NORTH ALABAMA – Welcome to “On The Job”, a series that focuses on professions throughout North Alabama.
Tiger Kid is a professional wrestler and production assistant at a local TV station. The Athens native wrestles in what he calls his “home shows” at Rocket City Championship Wrestling but also travels for bookings.
“I’ve wrestled for Spartan Pro Wrestling before and a few other outfits as well,” said Tiger Kid. “It’s kind of like being a professional musician. You either call around to different places and try to get books there, or someone hears of you and then they reach out to invite you.”
The amount of money a pro wrestler earns varies widely from $600 in local markets to $12 million a year for the highest-paid WWE wrestler. According to Glassdoor, the median salary for a professional wrestler in the United States is between $95,000 and $161,000 per year. Additional pay can include merchandise sales and bonuses. Tiger Kid tells 256 Today the majority of his wrestling earnings come from merchandise sales.
Tiger Kid spoke with 256 Today about his career as a professional wrestler. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you become a professional wrestler?
It’s what I always dreamed of doing. Ever since I was a little kid, me and my brother would go out in the yard and play around on the trampoline and have different wrestling matches. We would even make costumes for ourselves, never anything like fantastic. But there were suplexes and body slams involved for sure, jumping off of the tree house onto each other and stuff like that.
What kind of training is required?
I had to seek out a school. Luckily, a friend of mine had already joined the school. Once I found this school, I very quickly just fell into place. I put in a lot of hard work in the meantime and showed them that I was very serious by doing things during the show days. I was putting out chairs, I was taking money at the door so that the other wrestlers could go get ready. I was trying to make sure that I pulled my own weight and paid my dues and within a little bit of time of training, I felt comfortable enough, or at least my trainers did. That put me in my first match and I’ve wrestled consistently ever since.
What is your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part about wrestling is living my dream and being able to impact the kids that I see so much of myself reflected back to me. I used to be that kid that was trying to sit on the front row and cheer on my favorite characters and performers. I always take time to speak with as many younger fans as possible, that means a lot to me. I always make sure that I give back as much as I possibly can.
What is the most challenging part of your job?
The hardest part is probably getting suplexed or thrown into things specifically like the floor or a guardrail or a chair. Those things really hurt. So the risk of injury. And then trying to put on a compelling show.
I always have this moment before every match where I am thinking about all the ways it could go wrong. I have this moment of clarity, this moment where I’m thinking I have to make sure that I make it through this so that I can go home to my wife and my kids and be there for them.
Would you recommend this career path to others?
I will say yes, with the stipulation that it takes a very specific kind of person to be able to do what we do. And it’s not for everybody.
I’ve seen people who I thought would go further than me quit within a couple of weeks and I’ve seen people who I didn’t think would stick with it make it through their first match and continue past that.
It definitely takes a full on mindset and body working together in order to accumulate into something that you probably never would have expected yourself to do.
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