If Drake Wuertz is doing his job, chances are you’ve barely noticed him. The man who refereed Kevin Owens’ NXT debut isn’t meant to be the center of attention. Still, he may look familiar to those fans who have trolled the darker corners of YouTube, even though it’s hard to recognize him without thumbtacks hanging from his body and his face stained bright red.
“He’s one of the toughest guys I’ve ever been in the ring with,†Dean Ambrose said of his friend and former rival. “Drake’s a guy who could take great amounts of punishment and dish it out, as well.â€
Underneath the requisite black-and-white striped shirt, Wuertz still wears the scars of his days as a hardcore wrestler in the grueling independent deathmatch scene, where a regular night at the office included being thrown into fluorescent light tubes, panes of glass and, sometimes, makeshift nets of barbed wire. Every weekend ended with something being dug out of his flesh, resulting in a new scar and a new, almost unbelievable story behind it.
The funny thing is, if you’ve met Wuertz, you’d never expect the friendly referee to have such a brutal history.
“Drake is very happy-go-lucky, very positive and very smiley,†Ambrose said. “You would never think he could mix it up in such intense duels with the ugly, crazy characters that we were often in the ring with.â€
So, how does such a positive person end up competing in some of the most brutal matches ever concocted?
Wuertz grew up in Indiana watching hours of wrestling every Saturday morning. A self-described Hulkamaniac through and through, he often went to see Hulk Hogan and the rest of the WWE crew at the Market Square Arena. However, as he got older, he stumbled upon a new, more visceral type of grappling.
“I discovered ECW and Japanese hardcore matches,†Wuertz recalled. “I fell in love with the style. I gravitated more towards Sabu and Cactus Jack.â€
Drake eventually found the perfect place to both break into the wrestling business and take part in some wild hardcore matches in IWA Mid-South, infamous for its annual “King of the Deathmatches†tournament. He was trained for the squared circle by polar opposites, former NXT Superstar and technical wrestling wizard Chris Hero and Ian Rotten, who helped cultivate the hardcore wrestling scene in North America.
Wuertz, who adopted the ring name Drake Younger, spent plenty of weekends on the road, picking the brains of veterans like Tracy Smothers while traveling to matches. Though he wasn’t involved in the hardcore scene yet, everything he was learning was being stored away for that purpose.
“I was fairly athletic and I could wrestle,†Wuertz explained. “I felt if I could combine that with the deathmatch style, it could set me apart from your typical slice-and-dice guys.â€
That approach separated him from the pack. Amid all the mad men bashing each other with household appliances, Wuertz was mixing in headlocks and mat wrestling before being hurled through piles of light tubes onto thumbtack-covered ring mats during beatings that most people couldn’t even fathom. With shards of broken glass creating fresh scars on a weekly basis, Drake was finally living his dreams. But what was he feeling?
“It’s hard to put into words what it feels like,†Wuertz said. “When you get slammed into glass and it explodes, it’s weird. At the time, I’d never felt more alive. The crowd’s behind you and you’re telling a story. Although it might not be a very beautiful story, it’s beautiful in wrestling terms.â€
Wuertz’s mat proficiency, along with his never-say-die attitude in the most dire situations, earned him the moniker “Psycho Shooter.†With a quickly growing cult fan base, he started traveling further east, finding a new home that filled his need for hardcore brawling —Combat Zone Wrestling.
CZW was born out of the ashes of ECW, providing fans of hardcore wrestling with a brand of weapon-filled brutality that had never been seen before. Wuertz quickly became a fan favorite, taking on grimy villains like Dean Ambrose.
“He was a likeable guy,†Ambrose said. “But when things got dangerous and the intensity picked up, he didn’t get intimidated or back down.â€
