Show: Wrestling Epicenter
Guest: Dom Vitalli
Date: 08/14/2025
Your Host: James Walsh
Dom Vitalli is the promoter and co-owner of Phoenix Championship Wrestling as well as the Arizona Wrestling Training Center, known better by the hashtag #traininAZ. A veteran of the ring for nearly 25 years, the guy behind PCWAZ joined the Wrestling Epicenter for the first time ever this week. And, well, lets just say his line of thinking as it concerns pro wrestling lines up quite well with that of Wrestling Epicenter’s founder James Walsh. From the appreciation of Hulk Hogan and all he means to pro wrestling then, now, and in the future to the honoring of the greatness of the “Franchise” Shane Douglas character in ECW, Vitalli and James clearly click in a conversation worthy of your time!
PCWAZ plans to smash their record of 1,600 fans who attended last year’s anniversary show as they hope to crack 2,000. The event takes place on September 13th at the Skyline High School in Mesa, AZ and will feature a World Championship match, a star studded women’s tag team match featuring NWA’s Natalia Markova, and rising star Zamaya, a tag-team title match featuring CLAS and Devin Reno – friends to our show, defending against a game young team that threatens the Pretty City Express’ firm grip on those titles. And, a whole lot more!
Check out PCWAZ.com or find the Phoenix Championship Wrestling Facebook page to get your tickets today!
Below are some highlights of the interview that we have transcribed. The full hour long conversation can be viewed below on YouTube free of charge. If you’re a wrestling fan, you owe it to yourself to listen. We pick the brain of a very smart guy who is molding the future generations of pro wrestling in a very unique way. A genuinely great conversation with with Dom Vitalli! Check it out!
To listen, please visit http://www.wrestlingepicenter.com ! There you will find 23 years worth of our classic interviews , 900 of them or there abouts! Classic interviews with Hulk Hogan, Bruno Sammartino, Randy Savage, Sting, Ric Flair, Nick Bockwinkel, Shane Douglas, and beyond are all right there free of charge for you to enjoy! Also check out our store and buy somethin’, will ya?
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/ZkbXbKo2TYg
DOM VITALLI:
On Phoenix Championship Wrestling starting 7 years ago:
“Wrestling, especially quality wrestling, is something that seemed to really be missig out here. When it started, it was sort of an idea that was kicked around by myself and Jon Wolfgang. We were like, “Lets do a show!” It was going to be sort of a sister company to PCW Ultra which was, for my money, the best independent wrestling company in the country running out of Los Angeles. They had a virtua who’s who of guys who you see weekly on TV now including Jacob Fatu. So, we ran our first show and we drew about 100, 120 people. For us, we viewed that as a huge failure. But, that was where wrestling was at out here at that time. We tried our hand at it another time or two and then decided to pull back from life events and put a focus on our training school which we opened shortly after that first show.”
On the PCW AZ roster having a lot of guys that seem ready for TV anywhere:
“I’m glad you picked up on that because that is something we try to prepare our guys and girls for. Many of our guys have traveled to shows nationally and internationally and the feedback I often get is that for the minimal experience they’ve had, they didn’t expect them to be so good. That is not a knock on them. One of the things we try to do at our school is develop well rounded individuals.” One of the biggest compliments we have gotten has been people, even fans, pulling me aside after a guy makes his debut on one of our shows and say, “Hey, where did this guy come from” thinking he was from out of state and was around a while and I’d say. “No, he’s home grown, this was his first match!” That means a lot. But, that is what we work towards.”
On how he fell in love with wrestling:
“back when we were growing up, back in our day (laughs) there wasn’t as much entertainment readily available to us. I was a big GI Joe guy, a He-Man guy. When my dad introduced me to pro wrestling, I saw guys like Hulk Hogan. That was like bringing all of the things I liked into real life. My earliest memory of wrestling was Piper’s Pit where Andre the Giant ripped the crucifix and T shirt off of Hulk Hogan in the lead in to WrestleMania III. Something about that just connected with me. And, while a lot of my friends “grew out of it”, I never did. I just never did. So, when they’d go in and out of it and came back with the nWo and “Stone Cold”, I was like, “You’ve been missing out!” (laughs) I just never grew out of it. It always spoke to me. Wrestling was always there. No matter what,w restling was always there and has always been a part of my life ever since that Piper’s Pit… Probably the most consistent thing in my life as well! But, that connection that I made with those characters, even as a fan, really has stuck with me.”
On the death of Hulk Hogan:
“It is devastating to the wrestling community. I truly believe none of us are here in pro wrestling without Hulk Hogan in any form whether it is us as wrestlers or you as wrestling media, Hulk Hogan was the catalyst for bringing pro wrestling into the mainstream and taking it out of the smokey venues – I won’t say little venues because obviously they were selling out the Garden before him. But, he took all of pro wrestling to new levels. He put this all on his back and I think people don’t realize how much he sacrificed in terms of his health and his life in giving us this gift of pro wrestling that we have today.”
On where Hulk Hogan stands in the list of greatest of all time:
“For my money, and I argue this sometimes with some of my students and I always win because I’ve been studying this stuff for a long time (laughs), Hulk Hogan is the greatest of all time. Nobody has ever, number one, no one brought pro wrestling into prominence the way he did. And, number two, no one was ever a bigger star in two completely different eras and in two completely different companies the way he did with two completely different characters. To me, he is the be all and end all of what we should strive to be. Wrestling is entertainment and is a business at the end of the day. I don’t blame the guy for looking out for himself especially back in the cut throat day when you didn’t know who was and wasn’t a friend. He was a business man and I teach my guys and girls at the training center that you have to be a business man. That doesn’t mean you have to step on people or any of that. It means you have to be a business man. There is a lot of competition out there. There are thousands and thousands of wrestlers that are out there. I don’t want to train anyone at the training center that doesn’t want to do this for a living. The guys that are there at the training center day in and day out, they are there to learn to do this for a living. And, those who come in and don’t have that commitment, they get chewed up and spit out. We don’t beat them up or anything like that. It isn’t about that. But, what we do is we train our guys to be diligent about this at this level so that when they get to a higher level, it isn’t completely foreign to them.”
On breaking in in 2000 when the business was changing:
“I guess that’s the price I had to pay for being born in ’81! Even when I was in the business for 7 and 8 years, you still saw that the business was overall down. That’s just the way it is. Right now, business is up. You go 5, 10 years from now, business will be down again. That is just the nature of the business. But, when I was traveling the roads with my tag partner Gabriel Gallo, the crowds weren’t like they are not. It was very hit and miss. I’ve always been a firm believer of believing in the work. If you do the work, good things will come to you. To me, they did. Not in the ring as a wrestler. I truly believe my strong suit has come to me in coaching people. I believe I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Now, I’m focussed on building the next generation of wrestlers. Teaching them from my experiences – Good, bad, and indifferent. To me, that means more to me than main eventing WrestleMania would.”
On Gabriel Gallo being part of PCW and the training center:
“I love the guy. He’s a brother from another mother! It was pretty clear to me shortly after we met that we shared the same vision of pro wrestling. That became even more clear at a show he was promoting where we wrestled each other. We weren’t supposed to but either his opponent wasn’t there, maybe mine, I can’t recall. But, literally as we were lacing our boots, he told me we had to wrestle each other and we needed to go a half hour. We had no time to prepare and still it turned out being one of the funnest matches I had up to that point. We were both like, “Now we’re cooking!” And, it went on from there as our friendship grew and we formed our tag team. It is always tougher to go places as a duo instead of there being just one of us. But, Gallo, because he looked like a wrestler… I didn’t. I still had baby fat on me! But, Gallo would get us through the door. It was my job to keep us there and get us back because, he’d be the first to tell you, he doesn’t have the best people skills! (laughs)”
On if training has changed from when he was trained to how he trains today:
“Yes and no. It may have been a little more torturous back then! But, that was torturous just to torture guys. What we do at the training center could be seen by someone on the outside looking in as < “Oh, that is not necessary.” But, one thing I always say is everything we do at the training center is about wrestling. They might not see it that way right now but one day, they’ll be doing something and go, “Oh! That’s why we did this” or “that’s why we did that.” In that aspect, wrestling is much different. As far as the in-ring, it is different. but, it works for the Outrunners because no one else is doing that right now.”
On some of the legends that have praised PCW:
“I was always a believer in being the name that is being dropped, not to be a name dropper. But, since you mentioned Kevin Sullivan, he is one that was a big supporter of what we are doing. I had worked along side Kevin at PCW Ultra. I didn’t know him at the time and he saw me work and he said, “Brotha, you sure know how to sell!” I was like, “I’ll take it!” (laughs) I was able to present to him what we are doing here at the Training Center and he was very supportive and even told me stories about how similar what we are doing is to what they were doing in Florida back in the day. To me, that is the ultimate compliment. I mean, no where was more of a hot bed back in the day than Florida. He was kind enough to do a testimonial for the Training Center putting over what we were doing. That meant a lot. We’ve also been fortunate enough to have legends come by and be guest trainers. Jerry Lynn has been a guest trainer at our facility a number of times. He was like, “You’ve guys have got it down, man!” Being a big ECW fan, that was special. Other guys like Val Venis have come by and been part of things. Josef Samael from PCW Ultra was a big help especially in promoting wrestling. He learned from Kevin Sullivan. Kevin Sullivan learned from Eddie Graham! To me, that is a good “liliage to be a part of! He is one of our biggest cheerleaders, he says we’re old school but old school works, man! You’ve just got to tweak it a little bit. 2 Cold Scorpio is another.”
On CLAS and Devin Reno, the Pretty City Express, Having All the Tools:
“100% I’ll tell you why. Both guys are students of the game. I don’t just mean theys tudy old school wrestling. I mean, they take every aspect of this seriously. They put the time in to build their bodies and look the way they look because they understand they are trying to sell themselves to a bigger stage. And, they are both really, really intelligent. They truly are.”
On Zamaya and training women’s wrestlers:
“Zamaya is incredible. She has put in so much work. The first week of training, we had to tell her to stop smiling while taking bumps! I cannot say enough good things about her. As for women’s wrestling, I have a little bit of an unpopular viewpoint. And, if it gets me flack, I’m OK with that. There is a rush to have to have women’s wrestling on the card. There are a lot of women’s wrestlers that are out there on the independents right now that are horrible. They are absolutely terrible. Some of them are on Wednesday nights! (laughs) I think some of the women, guys too but especially the women listen to the positive feedback from fans and dismiss the negative feedback from those in the business. That is incredibly detrimental to them.”
On his shows being mostly if not entirely his trained talent and no big name on the poster:
“First, great call back to the Metal Maniac! (laughs) All I need is to get a fan in to see one of my shows and I will hook them. I’ll hook them because of great story telling but above that, the in ring action. No one will ever come to one of my shows, see the in- ring action and laugh at it. My guys are so well prepared, they’ll go, “Oh, this is the real wrestling.” I want them to see us as just like WWE on a much smaller scale.”
On if it is more fun to be a heel or a babyface:
“Heel. I’m a nice guy in regular life. But, it is more fun to go out and be a heel. Some of that is from what I watched as a fan growing up. Like, Shane Douglas. That’s my dude! Hulk Hogan made me fall in love with wrestling. Shane Douglas made me want to become a wrestler. For me, Shane Douglas from 1996 to 1998, that was perfect. The timing was perfect. He was the right guy. And, in a dark way, him breaking “Pitbull #1″ Gary Wolf’s neck only made it better. His promos from 1997 and 1998 are some of the absolute best ever.”
