Reminisce on your childhood. 

Remember how simple things were?  No jobs, no bills, no relationships.

Aspirations were much more vivid; at age seven, everything is in play.  Boys picture winning the World Series with a walk-off home run, girls dream of the Prince Charming who will sweep them off their feet.

As you get older, you become cognizant of your limitations.  Life rarely goes as planned.

But imagine being unfazed by these limitations.  Imagine saying, “I am going to do what I have always wanted to do”, and then actually doing it.

Sounds crazy, right?

Maybe, it is.  But so what? 

You only live once.

*****

The tickets cost $15. 

An obese woman, whose folding chair is holding on for dear life, takes my money, stamps my hand, and enters me into the monthly contest. 

Tonight’s prize?  A free DVD of last year’s WWE Summerslam.

I continue to the main arena, losing my raffle ticket somewhere amid the clutter in my wallet. 

In the center of the room stands a wrestling ring encompassed on three sides by four rows of folding chairs.  Seating is general admission, so I grab a chair near the westernmost point of the ring.  

The Centereach VFW Hall is no Madison Square Garden, but tonight it serves a similar purpose.  

This evening, the VFW Hall is hosting its monthly Victory Pro Wrestling (VPW) event. VPW is a Long Island-based independent wrestling federation.  If World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is Major League Baseball, consider VPW the Long Island Ducks.

I am here to watch Kevin Detiberus, a 26-year-old air-conditioning mechanic, go to work. 

Tonight, however, Detiberus will not be replacing any air conditioner motors; instead, the 5'8", 150-pound New Yorker is here to wrestle, just as he has done on the independent circuit for the past two years.

Professional wrestling has been Detiberus’s passion forever—why else would one put their body in severe harm’s way for what he describes as “gas and toll money, if that”—but he never gave performing any serious consideration.  Sure, he engaged in a backyard match or two in his youth, but that was all.

Then at 23, on a whim, Detiberus attended a wrestling class with a former co-worker.  He was hooked.

“I don’t know what took me so long to do it; I guess I never realized how easy it was to attend a wrestling school,” Detiberus recalls.  “But I decided to give it a shot because I didn’t want to look back one day thinking, ‘Man, I really could have done it if I tried.’”

Today, Detiberus trains over fifteen hours a week between weightlifting, cardio, and wrestling practice—all while having a full-time job.  He also watches WWE with a newfound intention.

Whereas he once watched solely for entertainment, Detiberus now studies what he sees on Raw and Smackdown for ideas.  Any innovative move or “spot” he sees on TV could come in handy in a future match

Detiberus’s wrestling gimmick is K-Funk, a high-flying white boy break-dancer modeled after characters from the movie “Kickin It Old Skool”.  He and tag team partner, Kevin Fullerton—known as K-Fresh—make up “The Funky Fresh Boyz”, a duo on the cusp of becoming the top babyface tag team in VPW.  (They will eventually wrestle in the first match after the show’s intermission.)

Tonight is my first time seeing them in action.

*****

As I settle into my seat, I notice Detiberus’s father, Denis, and oldest brother, Mike, seated in front of me.  It is fitting because Kevin’s family played an enormous role in his love for wrestling. 

“My brothers and I all watched together,” he remembers.  “As we got older, Mike lost interest, but Tom and I watched every Monday Night Raw together from like 1997-2002.  It was a big part of our bond.”

Tom is Kevin’s other older brother.  He is currently enlisted in the Army and has been stationed in Texas since 2003.  His responsibilities have prevented him from seeing Kevin wrestle in person.

“Tom was able to see my first match on DVD but he hasn’t been able to make it to a show yet, which sucks because of how close our wrestling bond was,” says Kevin.  “We used to wrestle our pillows pretending to be The Rockers.  We just loved it.”

Tonight, there is no need to wrestle pillows. 

*****

As the intermission ends, Kanye West’s “Stronger” hits and The Funky Fresh Boyz dance their way down the aisle to a mixed reaction. 

They are over with the crowd but the snarky teenagers in attendance try to drown out applause with chants like “Funky Fag Boyz”.  In Centerreach, teenagers do not like to cheer for the good guys.

Their opponents are Eclipse: Jay Delta and Xander Page, the VPW Tag Team Champions. 

For the past few months, the FFB have tried to take the belts off their rivals.  The youngsters in attendance are hoping that tonight will be the night that it finally happens.

As Detiberus plays to the crowd near our side of the ring, a young boy sitting to my right cheers wildly.  He whispers to his dad, “That’s K-Funk, my favorite wrestler.”

Mr. Detiberus overhears the exchange, leans over his chair, and glowingly tells the boy, “That’s my son”.   

The boy is awestruck.  The father is as proud as can be.

Just your standard night at the wrestling show.

*****

When asked what his best in-ring attribute was, Detiberus replied, “As funny as this might sound, I get my ass kicked pretty damn well.”

He wasn’t lying. 

Watching K-Funk’s ring presence for a short time, it becomes evident that Shawn Michaels was his favorite wrestler.  Between the bumps, the facial expressions, and the high-flying offense, the Heartbreak Kid’s influence is unmistakable.

Tonight, one of K-Funk’s opponents, Xander Page, is a six-foot, 300-pound cross between Earthquake and Rhyno.  Page is a monster of a man who looks even bigger next to the diminutive Detiberus.

Each time Page hits the canvas, the ring uses one of its proverbial nine lives.  

The big fellow has spent the better part of the match beating K-Funk around the ring, much to the dismay of the Funky Fresh partisans.  Funk sells each big boot and chokeslam with an authenticity that elicits cringing out of his fans. 

We can feel his pain.

That is, pain within the context of a pure wrestling match. 

One of the biggest surprises of my first VPW show was how little excessive violence there was.  The media portrays independent wrestling as a glorified bloodbath.  (Think vintage ECW—weapons, thumbtacks, ladders—minus the skills of a Rob Van Dam.)

However at VPW, traditional pro wrestling is favored in place of the bloody, barbed wire-infested wars that inhabit hardcore matches.  Psychology, storytelling, and amateur-style wrestling moves that make sense given the context of the match are essential to each encounter. 

Detiberus appreciates this environment.

“I used to love hardcore wrestling, but now I think it is cheap,” says Detiberus.  “Wrestling is about psychology—why did each move happen?  Any person who doesn’t care about their body can do the hardcore stuff, but it takes real talent to put on a good wrestling match.”

Fans who appreciate pure wrestling will notice the way K-Funk sells each kick to the ribs as though he has been bludgeoned with a sledgehammer. 

They will notice the exaggerated limp that Xander Page walks with after the Funky Fresh Boyz worked his leg the entire match, trying to “chop the big man down”. 

And they will also notice the disappointment in K-Funk and K-Fresh’s faces as they leave the ring having lost to their arch-rivals. 

Eclipse has defeated them once again, and the dejected Funky Fresh Fanz in attendance will have to come to next month’s show, if they wish to see their heroes finally win the tag-team titles.

Win-loss records mean little to the performers, though.  Their main concern is entertaining the fans each night.  But there is a selfish aspect to wrestling as well.  Something each performer gets out of it that most of us will never understand.

As Detiberus explains, “There’s just no rush like being out there.  When you are center stage and the crowd cheers a move you do, even if it’s only in front of 200 people in the VFW Hall, it’s just the most incredible feeling.”

Whether you are John Cena or K-Funk, that thrill is always present.  It’s what drives each person who steps into the ring.

*****

The rush.  The excitement.  The thrill.

You will hear these words a lot when wrestlers describe their craft.  If it sounds like a drug, it’s because it is. 

Ex-WWE stars travel the independent scene for years trying to replicate the feeling they experienced in their prime.  Even the independent wrestlers who have yet to reach the pinnacle of the sport experience this rush. 

It’s a dream come true to everyone associated with the business.

Most people never get the chance to fulfill a childhood dream.  (For example, you are likely reading this on Facebook, not in Sports Illustrated.)  Yet each time Detiberus steps through the ropes and becomes K-Funk, he does just that. 

K-Funk is the high school kid who chipped in $10 with Mike and Tom to order every WWE pay-per-view.  He is the teenager who practiced rock-bottoms on every girlfriend. 

And most importantly, he is an example of what can happen when you put your heart into something and never give up. 

Will he ever reach the John Cena/Randy Orton plateau?  The odds are not in his favor.  Not every Long Island Duck becomes Kevin Youkilis.

But to measure success in that fashion would be to misunderstand how to measure success.  As Mickey Rourke once showed, The Wrestler lives for the crowd, whether it is 200 people in Centereach or 20,000 in Madison Square Garden. 

In the meantime, Detiberus is living his dream. 

How great would it be if we were all lucky enough to do the same?