Blood, sweat and jeers: Pro wrestlers with central Iowa’s 3XW open up about the thrill of the ring

At this point, it’s cliche to declare “pro wrestling is fake.” Everybody, the audience and wrestlers included, knows the outcomes are predetermined and nobody’s actually assassinating each other off-ring. But as wrestlers jump six feet in the air and hurl headfirst towards a thin layer of foam laid over wooden boards, which rattle like a drumroll every time a body smacks against them, I doubt the word “fake” is running through anyone’s mind.

Between tribute bands, themed raves and touring acts, Des Moines venue Wooly’s hosts events produced by 3XWrestling, an independent wrestling promotion company based in Central Iowa, active since 2005. I attended 3XW’s bout on Friday, March 6 for a crash course in kayfabe.

The first match was between the Irish Haggernaut, a chunk of a man who looks like an inflated Paul brother, and Leon King, a slimmer, acrobatically built guy who strutted out arrayed in a shimmering sequined robe to his own theme music. He had it commissioned specifically.

There’s about two weight classes between the two, but that’s part of the fun. King skittered like a balletic spider, pouncing on the larger man, whirling around him, and somehow slamming him to the ground with his feet around Haggernaut’s head. It created a kaboom that caromed off of the walls.

Families sat in the front row and kids jumped up and down, holding out hands for high-fives, shouting requests like “Crossbody him!” or “Sleeper hold!” as wrestlers climbed up the ropes, perched gargoyle-like on the corners, scanned the room back and forth to build the tension. Youngsters love pro wrestling, and they’re the ones who scream first and loudest. It makes sense; a lot of pro wrestling feels like adolescent wish fulfillment in the form of musclebound adults in Spandex — a lifesize version of a kid banging action figures together.

“I think it allows [adults] to touch their imagination and inner child,” wrestler Mark “The American Bulldog” McDowell told me in an interview after his fight. “So much gets sucked out because of all the responsibilities they have … So, you really get to delve into your inner psyche, becoming something other — maybe what you always wanted.”

I also talked to Rory Fox, a wrestler from the second match who preened and snarled at the audience, dressed in preposterous St. Patrick’s Day sunglasses and bowler. He was slick with sweat, straddling a folding chair in a little room backstage as the rumble of the ring shook the walls. “They don’t know me,” he said, “but out there they know Rory Fox is an asshole. They believe Rory Fox is an asshole, and I’ll try every dirty tactic out there.”

He talked like he was cutting a promo, his voice booming in the small space. “I can get them to suspend their belief for just a little bit, get some real emotion. That doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years and years of dedication to the craft, the psychology, the manipulation of the fans.”

There was a spark in the eyes of every wrestler I interviewed, a fanatic love that drives them. It’s not just the money — they get paid, but sometimes it’s a “hotdog and a handshake,” King said. It’s a gig that can take wrestlers across the country, but it’s more a side hustle than a full-time job for most, with variable pay and lots of travel. 

It’s not really about the prestige, either. Sure, you can strive for a shot at the major promotions, but even if you’re lucky enough to get booked, all it takes is an injury or an executive’s casual decision not to renew your contract and you’re back fighting your way to the top. 

It’s the crowd, the hooting layers of people surrounding the ring, the booing and cheering and chanting, that keeps them going. 

“Oh, my God, pro wrestling is the greatest when it’s done right,” Fox said. “When you elicit those loud reactions at the point in the match where you were expecting it to happen, when that all comes together, it’s the greatest. That crowd reaction is a drug for me, the booing, it just makes me so happy. That is my standing ovation.”

For such an aggressive sport, there was a surprising range of ages on the March 6 roster. American Bulldog McDowell is a 51-year-old with the broad build and hulking shoulders of a bear. A former football and rugby player, cheerleader and Army vet, he’s not only a wrestler but a promoter for 3XW, putting together the graphics and pre-bout intro videos. Pro wrestling, his passion for two decades, is the hardest thing he’s ever done.

“I always, always say you can’t fake gravity. It is very much a dance of sorts with partners … [but] things do get physical. I mean, I accidentally kicked somebody in the nose and there’s blood and all that stuff.”

Next was a match between Bruss Hamilton, the Gentleman Barbarian, who looks like three #menswear guys from the 2010s mashed together into a scarily yoked strongman, and Sam Stackhouse, a hulking 450-pound dude. It was “a couple of big meaty men slapping at each other,” as the announcer put it. Then Bruss picked Stackhouse up and hurled him to the ground, and I found myself grabbing the sides of my head in disbelief. There’s no way to get around it, no tricks or theatrical manipulations — it’s just a guy pulling off a genuinely incredible feat of strength.

There’s more to it than a typical sport, though. In WWE, AEW or the other big promotions, the storylines between wrestlers can last for months, with extensive ad campaigns and recap segments. It’s harder to pull it off on the indie level, where it’s always someone’s first encounter with the company. Still, it’s worth it to follow individual wrestlers that strike your fancy and see the effort they’ve put in. 

“I did a storyline out in Arkansas,” King told me. “It was months of story. Me and this guy, we had a ‘Three Stages of Hell’ match. We wrestled for an hour and nine minutes. It was just brutality. I put skewers in his head. When I got to the back after we did what we did and the crowd got into the story, I started crying, so much emotion came over me.”

Story is important in wrestling, and there’s a skill to it that has a lot in common with improv theater. 

KJ Orso, the headliner of the bill and a former AEW wrestler, was the best I’d seen all night, a wiry ball of nasty charisma who strode out with an assured cockiness to a chorus of boos — many people in the audience knew him enough to hate him. He wore white wrestling boots with SAVANT plastered down the side. His slim, wiry build made him look tiny next to his matchup, Camaro Jackson, a musclebound guy who stands a head taller and glistened with body oil. His voice carried over the crowd noise as he howled that he’s gonna “pin his opponent in record time and get outta this dump town of Des Moines, Iowa.”

Orso’s been at this for a long time, too. At 14, he used a Christmas-gifted camera to record videos of him and his brothers backyard wrestling on the family trampoline. He kept at it until, by 17, he was pulling in around $1,500 a month from YouTube monetization, by his estimation. That was before the adpocalypse, when YouTube kneecapped incomes for creators covering controversial subjects — simulated violence included, apparently. After that, Orso started officially training and adopted the luchador-inspired persona of Fuego Del Sol. 

During the pandemic, when international travel restrictions meant that AEW was short wrestlers, he joined in on Jacksonville tapings and eventually worked his way into a two-year TV career with AEW, the second-largest wrestling promotion after WWE.

During his Fuego del Sol era, Orso was a good guy, a “face” in wrestling vernacular, but 10 months prior to the match, he took off the mask and turned “heel,” a holdover term from the days when pro wrestling was a carnie gig. The heel is the villain of the show, and also the ringleader. The face has an easy job: get the bad guy, win. The heel, though, has to convince the audience that he’s worth taking down, worth booing and screaming and taunting. 

Orso loves it. There was a glee in his eyes as he sauntered around the ring with his jaw thrust out, snapping his head towards the most vocal audience members to glare them down.

What surprised me the most was that, although the endings are predetermined by the producers to serve a longer-term narrative goal, everything between the walk-in and the finishing pin is improvised. Most moves are generally recognized between wrestlers, and it’s a partner dance at the end of the day. That’s where the showmanship comes in — and the skill. 

During the final match, Orso slammed Jackson into the corner and somehow barred his entire body across him, pinning him in as he did one of those paint-me-like-your-French-girls poses on the middle rope while blowing kisses at the camera. Jackson got him back, though, dragging him to the front row and inviting the kids — who at this point are practically foaming at the mouth — to slap Orso in the chest. He was lucky to get away with some patches of red skin.

“There is no, ‘hey guys, don’t hit me hard’ … I did this three months ago in Wichita, Kansas, and this little girl rears back and I think she’s going to slap my chest, and she just punches me in the jaw,” Orso said. “Luckily, she’s 8 years old, and I can take a punch, but even my opponent had to stop themselves from corpsing and breaking because they found it hilarious.”

When he finally won the match by slamming his opponent into a corner where he’d pulled back the protective padding, then choking him into submission, it felt hard-won, earned. He’s a bad guy, for sure, an asshole par excellence, and the ending was a tragedy where the bad guy wins. 

“There’s a story of a match that can be told in one night that you can try to get over,” Orso explained. “That’s what you focus on, because you want to get them enamored in the story [so] that they will lose themselves and cheer, and boom.”

“There’s no art form like this, right?” he continued. “We are circus performers. We are stuntmen. We are comedians. We are improv actors. Illusionists. Athletes. We are all of this rolled into one, right? It’s all on the fly. It’s on the spot. There’s no retakes. There’s no re-dos. There’s no yelling ‘cut!’s. We have to just go out there and do it. And if you can allow yourself to get lost in it, it is the best live experience.”  

This article was originally published in Little Village’s April 2026 issue.