'The Pride of the East Side' lights up local indy wrestling circuit
You may know him as Dashing Dick Davis. You may know him as Dick “Spike” Davis, the King of Old Style, or the Pride of the East Side. But whichever venue professional wrestler Michael Dzurovcik is working, the crowd will be treated to a hell of a show.
Dzurovcik’s main two promotions he works are the Super Wrestlers of Chicago and Backbreaker Wrestling of Cedar Lake, and he’s Backbreaker’s current Heavyweight Champion.
As one of his titles suggests, Dzurovcik actually did grow up on the east side of Chicago, but he currently resides in South Haven, Michigan. However, his parents both hail from northern Lake County, so he has spent an ample amount of time in Northwest Indiana growing up.
From the time he was about 5-years old, Dzurovcik enjoyed watching wrestling. He recalled his great grandmother actually allowing him to watch the pay-per-view events at her home.
However, Dzurovcik never attended any schools as a youth that had a wrestling program. He attended Luther East High School in Lansing, Illinois, but since there was no wrestling team at the school, he found himself competing in basketball and soccer.
Dzurovcik went to Calumet College of St. Joseph in Whiting after high school, where he studied media and fine arts, “which I’ve never used since,” he quipped. Upon finding out he could have his tuition cut in half by playing sports, he joined the track and cross country teams at the college.
About halfway through Dzurovcik’s tenure at Calumet, the school hired Leroy Vega to start a wrestling program. However, this didn’t guarantee Dzurovcik a spot on the team. Vega was recruiting a team from around the country. And at that point, he thought he may have been in over his head just a bit.
“(Vega) used to be on the same wrestling team, for the University of Minnesota, as (WWE superstar) Brock Lesnar,” Dzurovcik said.
Dzurovcik’s involvement with professional wrestling goes back to 2010 when Windy City Pro Wrestling had a gym in his neighborhood in Chicago. He had the opportunity to meet former pro wrestler Sam DeCero, who ran the promotion, and Chris “Shogun” Paul, who ended up training Dzurovcik.
“They held very, very small house shows there,” Dzurovcik recalled about Windy City’s facility on the East Side. “It was a really tiny gym.”
Not long after Dzurovcik went back over to the Windy City gym, he found that it was closed and another business moved into the building. However, a friend of his heard the promotion moved to South Holland, Illinois, rebranded as Dynasty Pro Wrestling and was training at Firepro Sports & Fitness.
At Firepro, Dzurovcik met Billy Whack of the Lunatic Wrestling Federation, where current WWE wrestler CM Punk got his start. And it was at Firepro in June 2011 when Dzurovcik started training. He went on to have his first match in November 2011.
Dzurovcik explained pro wrestling is very different from other sports, and there are a lot of things they do that he describes as “unnatural.”
“You aren’t doing things that you would normally do,” Dzurovcik said, “not just in any other sports but in any other thing in life. You think about running and turning your back to a set of steel and rubber cable ropes. Those are nice and tight and wound up. Or about taking a bump in a wrestling ring and falling. You don’t really do that anywhere else.”
Dzurovcik has had the opportunity to be the good guy (the “babyface”), the bad guy (the “heel”) and somewhere in between (the “tweener”) since he started wrestling. When he first started, he wrestled under the name Dashing Dick Davis, taking a cue from former WWE wrestler Ravishing Rick Rude. As for being The King of Old Style, he drew inspiration from the “Bill Swerski’s Superfans” skit from Saturday Night Live.
And Dzurovcik loves all of it.
“The best part is being able to present a dialed-up extension of yourself as well as getting to be somebody that maybe you know you’re not, but have always wanted to be,” Dzurovcik said.
The local independent wrestling promotions may lack some of the trappings you see in the WWE and other major outfits, but some of the wrestlers you may see down the street at the church gymnasium may wind up on television.
And where does he want to go with his wrestling career?
“I would like to be able to make as much of a name and as much money as I possibly can doing this,” Dzurovcik said. “I just want to be able to do as much with it as I can. Like right now, the chance to do anything on television sounds sweet. Even if it’s for a split minute.”
Follow Michael Dzurovcik aka Dick “Spike” Davis on Facebook at www.facebook.com/winspikewin.
Backbreaker Wrestling will present Double Down on Saturday, Feb. 15 at 5:30 p.m. at Hildebrandt Hall located at 525 N. Lafayette Street in Griffith. Tickets are $10 presale, $12 at the door and $8 for children ages 9 and under as well as seniors. For more information, please visit them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/backbreakerwrestling.