Atlanta’s Deep South Wrestling rises in round three
About once a month in the late afternoon, the patio at New Realm Brewing Co. along Atlanta’s eastside Beltline transforms into a wrestling arena.
Deep South Wrestling — an independent wrestling organization based in Atlanta ― is behind the patio’s transformation. Staff and volunteers erect a black square ring, wire up speakers and pop-up a tent to create a tunnel from which costumed wrestlers emerge with bravado, running out with their fists in the air to a cheering crowd.
Fans who follow Deep South Wrestling usually take their seats around the arena early, but far more common are the curious bystanders who wander up from the Beltline and out from the bar to see what the commotion is.
The crowd grows larger until the patio is overflowing with people, young and old, spilling over onto the grass, squeezing onto overcrowded picnic benches and parking their strollers in tucked away corners to place their children on their laps.
When the show gets going, the patio grows thunderous. The turnbuckles thwack and tremble as wrestlers launch themselves into the air from the ropes and come crashing down, rumbling the ring floor. Flashy costumes with sequins, spandex, face-paint and leather widen onlooking eyes. People who may have never even considered watching a live wrestling show before find themselves swept up in the storylines of good guys, bad guys, haters and heartthrobs.
“When you’re caught up in the performance of our athletes, you just can’t help but be mesmerized,” said Marty Buccafusco, Deep South’s head of production and co-owner. “You let your imagination take over. There’s a suspension of disbelief that happens … there is a moment when you stop trying to see where the magician is hiding the card.”
Indies’ place in the wrestling ecosystem
Keith Elliot Greenberg, a Brooklyn-based author who has been writing professionally about wrestling for more than 40 years, has lauded the indie scene as “vital to the future of the industry.”
“It is often the gateway to somebody becoming a fan,” he said. It helps that tickets for indie matches are inexpensive or, in the case of Deep South events, free.
In his book “Too Sweet: Inside the Indie Wrestling Revolution,” Greenberg explores how the explosion of indie wrestling circuits has impacted the larger wrestling ecosystem: It’s provided a critical training ground for up-and-comers, a bridge for amateurs to go pro, a ring for ex-professionals to continue wrestling and a roomier, more inclusive space for diverse wrestlers to get paid gigs.
Jeff Benedict, general manager at New Realm Brewing Co., said Deep South has also been good for business.
“It supports community (and gives people) another reason to come out and spend their time,” Benedict said. “It has been beneficial across the board.”
Honing their craft
For wrestlers, Deep South matches provide an opportunity to hone their athleticism, experiment with characters and perfect their panache.
Deep South is where wrestler Naja “Najasism” Small started trying out new wrestling persona “The Hoochie Daddy,” a greedy showman with swagger much different from the heroes he used to play.
“They say the best wrestlers know when it’s time to change and evolve,” he said. “Since I evolved (into “The Hoochie Daddy”), I’ve been all over the U.S. My bookings went through the roof … my merch sales increased.”
In just one month this fall, Small said he worked 20 independent shows, including a weeklong gig in Las Vegas. He has held championship titles in both Deep South Wrestling and Platinum Championship Wrestling, another independent promotion in Conyers. Small also works at Platinum training other wrestlers. Some of his trainees now wrestle in Deep South’s live matches.
Zoe Elizabeth Ann Walker, Deep South’s Women’s champion, has made a name for herself as Gemma Jewels, “the 6-foot bombshell.”
Inspired by Katey Sagal’s character in FX’s “Sons of Anarchy,” Walker wears purple booty shorts, fishnet stockings and a cape covered in silver stars. At a match in September, she made an epic comeback, unpinning herself from the ring floor to win.
A toddler who, at the beginning of the show, had been timidly curled up in her daddy’s lap clutching her stuffed animal was, by the end of the match, standing and cheering Gemma Jewels as if she was a superhero.
Performing for Deep South has been a dream come true for Walker. She had wanted to become a wrestler since she was 11 years old but couldn’t find a path to pursue her goal until well into adulthood. Seven years ago she found a school to teach her the basics, then moved to The Nightmare Factory, an Atlanta facility run by wrestlers Cody Rhodes and Q.T. Marshall, where she trained for two and a half years. It was there that Deep South recruited her for live shows.
“It’s a great time to be a woman in wrestling,” she said. “There are more championships being created for women as well for female tag teams. Women are having the tables, ladders and chairs matches. Women are doing the elimination chambers, the cage matches … Back in the day, it used to be just like lingerie pillow fights and mud matches.”
The independent scene provided her a doorway into the spotlight.
“(The independent scene) has gotten better than ever and more serious than ever. People can actually make a lot of money doing smaller, independent stuff,” she said. “You don’t have to be signed to a larger company.”
Deep South’s tag team champion Stunt Marshall (who does not disclose his legal name), said Deep South’s crowds set them apart from other independent circuits.
“The crowds are different from every crowd I’ve worked for because they’re non-wrestling people,” he said while donning his two-pronged handlebar ‘stache with bleached tips to complement his square-cut Afro. “Sometimes it’s hard to draw from a non-wrestling watching crowd. But this one is nuts … the morale is just so good here.”
Wrestling started as an emotional outlet for Marshall, who grew up in a tough environment. It’s since become his dream; he has aspirations to go pro. In 2023, he went viral after he knocked his competitor out cold on Dana White’s “Power Slap: Road to the Title” television show.
“Indie wrestling is long past the period where you would go to a high school gym or a church basement.” Greenberg said. “(Now) you are seeing highly developed professional wrestlers on indie shows.”
Round one
Deep South got its start in gyms and community centers back in 1986 when it was founded by Georgia-based professional wrestler Jody Hamilton, better known as “The Assassin,” a masked, 6-foot-1, nearly 270-pound menace who gained notoriety on the Georgia Championship Wrestling circuit throughout the 1960s and 70s.
After decades of professional wrestling took their toll, Hamilton started Deep South as a bare-bones training gym in Lovejoy with little more than a mat and some weights. Hamilton saw an opportunity to train the next generation.
His son, Nick Patrick Hamilton (whose ring name is Nick Patrick), had also been sidelined after blowing out his knee during a wrestling match in Louisiana — an injury doctors warned might end his career.
Together, the two opened Deep South Wrestling. Word quickly spread.
“People started asking if we would come and do shows in their town,” Patrick Hamilton recalled.
At the time, fans in small Georgia towns were starved for live wrestling as the state’s pros focused on cable television appearances and national tours.
The Hamiltons invested in 150 folding chairs they could haul to host pop-up shows.
“We were building an independent scene” at a time when “the independent circuit was a fresh idea,” Patrick said.
Momentum halted in 1988 when Hamilton was recruited to help launch the Power Plant training facility in Atlanta for World Championship Wrestling (WCW). His son, meanwhile, became a referee for WCW — later playing the crooked official in the New World Order storyline and presiding over one of wrestling’s most infamous matches: the 1997 Starrcade showdown between Hulk Hogan and Sting.
His career would take him across the globe, officiating bouts for stars like Randy “Macho Man” Savage, The Rock and John Cena.
Deep South went dormant for two decades.
Round two
In 2005, Hamilton revived the Deep South name with a much flashier purpose: a developmental camp backed by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to groom recruits before sending them to the main roster.
Deep South Wrestling 2.0 looked nothing like the modest school in Lovejoy. The new facility in McDonough featured multiple rings, weight rooms and video equipment. Recruits became television stars, including The Miz, Kofi Kingston and MVP. Hamilton worked as trainer and gatekeeper. Patrick assisted while still refereeing. Together, the Hamiltons were at the center of a wrestle-celebrity-making machine.
By 2007 though, Hamilton had a falling out with WWE leadership, who pulled their deal and moved operations to Florida.
Deep South was shelved for a second time. It would stay quiet for 13 years.
Round three
When the pandemic shut the world down, wrestling largely shut down with it. Gone were the flashy arenas and smoky grand entrances echoing with cheers and boos. In March 2020, “Monday Night Raw” and “SmackDown” started broadcasting without a live audience from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida. The silent seats were jarring.
By August, WWE started erecting LED boards around the arena to show live video feeds of fans squinting into small screens to watch from home. Prerecorded crowd noise and pyrotechnics helped to enliven the empty arena.
“But it just wasn’t the same,” said Patrick, who at the time had moved to his parents’ property in Griffin, a former textile mill town 40 miles south of Atlanta.
On the land was an old metal building where Patrick had once built a wrestling ring to train one of his sons. It sat unused, collecting dust, and Patrick was saddened by the sight of it, especially knowing there were aspiring wrestlers around whose training had been halted by the pandemic.
He recruited wrestlers, told them to take COVID-19 tests and invited them over to work out.
“I was sitting there watching them train and they were feeding off each other’s energy and I thought ... this could work if everybody had their costumes on and we had good guys on one side and bad guys on the other and referees in the middle and everybody interacting,” he said.
Patrick started scripting storylines, assigning characters and bringing in props and costumes. Those not in the ring beat on the mat and booed the villains. The metal building reverberated with body slams and squeaking boots.
Patrick realized he was resurrecting the original spirit of Deep South Wrestling with its mission to build community, mentor wrestlers and create live shows.
There was a problem though. His father died in August 2021 at the age of 82. Patrick was left as the sole caregiver of his widowed mother and autistic son. After decades spent traveling as a referee, he had no desire to travel to other towns even if he could.
Tag team trio
Enter Jose Rodriguez.
Rodriguez was a former wrestler who had grown up idolizing Hamilton. During the pandemic, he started working out in Patrick’s ring. When Hamilton died, he wanted to pay respects to his hero by hosting a tribute show. He presented his idea to Patrick and was told, If you get the money together, hire the wrestlers, book the venue, you can do it.
Rodriguez set out to find a venue.
What he found wasn’t glamorous. It was a defunct church off Broad Street in Atlanta that was so rundown the balcony was off-limits. He booked a dozen wrestlers he knew from his years in the scene and made spectator tickets free.
All 250 seats in the house filled. Rodriguez used Deep South’s original vintage logo on all the event materials and played a tribute video about Hamilton. “The Assassin’s” masked face was featured on the heavyweight champion title belts.
Several more shows followed. Patrick was impressed. He asked Rodriguez to become his business partner. Rodriguez gets teary-eyed when he recounts the story.
“I don’t have a lot in my life,” said Rodriquez, who was his mother’s caregiver for 12 years until her death in March.
“I’m an only child. I was raised by a tough-as-nails mother who raised me by herself in New York City while working for the NYPD,” he said. “She never got welfare or food stamps or assistance from my father. ... For a long time I thought being a caregiver and a good wrestler were the only value I had in this world.”
Patrick’s faith in Rodriguez’s ability to manage shows was moving.
“The fact he was able to trust me with a piece of his family legacy like that meant so much to me,” said Rodriguez, who is now a co-owner, matchmaker, talent booker and producer for Deep South. He is the creative mind behind Deep South’s storylines and the hype master, slapping backs and pumping up wrestlers in the tent tunnel before they run out into the crowd.
“Go get em,” he yells. “Go get em.”
Buccafusco, Deep South’s third co-owner, came on board in 2023. A videographer and lifelong wrestling fan, he had stumbled upon one of Rodriguez’s early live shows at the church and reached out to see if he could volunteer his time and talents. It was Buccafusco’s idea to host shows on the outdoor patios of restaurants and bars.
He wasn’t sure if the idea would work at first. At Deep South’s first attempt at Das BBQ in Grant Park, he grew nervous when only 17 people showed up at the start of the show.
“But by the end of the two-hour show there was probably 100 people there,” Buccafusco said. “I still get in a panic every month, but people keep showing up and new people keep coming along for the ride.”
Deep South’s show roster has been growing. The organization now produces two to four shows per month at festivals, community events and at restaurants and bars across metro Atlanta.
“It’s beautiful to see the name Deep South Wrestling still flourishing and still inviting new people into the tent because although Deep South wrestling represents the modern era of wrestling, it has deep ties to what professional wrestling once was,” said Greenberg. “It’s great to see the merging of the old and the new.”
Deep South’s rebranded logo gives nod to its founder. On black-and-yellow banners raised high and proud at matches is the masked face of Jody Hamilton.
“I think that he would be proud,” Patrick Hamilton said about his dad. “He’d be proud at the level of work that the wrestlers are doing. He’d be proud if he saw the respect that the (wrestlers) have at these shows.”
If you go
Deep South Wrestling’s next show: 2 p.m. Nov. 30. Free. New Realm Brewing, 550 Somerset Terrace NE, Atlanta. wearedeepsouth.com.
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