Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
On Saturday 2/24, The New York Wrestling Connection will present their 2024 Psycho Circus event in Farmingville, Long Island. Annually the promotion's biggest show of the year, this is the event that climaxes all of the NYWC storylines and traditionally is the biggest show of the year for the company, except for 2023 and 2024, it won't be.
Certainly, the show will be memorable with lots of talents working as hard as they can to entertain the live audience. That's the norm for every independent wrestling show across the world, everyone works hard and everyone is doing their best to live their dreams. Psycho Circus is always the one NYWC show I point to for everyone to try and attend and pay attention to, but this year, while I implore everyone to support the company, the "biggest" show of the year pales somewhat in comparison to an event the promotion ran several months back.
This past October 2023, NYWC ran an event titled "The Space Between" in Westbury, Long Island, billed as the biggest event on The Island (as we New Yorkers call it) in decades with lots of names appearing, lots of matches and a fun night that raised money and awareness for The V Foundation, a charitable organization that seeks to find a cure for cancer. Covering that show that evening, the last thing I expected when I walked backstage was to meet a true, 100% bonafide warrior and hero, but I don't know any other way to describe Sean Wachter.
Sean, who wrestled in the main event of that show and continues to train and compete for NYWC and other promotions, may be one of the most inspirational and resilient people I have ever met in all my years writing about pro wrestling, and I've met Terry Funk.
A former Arena Football player, Wachtner was forced to retire and exit that sport after breaking his neck. After recovering, Wachter began trying to figure out, like anyone who has gone through a massive change in their life, what was next.
Life has a way of messing with you when you least expect it and usually in the worst places.
For Sean, that process began when he was out on a date at a New York Mets game. He collapsed out of nowhere. His date ditched him and he was left trying to figure out what happened. He was told it was dehydration and other issues but could never get to the bottom of it.
Sean's aunt passed from cancer and Sean gave the eulogy, paying tribute to her and noting that while she passed on, cancer had not beaten her. He said that cancer is beaten by how and why you live and the manner in which you do, despite it. These were heartfelt words from someone reeling from a loss, but little did he expect that he wasn't just paying tribute to his aunt, but was predicting his own future.
With no answers as to his own health troubles, Wachter was thankfully home when he suffered a stroke. Rushed to the hospital by his father, Wachter finally received the source of his issues. In September 2016, Wachter had been diagnosed with cancer. Doctors discovered a tumor the size of a golf ball on his cerebellum. Wachter had surgery, then radiation, then chemotherapy. Seizures resumed and treatment was paused. His liver began failing. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 Leptomeningeal Melanoma. The cancer was in his spinal fluid.
Sean was told he was terminal and had 12 weeks, if he was lucky, to live.
Thankfully, Wachter was able to get into a clinical trial, at which point, all we can do is state the obvious: a miracle happened. The progression of the disease stopped thanks to a mix of chemotherapies. Then came the miracle. His disease showed signs of regressing everywhere it had spread. Sean's brain, lungs, throat, kidneys and more were battlefields and he was turning the tide of battle back against the invader. Then, COVID-19 happened and the world shut down. Now, Sean had to shelter in order to protect his own health, pausing the battle.
When it came time to resume the fight, three months without treatment, it was learned that the tumors kept shrinking. The fight continued and in February 2021, Sean Wachter, a man who had 12 weeks to live, had conquered his cancer. To this date, he is the only person in the world known to have won this battle against this type of cancer.
You just learned why I call this man a warrior.
Let's talk about why he's a hero.
Sean Wachter had the right to be bitter and angry over his twist of fate. Beating cancer, he also had every right to be euphoric and happy and self-centered, but instead, he's taken every experience he's lived through and has decided to pay it forward and try to assist others - and he's chosen to use one of his first loves, professional wrestling to raise awareness, help and perhaps even inspire those who are currently trapped in their own personal vortex, trying to find their way back to normalcy, peace and happiness.
Having been a pro wrestling fan from the second he watched WWF Summerslam '88 with his father, Wachter had at one point pursued training under Pat Buck before life took him in another direction.
Now, Wachter, cured from cancer, looked to pro wrestling to raise money and help others.
"Oh, a lot of people may go, Wait, what?" Wachter joked. "You couldn't paint a story any better for me. At the time my wife and my stepdaughter. we were on our way to my stepdaughter's first WWE live event and to be able to share that with her. You know what I've loved since I was a little child was just very special. I get a little emotional even just talking about it because she was so excited and just to see the pure joy and excitement on her face. I couldn't put a price on it, but I had happened to get a phone call while we were in the car we were taking up to Connecticut that I had gotten the DNA test results back certifying that I was the only documented cured case of my cancer. It was then and there that the wheels started to spin as, 'Wow, alright', there's a lot more going on in life. That's why something I try to tell folks is don't be afraid to make plans because you never know when you're going to surprise some people and there's going to be a future for you."
After attending the WWE show, the wheels began spinning.
"So when we got back from our own event, I spoke with a couple of friends of mine and they had said, you know what, you need to put together some sort of party or something. Maybe we get wrestling involved. I have a lot of survivors guilt. I always say that I did the best living of my life after cancer than before so when I think of the fact that I have a second chance, I think that there's a lot of people that are much more deserving than myself. So to have a party and to celebrate a victory when other people are still suffering or not having as fortunate of an outcome as I am, I just didn't think it was right, but we had an idea. We had an idea for entertainment from my friend in the form of wrestling and he just said, all right why don't we do a fundraiser?"
Suddenly, pro wrestling was pulling Sean back into the ring.
"He really twisted my arm, not really, but he went ahead and when he was putting up the information to help me organize this event," Wachter explaind. "He said, Hey, look, if Sean wrestles again...Now at this point I had not been in a wrestling ring in 12 years. He said, if Sean wrestles again, will you be willing to donate more money, let alone attend? And I think it was like. 97 percent yes and 3 percent no and I'll always say that 3 percent no is my aunt, my wife, and my parents. I had [the match] with ECPW's Rob Chase, veteran of the Northeast. He was very kind basically held my hand through something that looked like a match. It was a pretty neat moment. We did that for Memorial Sloan Kettering and we raised a good amount of money for their pediatric unit."
That should have been it, a job well done, but tragedy led Wachter back to the ring.
"The following year, I had no aspirations of doing another match, let alone another show," Wachter admitted. "Unfortunately that the friend of mine that kind of poked and prodded me to do it... he passed he was a Fireman here on Long Island died in the line of duty. So there was some talk about saying, Hey, can we do something for him this year? So I said, you know what? I can organize something, but now it doesn't need to be focused around wrestling. I am just getting back to...doing regular life stuff."
With no plans to wrestle again, Wachter then fielded a request from the one person he could never turn down.
"I didn't realize that wrestling was going to become part of my regular life again," Wachter noted, "but because my stepdaughter was away that particular weekend, she didn't get to see me wrestle, so she said to my wife, 'Mommy, I didn't get to see Daddy Wrestle last year. Can I see him wrestle?' Oh bless her sweet little heart."
Once more into the abyss for Sean Wachter.
"I didn't put her up to it, but my wife, oh goodness, she thought that the glass shattered and Steve Austin was coming. She she was not thrilled with that, but said, Okay, you get one more. We were able to put on a nice sized card that It was decently attended and we raised a good amount of money this year. We did it for St. Jude's that was my friend Michael's charity of choice, a lot of media coverage and then local press and the nice thing was they wanted to do a story on me. I didn't realize they were going to do a two page article with the front page component to it. So, when I wound up going on my company's retreat after the event My boss was more concerned about, how wrestling works and how all these different various storylines happen instead of anything that I do for the company. I have a pretty big responsibility for my regular job. I'm Vice President of Business Development for a company that deals with nonprofits by helping them raise brand awareness to help them streamline fundraising efforts. So for him to want to talk more about wrestling, I said, 'Oh goodness, I must have did something right.' So I put that newspaper story on my LinkedIn account, knowing I had the blessing of my company and then the awesome folks at ESPN and the V Foundation reached out to me and they said we'd like to learn a little bit more and that interest in learning a little bit more has now resulted in me working with a whole litany of amazing organizations."
Wachter now works with a number of charitable organizations helping them with their brand awareness, including The V Foundation, the Melanoma Research Alliance, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Then, all of this brings Wachter back to professional wrestling, consistently, on the independent level, as he's now training and competing for the NYWC.
"I'm back at NYWC, which will now be my third time there, but this time I've been back now for going on, oh, about seven months, I think we're going to, there's a lot of cliche talk about people finishing stories in the world of wrestling, but I guess now I'm back at NYWC to finish my story, " Wachter said. "At the same time, want to use this incredible platform of wrestling and show people that, look, just because they told you have only so much time doesn't mean that's true. And even if it is true, the way that we're going to go ahead and beat cancer. It is by living our best life and still getting out there and living because like I said, you never know when you're going to turn around and get more time and you never know when your efforts of just clawing and fighting and refusing to give up are going to pay off and maybe you get that chance like I got. I hope that, like I said, people get to see me and get something out of it and push themselves just a little bit harder. If I could get at least one person to do it, then it was all worth it."
The pursuit of professional wrestling certainly takes an individual that is unique and goal-driven in order to attain any level of success. Wachter has been through so much in his life and he's certainly had his celebratory moments with wrestling as one of the prisms in which he has shined. But, is he looking to pursue pro wrestling on a grander scale when so much of his life is focused on trying to pay things forward and assist others?
"In the world of professional wrestling, my goals are first off, with all the respect the men and women that have come before me and will come after me are currently in a locker room," Wachter explained. "Right now, I'm at NYWC. I have some excellent training over there. It's important to me is to finish properly training. Like I said, it's been very start stop for me. I just want to continue to get better at the craft of wrestling, the art of wrestling. My colleagues feel comfortable calling me just that, one of their colleagues. And then secondly, a lot of people are saying, 'Hey, you're like the Rocky of wrestling. You came out of nowhere and now you're pushing yourself to try to get somewhere.' And like you had said, where are you trying to get? And I know people chase a contract. People want to go to Japan. I want to, like I said, keep getting better at this, but if I was able to bring it to the national stage, I've had the luxury of working with the V Foundation, which is connected to ESPN, but to bring it to a larger stage, even any of the amazing national promotions that are there right now. To just be able to bring my story to one of them, even if it was just a collaborative one evening. Just to, like I said, show people, no dream is too outlandish. Cancer doesn't have to define who you are, there is the saying, cliché, the cliché saying. Cancer is a word, not a sentence, so it should, I want to be, like I said, the reason that maybe people push a little bit harder and like I've always gone ahead and said right after, I can revisit the same day, like the same horrible day of cancer over a thousand times. If it just made that difference in somebody's life."
One of the ironies of Sean's current NYWC run is that when he looked to step back into professional wrestling, his initial idea was to work on the promoting end.
"It's funny you say booking or promoting," Wachter explained, "That was my original attention and, Shane at NYWC, he's got a heck of a creative mind and I told him what I had going on when I had originally approached him about coming to learn, the behind the scenes aspect of the business. I told him and he said, 'Oh, you may still have something left and you were able to get in the ring a few times and...." He just believed in me and he believed in what I was doing. It's pretty, pretty intense, when you have social media or you have any interaction with somebody and I'm still getting used to the word fan, but as I start to interact with more and more, I guess you'd say my fans on Instagram or things like that, because I'm very fortunate that my following on there is skyrocketing just in the two months that I've had it active. You get messages from people thanking you and the fact that they're thanking you for going out there and doing what you love, I always say to my wife, and it's been said before the second woman is wrestling...this is my second love. This is my everything outside of my girls and my wife and when you see these messages of people saying thank you for doing what you love doing, just because it has such an effect on them. Like I said that, they're saying you know what, maybe I need to rethink my diagnosis or whatever. Maybe I should start to plan to go on that trip. Things like that or in the same swing, you have the stories of the people, like I said, that were not fortunate enough, and to look at what I'm getting to do and to not take advantage of that, we would be spitting all those people's faces. I know it may seem a little bit hokey, but I go out there for those people. Then I'll continue to go out there for those people as long as they possibly can."
The process of performing isn't so removed from Sean's time on the football field.
"The whole process for me of wrestling preparation is almost like getting ready for a football game, even as far as, sitting there doing tape study, breaking things down to, laying my stuff out the night before, do we got this, do we have that, get into the building, traveling over there, getting ready and just that adrenaline kick that you get before you go out there and it lasts you all the way through to, I always, when I get home from wrestling, it's just, I don't expect to fall asleep before three o'clock in the morning cause I'm still going off that great buzz. It's it's performing, it's art. I can't go out on the gridiron anymore, and I at least get to go into the wrestling ring, and now even looking back at my life, while I had great success in football I wonder if I really chose the right thing, because I'm so in love with wrestling again, and I can't see that changing."
As noted earlier, Wachter still deals with Survivor's Guilt as the only Only documented "Cured" case of Stage 4 Melanoma with Leptomeningeal Disease, something he tries to deal with through his efforts to give back.
"It's just like I said with giving back on this second chance," Wachter said. "It's about living a life of service and I don't think I'll ever be fully accepting of, where I'm at, why me versus why somebody else. So what I do to deal with it, I just try to give back in any way I can and whether it be getting out there and performing, I can't tell you how many folks that I've gotten the pleasure to work with on a personal level....whether it be giving them advice or...I do have a pretty expansive network on [Long] Island here and it grows a little bit larger with the world of wrestling. So I've been able to help facilitate some pretty neat experiences for people and it's not out of, 'Oh I want to show everyone what a great guy I am'...It's out of just knowing that I need to do something because I have the ultimate comfort, which is victory over my cancer. I just want to do something to make their lives a little bit more comfortable. That's how I deal with my guilt, by giving back, because to sit there and beat myself up and get myself in a mental funk, that's not going to help my two girls. It's not going to help my wife have a good husband. I need to make sure that I'm on point, and if by soothsaying my own pain is by giving back then that's what I'll do."
So what's the best part of getting to immerse himself back in professional wrestling?
Wachter pauses and notes, "I guess I would say it's just, it's knowing that the reaction that they're giving is hopefully something that you're facilitating, whether they're cheering you or booing you, it's what you're doing. That its leading to their reaction. So it's like an orchestra conductor [when] you're out there and hopefully they're playing the notes and singing the songs you want them to sing because, then, that's obviously the essence of the goal. I would say is being a professional wrestler is just to get that mastery of the audience."
And, for those of us in the world going through horrible twists of fate, hoping to find a way to right the ship against cancer? What does Sean say to those who are in the chaos right now trying to overcome their own personal adversity?
"Again, I'll go back with the V Foundation again, because they just had such a level of involvement, right out the gate two months prior to me getting sick, my aunt had passed from adenocarcinoma, and being I seem to have a way with words, they asked me to do the eulogy at her funeral. I was just searching for what I could possibly say cause I never dealt with cancer so closely and I got up there. Stuart Scott from ESPN had just passed away and he had accepted two years prior the ESPY Award named after Jim Valvano, the V Foundation for, displaying courage and grace during his battle with cancer. He went up there and he said, and these were words that I lived by, and this is what I try to tell folks that are dealing with it now. When you die from cancer, it doesn't mean you lose. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and the manner in which you live. So live. With that, the victory over cancer doesn't need to be the bigger picture. It could be just putting your feet on the floor that day. Realizing that you have another opportunity that day to fight back against this thing. I also tell people all the time, former college football great, current motivational speaker Inky Johnson, he was supposed to be the number one draft pick coming out of the University of Tennessee. Horrible neck injury, severed a couple arteries, nerves in his arm. Basically, he was told he was never going to play football again and there was a thought that he was possibly not going to wind up living, and when he was about to throw in the towel mentally, he realized that his grandmother would be losing her grandson, his mother would be losing her son, his brother and sister would be losing their brother, his teammates would be losing their teammate. So he makes this video and it's titled, It's Not About You. Sometimes. Yes, we do have a big burden as a cancer patient, but other people have a burden around us as well, and it's just as much about lifting them up as it is lifting ourselves up. My words of advice is to keep living and be appreciative of those around us and realize that we're in this fight for them too."
On Saturday 2/24, the cast of characters that inhabit the NYWC locker room will do their best to take the audience live in Farmingville on a ride to help them cheer, boo and be distracted from real life with a little bit of fantasy. For every performer on that show and any other, there's a real life person striving to do their best to live dreams by inhabiting the world of professional wrestling.
I've been doing this job, as of this week, for 20 years and I've met an incredible calvacade of people from all walks of life, who share that same dream, but I've never met anyone as inspiring or resilient or who has faced insurmountable odds at the level that Sean Wachter did - and the fact that he's not only pursuing his dreams, but doing so as a way to help others who were once in his position, giving them some hope while he works in his "civilian job" to assist the same organizations that helped him, I don't know to call that other than heroic.
Sean Wachter is Superman AND Clark Kent. Sometimes he's performing heroic feats in costume, and the rest of the time, he's performing them in the real world.
If that isn't a cause for celebration, I don't know what is.
Sean might argue differently, because true heroes don't want attention. They just want to get the job done.
But that's just exactly why he's a hero.
For more on Sean Wachter and how you can help him and others in the fight against cancer, visit https://www.instagram.com/thecancerfighterseanwachter.
NYWC Pyscho Circus is 2/24. For more, visit www.NYWCProWrestling.com.
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.
If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
Bang On Casino
