|
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
UPW Partners |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
Student of the Month, November 2003 Brandon Hill |
|
|
|
by
Les Honig Brandon Hill, one of
the most outstanding of the newest wave of ultra-dedicated Ultmate U.
trainees, remembers with amusement how he was given his nickname
“Lionheart” back when
he was a 16 year-old at L.A.’s Harbor City Christian School. “I wasn’t more
than 88 pounds then but I would work on moves in the gym after school
with a teacher who knew a guy that trained at Ken Shamrock’s
Lion’s Den. We had no
wrestling program at Christian but he knew how much I loved the sport
and wanted to learn so he’d call in the janitors or really large
students to test my skills out. Some weighed over 260 pounds but I’d
hang in there with them.” Such a story is so
typical of this South Central L.A. native, now 19, who has brought his
own special contribution of guts, determination and great karma to the
R1 Center ring ever since he stepped in there for the first time last
May. Since then he has
been one of the University’s most dedicated aspirants, scarcely
missing a class and in his own quiet but impassioned way, helping to
enrich the total UU learning experience. Remembering himself
as always being a youthful class clown who “even made my teachers
crack up,” Brandon also recalls treating his parents and four
brothers and sisters to many impromptu living room performances. He
also points to his first encounter with sports entertainment when
he’d watch Saturday Night’s Main Event and see athletes like the
Hulkster, Brett Hart and Shawn Michaels thrill audiences with their
larger than live presences. It was, however, as with several other
current trainees, his viewing of the classic Wrestlemania 12 Ironman
Match between Hart and Michaels that firmly convinced him of his own
need to join the wrestling ranks. “To keep the audience in the palm
of their hands for 60 minutes just was something amazing and magical
to me.” When the Christian
School was forced to close down, Brandon transferred to Torrance High
which happily did have an active and thriving amateur wrestling
program and where he soon became one of the school’s most
outstanding 121-pounders. (“It was great for me because I thought
this would be a natural way to get into the pros.
I had seen how Kurt Angle, an outstanding wrestler, himself,
had just made that transition.”) Excessive costs for
his family for that long daily commute, however, forced him to return
closer to home to nearby Locke High, but even though he could no
longer actively compete on a school mat, his dream continued to burn
brightly and after graduation he was once again trying to make the
moves necessary to enter the professional wrestling field. “My folks didn’t
really support my decision to become a wrestler but that didn’t stop
me. I tried out college but after just a few minutes in my first
class, I decided where my heart really was. I left and went back home
and told them that I preferred to invest my 4 years in chasing my
dream rather than know forever that I had never tried at all.” With cost a definite
inhibiting factor in selecting a school to enroll in, (he had looked
at Louisville’s Ohio Valley, St. Louis’ Heartland and Shawn
Michael’s San Antonio School but all seemed out of his financial
reach), Brandon remembers how excited he was when his brother brought
home a wrestling magazine one day that provided him a solution to his
dilemma. “It had the Rock
on the cover and I looked through it and towards the back I found a
story on UPW. It featured people like Prototype, Bad Boy Basil and
Looney Lane and when I saw there was a training school in El Segundo,
California, I ran down to my mom and asked, ‘Where is El
Segundo?’. When I found out it was near LAX and only 10 minutes from
where I lived I screamed, ‘Yes! That’s the one! I’m going
there!’” Immediately
befriended and assisted by outstanding talents like L’il Nate
Nickerson, Kevin Zacaula and Tony Stradlin, Brandon quickly adapted
and has consistently intensified and surpassed his own personal
learning curve. With the
mastering of match psychology one of his current and greatest
challenges, Brandon still is ecstatic about the whole experience as he
enters his seventh month of learning. “I’m on Cloud 9
because I’m finally living my dream and I couldn’t be happier!” Crediting teachers
like the Ballards and Keiji Sakoda, especially, for his rapid
progress, Brandon Hill can now look forward to a future that may
indeed be as hopeful as that of many of his other equally talented
classmates. “I see how smaller
guys like Spanky can make it and I am taking him as my inspiration.
My ultimate goal is to make it in WWE like he did and I am
willing to pay the price, whatever it takes to reach that point.” An attitude typical of the best that Ultimate U. has to offer….and a reason why so much of our homegrown UPW talent base has already become glory bound and why so many in the future surely will meet with equal success as well!
|
|
Previous Ultimate University Students of the Month: September 2003 - Tony Stradlin February 2003 - Nate Nickerson |
