Editor's note: In April, the Asbury Park Press brought you the story of independent professional wrestler Joey Janela, the "Bad Boy" of Asbury Park who had gone from wrestling in VFW halls to arenas around the world.

Janela signed a contract with the upstart All Elite Wrestling promotion and, on Oct. 2, AEW: Dynamite premieres its first episode on TNT.

ASBURY PARK - "I think this is the one."

Joey Janela was visibly shaken, barely able to talk into a microphone — one of the first times the "Bad Boy" has been speechless.

Janela, 30, could barely sit up straight in the ring. His left knee is throbbing. His wrestling career is flashing before his eyes.

A few minutes earlier, he had jumped from the ring turnbuckle to the slick floor of the House of Independents in Asbury Park — a simple "crossbody" move that he'd performed thousands of times before.

But the jump was mistimed and Janela landed feet-first. His left leg gave out from under him and bent almost 90 degrees — in the wrong direction. As he fell, his toes could almost touch his ear.

"Both participants ... Something was taken out of them by that maneuver," one commentator said.

One fan simply stared at Janela, giving him the middle finger.

In the days afterward, Janela, a lifelong Hazlet resident who had moved to Asbury Park, would confirm that nearly every tendon in his knee was some combination of strained, torn, ruptured or “completely destroyed.”

But in the moments after his Sept. 21 match, all he knew was that he'd just injured himself — in his adopted hometown, for his home promotion — with the first full-time contract of his 14-year wrestling career on the line.

“I f---ed my knee up pretty bad,” Janela told the crowd, who finally realized that this wasn't an act. “I think I’m going to be out for a little bit.

“You know, this stuff always seems to happen when the momentum is rolling.”

At the time of Janela's knee injury, he was wrestling more matches than ever before — which meant he was making more money than ever before. And that's not even counting the hundreds of T-shirts that would sell out at merchandise stands on a regular basis.

And though it hadn't been announced yet, Janela had already been offered a contract with All Elite Wrestling, the new startup wrestling promotion poised to become the biggest non-WWE promotion in more than two decades.

He hadn't signed it yet. And who knows if the deal — the first full-time contract of his 14-year wrestling career — would be there for a 30-year-old guy recovering from major knee surgery?

Every doctor Janela visited told him he’d be out of action for a year. And yet, less than six months later — just under 200 days — Janela will make his comeback on April 5 at “Joey Janela’s Spring Break 3,” the annual wrestling show he organizes alongside Game Changer Wrestling, his longtime home promotion.

The two-day Spring Break event, at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, sold out almost immediately. Even with WrestleMania on the schedule at nearby MetLife Stadium, it’s the hottest ticket in town.

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“There was no way he was going to stay out for a year. No matter what," said GCW promoter Brett Lauderdale, who first dreamed up the idea of Spring Break. "Whether he was healed 100%, 50% or somewhere in the middle, there was a clock in his brain that was eventually going to run out, and he’d come back — even if it was against doctor’s orders.

“When he wants to do something, he’s going to do it by any means necessary.”

Coming back from a career-threatening knee injury too soon, to make sure he's in the ring for the wrestling show that's become his pride and joy? It's par for the course for Janela, whose career is essentially a decade-long response to someone saying, "You can't possibly be serious."

Every step, every highlight involves Janela doing something he usually describes as "wild," followed by a firm declaration of: "I'm never doing that again."

Until, like clockwork, he does it again.

"Being a full-time wrestler, a full-time athlete, everybody gets injured," Janela said last month, sitting on the couch, sipping a Red Bull. "But it's scary because I’ve never dealt with something like this. I’m psyched, but I'm cautious at the same time. I'm sure once I get out there, it'll be like walking down the street for me."

The story of Joey Janela goes something like this:

Jersey Shore kid grows up dreaming of becoming a professional wrestler. Chases said dream. Works really hard. Gets thrown off roof, through barbed wire and glass and plywood and fire.

Goes viral. Becomes an ESPN "SportsCenter" highlight.

"I'm going to look back one day and be like, 'Wow, that was a crazy journey,'" Janela said.

In professional wrestling, the stories are only as good as the characters who tell them — and Janela’s story has the same kind of "Bad Boy" spin to it that people expect out of him.

He conned his way into his first match, lying to the promoter about his age (16) and hours of training (zero) but gladly accepting the beers he was offered (15).

The training came after that first match and "Jumpin' Joey Janela" quickly became a standout at small independent wrestling companies around New Jersey, performing with mostly out-of-shape has-beens and the occasional up-and-comer.

I’m good, Janela told himself. I’m going to make it.

“I was cocky, so I thought I knew what I was doing,” Janela said, reminiscing on the early days of his career.

"Jumpin' Joey Janela" soon turned into the "Bad Boy," his calling card and the gimmick that has since defined him. On paper, the “Bad Boy” looks like a cross between a fist-pumping Jersey Shore clubgoer and the, well, bad boy from a 1980s teen movie, complete with long hair, a pack of cigarettes and comically large Neff Brodie wraparound sunglasses.

But Janela is quick to point out that there’s very little distinction between the “Bad Boy” and Janela himself. He even wears the sunglasses when he’s alone, getting quizzical looks from passers-by on the highways and high fives from random wrestling fans at airports.

“I’m the same person. That’s the thing,” he said. “I think that’s why I’m so popular, because if the fans get to know me or go out with me, they realize the Joey Janela in the ring is the same Joey Janela outside the ring. There’s really no character there. I’m the same person.

“That’s me.”

There are a few before-and-after moments in Janela’s career, marked by some match or gimmick that blew up and caused everything to change.

The birth of the “Bad Boy” was one of them, his social media posts passed around among wrestlers and wrestling fans alike as if they were trading cards.

In the Rahway-based Pro Wrestling Syndicate, it was his time as “Starman,” wrestling in a full body suit replicating the Nintendo video game character. Footage of Starman’s matches became spectacles beloved by video game and wrestling fans alike, and came at a time when Janela felt like he’d found his footing.

And his "deathmatches" became so popular that casual fans assumed they were his specialty, despite only happening five or six times.

In deathmatches, blood is expected. And while steel chairs or tables are considered highlights in most professional wrestling matches, they're considered tame in deathmatches. Instead, fans clamor for barbed wire, baseball bats, thumb tacks, broken glass and fire.

"Man, they’re scary. I don’t like doing them," Janela said. "They’re not fun."

And then there was the "Roof Spot."

It was the climax of a 2016 deathmatch with John Zandig, one of his idols who briefly came out of retirement for a tournament hosted by GCW.

Janela arrived at a warehouse in South Jersey for the show, when he realized there was a pickup truck parked along the building — with its bed assembled into a Lincoln Logs puzzle of plywood, barbed wire and fluorescent light tubes.

And the plan was for Janela to be thrown off the roof and through the plywood, barbed wire and light tubes.

Oh, and fire. It would all be set on fire.

“Well, I’m probably gonna die,” he told Penelope Ford, his then-girlfriend and still-manager, tag team partner and friend.

And he almost did, his head missing the rail of the truck bed by inches.

Warning: This video contains explicit language.

Not that Janela realized it — he closed his eyes the entire way down, until he could feel the pinch of the barbed wire sticking into his thumb, slicing it so deep that it squirted blood like a lawn sprinkler.

A few feet away, the crowd chanted “ho-ly cow!” (they did not say “cow”). Other people outwardly wondered if Janela was dead (he was not). Next to him, Zandig muttered that he thought his back was broken (it was).

It was only after all that when Janela opened his eyes.

Whoa, he thought to himself. That was on a different level.

And then all the shattered glass from the light tubes came crashing around all around him – into every open pore, slicing and embedding into his skin.

He should have kept his eyes closed.

The stunt went so viral that it was discussed on SportsCenter. Old-time wrestling icons who’d been in the business longer than Janela had been alive dismissed him as a “scum-sucking, bottom-feeding no-talent horses--t wrestler.”

“Needless to say, I'm retired from doing deathmatches,” Janela tweeted from his hospital bed the next morning.

It lasted six months.

If WrestleMania is the Super Bowl of professional wrestling, Spring Break is the freakshow next door. It’s a midnight showing of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” on a weekend dedicated to a Hollywood film premiere.

In fact, the first annual “Spring Break” came together solely as a way for GCW to make use of a midnight time slot — curated from top-to-bottom by Janela, with a "Bad Boy" flair.

Warning: This video contains explicit language.

Now, it's become one of the biggest independent wrestling shows of the year, and the highlight of the GCW calendar.

“This year, there are over 60 wrestling shows in the area — and 98 percent of them are the same exact thing,” said Lauderdale, who came up with the idea for Spring Break three years ago. “Eight wrestling matches, bell to bell. Same old s—t.

“With Spring Break, you just know you’re going to get something totally different. It’s a break from the rest of WrestleMania weekend really,” Lauderdale said.

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At Spring Break, you’re just as likely to see a dream matchup as you are to see the Invisible Man win a match or Janela himself use an inflatable pool raft as a weapon (both of those have happened).

Over the last three years, Spring Break has become the hottest ticket in whatever city is hosting that year's WrestleMania. This weekend’s two-part show at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City sold out in minutes, with fans scooping up the 1,500 tickets well before Janela’s return was even announced.

And that doesn't include the countless thousands who pay for an online livestream of the show.

The event has become the single biggest spark plug of Janela's career, an impact he felt almost immediately. His lines at the merch table got longer. His T-shirts sold out. People chanted “Spring Break” wherever he went.

The professional wrestling community had figured out that maybe the guy who was thrown off a roof through plywood, barbed wire, light tubes and fire was onto something.

“I saw how he marketed this show — and that was a big inspiration for a lot of the DIY guys out there,” said professional wrestler Cody, née “Cody Rhodes,” the longtime WWE wrestler turned independent star and son of the legendary Dusty Rhodes. “There’s a lot of Janela copycats out there already.”

Cody hand-picked Janela as one of his first opponents on the independent wrestling scene, where he was blown away by not just Janela’s in-ring work but his professionalism.

It was an inspiration for Cody himself, who was already in the early stages of planning 2018's “All In.” The plan was to prove just how big independent wrestling was by booking a 10,000-seat arena show in Chicago.

It sold out in minutes — with Janela on the card. When his name appeared in big letters on the light-up stage, the crowd erupted. And when he came through the curtain as the familiar, 1980s-style guitar solo blared, it was a literal dream come true.

“It was like all my hard work had come into play,” he said. “It was like, I made it.”

Professional wrestling didn't become Janela's career until last year.

Sure, it had always been a job — a decent-paying one, of late. But he had other jobs, too: Pizza delivery. Uber. Selling solar panels door-to-door.

He quit them all, allowing himself to "focus on wrestling all day."

“A lot of people say, ‘Oh, he must be getting paid in hot dogs and handshakes,’” Janela said. “But people make money wrestling.”

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For decades, the independent wrestling scene had existed solely as a way for guys like Janela to make a name for themselves and hope that, one day, WWE would come calling.

But that's long since changed. An impromptu flea market is ingrained into the independent wrestling experience, with wrestlers selling anything possible they can put their name on: T-shirts. Pins. Posters. Photographs. Many sell their autographs or the right to take a quick photograph.

“It’s do-it-yourself,” Janela said. “We’re getting paid cash. We’re selling our own merch. We’re packing. We’re shipping. We’re promoting ourselves. We do it all ourselves. It’s a completely independent process — and that’s what makes it so great.”

Even while recovering from his knee injury, Janela is still a hot commodity. At a recent GCW show in Atlantic City, Janela appeared in the ring for about two minutes — setting up a match for Spring Break — and did commentary on the event’s livestream.

There was a line at his merch table from the moment intermission started, and the moment the show was over. Most took a photo with Janela — sunglasses on, tongue usually out — and others bought a shirt or pin.

One teenager had Janela sign a baseball bat with barbed wire wrapped around it.

“He’s unpredictable. He’s different. He doesn’t look like the stereotypical jacked-up wrestler, with a beard and tattoos. He’s just different,” Lauderdale said. "He’s the underdog in the grand scheme of wrestling. He’s always going to be up against it, and people always want to root for that guy.”

In January, Janela signed the first contract of his 14-year career — a deal with All Elite Wrestling, the new promotion spearheaded by Cody and the other wrestlers behind “All In,” as well as Tony Khan, co-owner of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars.

“I finally feel like all my hard work has come to this,” Janela said of the deal.

While the founders have said AEW will exist as an alternative — not competition — to WWE, the company is certainly poised to become the first true No. 2 since WWE swallowed archrival WCW in 2001.

But for now, the company’s success rides-or-dies on the “spirit” of wrestlers like Janela, said Cody, who serves as executive vice president of AEW.

“He appeals to … I don’t even know what the demographic would be, he covers so many,” Cody said. “And he’s done this all on his own. That’s the revolution embodied. That independent spirit, that voiceless, underappreciated hard-working, bust-their-ass type wrestler that he is? That’s the fire we’re trying to stoke with AEW.

“And that’s why Janela was a no-brainer for us.”

After six months on the shelf, Janela is a “Bad Boy” reborn and recharged. What he thought was going to be the worst timing for a career-threatening injury turned out to be perfectly timed.

After years of going full-throttle, it was nice to lay low for a while.

“It needed to happen,” Janela said. “I think I needed to give myself a break. I was going too hard. I was wrestling three or four times a week — and I don’t pace myself.

“I needed to take a little break and recharge my mind and my body,” he said.

He started hitting the gym more regularly. He spent more time with his family. And like any good professional wrestler, he built the hype up for his return.

In the weeks since his return at Spring Break was announced, the video making the announcement has been viewed almost 200,000 times. His social media has shown a nearly daily routine of gym workouts and tanning sessions, along with Spring Break match announcements.

"For me, being a wrestler was do or die. There was no backup plan," Janela said.

"If I didn’t become successful at this…"

He pauses, trying to imagine what life would be like – without the sunglasses, without the Roof Spot, without Spring Break. Without the “Bad Boy.”

A sigh.

“Who knows?”

Mike Davis; @byMikeDavis: 732-643-4223; mdavis@gannettnj.com

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