A chair to the gut.

A broken arm.

A dream come true.

Check one off the bucket list for Sarnia city councilor Brian White who stepped out of the political ring and into the ring at a Smash Wrestling show in Sarnia Friday.

“Certainly growing up at a very young age I dreamt of being a wrestler, like a lot of kids today,” said White.

“To be able to step in the ring at 42, certainly checked off an item.”

White has been helping draw eyes to the independent professional wrestling circuit that Friday made its fourth stop in Sarnia.

White, in a tag-team match alongside Smash’s Brent Banks, went up against promoter and performer Sebastian Suave and his manager Anthony Kingdom James.

White said he trained two months in London to get ready.

“I learned a bunch of moves that I wasn’t able to get into the match, simply because of the mugging that I took,” he said.

He was pinned, he said, after taking a couple of chair blows from James.

“I handled myself fairly well in there and showed that I took the opportunity seriously,” White said.

The match was the latest chapter in a social media and ringside feud involving White, Suave and James, after White took his 10-year-old son Séamus to a show at The Station in Sarnia last July.

Suave was on the receiving end of some playful chops from children in the audience and White posted a photo of his son delivering one of the blows.

“That sort of led to this opportunity where Sebastian Suave took exception to that, and maybe he was embarrassed and whatever and he started to call me out,” White said.

They battled it out on social media, with Suave taking aim at Sarnia and White coming to its defence. White also participated in the show ringside in November – handcuffed to James to prevent him from interfering.

Friday, his first time wrestling, was “unbelievably fun,” White said.

“There really is nothing quite like not only the physicality of that experience, but the energy you get from the crowd,” he said.

He’s hoping to get back in the ring too, he said. But he’ll have to wait for his broken left arm to heal.

He landed on it trying to deliver an elbow drop.

“I just had bad form,” he said, calling it an amateur mistake.

He still wrestled the next 20 minutes, he said, including delivering his signature “parking ticket” move on Suave.

He spent the night in hospital, he said; then the following day competed and won with his partner in the Dancing with the Stars fundraiser for the Alzheimer Society of Sarnia-Lambton.

“That’s probably the coolest 26 hours of my life, besides when my kids were born,” White said.

He’s hoping Smash continues reaching out to youth organizations – Big Brothers Big Sisters has attended some shows, he said.

It’s another outlet for kids to dream and have aspirations, he said.

“With this massive growth in independent pro wrestling and with wrestling schools opening up all across Ontario, I wanted to make sure there was at least some kind of a bridge to the young people in Sarnia.”

The risks are real though, he said.

“Watch it and have fun interacting with the wrestlers but leave the moves to the pros and for your future dreams.”

Smash Wrestling comes back to Sarnia March 31 featuring a no-holds-barred match between Suave and Banks, White said.

“If Sebastian loses, his manager – who is the one who hit me with a chair – he’s no longer allowed to come back to Sarnia,” he said.

If Banks loses, Banks will have to stay out of Sarnia, White said.

“I’ll be there to support my friend Brent Banks and we’ll see what happens.”

tkula@postmedia.com