NiniaPimp Magazine

Afro-Squad has been online for well over a decade, and we’ve made tons of other websites over the years. Our websites get thousands of visitors, and we’ve tried a lot of advertising methods.

Google has been by far the most successful advertisor for us. We get hig quality ads, and we make decent money from them. However, we are testing Adbrite on this site to see if they compare to Google.

In the first 10 days of August, we got 24,000 impressions with our Google ads on pro wrestling sites. From those 24K impressions, people clicked our ads 92 times. Google will pay us $28 for those 92 clicks. That equals 30 cents a click.

During our test on Afro-Squad.com, Adbrite got us 13,410 impressions. That means 13K people saw Adbrite advertisements. From those 13K impressions, people clicked the ads 17 times. The fewer clicks per impression than Google may be because of my ad placement. So I can’t necessarily blame Adbrite. However, it is likely that Adbrite just has less interesting ads. It seems that Adbrite ads have nothing to do with my content, probably because they have fewer advertisors. In total, Adbrite will pay me 84 cents for those 17 clicks. That’s about 5 cents a click.

When you compare, Google is paying me six times what Adbrite is paying me. Of course, this often has to do with the type of content. You make more money off of better quality content. For example, you could make $2 a click with a web site about legal advice and less from a site about bikini models. That’s just how the advertising world works.

I have tested Google and Adsense for years, and in every comparision, Google has won out. Google Adsense pays more per click than any advertisor I have ever found online.

Question: Is there anything you would like to say to our fans?
BISON:  First off, I would like to thank the fans of wrestling. Thank you for your loyal support through these difficult times in the professional wrestling business. This interview is going to focus mainly on the Japanese, Puerto Rican and a little on the United States wrestling Business. If you are a WWE or TNA fan you may not know who I am but just read the interview to get a different aspect of the wrestling business. I guarantee it will be a good read.

Question: How did you become a fan of wrestling?
BISON: I started my athletic career in Fresno, California. In 4th grade I started to play football and amateur wrestle. Doing those sports I supplemented the two with weight training. I started lifting weights regularly when I was 13
years old.
I worked out at Gold’s Gym. I loved lifting weights more than I did playing football or amateur wrestling. Some kids played video games some rode dirt bikes but I loved to hang out at Gold’s Gym.
I noticed a group of guys would come into the gym once a month. These guys were monsters to me. They would lift heavy weights, they looked like movie stars and they were huge. I was really in awe of them and I told myself, “I wanted to be like them one day.”
I asked around the gym wanting to know who those people were. Some didn’t know but one guy told me they were pro wrestlers. So I went to a local grocery store headed to the media section and looked through some wrestling magazines.  I saw the same guy’s at Gold’s Gym that were in those magazines. They were WWF wrestlers.
My family had just got cable television and on the USA network there was a show called Tuesday Night Titan’s. I watched it every week along with the other WWF programming. I also watched World Class and AWA on ESPN.
This is right before the WrestleMania’s and the Rock and Wrestling connection started on MTV. When I saw Roddy Piper break that platinum record glass frame over Lou Albano’s head, let me tell you, I was hooked on wrestling.
Every time the WWF came to town I went to the shows. Before the shows I would wait around Gold’s Gym all day just to see the wrestlers work out. I remember one time Ken Patera and I talked in the locker room. He went to BYU with my high school football coach. He was really nice to me and we had a good conversation about power lifting. That was Patera’s specialty and at the time I was into it also.
After High school I accepted a scholarship to play football at the University of Colorado. I kind of lost interest in watching pro wrestling until one day this monster came into the University of Colorado’s weight room. Again, I was in awe of this guy and I wanted to know who he was.
They told me his name was Leon White and he played for Colorado back in the 1970′s. Then they told me he was a pro wrestler working in Japan under the name Big Van Vader. This was right before he got signed by WCW. Vader would rarely come to the gym and work out but when he did I tried talking to him and he was always pissed off  and unapproachable.
I started to watch WCW because of Vader. He was a real heel monster and I loved watching him destroy people. When he would show up at the gym I would again try to talk wrestling with him and again he would treat me like an asshole.
After I graduated college I was done with football. People ask me why I didn’t try to pursue the NFL. The truth is I was a stupid young kid that felt burned out on football and at the ripe old age of 22, I retired. I will always consider that a huge mistake I made in my life. I will always regret not giving it a shot.

Question: How did you become a Pro Wrestler
BISON:  When I was at the University of Colorado the football players were treated like Gods. It was first class. Best hotels, being fed the best food,  playing in front of 70,000  people at Folsom Field in Colorado or in Nebraska and Oklahoma. We went to a bowl game every year. Staying 2 weeks in Florida for the Block Buster Bowl against Alabama. Staying in Phoenix, Arizona to play Syracuse in the Fiesta Bowl. We stayed in Hawaii two weeks for the Aloha Bowl my senior year.
Then after my eligibility  was done they told me, “You can’t do this anymore,” you feel like you have been dumped in the middle of nowhere. I was a civilian for the first time in my life.
What next? Get a 9 to 5 job? I was a 290 lbs. 6’3 gorilla. How was I going to convert from an athlete to a regular person? I couldn’t, I stuck out, and I wasn’t normal looking. Me in a suit and tie?…… please.
I approached my old strength and conditioning coach Doc Kries about him talking to Vader about possibly getting me into the wrestling business. His response was not good. It seemed that there were two football players before me that Vader helped get into the business. These two idiots made Vader look bad. I guess they were sent to the Power Plant, WCW’s training school, were given special treatment because of Vader and they totally blew it by being jackass’s.  So Doc Kries told me Vader is not interested in getting ex-football players into the business.
I was crushed. I kept staying on Vader about it. I begged him to give me a shot. Vader just didn’t like me for some reason. So I decided and said to myself, “Screw him, I am going to do this the hard way.”
Back then the Internet was in its infancy. The business was so tightly sealed no one would know where to go to be a wrestler. Back then you had to know someone. Well, the someone I knew didn’t give me the time of day so I was in the dark on how to get into the wrestling business.
It was probably 3 years after my football career and I was working at a furniture store in Denver moving sofas for a living. What a depressing time in my life. I was a fat, beer drinking warehouse worker with zero direction. This was the time the WCW WWF wars were heating up. I can honestly say that is when the business was at its best.
Every Monday night was wrestling night. I was so hooked on wrestling then.  I was so determined to become a wrestler but I didn’t know how to get into the business, it was so frustrating.
I remember one time WCW was in town for a Nitro tapping. I couldn’t go because I had to move sofas but on my lunch break I drove to the Denver Coliseum to try to talk to anyone who knew how I could get into the business.
I approached this roadie or some crew guy that was smoking a cigarette next to one of the WCW semi trucks. He told me to call the head quarters at 1 CNN center. So I called, talked to some lady, she asks, “Do you have any experience as a pro wrestler?” Stupidly, I said, “NO.” She replied, “I am sorry sir we can’t help you.”
One of my co-workers at the furniture store got a new computer and had the Internet hooked up. I thought the Internet was the coolest thing then but today it is killing wrestling, but that’s a whole other story.  So, I got the bright idea to put,” pro wrestling schools,” into the search engine. The first one that popped up was All Pro Wrestling in Hayward, California. I told myself ,”Pack your bags your going to wrestling school.”

Question: Tell us about your training.
BISON:  To be honest, God was on my side when he directed me to APW. At APW I was trained the right way. At APW I was trained in an, “old fashioned style.” The old fashion style is paying your dues. Learning how to wrestle slowly and laying a strong fundamental foundation before you have your first match.
I didn’t start my training learning a power bomb or a choke slam the first day. I did cardio drills the first two weeks. At first, it pissed me off that I wasn’t in the ring learning wrestling. But when I did finally make it to the ring, I didn’t like it.
In wrestling you have to learn how to fall right to protect yourself, this is called, “bumping.” For 5 months all we did was bump. It hurt, it was really painful. My whole body ached. It was way tougher than playing football. I really didn’t think I was going to make it. The class I started my training with consisted of 48 boys. After 9 months it was down to 3 men including myself. Pro wrestling is very brutal to a person’s body and how I made it was without a doubt the toughest thing I have ever done.

Question: Tell us about the first couple years of your wrestling career.
BISON:  My first match was in 1998 against a guy named James Watkins. It was a good match but you could tell I was not comfortable being in front of people and I just wrestled awkward. I was very bland. The fans didn’t like me. I couldn’t talk on a microphone. Truthfully, I sucked my first 2 years of wrestling. I am sure there are people today who still think I suck but back then I really sucked. I had no concept of how to be a wrestler.
After about two years the promoter at APW decided to put me in a hood, a mask, and make me this, “Old School Heel,” type wrestler called Super Destroyer 2000. Once I put that mask on it changed me. I was more relaxed in the ring. I started having good matches. I was moving forward. The gimmick was getting over with the fans and it felt good that I was being accepted as a credible wrestler.

Question: What was your biggest highlight the first couple of years in wrestling?
BISON:     I had an opportunity to work for a Hollywood promotion called the Urban Wrestling Alliance. I say Hollywood because it was filmed in Hollywood and was backed by Hollywood money.
The whole concept would be based around an,” Urban,” theme. African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, Mexicans and Samoans were the good guys. Well, the bad guys would have to be White. So I was hired to come in and play a Texas redneck.
They had 8 pilot episodes to film. I was in Los Angeles for 3 weeks. I was making $200 a day and at that time it was gold to me. Some of the wrestlers that were a part of it were Orlando Jordan and Sonny Siaki.
It was such a great experience. I got to feel Hollywood and it was cool. Catering trucks at our shoots. I went to acting classes. I got to wrestle in the Grand Olympic Auditorium.
The pilots were sent to test markets on the UPN network like Dallas, Miami, New York, Chicago and a few other cities. They were running late at night going against some other ethnic shows. The pilots got good ratings but none of the networks picked up the show.
Looking back I can see why it failed. First of all it was too Hollywood oriented. They were hiring actors to be wrestlers. They were training actors in
3 weeks how to be wrestlers. That’s impossible.
The people doing the booking were Hollywood scriptwriters. That will never work even though it still is happening today in other promotions. I remember one time an acting agent was directing story lines. People calling the shots had no clue how to run a wrestling promotion. I was still very green at that time of my career but I was getting paid to be a wrestler and I was back to that life style I had when I played football at Colorado, so I was happy.
When it failed, again, I was crushed. WCW had just been bought out by WWF and jobs in the industry got scarce. It was 2000, I wasn’t getting any younger and I was seriously thinking about quitting, in fact, I was going to quit. I told everyone I was finished and I had an opportunity at a great promotion at my 9 to 5 job to be an executive at a major retail store.
People understood where I was coming from and they wished me well but the man who trained me thought I was a fool to quit.
I will never forget Mike Modest and I were standing in the parking lot at APW. He was desperately trying to talk me into staying in the business. I told him I had had enough. Modest told me to stay around for just one month because
he and some others were trying to get a Japanese wrestling promotion to come to APW and scout some talent. So I stuck around.
That next month 3 Japanese men representing a Japanese wrestling promotion and a television crew and reporters from Japan came to APW to watch some matches. I had a match with Tony Jones. It was a good match and Tony made me look good but I also made him look good.
After the matches I thought they would say, “Thanks for your time we will keep in touch.” No, what they did was, they pulled 3 of us one at a time into the office of APW. I was the last to get called in. I sat down and remember looking at the 3 Japanese men and thinking, ” what do they want from me?”
One of the Japanese men spoke dead on perfect English. The other two were silent and had these deadpan scary intimidating faces just staring at me with those cold looking eyes. We had a conversation and the Japanese man that spoke perfect English said, “Congratulations, you’re going to Japan to work for Pro Wrestling Noah .” I thought to myself, “for who?”

AfroSquad Exclusive Interview:
Gino Galento, Professional Wrestler and Actor

Gino, can you give us a quick bio on yourself?
Sure brother, I was born in Miami, Florida on July 1rst 1969 at Mercy Hospital in Dade County.  After my parents divorced in 1974, my Mom took me to Santiago, Chile, South America where I was raised.

My life has had a lot of ups and downs..  In the 80s, I was a roadie and had a band that almost signed a contract with BMG, but in 1992 I was burned out and willing to have a fresh start, so I moved back to the States and gave up on Heavy Metal to start a new life.

here was always the need to do something with the entertainment industry.  But where or what?  I didn’t know!  I had a lot of hints, but I never thought that in 2001 I would be joining a wrestling school. Skull Crushers to be exact, which was a school owned and operated by Exotic Adrian Street.

Due to his throat cancer he was gracious enough to let me train at the Pensacola Wrestling Academy, which was owned and operated by a former WWE wrestler Bobby Doll.  When I found out that Sika, The Wild Samoan was running a school in Pensacola I went there and finished my training with his blessings at The Wild Samoan training Center.

Who is Gino XL and how does he differ from Fabian Graham?
Let me start with a little history here, shall we? It all began with my first gimmick which was called “Cajun Gator” which was a technical wrestler with a bad temper, however Sika wanted me to become flamboyant so I was given the moniker of Fabulous Fabio a few years later I changed it to the short lived Fabulous Fabian

I added Graham to honor Superstar Billy Graham and Doctor Jerry Graham among the rest of the Graham clan, I even had the bleached blond hair back then.

Then I changed my name to Gino Galento (XL) to honor the Galento wrestling family.

Why are you known as “XL?”
XL stands for Xtra Large.  The fans know that I’m bigger and stronger than the common man!

What do you know about Sika and his crew?
Sika is currently retired and spending quality time with his immediate family and living large and in charge in a beautiful big house in Gulf Breeze, Florida.  Well, about his crew, they are busy bees on a lot of good projects, including me, I was always a part of his crew!

What do you think of Ultimate Wrestling?
Ultimate Wrestling has a lot of potential!  They are new to the game and pack on a few good ideas plus they seem to have a good time at it!  I had a great time there.

Can you tell us about your acting career?
My acting career is expanding, I now have an agent and she’s getting auditions for me to speaking roles and I have performed a few stunt fights on Film!

I’m also being groomed in the movie biz as a character actor the likes of Danny Trejo, who has always played tough guy and bad guy in the movies. My agent and casting directors love big guys for those roles and they see a lot potential in me.

What do you think about all the drama in indy wrestling?
Some things never seem to change around Indy Wrestling, it is the nature of the beast.

I believe though, that we need to bring good “Psychology” back in the Pro Wrestling Industry, and not just focus on circus acts that don’t make sense.  We are supposed to be wrestlers not acrobats.

What is Pea Ridge Wrestle Fest?
Is a nice series of Pro Wrestling events performed at the Pea Ridge Flea market.  The Pea Ridge Flea Market has opened it’s doors by their owner thanks to my uncle Tex Galento and Danny Roland, so we can bring high quality matches while helping our community through Fund Raising Events.

Who is Tex Galento?
Colonel Tex Galento is my “uncle,” my personal hero, and my wrestling manager!

What can you tell me about the Galento family?
The Galento Family is a family of tradition and American as Pie.  We are innovators!  Look at how many men molded themselves after Al Spider Galento, he was one of a kind and tough as nails, a true champ who never back down from a good fight.  The great Mario Galento, often imitated but never duplicated

What other projects are you working on?
I can’t disclose details right now, there are a few movie projects on the works, but I can tell you that I’m working right now on a character that involves stunt fights and a couple of lines and I have been auditioning for potential speaking roles that involves stunt fights!

Thanks for your time, Gino! Good luck in your endeavors.
My pleasure SnowMan, by the way I am not only your biggest fan, I’m also a NINJA PIMP PLAYA!!!

Check him out in the Tampa area.

Anthony Devlin is a cruiserweight based out of the Tampa area. He is closely associated with DWI pro wrestling, and he is one of my favorite cruiserweights to watch. A former professional stunt man, and coming from a high wire background, this guy is one to watch.

Anthony Devlin, thanks for joining us today!
Well, thanks for asking me be a part of your interview today. I really appreciate it.

How are you doing?
I’m doing fantastic and how’s everything going for you today?

Pretty damn fantastic. Can you tell us about yourself?
My ring name is Anthony Devlin. I primarily work DWI Wrestling. I’m 5’8″ and 157 lbs. I guess you could say, “I’m a old school worker at heart with extreme high flying capabilities”.

Tell us a little about your history.
I work to put the match and the show over, not myself. I started training back in 2005 in Chickopee, MA under the tutelage of Kevin Landry. My first year was absolutely amazing! if I did not have the bug prior to training, I most defiantly caught it after I began. I was told that when I started the I wouldn’t have my first match until at least 10 months to a year. At training, I would bust my ass when learning to take a bumps; I’d never quit. I would stay in there and take the bumps into the other workers got tired running off the ropes into me. As a smaller guy, they really respected my hard work and drive. My coach noticed the hard work put in; after 6 months I was told there was going to be a show that I was going to be put on ran by Joel Gurtner. That was really awesome! I was part of a sumo-style battle royal that day. I was asked to be a part of another show that was taking place the following week. The show was called WCWA out of CT. Soon, the offers came in pretty regularly. The highlight was going over to Providence, RI and being asked to take part in some tapings for EPW, Brutal Bob Evans show. After moving in 2007 to FL, I continued my wrestling education at the FXE school in Orlando for 5 months. But then I had to stop going, gas was up over $4 and couldn’t afford driving back and forth 3 times a week. Got in contact with Frankie Reyes and the rest is history.

One might ask why so much training? well the truth is 1) your never done training and you could always get better and 2) unless your 6′ 5″-7′ tall, or built like a Greek God. If bookers and promoters don’t know who you are, good luck getting booked down here. So, you have to get yourself out there somehow, which is another reason why DWI was started.

Who do you love to work?
Sheik Khan Abadi hands down was my favorite!

Can you tell us about any injuries you have had?
I almost put my bottom teeth through my lip during that first sumo-style battle royal. I skinned the cat and forgot to turn my head. I also broke a toe doing a moonsault which incidentally I happened to be up for shot of the year for www.Wrestling911.com.

What workers did you love as a kid?
Junk Yard Dog, Tito Santana, the Boogie Woogie Man-Jimmy Valient and of course Dusty Rhodes and Hulk Hogan were my favorites as a child. I loved the way they engaged the crowd and how they’d do everything they could to put the match and their opponent over. No, I really never used them as role models seeing that I’m a smaller guy and they were so big. But without a shadow of doubt, my favorite wrestler and biggest role model was Eddie Guerrero. He wasn’t the largest man but his in-ring ability and showmanship in my opinion as a Latin American are second to none in my book; especially how limited our options are for role models.

What are your favorite websites?
Well, we always have the DWI website that is always under construction. Yes, I’ve been to Wrestling911.com many times. I enjoy reading all of the writing and opinions of people who had never taken a bump in their life, let alone being in a ring to perform in front of people give their opinions on how an individual(s) suck or don’t belong. And I am being a smartass. Thou, I think your website is very well maintained and a good source of information on wrestlers and events. And again, if it wasn’t for the some of the ignorance and immaturity on there, I would give it a 10.

Hoping this new guy works out and the site is up and running by mid-January. DWI will be at the International Independence Showmen’s Club 6915 Riverview Dr., Riverview, Fl. Jan.13-16. Go to DWI calendar events for times.

Thanks for taking the time to be with us today.
Well Snowman, I’d like to thank you again for asking me to take part in this interview and wish you a Merry Christmas and all the continued success in 2011. Sincerely, Anthony Devlin

Thank you Tony. It is always an honor to see you work.