Photo Credit: West Smith @ukelelepunk

Though he’s been largely confined to the Pacific Northwest over the past year, Josh Schaff has been thrilling crowds with his blend of athleticism and sheer power.

Known in the ring as simply ‘Schaff’, the bruiser is veteran of the United States Navy and has recently been seen going up against top independent names like WALTER, Brody King and Shane Strickland, among others. His laundry list of skilled matchups is impressive not only in its length of standout names, but also because of the fact that he made his debut fewer than two years ago.

Though relatively new to the aspect of competing in professional wrestling, Schaff has long been a fan of professional wrestling and shares a familiar tale with many current fans.

“I think most people have some sort of draw to wrestling, even people who don’t watch it currently. People will always say, ‘In this era I watched wrestling’ so I think most people had some sort of a draw towards wrestling. I was raised during the Attitude Era with the Monday Night Wars and I was a WCW kid, so my favorite wrestler ever is Bill Goldberg. Sting, the NWO, that whole thing was so much fun,” Schaff said.

“As I started to get older I also fell out of love with wrestling, I don’t know if I was just too cool for it but as I got passed that I just started to think, ‘Who cares if other people think it’s cool?’ and I started watching again. CM Punk was what got me back into wrestling with the Summer of Punk and I was hooked from there on out and haven’t stopped since.”

Leaving high school and joining the Navy, Schaff found himself looking for a career outside of the military as his commitment was winding to an end.

“I was in the Navy for six years and as I was there, professional wrestling was really never something I thought I could do. The longer I was in, the more I realized I wanted to do something that I enjoyed and something that I loved and I wanted to get paid to do it. I had recently started lifting weights and getting super into that so I just thought, ‘Why don’t I just get out and start wrestling?’ and so I made that my goal. I started telling everyone I was going to be a pro wrestler. A couple of years later and here I am.”

With a potential lifelong career in the Navy in which he could have retired at the age of 37, many questioned Schaff’s decision to not re-enlist and those concerns intensified when he told his friends and family that he would instead be pursuing professional wrestling.

“When I told my friends and family about my plans, a lot of people laughed. My mom was very supportive and told me that, ‘Someone has to get paid to do it, it might as well be you.’ My family has always been supportive and my dad pretty much got me into it when I was young so my family was always supportive — friends, not so much. My friends that are into wrestling love it and think it’s awesome, they come to the shows, but some of the people I worked with thought I was stupid.”

“I was in a job where I was guaranteed a paycheck the 1st and 15th of every month and they thought it was dumb that I was going to give that up for something that I wasn’t going to get paid at all, especially at first. I could have 20 years in the military and since I joined when I was 17, I could have retired at 37 if the days lined up right. I would have had a retirement check and sailed off into the sunset, but for me it wasn’t fun and it wasn’t really what I enjoyed doing.”

“I remember a quote that said something to the effect of, ‘You can sit on your couch, smoke weed and eat cheetos and get a high school diploma, but you can’t do that and be in the military’ and that’s true, but it’s also true for professional wrestling. You have to put in a lot of time and effort and you can’t just sit there and eat cheetos and then be John Cena.”

Returning back to the United States, Schaff made his way to Atlanta to train under well-respected independent wrestler AR Fox. Despite a long commute and the early struggles of wrestling school, Schaff pushed forward with his burgeoning career.

“I started training in Atlanta and I drove about two hours one way every day, so it was pretty overwhelming. When you’re not used to bumping, it hurts like hell. AR Fox, the lead trainer down there, sometimes had 20 or 30 people there training so if you’re doing a bump drill where you’re taking three bumps per person, that’s close to 100 bumps you could be taking in a row and it’s nauseating. There’s nothing you can really do to prepare for it — I don’t know of any exercise where you prepare to fall on your back over and over again. I took a belly-to-belly suplex and I landed and the guy landed on top of me and my shoulder hurt like hell for weeks afterwards and I was terrified to take another one. You have to work past it.”

After persevering through the early stages and overcoming any obstacles put in his way, Schaff finally made his debut in 2017 against none other than his trainer, AR Fox.

A veteran with over a decade in the business, including a run as ‘Dante Fox’ in Lucha Underground, Fox made the perfect opponent for a debut match.

“My first ever match was with AR Fox, who has wrestled all over the world and is just phenomenal. I don’t think I could’ve had a better first match to be honest. It was totally nerve wracking, but he made me feel really comfortable. You never want to say it’s easy, but the guy makes it easy. I knew some of the things I wanted to do and he listened and he set me up to do exactly what I wanted with my career and as far as the match, it was easy.”

“As nerve wracking as it was, it was a comfortable experience. I really enjoyed it and had a lot of fun and I think having the first match is what kept me going. You’re consistently training every day and if you’re not having matches I don’t think you’re learning. I think having even practice matches is where you’re going to learn and they’re the most fun. Having that first match lit a fire under my ass because of how much fun I had and how much I enjoyed having a match.”

Wrestling primarily in Florida and Georgia throughout the early part of his career, Schaff eventually branched out to the Pacific Northwest by making his debut with DEFY Wrestling in Portland, Oregon. After his debut with DEFY, he took on Clark Connors in front of a lively audience; a fact that sent Schaff’s nerves skyrocketing.

“I don’t know if I’m ever really comfortable, I’m always anxious. I’m really anxious before I go through the curtain but once I go through the curtain it kind of all just comes down and you realize, ‘Okay, this is going to be alright.’ It was pretty quickly that the nerves of the physical match went away, but as far as getting ready for it and standing there and getting ready for the music to hit, I don’t think those have went away. My second match in Defy was at Defy 9 against Clark Connors and it was pretty much my big debut match and I thought I was going to puke everywhere, I was so nervous. It was the loudest crowd and the most people I’ve ever wrestled in front of and I thought I was going to puke — it was fun.”

He’s continued to grow in the ring as he’s put more matches under his belt, but Schaff’s greatest lesson learned to this point is not one that many would consider conventional.

“The most important thing I’ve learned is to be yourself and to not necessarily listen to what everyone says. We had a guy come to the school shows and he would write reviews, and the first review he said some stuff about me that kind of bothered me. I spoke to my girlfriend about it and she said to stop getting bothered by the opinion of one guy, but for some reason it ate me up inside. I made it a point to turn it into almost an angle in that every show he was there, I would talk shit to him. It ended up being a pretty fun thing we ended up doing and in the end I made a fan out of him. As long as you’re successful, who cares what other people think of you. If the fans are enjoying you and you’re having fun, who cares what anyone else says?”

Staying true to himself has been a key to this point, both as a character and in the ring. Standing 6’1, 275-pounds with a body built from powerlifting, Schaff is able to use his power to manhandle opponents. Even with that build and skill set however, Schaff knows that he needs to bring more to the table than size and power.

“Sometimes I think it’s harder as a bigger guy. I think it’s a different time for wrestling and being a big guy is almost harder because you have to do things that you typically wouldn’t have to have done to stand out. There are guys doing Spanish Flys off the top rope and Canadian Destroyers and double moonsaults or whatever, there’s these crazy athletic things I can’t do and sometimes I think it might be harder.”

“Beyond that, you have guys like Keith Lee and Brody King who are 300 pounds and still flying everywhere and doing flips and stuff. Some guys haven’t realized it, but you have to elevate yourself. It’s the evolution of big man wrestling, it’s not what it once was. You have to bring it and you can’t just stand there and pick people up and throw them. You have to pick people up and throw them and you have to go to the top and you have to be able to move.”

Though it’s been fewer than two years since his career began, Schaff has made tremendous strides and has seen opportunities continue to open up. A career in the military was a viable possibility that he ultimately turned down, but Schaff feels that the experience in the Navy has helped push him to where he is now.

“I learned that I want to chase after a dream — I was very stagnate and very content — but I wasn’t happy necessarily. It taught me that I don’t want to just be content, I want to be happy. It gave me my love for fitness and for working out. Five or six years ago I didn’t work out and in high school I didn’t play sports, in fact I was in the play in high school. I was in the band in middle school and wrote on the newspaper staff, that’s what I did while in school. I wasn’t really into athletics other than wrestling my brothers on the trampoline in the backyard, so I didn’t exercise until joining the military.”

“When I was in, a lot guys liked to work out so I figured I’d try it out and I found out that I liked it and really enjoyed doing it. I started powerlifting and some of the guys I was doing it with told me I should do a powerlifting meet and it was really fun. You can look of pictures of me in high school and I probably weigh 100 pounds less than I do now. There was a guy I was in the Navy with early on that I recently saw at the mall and he didn’t recognize me at all. I texted a buddy of mine and said that I saw this guy at the mall and the guy didn’t recognize me and my buddy said, ‘Well no shit, you look like the new version of you ate the old version of you.”

With marquee matches already filling his career, Schaff has already begun to get a strong following behind him. Considering his background, his athletic build and his ability both in the ring and on the mic, it will only be a matter of time before the entire independent wrestling scene catches on to the unforgettable talent that is Schaff.

“I would love to be able to live off of professional wrestling and if I can get to that high-level independent wrestler status in the next few years, I would love that. I would love to win the DEFY belt because that company has been so good to me and I’d love to wrestle for PWG — it’s a company I used to watch while I was in the Navy and just think of how crazy this shit is. I would love to show those same people the highlight footage of my stuff on there.”

“Ultimately I would love to make it to the WWE, it would be the craziest thing ever if I found myself there. I have short term goals along that, I know that I’m not just going to wake up tomorrow and be in the WWE. There are independent goals that I have with DEFY and with certain promotions that I had watched before I started wrestling. At the end of it, my goal is to be wrestling in the WWE.”