One Man's Vision: How Naptown All-Pro Brought Pro-Wrestling Back to Indianapolis.
By: @heyitsalli12
To represent your city means you have faith in it. You feel every win, every loss; The heartbreak of feeling a championship in your grasp just for it to get torn away, and the pride of your college football team taking home the national championship for the first time in program history. You do everything in your power to better it, transforming what some consider ugly into something beautiful, full of passion and hope. Even in a city where it seems like there's nothing to do but get into trouble.
Jordan Rose, known locally as “J-Rose,” feels this. Born and raised in Indianapolis, Rose has witnessed the city's ups and downs over the past few years. He’s stayed there, even after it has struggled in the past few years, turning into something he could barely recognize, with many activities being shut down and violence and crime rising. In 2022, Rose decided people needed a place to go to get off the streets and have fun. So, he combined that idea with his passion for wrestling.
“ I own my own wrestling promotion called Naptown All Pro Wrestling. We run independent wrestling shows in the greater Indianapolis area with the intent of focusing on low-income neighborhoods. We try to give kids an alternative event to attend to keep them away from gun violence by linking them with community resources, if nothing else to distract them, but at best change their lives,” Rose said.
Rose’s love for wrestling started at an early age. He spent hours bonding with his cousin, watching WWE and Extreme Championship Wrestlign known as ECW, after school and when visiting their grandmother over the weekend. His cousin was a big fan, and Rose sat and watched with him, albeit confused about the premise of wrestling even after watching a Steen vs Genericho match, but he cherished the time they spent, and even started becoming a casual fan in 2007 after watching one of Bobby Lashley’s last matches in ECW but iIt wasn't until 2008 that wrestling would turn into an obsession that Rose could not ignore.
“ I was a wrestling fan, but it wasn't an obsession. It became an obsession, I used to know the date off the top of my head, but it was early 2008, going into Royal Rumble 2008. Jeff Hardy climbed the TitanTron structure, with Randy Orton at the bottom, climbed up even higher and Swanton off, yeah, it was over. I was like this is the coolest thing I've ever seen, and it has been a ‘como se dice’ special interest of mine ever since,” said Rose.
From that day forward, Rose was hooked, and he wanted to become a wrestler, even after his parents blocked all the wrestling channels growing up, so he started training where he met his soon-to-be co-founders, Shawn Kemp, Chase Holliday, Calvin Tankman, and “Hoodfoot.” All five of them trained at the same place, Holliday and Hoodfoot having come from California and Chicago, respectively, and “went through hell in their training,” Rose said. Rose decided his strengths were behind the scenes rather than in the ring, so he focused on video editing and communications to promote the wrestling operation.
“I originally wanted to be a wrestler, and I wanted to figure out how to train. I was an athlete;I ran track and played tennis in high school, so I'm not going to act like I'm uncoordinated, but I was not coordinated enough to be a wrestler. lso, that shit hurts,” Rose said. “But I wanted to be involved in putting together; I wanted to see what that was like, I wanted to be a part of it and I knew I had a skillset that would allow me to do so with knowing how to video edit and graphic design and that was my foot in the door. It's been a journey but being around them (the other co-founders) as I continue to grow, their faith in me has been paramount in my personal success and the success of the company.”
Rose’s journey in independent wrestling, which includes professional wrestling promotions outside the major names, began after he returned home from his first year of college in Michigan, following the loss of his scholarship. He says that rediscovering the indie wrestling circuit, through Wild Championship Wrestling Outlaws or WCWO, on a Friday night saved his life, as it allowed him to be involved in the community. Over time, he began to question the quality of the wrestling he was watching, and at the same time, he was seeing kids dying in the streets of the east side where he grew up, so under the urging of an indie wrestling superfan, he calls Trey, started Naptown All-Pro.
“If I didn't have these special interests and something to sink my time into, I would have ended up with the same trappings that they do. This is all to say wrestling saved my life, and I at least want to present the opportunity for wrestling to change someone else's life. So at the urging of Trey, because I really didn't want to be a promoter. Nap was started with the idea of giving people a level of safe space and an outlet to express themselves and have something to look forward to, with the efforts of trying to cut down on gun violence,” said Rose
By holding shows every other month, which are open to people of all races, genders, ages, and sexualities, that safe space became known as Naptown All-Pro, and it has grown ever since, with 38 wrestlers in the company, which streams on Independent Wrestling TV. The company is small, Rose said, but he said he has no doubt the company will grow and launch these hard-working wrestlers into the stratosphere within the wrestling world, all while putting the city back on the map within the indie wrestling circuit by hosting shows in their current residency at the Fountain Square theater in downtown Indianapolis. Even though he has been offered to take the whole operation somewhere else, Rose refuses, despite his burnout; he knows that he's got a few shows left in him.
“ There’s a reason it's not called like ‘ The Wrestle Festival’ or ‘The Fight Factory’ or whatever the fuck. The name of the promotion is Naptown All-Pro, and even if you abbreviate it its still going to be the name of the city. I don't want to do this anywhere else. I want to be that sort of company that I would have wanted to attend when I was a little kid watching Steen and Genericho. I want to be the same promotion I needed when I was depressed, and I couldn’t watch live wrestling in Central Michigan. I want to be that same wrestling promotion when I was 19 and 20, wondering why we couldn't get ACH, or Leo Rush, or Donovan Dijack, or Keith Lee to show up to Indianapolis. That’s what I want. And as much as there are some days where I’m like ‘I don’t want to do this shit anymore’ the fire still burns in trying to create a safe space that I think could truly bring the city together. I want to be a part of the fabric of Indianapolis, the city I love more then anywhere else on the planet.” Rose said.
Naptown All-pro will be having their next show on Sunday March 29th. You can get tickets at the link below: