By James Fitzpatrick, Jr.

Senior Sports Editor, Ultimate Athlete Magazine

Every Sunday during football season, Carmine Azzato would sit in front of the television set in his family’s third-floor apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn and cheer on his idol, Lyle Alzado. Alzado, a graduate of Lawrence High School, was in the midst of a 15-year NFL career as a defensive lineman and athletically epitomized everything Carmine wanted to be when he grew up – big, strong, fast and powerful. Carmine said he idolized the NFL superstar so much that he wore his jersey number (77) throughout his high school career and wanted nothing more than to play football at the college and professional levels.

When Carmine got to Susan E. Wagner High School on Staten Island he stood 6-6 and weighed 325 pounds, so football certainly seemed to be in his future. With aspirations of earning a scholarship to the University of Miami, Carmine joined the varsity football team as a sophomore and seemed destined to be a star on the team’s defensive line, just like his idol was for the Los Angeles Raiders. Carmine was a terror to opposing offenses from his spot at defensive tackle, but it was one play at fullback during his junior year that changed his life forever.

 Entering the game as a fullback during a short-yardage play, Carmine suffered a compound fracture to his right ankle that would leave him unable to ever play the football again. After years of hard work and dedication to increasing his strength and improving technique on the gridiron he was forced to come to the bitter realization that his dreams of earning a football scholarship were gone and his dreams of NFL stardom were finished.

“That was definitely one of the toughest things I ever had to deal with in my life. I had University of Miami and UCLA seriously looking at me and I thought I was being recruited by a bunch of big schools, but an injury like the one I suffered, where I broke both bones in my ankle, and all of my tendons and ligaments were severed, all the interest went away,” Carmine said. “Besides my parents going through a divorce when I was younger this was one of the toughest things I went through during my youth.”

Although his dream of playing football at the next levels were shattered, a different career path, one Carmine admits he never could have imagined being interested in prior to his injury, suddenly presented  itself during a fundraiser event at his high school. As he recovered from his devastating injury and continued to remain focused on completing his senior year, his life was changed forever when the World Wrestling Federation showed up to perform a show in his school’s gymnasium. Carmine said he vividly remembers being approached by one of Vince McMahon’s senior assistants, Elliot Maron, because that is the exact moment when his life changed forever.

“Elliot [Maron] came up to me when I was helping out as part of the security team at the event and asked me if I ever considered becoming a professional wrestler. He said since I basically towered over most of the wrestlers on the show that day I should consider getting into it. I’ll never forget that moment for the rest of my life. I really felt like I was dreaming because I always thought I’d be playing football for the New York Giants not wrestling,” Carmine said.

Mr. Maron offered Carmine an opportunity to meet an established pro wrestler named “The Unpredictable Johnny Rodz,” who had a wrestling school in Brooklyn. After nine months of training for four days a week in the ring with Johnny and other aspiring wrestlers, Carmine was given the opportunity to wrestle in his first professional match at the ripe age of 17. He was partnered up with another wrestler in a tag-team bout and came out on the losing end, but the experience in itself is something Carmine said was priceless. Plus, he said hasn’t lost much ever since that initial match so getting a loss out of the way early in his career “wasn’t so bad.”

“After 21 years in the wrestling business, I still can’t believe he was given the opportunity to be introduced and train with some of the biggest and best names in the business right from the start,” he said. “To have that opportunity was really something special.”

After a few years of wrestling independently, he was introduced to Bill Eadie, also known as “Ax,” from the famous WWF tag-team, Demolition. In 1991, Carmine, who took on the ring name of “Blaster,” and donned red, white and black face paint and a pair of spiked shoulder pads, joined forces with Eadie to form The New Demolition, an independent tag-team act they took around the world for more than eight years. In the late 1990’s, after ruling the tag-team circuit around the world, and wrestling a one-on-one match against Scott Steiner under the name of the “The Brooklyn Blaster” during the inaugural episode of WWE’s Monday Night Raw, Carmine decided to get back to his roots. He opened Blaster’s Center for Professional Wrestling in Staten Island, where he would go on to teach his students how to become technically sound wrestlers, develop their characters, and have respect for the “old school style” of wrestling that the WWF used to produce during the 1970s, ‘80s and early ‘90s.

“The wrestling of today is so violent, obscene and cheap and I want to bring the old school wrestling back. It’s just not family entertainment anymore,” said Carmine, who also travels around the country as a certified motivational speaker and public speaking instructor. “Look in the audience today at WWE shows 80 percent is teenagers and adults, but back in the day you would see children in the audience with their grandparents and their families. I’m not going to teach my guys the way you see it today. I’m going to teach self respect and values to make sure they respect themselves and the sport.”

In 2002, an opportunity to teach aspiring wrestlers on Long Island the ins and outs of professional wrestling presented itself, and Carmine didn’t hesitate to jump on it like he would an ailing opponent in the squared circle. While attending Upper Room Christian World Center in Dix Hills, he met wrestlers Johhny Ova and manager Bobby Riedel. The trio, along with Bishop Anthony D’Onofrio and the pastoral staff, decided to create Pro Wrestling Revolution, which is not only a wrestling school that teaches people of all ages everything from technical wrestling, refereeing and character development, but is a professional wrestling ministry/outreach which puts on live shows every month. Including Carmine as “Blast” and Ova, some of PWR’s headliners are Brimstone, Lou Valentino, Samir Ahmed, Chris Pain Forza and Jason Static, and also include appearances by former WWF superstars like Brutus Beefcake, The Wrestling Clown, Ted DiBiasi, Jim Duggan, Tito Santana and Jimmy Hart among others

Carmine’s life went from tackles, three-point stances and quarterback sacks to body slams, back breakers and clotheslines. He’s battled back from life-altering injuries, watched his parents’ marriage crumble and has overcome many other obstacles during his life. But since the fateful day in the gymnasium of Susan E. Wagner High School Carmine has embraced the opportunity he was given and has continuously used it to help others improve their own lives.

“I can say from experience, I faced a lot of personal challenges in my life; weather they were sports injuries, academics or personal. I had to figure out a way to motivate myself so that I didn’t have to settle for defeat. I had to use negative energy to create positive results.”

Carmine / Blast's Testimony Comming Soon