The Good Life – September-October 2021

ON THE COVER | BELOW ZERO WRESTLING
This is where our story picks up …
Super Fans Find Each Other
The nostalgia of the 90s lives on as passions for many
now-adults who will take any excuse they can find
to keep that passion alive. For Zach Werre, it was a
natural progression that started, where else, but at
the rental store.
"I didn't start getting into wrestling until middle
school," Werre admitted. "It was through video games
— I was a gamer first — I got into wrestling."
Zach lived near a used video game store, and as a kid
he just wanted to buy as many games as he could get
his hands on. The genre didn't matter. Budget did. So
when he figured out the wrestling games were the
best bargain, he jumped right into the virtual squared
circle.
"Starting out with those games, slowly but surely I
figured out how things worked in wrestling," Werre
explained. "I started tuning into the weekly shows,
which all build up to the pay-per-views… the storylines,
the drama, wrestlers leave, they return, the good buys
vs. the bad guys."
Through video games, Werre got addicted to the sport
of wrestling as a teenager. For his future business
partner, however, the seed was planted at a younger
age.
"I was around 10 years old," Nick Stokke recalled.
"WWF came to the Fargodome and they actually
screwed up our seats. But because of that, I got to go
down to the locker room and meet some of the guys.
I remember seeing them all dressed up in their gear,
then they made their entrances... guys like Tugboat,
Razor Ramon and Brett Hart."
That up-close and personal glimpse into the world
of professional wrestling left a strong impression on
Stokke, and his passion for the sport grew steadily
throughout his childhood. And wouldn't you
know it, he, too, can trace much of it back to
weekly trips to the rental store.
"Friday nights, if I was renting videos from
the rental store, wrestling videos were my
first choice," he said. "As we got older, we'd go to
friends' houses and watch pay-per-views. There are a
lot of parts of my life where wrestling was a big part.
I can look back and picture the different stages. The
larger-than-life Hulk Hogan when I was a young kid
to Degeneration X (Triple H, Suan Michaels, Chyna,
Xpac) when I was a teenager… It's cool to think about
my own progression as a wrestling fan."
Both Werre and Stokke grew up to become wrestling
superfans, and as adults, they were searching for a
way to make the sport a bigger part of their lives. In
their own ways, each had been pondering the idea of
launching their own promotion that would feature
local wrestlers (also referred to as talent) with a
focus on family-style entertainment.
20 / THE GOOD LIFE / urbantoadmedia.com