Luke Hawx Returns to Wrestling in the Wildkat Ring Saturday

Luke Hawx

The founder of the New Orleans-based indie promotion has been out for more than a year, and WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley will on hand for the occasion.

Luke Hawx is feeling good about himself. The weekend before we spoke, he competed in NPC Bayou Muscle, his first body building competition. He placed first, second, third and fourth in different categories he says, and at any age much less 42, that’s something. He didn’t have a coach unlike the other competitors, and now that he has seen how the competition works, he knows what to do differently next time.

“I feel like I’ve become so much more dangerous with so much more knowledge,” Hawx says.

Now that that’s over with, Luke Hawx—born Oren Hawxhurst—can focus again on his indie wrestling promotion, Wildkat Sports, which has a show Saturday night at Crescent City Christian School, and for the first time in a year and a half, he’ll be in the ring wrestling again.

Professional wrestling is hot again. The WWE has been selling out arenas in large part on the strength of the Bloodline saga, which has grown to include Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The number two promotion, AEW, has some of the best wrestlers in the world in Bryan Danielson, Will Ospreay, and Kazuchika Okada, and since both promotions draw talent from the indies, there’s more attention on them now than there has been in a long time.

Hawx counts off the stars that have worked in Wildkat—Ricky Starks, Shane Taylor (“He’s a multi-time Wildkat champion”), Ray Rowe (now Erik from Viking Raiders), Jinder Mahal, and in the past Scott Hall, Booker T, Bob Holly and Billy Gunn have worked in Wildkat rings. “Stevie Ray from Harlem Heat was our heavyweight champion,” Hawx says.

Under Stevie Ray’s reign, they temporarily lost the Wildkat belt because someone broke into his car and stole it while he was working out. Out of nowhere, Hawx got a message from a guy who bought it from a pawn shop and offered it back.

“A crackhead busted the window and pawned it,” Hawx says.

Naming the names of the stars who have passed through is hard for Hawx because the number keeps growing, but he keeps the success stories in perspective. “Most of the guys don’t make it,” he says. “But the ones that do make it far and lead these dream lives.”

Hawx has chased that dream. He started in 1999 as Altar Boy Luke in the aptly named Xtreme Pro Wrestling, working events like the King of the Deathmatch tournament. He bled and took some brutal bumps in the process, and once he gave up the hardcore gimmick he bounced between Indies and worked with the WWE as an extra. As Luke Hawx, he made enough of an impression that the WWE eventually offered him a contract, but after he had opened Wildkat in 2011. WWE was almost every young wrestler’s dream and probably still is, but between Wildkat and the career he had established doing stunts and stunt coordination, Hawx had to reconsider his dreams. He realized he made more from film residuals in a year than he was going to get paid by the WWE.

“I never gave up on wrestling, but I realized my future was with film,” Hawx says.

Hawx opened Wildkat in 2011 with the idea of prepping young talent to not only work in the ring but in some of the other fields where he worked, particularly film and television. WWE wanted him to walk away from Wildkat if Hawx signed with the promotion, and he felt like he couldn’t with so many people depending on him. Fortunately, he was making enough in film to help keep Wildkat open because “we were losing money at first,” Hawx says.

Since then, he has been able to use Wildkat to help get opportunities for himself and some of the other wrestlers. He appeared in Fate of the Furious in the Fast and Furious franchise, and he played Stone Cold Steve Austin on NBC’s Young Rock. He and some of the guys have appeared on episodes of shows that need some muscle filmed in New Orleans including Leverage: Redemption. Hawx and Wildkat wrestler Danny Flamingo worked on Iron Claw, the biopic on the Von Erich family that filmed in Baton Rouge, and he has worked as a stunt man on countless movies and shows including Black Adam, The Purge, and Logan. He’ll appear in Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming film, Megalopolis.

“That was a hard decision to make though,” Hawx says about turning down the WWE contract. “That’s how you get the household name.”

Hawx isn’t afraid of hard, though. In his Altar Boy Luke days, he beat the hell out of his body, but “I’m glad I did it because who the fuck else do you know doing crazy stuff like that?” he asks. “You’ve got to be a wild and tough individual to do those things because it’s no gimmick. It’s straight up.”

He has always appreciated that it takes work to get somewhere. The first time he was backstage at a WWE show, he saw wrestlers walking around doing the promos that they would deliver on screen when the show started. His first response was that it looked a little goofy, but he realized that they were practicing their inflections and cadences so they would nail their promos when they delivered them live. When nobody backstage looked at them twice, he realized, This is why these people are so good. Everybody does this.

He dedicated that kind of rigor to his body building regimen, even though it has been hard on everyone around him. He ate the same foods at the same times in the same quantities each day while in training, even when it made holiday get-togethers with family awkward.

Film and television work and body building training jammed up Hawx’ last few months, but he’s excited to have a Wildkat show again. He will have WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley on hand to serve as guest commissioner, and that announcement—along with Hawx’ return to wrestling—prompted the floor seats to sell out on the first weekend on sale.

“I’ve known Mick a long time,” he says. And what does a guest commissioner do? “Make matches, make the rules, deal with the shenanigans.”

Hawx is excited by the show and the plans he has for the rest of the year. Wildkat usually runs eight or so shows a year, but he also thinks he’ll get another co-promoted event or two in as well this year. “We have some big surprises coming later in the year.”

He’s also excited to be cleared to wrestle again after being out with broken ribs for more than a year. “I’m ready to hit the circuit again and have some badass matches again.” He admits that he got into the body building competition in part as a way of challenging himself, and taking on challenges is the way he copes with stress. He was dealing with the injuries that kept him out of action, and the rift that opened between him and his son, wrestler PJ Hawx. A video of PJ diving from the second floor of the Esplanade Mall on to an opponent in the ring a floor below went viral, and the two have worked solo and as the Hawx Aerie tag team. Father and son issues multiplied by the different places they’re at in their wrestling careers have led them to a place where the two are not talking. Hawx has dealt with all of it by immersing himself in the punishing work and routines of professional body building.

“How long can you be uncomfortable for?” Hawx asks. “Because if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing. I feel like I’m uncomfortable all the time.”