Kiefer Bartek wants New Texas Pro Wrestling to be ‘No. 1’ in Texas

Kiefer Bartek may have just wanted a show in his hometown, but one year later New Texas Pro Wrestling is a thriving part of the Texas independent wrestling scene.

On October 28, 2018, New Texas Pro Wrestling came into being by hosting the event Bye Week Beatdown at Kelley Cafe in Colorado City, Texas. It’s been over one year since their inaugural show, and New Texas Pro Wrestling has steadily grown into one of the premier promotions in the Texas independent wrestling scene.

I got to speak exclusively to New Texas Pro Wrestling owner and promoter Kiefer Bartek ahead of this Saturday’s show LoneStar, and he was honest about the company’s humble beginnings.

“So, myself, Terrale Tempo, and Michael Hernandez who wrestles as Max Heights, we’re all from West Texas. And there [was] just not a very good independent wrestling scene in West Texas. Our goal was like, ‘hey, we really just wanna run a show in one of our hometowns and we can get our family and friends to actually come to our show.’ Because it’s just a long trip to ask somebody to drive to Houston, which is about 6 or 7 hours,” Bartek said.

As Bartek and others started putting the event together, they had some help from elsewhere in the Texas indie scene. Dylan Dunbar is the promoter of Heavy Metal Wrestling in San Antonio, which only started in 2017 but has also grown into one of Texas’ key indie promotions.

“So we had a guy, a good friend of mine. His name is Dylan Dunbar, [and] he runs Heavy Metal [Wrestling]. He offered to let us use his ring and any kind of production things we’d need for the show,” Bartek said. “And we found a venue in Michael’s hometown, which is actually Colorado City, which is about 30 to 45 minutes west of Abilene. It’s a really small town. It’s like 6000 people.”

“Honestly, it was really just supposed to be like a one-time thing. I just kinda made a promotion name and made a little poster, what have you. I was really nervous to even attempt to do something like this, because I didn’t know how it would be received out there in West Texas or how it would be received by some of the boys in Houston, or wherever that I knew them,” Bartek said.

That one-time event has been going for over a year now, and they’ve got eleven top-notch events under their belt already. You can tell how much wrestling means to Bartek and all of those involved, and it’s a love that Bartek saw ignited years ago.

WWF Superstars to a WWE Hall of Famer

“When I was really young, like 4 or 5, my oldest brother was really big into wrestling. On the weekends, we’d go to our grandparents’ house and watch WWF Superstars on Saturday morning. And I think that’s when I got hooked on everything,” Bartek said. “The pageantry of wrestling. WWF was very colorful in the early 90s and mid-90s, so it was all pretty special. Pretty much from that age to now, I’ve consistently watched wrestling and been a huge fan.”

With that love of this industry in mind, it’s no surprise that Bartek eventually found himself entering the same business he’d been entranced by.

“When I got into decent shape, the stars aligned and I was able to train at Book’s,” Bartek said, talking of Booker T’s wrestling school in Houston. “I knew I had to go to a good school that would get me on track quickly. It just happened. Everything happened probably within the span of three or four months. I was living in Lubbock at the time, and I drove nine hours in my car with everything I had, and ever since then I’ve been entrenched in this crazy world of wrestling.”

Kiefer Bartek started his wrestling training back in January of 2014, and had his first match in March of 2015. Wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Booker T helped him establish the needed foundation to thrive in this business, and Bartek was as appreciative of Booker T’s influence as Booker’s students tend to be.

“At first, it’s a little intimidating I think when you meet him. Because I did watch him from when I was a kid and he was in WCW to whenever he hung up the boots. He’s very intense. He’s an intense person, but I have nothing but love and respect for Book because he’s very honest. And he’s funny too, the way he kinda jokes around on TV is pretty much how he is in real life,” Bartek said. “I have nothing but respect for Book. He’s taught me way more than anybody else has probably taught me in this business.”

Why Abilene?

Those things set the stage for New Texas Pro Wrestling, which continues to grow as an important piece of the Texas independent wrestling scene. When I asked Bartek why he chose to base a promotion out of Abilene, it wasn’t difficult for him to explain.

“Abilene’s my hometown. I grew up here. There was never any independent wrestling shows that I was ever aware of when I was a kid. When I grew up, there was never an independent wrestling promotion that was here in Abilene,” Bartek began. “WWE comes here every two or three years. It’s not like it’s a super-duper small town, there’s 170,000 people here. It’s just that it’s three hours from Dallas, it’s four hours north of San Antonio [and the] Austin area. It’s just kind of in the middle of nowhere. There’s no schools here. There’s no talent that’s out here.”

“That was a big thing to me,” he said. “I’m gonna run a promotion where I’m gonna bring some of the people that I really like in Texas, and even further out now, to Abilene because I wanna do something good for the community. I want this to be a good entertainment show, or a good wrestling show, for the city itself. Not just like in the grand scheme of things of independent wrestling, but actually bring a good show to Abilene.”

You might wonder how this Texas town nearly three hours from Dallas would react to a brand new wrestling show, but the support of the town has become crucial for New Texas Pro Wrestling.

“It’s kind of weird. I would probably best describe it as like a college football team. People get really behind the brand, and they really wanna be supportive, and that’s the best way I can compare it. It’s almost like when we have our show days that people are really excited and posting things only and showing up to the venue early,” Bartek said. “I’ve met a lot of these people personally now because I’ve seen them on the shows and I’ve added them on social media. It’s really cool, man. They’ve really taken to it.”

Nothing Less Than Number One

New Texas Pro Wrestling may have started as a potential one-off, but now they’re going strong over a year into things. I asked Bartek what it felt like to hit that milestone.

“It kinda snuck up on me, I think. I’m just so concentrated on the next show. We didn’t just run in Abilene,” he said. “That’s where my base is because I’m actually out here now, but we ran in Colorado City twice, Michael’s hometown. We ran in San Marcos twice. We ran in Hidalgo once, which is right near the border. We ran different shows, but I was just always concentrated on the next show and how we could make it better than the previous one.”

“When October rolled around, and I was thinking about it, and I was like, ‘we ran…a year ago.’ But it kinda moved around pretty quickly, because it’s been a really good year man,” Bartek said.

While Bartek’s aspirations as a promoter are no longer as simple as the beginnings of New Texas Pro Wrestling, the ultimate goal is always the same: help Texas wrestling.

“If I said that I didn’t want to be the number one promotion in Texas, then I wouldn’t be the promoter that I’d want to be. As a promoter, I want to be the number one promotion in Texas, but it’s not about stepping on people or anything like that,” Bartek said. “I’ve really tried my best to work with every promotion if there’s anything we can do to help them or vice versa. To kinda build up, not just New Texas Pro, but to build up the Texas independent wrestling scene in general. That’s been a big thing for me.”

“I didn’t want to be one of these promotions that come to Texas and use like one guy from Texas, and everybody else gets flown in from places [outside of Texas],” he said. “And that’s cool, you get to see a lot of cool faces you don’t really get to see, but what does that do for us? What does that do for Texas wrestling?”

“There’s a lot of good promotions who do showcase Texas talent, and I just wanted to be another one of those promotions that get to showcase talent. Doesn’t matter where you come from. Doesn’t matter your gender. Doesn’t matter your sexual orientation. Doesn’t matter your race. Whatever you are and wherever you come from, if you’re hungry and you wanna do this and you’re serious about it, I’m gonna give people a platform to do that,” Bartek said. “I think if you just get a combination of really good people who wanna be successful, and you just get a good town that wants you to be successful, I think you can do special things. I wanna try to be the number one promotion in Texas, but I don’t ever wanna lose sight of what we have going on here in Texas.”

“For too long, there’s just been too many promotions that have just kinda been more cutthroat. ‘We’re the only place in town. We’re the only people who can run here. Our talent can’t work elsewhere.’ Whatever the case may be. If I’m promoting correctly, my business in Abilene shouldn’t affect somebody’s business in Dallas, or shouldn’t affect somebody’s business in San Antonio or Houston. It’s all different markets that you can capitalize on.”

“If you do your promoting correctly in your market, then you shouldn’t have to worry about this person running a show in Dallas. Even if it’s WWE, or I know MLW ran a show in Dallas recently, whatever the case may be. It doesn’t really matter who’s doing that, because you should be doing your [own] legwork,” Bartek said. “That’s a great thing, just kinda stepping over from being a pro wrestler to being a promoter and being more friendly with the promoters in Texas. It’s good to see that everyone’s kind of on the same page with that.”

“Smiley” Kylie Rae returns to Texas

Tonight, New Texas Pro Wrestling presents “LoneStar,” and one of the night’s most anticipated matches will pit Rok-C against “Smiley” Kylie Rae in the latter star’s return to the Texas independent wrestling scene.

“There’s not one person that I’ve ever been more excited about to be on my show, and it’s not even because she was with AEW and then she wasn’t. Because she said that she wanted to work for us before she even signed a contract and did all that stuff,” Bartek said. “So it was always something that I wanted to do, I just didn’t know if it would ever happen. And then there was a time [when] I didn’t think it was ever gonna happen, but I was so happy for her to be able to be signed.”

“It didn’t really matter to me. Whatever happened, and she started taking more bookings, and I reached out to her because I hadn’t talked to her for a little bit, and I didn’t want to press her on anything. I checked up on her a couple of times, and we trained together at Book’s. We go back a ways. She was a little bit hesitant to do it, but once she decided to do it I was very excited. I’m very excited about the matchup, it’s gonna be very cool,” he said. “A lot of people here in Texas, they kinda got acquainted with Kylie. She kind of got popular, and then she was kind of gone. So it’s cool to see her come back to Texas. It’s kind of a second home for her. You know, Chicago is her home, but a lot of people accepted her in Texas, and a lot of people are just happy to see her wrestling again. I think that’s what’s really cool.”

While New Texas Pro Wrestling is first and foremost about the fans attending events in Abilene and other parts of West Texas, fans everywhere have the opportunity to see some of what makes New Texas Pro Wrestling great thanks to a partnership with Texas-based production company Heel/Face Wrestling.

“So, we work with a production company here in Texas called Heel/Face Wrestling. They also run Sabotage Women’s Wrestling, which is a pretty prominent promotion here. So they usually record the shows. They’ll usually put the entire shows up on their Twitch stream, so we have some entire shows on their Twitch channel, Bartek said. “As well as, I like to put individual matches on our YouTube. We’re trying to grow our YouTube as best we can, which is the YouTube [for] New Texas Pro. We try to post clips on Twitter, on Instagram, Facebook, wherever we can.”