Real Pro Wrestling Interview, Part II: More With Co-Founder Matt Case
Last week, Real Pro Wrestling co-founder Matt Case talked about what happened to RPW in an exclusive interview with The Wrestling Mall. In part II of the interview, Case talks further about the league, and adds more details, comments and insight about what went on inside Real Pro Wrestling. He also talks more about the sport of wrestling, and what can be done to market the sport and create a better product for wrestlers and fans on and off the mat.
By Matt Krumrie
Senior Editor/TheWrestlingMall.com
info@thewrestlingmall.com
Read Part I: Whatever happened to Real Pro Wrestling?
Read Part II below:
TWM: If you know now what you didn’t know then……
Case: I would have played baseball. But seriously, I would have spent less time trying to work with relationships within the wrestling community (organizations, groups, etc) and more time trying to network key relationships outside of wrestling.
TWM: How much money do you estimated was put into making this league work?
Case: Too much. That’s really a Toby (Toby Willis was the co-founder and president of RPW) question. But if I had to guess, I probably wouldn’t like the answer.
TWM: Have you and co-founder Toby Willis ever sat back and reflected on all of this and thought about all the hard work and efforts you put into this? Are the memories good, bad, frustration, joy, relief? Please explain.
Case: The memories are mostly good, but there was/is also lots of frustration. Toby had more riding on the venture then I did. So, his feelings are going to be different. However, as a team, we both found it a rewarding challenge. It was painful that it had to end, but at the same time, there was some relief because we’d been working so hard for 5 years to try and make it happen. There was a lot of sacrifice on Toby’s part and strictly from a friend’s point of view, it was good to see him get to relax and finally spend some quality and quantity time with his family.
TWM: What are you up to these days? Do you still follow wrestling?
Case: Toby and I both still follow wrestling. I don’t follow the sport quite as closely as before, but am still reading articles and web sites. It was great to see Jake Herbert win the NCAA’s again, and win a spot on the World Team. Toby’s three boys are wrestling now and it’s cool to see them starting to grow in the sport.
TWM: What is Toby Willis up to these days?
Case: Well, as mentioned earlier, Toby’s spending lots of time with his family. He’s got them doing lots of creative things such as dance, music, art, writing, etc. They’ve been wining some major dance contests across the country and are being asked to play lots of music fests around as well. They are all a very driven and hard working bunch as you can imagine.
TWM: What is your best memory of this whole RPW experience?
Case: I think my best memory is probably the culmination of working with the grassroots community of wrestling. I attended so many different events trying to get the word about RPW out there that I grew even more in my appreciation for the families and participants in the sport. Tournament hoping brought back a lot of memories when I was a kid…smelly bathrooms and all.
There was one specific memory however, that I’ll always remember, and that’s when I went to produce a bio video on Rulon Gardner at his parent’s house in Wyoming. He had just gotten a new parasail - you know the kind that you pull behind a boat that takes you up into the air? Well, he didn’t want me to drive his boat while he broke the parasail in, so to get on his good side, I volunteered to do it. Well, the short story is that I was up in the air for about a minute, then started to descend fairly quickly on this mountain lake. The winds were a little tricky. Anyway, I proceeded to fall into the lake while Rulon kept driving the boat, dragging me behind for what seemed like an eternity. The truth is, an Olympic champion almost drowned me that day.
TWM: What is your biggest disappointment of this whole RPW experience?
Case: The biggest disappointment was simply not making it happen. It’s still extremely disappointing that we didn’t get RPW rolling past the pre-season of Season 2. Wrestling has had so many problems from the college cuts, to the stigma it’s had via the growth of theatrical wrestling, to the uber traditional way of thinking that often stymies our systems, that we believed that if done right, our sport could be marketed to a mass audience, where it could be respected by more mainstream sports. And we still believe that.
TWM: What do you want to tell the wrestling fans who hoped this would work? What would you say to them about all of this?
Case: Well, without getting too melodramatic, I’d like hope that those folks who understood what the idea of RPW was all about, would keep applying that same “idea” to the sport. Meaning, don’t ever stop imagining what the sport could be. Right now, I’m convinced that many of the leaders in our sport don’t dream enough nor think outside the box enough, even when it comes to practical things like rules. For example, why doesn’t the NCAA adopt the “push out” rule? It’s a simple change that would increase action on the college level by an enormous amount. Yet, we’re still caught in our old ways of thinking. At the same time, FILA and USAW, while they do a bit better at outside the box thinking, need to better study what really works rather than employing rules that to be, seem arbitrary. For example, why did they move to the “tennis approach” to periods? I liked the fact that they were trying to innovate, but all that format did was decrease scoring and action. It just didn’t seem like a decision that was thought through well enough. But again, I don’t want to get too soapboxy here. I just want to encourage others not to be afraid to try their ideas like we did ours.
TWM: What would you say or mention that would be unique that people wouldn’t understand unless they were involved behind the scenes with everything RPW like you and Toby?
Case: Man, that’s a tough question. We had to maneuver though so many different situations, it would be difficult to explain the “behind the scenes” in a few words. But I think that if one could imagine two guys continuously analyzing our sport from every possible angle like two mad scientists, one might get the gist of it. But not only did we have internal analysis and debate going on about how to improve wrestling, we asked hundreds of others in our sport who we respected. So, in a nutshell, we were really just analyzing and processing data, while adding our own creative bent to produce the best possible “product” of wrestling we could envision.
TWM: What else can you add that I didn’t ask? What would you like to wrap up with?
Case: Thanks for the opportunity to share more about RPW, which was/is really just an idea. I would encourage others to imagine what our sport “could be” and come up with ideas of their own. Innovate.
Looking ahead: Look for more information and interviews on Real Pro Wrestling with an exclusive interview with RPW co-founder and president Toby Willis coming soon! | 
