Joseph Beland’s wrestling worlds will collide in a Surrey school gym on the final Thursday night of September.
All Star Wrestling is bringing a Rumble at the Ridge event to Panorama Ridge Secondary, where Beland teaches math and physics. He also coaches the school’s fledgling wresting team.
In the ring he’s Joe Funk, who has wrestled at All Star events across B.C. since 2012.
The Sept. 28 “Rumble” will raise money for the school wrestling team that Beland helped launch last year.
Planning for the big night started last May.
“We’re really excited to be able get it all set up and everything,” Beland said. “It was quite the undertaking to make sure we got everything covered, get all the approvals (from school administration). We’re really looking forward to putting on this show. It’s super exciting.”
Beland, 29, grew up in Surrey and became a teacher four years ago. A decade ago, into the wrestling ring he followed his father, “Freddy Funk,” who started wrestling when Beland was nine years old.
• RELATED STORY, from 2017: Surrey’s ‘Joe Funk’ carries on family legacy in All Star Wrestling.
With wrestling in the family blood, Beland saw an opportunity to get students involved in the sport at Panorama Ridge.
“We started last year with 11 kids on the team,” the coach explained. “You know, it was a really great learning experience for everybody, and we wanted to go to this big tournament on the Island that takes place every February. But with taking 11 kids, plus some adults, all on the ferry, multiple cars, plus hotels and all that, it was just a little bit too much to ask for everybody to do. So we weren’t able to go.”
Soon enough, the concept of a wrestling-event fundraiser was born.
“That’s kind of the big goal of this fundraiser, because the students really, really wanted to go to that event on the Island,” Beland added. “So we’re looking for some way to help them out and get that happening.
“We also have a couple students who, you know, had a little bit of a hard time getting wrestling shoes and stuff like that, so we’re hoping to use funds to kind of support them. Anybody who wants to wrestle at the school should be able to wrestle, so we’re really making sure that all the kids are set up for that, too.”
The Rumble will see Joe Funk wrestle Travis Williams. Some other All Star characters will also be there for a night of fun and fundraising, including Battlewasp, Thunder from Jalandhar and Sebastian Wolfe, with the first bell at 6:30 p.m.
“We’ll have it in the large gymnasium, and we’re planning on using the bleachers, so we’re looking at about 500 people, approximately,” Beland said. “The ring will take up space, too, but 500 is what we’re looking to do that night. Tickets for general admission won’t be sold online, only at the door, and the wrestling club members are also selling them as a student-led part of this, to their peers at the student rate we have.”
Event tickets are priced at $30 for the front row, $20 for general seating and $12 for kids. Check facebook.com/ASWCANADA for more details and updates.
“We’ve had the wrestling mats at the school for several years,” Beland said, “but finally there was an opportunity for me to be able to start coaching, and we had a good mix. We have some kids who have done wrestling outside of school in their own clubs for a couple of years but then we also had about 50/50 with that and also some brand-new kids to wrestling, for the very first time, in November.”
The Sept. 28 event will help everyone involved, he added.
“I was just kind of thinking of ways to do fundraising that was a little bit more unique, rather than just a bake sale or something,” Beland said. “That’s when I kind of thought, well, I coach amateur wrestling and then I do professional wrestling, and this is way for the worlds to collide, so to speak.”
