Real American Freestyle, the brainchild of the late Hulk Hogan, debuts Saturday as a league meant to widen the possibilities for collegiate and Olympic amateur wrestlers.
For as long as MMA has existed — and in sticking with Gregorian traditions as it applies to the UFC calendar, we’re talking approximately 32 years — there’s been a notion in place that wrestling is an essential base.
Jiu-jitsu is a high-minded martial art, as you can tell when people call it “kinetic chess,” nuanced down to the folds in the gi. Muay Thai is a beautiful weapon to have, the time-honored “art of eight limbs,” but a good wrestler treats a strict Muay Thai disciple the way the bull treats runners in Pamplona. And boxing, which we have leaned on as the “sweet science” for so many years, is a fine thing, so long as a wrestler decides to stand and trade.
But wrestling is the steely-eyed rule. It’s the brass tacks of MMA, the nullifying endgame, merciless in its purist form, and without a shared conscience to crowd-pleasing aesthetics. When Dricus du Plessis ran into Khamzat Chimaev in his title fight at UFC 319, he suffered 25 minutes of existential quandary. The wrestler showed up and tore through any game plans with the first takedown. By the 12th, Chicago groaned like it had lost its umpteenth hand of blackjack in a row.
The inaugural Real American Freestyle event that’s slated to go down in Cleveland on Saturday night will bring a few bells and whistles, but really, grit is at the heart of it all. Started by Chad Bronstein, alongside the late pro wrestling icon Hulk Hogan, wrestling coach Izzy Martinez, and the former WCW mastermind Eric Bischoff, it’s a wrestling league meant to widen possibility.
Bronstein floated the idea to Martinez a few months back while in Florida, and boom — just like that — the thing was in motion.
“I always thought this was an underserved opportunity, and so I went to Izzy with it, and then I went to Hulk,” he says. “Our first call, Hulk was like, ‘Brother, we gotta call Bischoff’ — and he used to tell me that all the time, because he knew Bischoff was a creative genius and that no one can do what he can do — and that’s what we did.
“So Hulk, me and Eric sat around my table with Izzy on the phone and, yeah, I would say we created it together. I saw the opportunity and all of us brought it to life.”
Bronstein, who wrestled in high school growing up in Ohio, wanted to create a league in which decorated amateur wrestlers would have an alternative to go after their collegiate or Olympic careers, a place to compete and make money. Or, as in the case of Bo Nickal, who will compete at the first RAF event on Saturday, to keep a foot on the mats while pursuing a career in the UFC.
Clocking in four months later, the speed with which the RAF came together should be the astounding part for the first card at the Wolstein Center, which also features the likes of Wyatt Hendrickson and Yianni Diakomihalis in the top few matches, as well as wrestling-rooted MMA fighters Darrion Caldwell and Lance Palmer.
But what ends up being even more astounding is the level of adversity the RAF has faced in getting to the launch date.
A little over a month ago, Hulk Hogan — whose real name was Terry Bollea — passed away suddenly at the age of 71, which shocked the whole of professional wrestling and beyond. As the world lost an immense cultural figure who was vital to the success of pro wrestling, Bronstein and Bischoff lost the driving force who helped dream RAF to life.
After all, it was Hulk who inspired the name “Real American,” which was the name of his iconic walkout music throughout his career. It also later became the name of Hogan’s own beer brand, Real American Beer. It was Hulk who so enthusiastically shared a vision of real wrestling — as in non-scripted — becoming a real thing beyond the amateur levels.
“It’s been rough for the team, and we know Hulk pretty well,” Bronstein says. “Eric has known and worked with him for over 25 years. Hulk was an ultimate workhorse, he was the kind of person that, he’s in my head, and he’s in Eric's head.
“I woke up at three at the morning and had him talking to me, and he just said he wants this to be successful. No matter what kind of mood he was in, or kind of pain he was in, if he was working, he turned it on. And so, that's how I’m getting through it, and I think that’s how Eric is getting through it.”
Nobody knew Hulk as well as Bischoff, the man behind one of wrestling’s greatest factions, the nWo from the late-1990s, of which Hogan was a major part.
“For the first week, 10 days, it was pretty tough, tougher than anything I’ve personally have gone through, maybe forever,” Bischoff says. “But it quickly became, 'You know what, now’s an opportunity to bring his vision to life,' because he had a big vision.
“That's one thing about Hulk, man — he thought big. Sometimes too big too soon, but he thought big, and when he reached out and told me about this and they introduced me to Chad, I could see what he saw. I got a feel for his vision, and now it's all about honoring him, making him proud, because his legacy's going to live forever. That brand is going to be around forever, and it’s up to us to do great things with it. And that's what we're going to do.”
Still, the show must go on. RAF01, which streams on Fox Nation, will feature 10 matches, each with three two-minute periods. The main event will pit Oklahoma State’s Hendrickson, who stunned the wrestling world by upsetting two-time NCAA champion Gable Stevenson back in March, against Egypt’s Mostafa Aly Elsayed Gabr. Nickal will face Jacob Cardenas, who wrestled at the University of Michigan.
One name who was supposed to be on the card was Ben Askren, the two-time Dan Hodge winner and University of Missouri icon who innovated freestyle wrestling and won multiple titles in MMA. Yet as the combat world knows, Askren nearly died after a bout with severe pneumonia, so bad that he ended up needing a double-lung transplant. Askren was in and out of consciousness for more than a month this summer, losing over 50 pounds in the process.
Now he has emerged as a pillar of inspiration.
With his days of competition forever behind him, if ever RAF needed a spokesman to embody the perseverance of the wrestling mentality, it’s Askren. He has been documenting his recovery process through a series of update videos, going back to him relearning to walk, and has continued on as he regains strength. Through it all he has championed wrestling, and — as a longtime friend of Martinez — has become a larger part of the RAF team.
“When all this happened with Ben, and he started getting better day by day, he wanted to get more involved in the league,” Bronstein says. “We were like, 'Ben, are you sure? You got a lot right now.' He was like, 'Yeah.' And he showed up to calls with us from his hospital bed.
“So, yeah, it is the attitude and discipline of these [wrestling] groups. And Ben was super excited about this from day one. We pitched it to him, he’s like, ‘I want this to succeed.' He believes that this is going to succeed based off of how we all built this.”
Bischoff says Askren’s attitude is quintessentially what wrestling is all about, and why it needs to be zeroed in on and highlighted.
“I think that conversation about Ben, it’s one of the reasons that I’m excited about this new professional league in combat sports,” he says. “Because MMA, as much as I love it — and I grew up in martial arts as well as wrestling — when you look at so many of the champions in UFC, so many of them have extensive wrestling backgrounds. People are generally aware of that. MMA fans are generally aware of that.
“But I think one of the things that we have an opportunity to do at Real American Freestyle is to showcase it because it is the discipline, it is the focus, the intensity that I think the amateur wrestlers coming up through elementary school, junior high school, high school, college and beyond, that’s what they bring to the table for the entire combat sports world. We want to bring some attention to that. We don’t want it to just be a footnote in the conversation, we want to highlight that conversation.”
After Cleveland, there will be more cards. College wrestling hotbeds. The next one in November, Bronstein says.
Wrestling at its best has always been a dictation of wills, and to love it is to appreciate what needs to be overcome. There’s been plenty in the lead-up to RAF 1. Askren nearly died, but when he came roaring back to life, the first thing he did was champion the sport that he loves. Hulk Hogan did die, and a tribute is planned for Saturday night. To hear the RAF team tell it, the Hulk will be there in spirit. So will all of them.
As Bronstein says, nothing was going to stop RAF01 from going down.
And that perseverance just might be its greatest selling point
Category: General Sports
