Gulf Coast Wrestling Alliance helps athletes in the Coastal Bend reach their goals.
One student at the Galvan School of Professional Wrestling, Fernando Arevalo, has found his home and is making a name for himself.
"What it takes to be a wrestler is you need to keep your conditioning up because if not this ring will eat you alive," he said.
From throwing people down to his signature move, Arevalo is living his dream in the ring.
"The coolest part about it is just hearing the reaction from the audience," Arevalo said. "Like if you hit a guy particularly hard you'll get somebody in the audience go ooh that looked like it hurt. That's always really cool."
He goes by 'Don Fernando', and has trained for eight years, including one so far as a student of the Galvan School of Professional Wrestling.
"We have a whole team to kind of like work things out and put us together, and work on things together," Arevalo said. "If there's a new move I have like five different guys that raise their hand and say oh you can try it on me."
Arevalo loves that the Galvan's allow him to represent their promotion even on the road. He never stops learning and training.
"Since the first day he got here, I tell him time and time again, he's one of the hardest working guys that I've met," Galvan School of Professional Wrestling Coach Josh Galvan said. "He wants this and he has a passion for this, and I know in the end he's going to make it very far."
It's a family business at Galvan School of Wrestling. Josh's father, Ben, is the head coach, and he also learned from his father.
"What we can do for them as a company and as a wrestling family that's been around for so long is give them the opportunities to be on matches with some of the greatest names in wrestling today. We've believed in Corpus Christi wrestling for the last 25 years."
Arevalo has learned a lot, but there's one piece of advice that helped shape him to become 'Don Fernando'.
"You need to come in and bring your own stuff from home and bring your own personality here, so I just felt like Fernando would stand out," Arevalo said. "It goes along with my signature chant. It's Fer-nan-do."
Wrestling can be a reality in Corpus Christi.
"If there's any advice I can give to anybody is that if your heart won't shut up about it go after it because it's never going to shut up about it," Arevalo said.
To see more from the Gulf Coast Wrestling Alliance students like Fernando, they will be presenting Pura Locha next Friday, July 28th at the Valencia. The show will be Lucha Libre themed, headlined by Triple A Mega champion Vikingo and the NWA national champion EC3. Bell time will be at 7 p.m.
If you’re interested in doing a tryout to be a pro wrestler send an email to GCWAcctx@gmail.com with “pro wrestling tryout” in the subject. To follow their Instagram click here.
