Below Zero Wrestling

0:00Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Afternoons Live. I am Joe Deutsch sitting in today for the Fishing Tyler Aksness and got the producer Eric Johnson here with me. One more segment left here. I've had a great, great time here as you probably can tell by listening to me. I asked my first time doing this and, you know, being on this side in the 20 years I've gotten to always be a guest. And so I'm finally finally comfortable and and really appreciate the opportunity to to be able to do this today. And as I've said several times already on my birthday, right? So yeah, I mean, and like I said, big, great loose group of people. I've already had a chance to talk to and different groups that I had to talk to. And I figured it was most fitting that we end today today with with below zero wrestling. Full disclosure, below zero wrestling is a professional wrestling organization based right here out of Fargo. Some people crack jokes all the time that I have an alter ego, so Vester J. Fox manager, extraordinaire for 30 years.

1:09I've been involved in professional wrestling, being slifox and whatever else. But most recently, and I'll let him talk about how long and in the buildup. But most recently we've actually got a promotion right here and awesome promotion right here in town. And the man behind that, Mr Nick Stokey is with me right here in the in the studio today. So Nick, thank you very much for coming in. Owner of below zero wrestling. Yeah, appreciate you having me happy birthday. I know I texted earlier the same thing, but I guess people got to hear that I actually say it to you. So, but yeah, no, thanks for having me on. It's wonderful. You know, with what we do below zero and just being a part of the community in Fargo and everything as we've grown. So why professional wrestling? What's the appeal? What did you grow up with it? Tell me about forever. Wrestling fan for my entire life is as young as I can remember, I've liked wrestling in some sense. Why to start a professional wrestling company, because I never became a professional wrestler. I never became a referee. I never became a manager extraordinaire.

2:15That's a tough thing to do. And so it was like, let's go for it. Let's just see what happens when we started ahead of business partners, Zach, we're and here we are five and a half years later. And it's not a hobby anymore. You know, now it's a thing and it's something we take so much pride in. No, it's definitely not a hobby or a thing anymore. It's it's it's growing and it's become I mean, you came out of the shoot saying you're going to be family friendly. And I grew up with with professional wrestling as my mother who might be listening right now, can attest. I would, you know, Saturday nights main event would be on Saturday nights, instead of Saturday night live once a month. And I would read the newspaper on Saturday morning and pray that that Saturday night live was going to be listed in there on the TV guide. And I was supposed to be sleeping because I had to get up and go to church next morning, but I'd sneak out and turn that TV on and watch Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy and the steel cage. And I just loved I loved professional wrestling. I loved everything about it. And like you, I never became an actual professional wrestler.

3:18I didn't feel like I was I was big enough. But I did want to be a part of professional wrestling because it's it's awesome. And it's an amazing thing to be part of. I was where so Vester J Fox manager, Jurel, extraordinary was built out of I love to support people. And so the it's fun that the character oftentimes represents something different than who or what you are. But talk a little bit about, you know, where where where the first show was and how you've grown in the last couple of years. So I mean, our first show was May of 21 and we started the sanctuary event center. You know, we had gone from, you know, events all the time. And then we hit a time where, you know, for a year and a half there, we didn't have a lot of live events just in general. And so, like I said at the time, my business partner Zach, me and him probably planned this out for let's say six to eight months. And finally in May, May 15 of 2021, we had our first event at the sanctuary event center.

4:18We had no idea what we were getting into looking back, you know, five years, five and a half years ago, how many things I did wrong and just not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. But it also set the foundation for where we are now, because I can look back at that and say, OK, this is the few things we did right because we did have a great crowd. We had great matches. We had great talent. But now we can grow off it. So I still am looking back to that first event, the second event, third events. And here we are. Now we've continued to run at the sanctuary event center from time to time. But we found other places in Fargo as our home, other places in the state. And even a few out of state as we've grown. Tell us a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. So growing up, a little backstory for WCW, if people know WCW, hog wild road wild is one of their biggest pay per views of all time down in Sturgis. So something that we were really proud of. We've ran the Sturgis motorcycle rally now for two years. We have multiple thousands of fans at each event or center stage downtown red on Main Street, the iron horse. And that's just phenomenal. I never thought that that was something that was.

5:27That was a day one goal. I wrote down about four or five day one goals and that actually was one and then to make it happen is just was crazy to me. And then we've grown, you know, my not Bismarck Dickinson. We've done Montana. We've done Minnesota, but we always come back to Fargo. We run some of our major shows at like the lights and the Butler arena, you know, where we have thousands of fans and it's family friendly. It's all ages, you know, so not only are you seeing Graham and Graham having a great time, but you're seeing the five year olds, the six year olds, the kids and all this having such a great time and just being able to see everything in between makes everything that we do. So much more worth it. It's more than wrestling. It's entertainment. Yeah. So talk to me about somebody who, you know, watches WWE on television, because that would be an analogy, right? You're watching it being entertained. But tell me what's different about the interaction at your shows versus somebody watching WWE on television or even actually watching WWE live.

6:27It's the small, it's like while we're still wanting to be a big company, we're a small company. And so you can get very intimate with the wrestlers and the, you know, personalities and meet them with the autographs, meet them with the pictures. And that we're not just focused on what people are seeing on TV. We're not just, you know, that's not always just a storyline, but you can come one time a year, bring the kids, enjoy what's going on and not have to actually know about professional wrestling. You can just go for the entertainment because match one to match six, you know, however many matches you have that night, we make sure that it's not just for wrestling fans, but it's for this entertainment experience. Yeah. I mean, whole families are coming, you know, kids are taking pictures with the wrestlers. The wrestlers are interacting with them, talking with them. The champions are walking around to have their belts. The kids get a chance to, families get a chance to take the pictures with the belts. Families get to go right up to the rail, take pictures at the ring. And so like you said, professional wrestling, whether you enjoy the storylines or not, it's just it's pure entertainment. And it's so interactive.

7:36It is. We, so we enter, let's call it two years ago, maybe three years ago, this was a Zaxx idea that we started a fan championship. So you can come, bring the kids, take a picture with the belt. Hold, but a wrestling belt feels like and it might not seem like a lot to some people when we did that, but just to be able to see when kids get to hold those and they experience like, oh man, this is what a belt feels like, like those little things just make our events so much more, not just necessarily that, but there's more that we try to do, whether it's pictures in the ring or like you said, meet and greets with fans, maybe meet and greets with, you know, wrestlers that did wrestle on national TV 20 years ago, one year ago, 40 years ago. Like there's, there's a lot of things going on at every single event we have. Yeah, I mean, it's an opportunity to bring in old, W W wrestlers to interact with the fans and and have them remember that experience that they had when they were younger. All right, when we get back from from the break, I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, the fan experience.

8:37I talked a little bit with Nancy about how blows wrestling did a show for has done the show now for special Olympics for the last two years, we'll talk a little bit about that, but we're up against the wall here for another break. My name is Joe Deutsch and I am in for Tyler Axis today. And this is afternoon's live there Johnson and we'll see you after the break. Welcome back to afternoon's live. My name is Joe Deutsch and I am in the final segment of my opportunity to come in here and fill in for Tyler Axis today on afternoon's live and it's been, it's been fun. I really enjoyed, enjoyed having it right now. I've got the opportunity to talk to below zero wrestling owner Nick Stokey, but I would be remissed to not bring up the final boss as we like to call her Teresa Stokey because behind every good man is an amazing woman. She does amazing things for the company as she does for your own personal company that you guys own as well, but Teresa is amazing. She, I mean, it takes many hands, right? I mean, talk about, talk about what Teresa does, but talk about what it takes to do for all the other people that are have to be involved.

9:54It takes a lot and thanks for stealing my thunder there as we just talked about it, but it's okay. You can get the credit for it. She'll know. But yeah, it takes so many people because it's not just, hey, let's put a wrestling show together. It's setting up the ring. It's doing the promoting. It's getting the tickets. It's helping run backstage. It's doing sound. It's doing video. So I mean, we have so many pieces to the puzzle and sometimes roles change and sometimes you don't get the people to come to the shows and mine out their Bismarck. They can't come to Sturgis with you. And so I've been extremely fortunate that over the years, my wife has taken on a role of just instead of like, hey, I'll help with tickets to she's she's running a lot of these events. Like, I have to do my thing and then she does everything else. If it's tickets, if it's set up, if it's handling the locker room, which is not always easy. The other day, one of the other shows she ran sound. She's never done sound in her life and she's running sound in Sturgis, one of our biggest shows of the year.

10:56So no, I can't thank her enough on top of that at home. We have our two girls. We have our other company, Prairie Pest Control. Like, there's so much that she has going on. And yet she's let me live out this dream and been there with me since day one. Yeah, I mean, running sound in front of 3,000 people in Sturgis without having ever done sound before. I mean, that's a big, that's a big undertaking for anybody. Without a hiccup. We didn't have a single hiccup. No, I mean, maybe she can't be in charge of that because she's in charge of tickets. So I was show has to start before the tickets are done to be put in. And you know, that below zero wrestling is is important. I mean, is an awesome entertainment for everybody and we encourage everybody to come out. But it's very important to to some special people, especially a lot of the special Olympics athletes talk to us about not just some of the special Olympics athletes that come to every one of our shows, but putting on an actual wrestling show for the state summer games here in Fargo for the athletes. And yet, you know, the special Olympics in North Dakota has really become close to me and I have you to really think for that.

12:01Some of our biggest fans are most devoted fans, you know, there's a group of five or six, you know, that come from Jamestown. And they've been at all of our events there in Fargo, they're in Bismarck there and I think they came to Dickinson one year. So getting to know those athletes and then being able to get involved with special Olympics in a very small scale by putting on these shows at the last two summer games has been just there's some of my favorite events. It's small. It's, you know, in a small gymnasium. We just put on a few events for them, but they're the most like crazy, Ram book, Ram Bungus crowd as can be. And then taking that picture every year at the end where we have all this athletes in the ring and I'm praying that their ring doesn't break. It's just it's really amazing in that organization's amazing. I can't wait to see what more BZW can do with the special Olympics in North Dakota here. You know down the road. Yeah, and shout out to the Ryan's and the Skylers and the Richards that come to every one of the shows. They're my slides guys.

13:04I don't know they like you more than they like me. Yes, that's fine. Show them out. Well, and like I said, I get to be at the finish line for them when they cross when they're when they're running. They get to be there to support us at the wrestling shows. It's win win for everybody all the way around. Well, Nick, I appreciate you coming in immensely. You're one of my best friends is and that's come through this this wrestling thing. It's just wrestling as a way of bringing people together and forming bonds at locker room is is insane. But that means I have to get out of here. It is the end of afternoons live as much fun as I've had today for three hours. We're going to be transition and right out of here and into drive times news with the Derek Hansen. And then I think he's going to do couch potato radio air because that right afterwards. Yes, indeed before we head to the Australia game tonight in Melbourne, Australia. Okay, well, thank you very much for spending my birthday with me. Thank you very much for Tyler Axenus for giving me the opportunity to finally bucket list item. Joe Deutsche got to finally get himself an opportunity to host a AM running show. And I'm so excited to have been here. Thank you very much. Have a great evening.