Houston wrestling promotion has a unique flavor

HOUSTON — Houston and wrestling have a long history. In the 1970s, it was Friday night at the Sam Houston Coliseum. And 50 years later, every suplex still captivates and mesmerizes audiences.

“You can’t replicate it,” says Oday Bara (IG: @fatheroday), who goes by “Father Oday” in the ring.

According to Bara, wrestling is more than a sport.

“It’s live theater, it’s sports, it’s physical, it’s entertainment, it’s storytelling. It’s all of those things,” he said.

His tag team partner, Timur Martac, nicknamed Brother Tracey (IG: @traceymooreofficial), said it was one of the few forms of live entertainment where the audience could dictate the direction a show could take.

“We have to think about entertaining the audience, so we have to be creative and come up with scenarios that captivate the audience and draw them into our performance,” he said.

Bara and Martac are part of Lions Pride Production’s “Cruel Summer” promotion, which is setting Captiv Studios (captivecreative.com) ablaze in Houston.

One of the promotion’s main sponsors is wrestling fan Darren Tompkins and his hot sauce company.

“For a long time, there was only one major player, WWE. Now we have AEW, we have Ring of Honor coming in. All these other promotions that are really pushing the envelope to create a bigger audience,” Tompkins said.

Tompkins’ business is inspired by the sport. Headlock Hot Sauce (headlockhotsauce.com/IG: @headlockhotsauce) was born during the pandemic and Tompkins saw an opportunity in the sport.

“I just knew that to get this result, it had to be a fight,” Tompkins said.

Now he hopes it can help promote the sport he loves in a city where wrestling has such deep roots.

“There’s a strong independent circuit here. In many ways, it feeds into the major leagues,” Tompkins said. “We can embrace it as an art form, and Houston is a very artistic, very sports-oriented city and I think it’s a great mix.”