Juan Mattioli and Antonio Rios grew up in San Diego as fans of professional wrestling, even joining a school to help them achieve their dreams.
But after a while, they decided to start their own school and in 2023 opened the Primal Pro Wrestling School in National City, not too far from the Mile of Cars.
Now, their so-called “little gym” that they started in a garage is in the national spotlight after it hosted a wrestling show by a national promotion that is streaming the event.
“I feel like we’ve definitely built a very good reputation, mostly because we’re starting to work with a lot of these bigger companies,” said Mattioli.
Mattioli, 32, of Chula Vista and Rios, 20, of El Cajon, are co-owners of the school.
Their journey started when they were training at another school that no longer exists.
“We weren’t really liking how things were going there and Antonio kind of told me, hey, what if we started our own school,” said Mattioli.
So they started the school in a garage at Rios’ house and later subleased space at a crossfit gym in Chula Vista. That lease was coming up and they started looking for a new spot. On the same month the gym closed, a two-story building in a National City commercial park became available.
The school has two wrestling rings and on a recent day, noise echoed throughout the building as wrestlers ran across the rings and crashed onto the mat. T-shirts and photos of wrestlers line the walls of the building.
The school offers a 12-month program of classes, a time they feel is needed to train students.
“I personally feel it takes a year for someone to wrestle in front of an audience,” said Rios.
Added Mattioli: “Pretty much when people come here they’ll see that we have a very structured program that is pretty much for 12 months, our goal is to teach you the right way of pro wrestling, how to have your fundamentals right, how to have basic matches and even how to be a character and tell stories.”
Class fees are listed on their website and range from $300 for the first month to $150 a month for advanced students. They mostly teach American wrestling but they also teach the more high-flying Mexican style of masked Lucha Libre wrestlers.
Both men have wrestled in California and other places and now are working to help others fulfill their dreams.
Their students are athletes and non-athletes. Some are passionate about it, some just love wrestling and do it for fun.
“Sometimes they surprise you and yeah they struggle at first, but they keep coming back,” said Mattioli.
Besides wrestling, the school also teaches people how to become managers, referees, commentators and camera operators.
The school offers bi-weekly shows open to the public that allow their wrestlers to work in front of a live audience. The next one is scheduled for March 9 at 3 p.m.
“Mostly, these shows are made for our students, produced by our students,” said Mattioli. “It’s to help them get footage, also for them to work on their craft and get better and more confidence so that when they do get a tryout, they know what to do.”
The success of the school has caught the attention of the wrestling community. GCW, an East Coast, hard-core style wrestling organization that produces shows across the country, held a show in October at Primal. On Friday, GCW returned for a show it streamed on @fitetv from the Primal school.
The GCW show is adding to San Diego’s reputation as a hotbed of professional wrestling, especially because of its proximity to Mexico. Last week, AEW, a major wrestling promotion, televised one of its weekly shows from the new Frontwave Arena in Oceanside. And in January, WWE held its “Friday Night Smackdown” show at Pechanga Arena in San Diego.
It’s a pro wrestling wave Mattioli and Rios plan to ride.
Said Mattioli: “Even though we’re in National City in this little building, our goal is to keep growing and get a bigger facility and be one of the hot spots for pro wrestling, not just for training, but also to be a destination for wrestlers all across the world to come here and train and make San Diego one of the places to wrestle.”
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