After growing up watching professional wrestling, Eric Bonacci, 29, decided to become a professional wrestler himself. Bonacci has been wrestling since 2013, traveling within New York, Pennsylvania, and even to Canada to perform in shows. To support this passion Bonacci works as a construction worker for Colonial Fire Protection System. Bonacci’s day starts early at 5:15 a.m. in order to get to the job site on time. After six hours of construction work Bonacci comes back home to relax before heading back out to Upstate Wrestling school for the rest of the night where he practices, records promo’s and gets ready for upcoming shows. For these events, Bonacci will spend some time cleaning himself up but doesn’t spend to much time on it, “Some of the guys shave their whole body but not me. Do you wanna put me on T.V. and pay me millions of dollars, then ya, I’ll shave my legs. But until then I’ll work with what I got”. In order to get inspiration for upcoming shows Bonacci will watch old paper view WWE shows in his spare time. “I’m watching wrestling as I’m watching wrestling,” Bonacci said as he watches WWE on his phone and T.V. simultaneously. Since he was a kid Bonacci was enticed by wrestling, which he would watch on T.V. and then pretend his toys were wrestlers and make them fight each other. The main reason that Bonacci joined the sport and continues to do it is because it is fun. Growing up he was able to get attached to the wrestlers in a show the same way as a character in a movie. Now he is able to be that wrestler. Aside from being a fun hobby, Bonacci has been able to use wrestling as a way to improve his life. Wrestling becomes an outlet for him during hard times in his life but has also allowed him to meet many interesting people. “Wrestling has given me so much, and owes me nothing,” Bonacci said.