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by Les
Honig
He has already fought many fearsome battles to survive and conquer several major athletic fields of competition and now stands poised to dominate still one more.
And it’s no wonder.
To look at Sean O’Haire, one is immediately struck with an appearance that is both awesome and intimidating. The 6’6” 250-pound chiseled-from-granite athlete who drips with both fierceness and charisma has already dominated the squared circle in several major promotions and now threatens to tear open the entire mixed martial arts scene as well.
Raised in Hilton Head, South Carolina, the young Sean possessed both great natural athletic talent along with a penchant for brawling and street fighting that caused his parents to early on send him to a Virginia military school where he admits, “I only learned how to better get away with being bad.” Still, he was able to channel his aggression into positive sports achievement and was soon an all-conference and all-state wrestling, football and track standout.
Already getting into heavy lifting during his late teen years while and accomplished in a variety of martial arts, (done to better defend himself in his many street confrontations), he soon became an imposing figure and a deadly combatant with a mastery of many forms of self-defense. Hired at the age of 19 as a bouncer by a company that owned a string of clubs throughout the nation, it was the young powerhouse’s job to visit various venues “and clean them up,” which he resoundingly did.
After that successful five-year hard-edged experience, it was time to join the corporate-oriented work world, so O’Haire used the many training skills he’d acquired to open his own Hilton Head health club which grew in-demand until Sean tired of the demanding 9 to 5 grind and decided to return to sell it and return to active sports competition he’d missed.
“I was boxing for a year when somebody suggested I’d be a natural as a pro wrestler also. At first I didn’t take the idea too seriously but then thought, ‘Hey, that’s a place where I can run around in my underwear, beat people up, do some kickboxing and karate and get paid for it all. It’s not a bad idea!”
Deciding to apply to the famed WCW Power Plant, O’Haire was soon taken notice of and within six months he was on national TV as a hot new rookie talent. “It was kind of strange,” he muses, “since I ran into all these guys whose whole life revolved around pro wrestling and with me I was totally new to the field. I spent my own childhood being a martial arts fan and reading Black Belt Magazine.”
Still, his ascent in the soon-to-be extinct World Championship Wrestling was immediate and before long he grabbed the coveted tag team title with rookie partner Mark Jindrak. Becoming a member of Natural Born Thrillers his fan base grew rapidly and his star-quality persona made him one of the fed’s most coveted talents. Yet, his memories of his first pro experience were not uniformly positive. “I enjoyed it alot but actually the salary wasn’t that great. I was paid far less than many of the big names who had megabucks contracts.” Such overpaying, he feels, actually helped bring about the eventual downfall of the already struggling company.
With the title changing hands several times in the subsequent year, O’Haire was to team with new sensation Chuck Palumbo and as the company was finally sold to World Wrestling Entertainment, the pair ended their WCW tenure as reigning champions; heading into their new federation, like many other fellow crossovers, with high hopes and ultimately dashed expectations.
“Basically they used us, like many other talented guys who had entered at that time, just to put their own guys over. It was a waste as far as I was concerned.” Not one to hide his feelings and getting repulsed by the politics that goes on in many feds, O’Haire was soon considered “too angry” and was shipped off to OVW for further training and development; a move that at first deeply upset him but ultimately made him a far better competitor.
“I decided I needed to look within myself and I soon realized that not everything that happened to me was somebody else’s fault. I dedicated myself at that moment to becoming a better wrestler and as time has developed I have become just that.”
With the help of trainer Danny Davis and other OVW instructors, O’Haire began to understand more of the subtleties and psychology needed to execute successful ring encounters and he also developed a steely-edged mat persona that began winning him numerous new fans.
Despite attempts to direct him into a revised gimmick upon his WWE-TV return which he did not personally find appropriate for his own talents, Sean persisted in presenting an alternative: a character where he followed the classic Prince of Darkness, Machiavelli, and portrayed what he calls “The Devil’s Advocate”, encouraging more positively motivated matmen to look at their own dark side and draw from that part of their inherent negativity. Soon he was teamed up with Roddy Piper as a kind of assistant who was also an enforcer, but with Piper’s departure due to friction, with Titan, the fabulous but still underutilized mat mega-talent seemed on the verge of becoming submerged again.
“At that moment, as my popularity was still growing, they advised me that I had to go back to OVW for still more training and I decided it was time to make a fateful decision. I asked them to either let me continue with my now successful new image or just give me a release and allow me to pursue other things.” As those in charge decided to follow the latter course, advising him he could gain his release without legal repercussions; Sean says “I felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders.” No longer did he have to please those who he felt might never be satisfied with his superior efforts or truly appreciate his potential; now he could strike out on his own and pursue other more compelling interests.
Taking a month or so off to get his head together, he was encouraged by WWE’s Paul Heyman to look into the field of shootfighting; as he possessed all the necessary tools and the incredible power to becoming a major success should he focus all his efforts in that direction. Having come into contact as well with Rick Bassman, who had started his own Valor Fighting company and had encouraged him in the same direction, Sean was hooked up with famed mixed martial arts trainer Eddie Millis of the L.A.-based Shark
Tank and soon the talented fighter began training in earnest.
Already O’Haire has made two forays into his new field of sports competition and the results have proven devastating for his opponents. In his current shootfighting debut at a Long Beach based tournament he disposed of his opponent, 6’9”Anthony Roberts with a choke submission in only 1:42 of the first round and then went on to be a major player at November’s K-1 “Rumble on the Rock” in Hawaii, winning with a TKO over well-known mixed martial arts fighter, Shungo Oyama in less than a minute.
Still, as he begins to fulfill the awesome expectations promoter and manager Bassman has for him, Sean has not abandoned the faithful wrestling fans who have helped him survive what has been a rocky career path; made most difficult by the locker-room politics he has had to endure.
“I really do love pro wrestling too,” he asserts, “although my heart has always been most in fighting. For now I will pursue that with total commitment, but if opportunities come my way also in the wrestling arena, I won’t hesitate to find my way back there too.”
Enjoying his 2004 squared-circle UPW confrontations, like the recent Destruction in the Desert where he bested 21 other opponents to grab a victory in the giant Battle Royal, Sean O’Haire continues to prove that he is one of the most awe-invoking, incredible talents to hit either the wrestling or fighting ring anywhere in the sports world. Under the skilled direction of his extraordinary manager, Rick Bassman, and with an unlimited and dread-inducing arsenal of physical explosives, there is absolutely nothing that this towering and dreaded dynamo will not be able to accomplish in the new field he has just embarked upon and in the established one he has already made giant waves in!
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