The WWE’s biggest event of the year goes down this weekend
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
This weekend in Philadelphia, Penn., is the biggest weekend of the year for fans of professional wrestling.
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) will host its 40th Wrestlemania, the equivalent of pro wrestling’s SuperBowl, on April 6 and 7 at Lincoln Financial Field.
It’s at this event that storylines (yes, this writer knows it’s scripted) come to a head, new champions can be crowned, and moments can be made.
As it turns out, there are ties to agriculture in pro wrestling.
From upbringing to using equipment to gain an advantage on an opponent, here are a few ag connections to pro wrestling.
Brock Lesnar
Brock Lesnar is one of the best examples of the connections between farming and pro wrestling.
He grew up on a dairy farm in Webster, S.D., and today lives and farms in Maryfield, Sask. He also appeared in promotional videos for Rocky Mountain Equipment.
In addition, he used a piece of farm equipment during a match.
While challenging Roman Reigns for a championship during a last man standing match (the objective is to incapacitate an opponent to where they can’t answer the referee’s 10 count) at SummerSlam 2022 in Nashville, Tenn., Lesnar employed a tractor.
He drove a Case IH 100C tractor equipped with an L630 loader to the ring. And later during the match used the tractor to ram the ring and lifted the ring with the tractor, sending Reigns tumbling to the other side of the ring.
It wasn’t enough, however, as Reigns won and retained his championship.
AJ Styles
Allen Jones, better known to wrestling fans as AJ Styles, is billed from Gainesville, Ga.
Gainesville, in Hall County, is home to 574 farms and is responsible for about 2 percent of the state’s ag sales, data from the 2022 Census of Agriculture says.
Styles acknowledges farmers and hard work in his entrance music.
His theme song, titled Phenomenal, includes the following lyrics:
“We some southern boys
With the farmer strength
Ain't nobody man enough to feel the pain
And you could be next
You better give respect
'Cause ain't nobody breaking this red neck.”
and
“I'm a Mack truck
Don't get run over
We some country boys working overtime for it
Kings of the South
We never had nothing
Blue collar boys do it with our hands muddied.”
Liv Morgan & Bo Dallas
Current WWE talent Liv Morgan and former WWE wrestler Bo Dallas live together on a farm in Florida.
The farm is called The Wonderland Ranch, where, according to the farm’s Instagram account, produces fruits and vegetables and also has cows, pigs, eggs and honey.
In a 2021 interview with Complex, Morgan described the farm as “more like an animal sanctuary; I just like taking care of them. I like just watching them live and thrive and grow. It’s been a fun experience.”
Nia Jax
Between her WWE release in 2021 and her return to the company in 2023, Nia Jax bought a small farm.
She bought a 40-acre property in Florida, she told Sportskeeda Wrestling in August 2023.
“Right now, we’re just kind of clearing it and sectioning it off for animals,” she said. “We have hemp, we grow hemp on there. We have chickens (and) we have ducks.”
When asked about what led to this decision, Jax told Sportskeeda she enjoys the openness and calmness the farm brings her, and that she wants to use the property as a dog rescue.
Verne Gagne
Pro wrestling legend Verne Gagne, who owned the American Wrestling Association, grew up on a farm in Hamel, Minn., where he milked cows and baled hay.
In his adult life, Gagne used his own farm near Lake Riley as a training ground for future wrestlers.
He had a ring inside an unheated barn where he’d put trainees through their paces.
“Wrestling was going strong and we had a huge number of guys show up … over 100,” Greg Gagne, Verne’s son, told the Minneapolis StarTribune in April 2015. “The daily workout was six hours. The first hour was calisthenics. We lost half of the guys in the first hour of the first day.”
Ivan Koloff
Many wrestling fans know Ivan Koloff as the Russian Bear, but the man behind the character, Oreal Donald Perras, grew up on a dairy farm in rural Ontario in the Ottawa valley.
“I wanted to wrestle since I was eight years old on the farm,” he said, according to a Mid-Atlantic wrestling archive. “Seen it on TV about 1950, when the TVs first showed wrestling. That was one of the main programs that got a big rating back then.”
Jim Ross
Jim Ross, considered by many to be one of pro wrestling’s greatest announcers, is involved in a cannabis farm operation with his daughter and her husband in Oklahoma.
The operation is called Black Hat Farms, a nod to the black cowboy hat Ross wears during his match calls.
He was also involved in ag growing up on a farm in Westville, Okla.
Ross became the Future Farmers of America’s state speech champion in 1968 as a junior at Westville High School. As a senior, he became the state vice-president.
You can check out seven more wrestling connections to agriculture here.