“It’s amazing how many people have gone through the door,” Joe DeFalco says. The owner of Future Stars of Wrestling sits in his office while, in the next room, bodies bounce off the mat with a rumble that sounds like a thunderstorm. DeFalco isn’t talking about fans, who’ve been turning up in larger numbers since WrestleMania came to town last April. He’s referring to some of the wrestling luminaries who’ve signed the gym lockers in the corners of the room.
“I know Matt Hardy had to sign it,” DeFalco says, looking over the scribblings on the dented metal. “I know Jeff Jarret had to sign it. … Ted DiBiase on the upper right, I see.”
DeFalco locates signatures from Ricky Steamboat, “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, Rob Van Dam and Booker T alongside those of newer stars such as Dominik Mysterio, Mercedes Moné and MJF.
“Sabu used to come in here,” he says of the late hardcore legend, “and he’d work on weird spots with the chairs. … It was like artwork.”
DeFalco’s gearing up to welcome plenty more wrestlers through that door to the FSW Arena. With WrestleMania’s return to Allegiant Stadium on April 18 and 19, the next week is shaping up to be the local promotion’s biggest yet.
From the swap meet to the Strip
“It was a day that anybody who was there will never forget,” DeFalco says of the inaugural FSW event.
About 250 people crammed into the back of the Rancho Swap Meet on Memorial Day 2009. The temperature was in the mid-’90s, but the swamp coolers were busted, making the room feel like about 175 degrees.
Among the wrestlers on that first card were brothers Matt and Nick Jackson, who earned one of the biggest paydays: $75 each. Known as The Young Bucks, the duo would go on to cofound All Elite Wrestling, which debuted 10 years later, to the day, at the MGM Grand Garden.
County officials quickly shut down DeFalco’s future plans over zoning issues, so FSW moved its shows to the Silver Nugget for a couple of years. Then it was on to Sam’s Town, then the Silverton. Recently, Kyle Santos from HyperX Arena at Luxor reached out.
“He was like, ‘Hey, you ever think about doing a show here?’ ” DeFalco recalls. “I’m like, ‘We always think about doing a show anywhere!’ ”
He isn’t lying. Last month, FSW stars traveled to California to put on a match following a San Diego Seals lacrosse game. On Friday, they’ll wrestle between periods at the Silver Knights game in Henderson.
“Now we’re on the Strip,” DeFalco says of the promotion’s new home away from FSW Arena. “We have a residency. We have shows every month.”
Despite the fancy new digs in the resort corridor, the Luxor shows are still very much geared toward locals. There have been two so far. Each included an intermission so fans could move their cars during the parking grace period and avoid the fees.
An intimate home
FSW Arena is a bit of a misnomer.
The home of the promotion’s smaller shows, located in an office park at 6035 Harrison Drive, is just big enough to squeeze a row of chairs behind the metal barricades on two sides of the ring. The curtained-off wrestlers’ entrance leads to the parking lot behind the building, which serves as a sort of alfresco locker room. Along the fourth wall, there’s another row of chairs and some wooden bleachers, whose occupants often are asked to slide down to make room for late-arriving fans.
There’s one toilet, zero concessions, and leaving your seat in the bleachers before the very end requires agility and the cooperation of many. But no one jammed into the space seems to mind.
The venue is small enough to hear everything. Heel wrestlers working on their characters by taunting individual fans throughout their matches. Wannabe comics heckling the wrestlers with any thought that enters their heads. During a recent show, a teenage girl screamed herself hoarse trying to get one of the wrestlers in a tag team to move because he was blocking her view.
“That’s what I like about independent wrestling,” says Greg Minor, the wrestler known as G Sharpe who’s spent the past 15 years in FSW. “You get to have that small venue intimacy. … It feels so special when you’re in a smaller venue. There’s maybe a hundred people. You can see every other face in the crowd.”
Next stop: WWE
Over the years, Future Stars of Wrestling has lived up to its name.
In the promotion’s earliest days, when someone would inquire about getting into the business, DeFalco would refer them to a local wrestling school. After a while, he realized he was leaving money on the table and started one in his backyard. Classes now take place in the FSW Arena, where everyone from the promotion’s champions to newbies off the street hits the ring.
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Three of the top names in Future Stars of Wrestling share their stories
Trainers have included the likes of Jake “The Snake” Roberts and D’Lo Brown. Now, those sessions are led by T.J. Perkins, the WWE’s first cruiserweight champion, and Chris Bey, a homegrown talent who’d captured multiple titles in TNA Wrestling before suffering a broken neck in a match against Matt and Jeff Hardy.
It’s their job, as well as DeFalco’s, to school the wrestlers and send them on their way.
“I’m the proud papa,” he says. “The enjoyment for me is these guys being signed. That’s fantastic.”
On rare occasions, those departures are bittersweet.
Take Shaun Ricker, who came to FSW that first year.
“The minute he got on the microphone,” DeFalco recalls, “we were all like, ‘Holy (expletive)! This guy’s gonna be signed.’ ”
Ricker was booked as a heel, but the fans loved him for the promos he cut. They booed, lustily, but they loved him — so much so that when the company made him a babyface (wrestling parlance for a good guy or hero), he didn’t have to change a thing.
The day Ricker was going to become the FSW heavyweight champion, he told DeFalco he’d just been signed by WWE and would be leaving in a month. Ricker still won the title, dropped it two weeks later, and set out on the next step in his journey to becoming LA Knight.
WWE Hall of Famer Rikishi trained two of his sons, who wrestle as Jey and Jimmy Uso. Another son, known as Sefa Fatu, was living in Las Vegas and didn’t want to return to Southern California and the family’s KnokX Pro Wrestling Academy.
Rikishi called DeFalco in 2018 and asked if he’d look after Fatu. The next January, he was the FSW Nevada State Champion. Fatu was in line to become the heavyweight champion in June 2021 when he got the call from WWE. Four months later, he debuted as Solo Sikoa.
“Those were the two that, man, we missed out on getting what we wanted,” DeFalco says.
A WrestleMania week homecoming
Kevin Kross, another homegrown star, will return to help lead FSW through WrestleMania week.
“Kevin’s a local legend,” DeFalco says of the man who showed up unannounced at the FSW Arena wanting to learn. “He started with us. Within about two months, he got to be on ‘Raw,’ and he went from being the hated heel to the ultimate babyface because he was on ‘Raw.’ I remember he cut a promo threatening to beat the (expletive) out of every single person in the arena and lock the doors, and they started cheering him.”
After a couple of runs with WWE as Karrion Kross, he’s back on the indie scene as Killer Kross. He’ll headline two FSW shows at HyperX Arena. Mecca XI: A Violent Night in Sin City, set for 10 p.m. April 17, is FSW’s biggest show of the year. Killer Kross Presents Natural Born Killers 5, at 10 p.m. April 18, is what DeFalco calls “kind of a hybrid, MMA-meets-pro wrestling type show.”
They’re among the 15 shows, most of them involving promotions visiting from around the country, that DeFalco will oversee in the two venues.
Current and former members of the FSW roster will be scattered throughout those and the roughly 50 other shows spread out among venues ranging from the Palms and the Horseshoe to The Center, Dive Bar, Container Park and Bizarre Bar.
It’s a testament to the hard work they and DeFalco have put in over the years. And it’s another way of helping wrestlers on their path to the big leagues.
“There’s a lot of really good people, but if nobody knows who you are, it doesn’t matter,” DeFalco says of other small promotions. “We have that gateway to where we can at least get you looked at.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at [email protected] or 702-380-4567.
WrestleMania’s back
Here’s a look at the official WWE events coming to town as part of WrestleMania week:
WWE World — The fan festival will offer memorabilia, meet-and-greets, live panels, activities and the WrestleMania Superstore. Noon-7 p.m. Thursday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. April 17, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. April 18 and 19, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. April 20 at Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall; tickets.fanaticsevents.com
WWE Friday Night SmackDown — 4:30 p.m. April 17 at T-Mobile Arena; tix.axs.com
WWE Hall of Fame ceremony — Stephanie McMahon, AJ Styles, Demolition (Ax & Smash), Dennis Rodman, Sid, Bad News Brown and the WrestleMania III match between Hulk Hogan and André the Giant will be inducted. 8:45 p.m. April 17 at Dolby Live; ticketmaster.com
WWE WrestleMania 42: Saturday — 2:30 p.m. April 18 at Allegiant Stadium; ticketmaster.com
Kill Tony: WrestleMania — The Tony Hinchcliffe podcast will welcome WWE stars, other celebrities and comedians for a Netflix special. 8:45 p.m. April 18 at Dolby Live; ticketmaster.com
WWE WrestleMania 42: Sunday — 2:30 p.m. April 19 at Allegiant Stadium; ticketmaster.com
Gronk Beach — Rob Gronkowski hosts this party with appearances from Tiffany Stratton, Trick Williams, Lash Legend and surprise guests. 10:30 p.m. April 19 at Marquee Dayclub at The Cosmopolitan; tickets.taogroup.com
WWE Monday Night Raw — 4:30 p.m. April 20 at T-Mobile Arena; tix.axs.com