Heavy metal pulses through the giant arena. The crowd, which ranges in age from children to senior citizens, mills around before the show begins. They line up to get autographs and take photos with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) stars, like Rhyno. They shop at the various tables selling wrestling magazines and DVDs. Everyone is waiting for the Jersey All Pro Wrestling (JAPW) Homecoming event to start.
The BCB Bank Pavilion is enormous. Even partitioned in half, as it is for the event, it is big enough to fit thousands. Beyond the black divider, wrestlers are warming up and hanging out. Rivalries seem forgotten for the moment. There’s even a massage therapist to help them limber up or address any injuries to come.
The venue is a new one for JAPW. In fact it’s new in general, but the independent wrestling federation has a long a history in Bayonne.
Back in the Day
JAPW was launched in 1996 when the late Frank Iadevaia approached Jeff Shapiro and Pierre Pilger, who later became a partner in charge of talent, about putting on a wrestling event at Charity Hall, now a liquor store on Broadway at the corner of 37th Street.
“I used to run Charity Hall, which was the bingo parlor,” Shapiro says. “Bayonne, back then, had the Hometown Fair which was all along Broadway. I was outside setting up the tables of all of the stuff that we were selling, me and Pierre, and Frank came along and said, ‘Would you guys be interested in doing wrestling in Charity Hall?’ I said I guess we could, I mean the place could hold two- or three-, maybe even 400 people if we set up a wrestling ring. So we agreed and two months later we had the first show in Bayonne. That’s really how it started. Frank founded JAPW.”
But JAPW left Bayonne after the promotion came under scrutiny for violence in 2000.
“Back when Joe Doria was the mayor, the New York Times had come out with an article about us that unfortunately tied us in with a South Jersey group that made some of the matches very gory,” Shapiro says. That group, Combat Zone Wrestling, used weapons like boards wrapped in barbed wire. “A couple of people who had never attended anything complained to the city, and all of a sudden Governor Christie Whitman got involved. The city didn’t stop us, but they sent people to watch the show.”
The size of Charity Hall was another factor that led JAPW to leave Bayonne for the Rahway Recreation Center. In the end, the negative attention influenced the promotion to change their approach.
“We decided to take away any barbaric style and stay true to old-school wrestling,” Shapiro says.
Veteran Wrestler
Many of the wrestlers at the event were mentored by Iadevaia, including Bayonne resident Danny Lopez. He wrestles under the name Danny Maff as part of Da Hit Squad tag team with Monsta Mack, Homicide, and Low Ki. He got his start in 1998 with JAPW, but his history with wrestling goes back even farther.
“I was born into the business,” Lopez says. “My father was a referee and a small independent promoter. The Bayonne Wrestling Club was where Goodyear Tires is on the Boulevard. That was a wrestling gym. That was like in 1977 or ’76. I saw it firsthand, and I was soaking it in as a child.”
He first learned of JAPW when a friend gave him an extra ticket to a show at Charity Hall. That night Iadevaia made an announcement about a wrestling academy that he would be opening, and Lopez was inspired to begin his training.
“Me and Frank became great friends and that’s how I got my start,” Lopez says. “I’ve wrestled in Japan. I’ve wrestled in England, Germany, the Dominican Republic. I’ve wrestled all over the world, and it all started by walking through the doors of Charity Hall. I’m 42 years old, and I’ve lived a real good life. I’m a Bayonne boy, I love Bayonne. This is where my story begins.”
He represents Bayonne in the ring. He says, “My nickname is The Bayonne Badass. I take no crap from anyone. I fight for the blue-collar guy.”
A blue-collar guy himself, he works at Philips 66 Refinery in Linden.
Lasting Legacy
This past September Iadevaia died suddenly at age 43. He was affectionately known as Fat Frank, or Adorable Anthony, back in the ’90s when he’d get in the ring.
“It took the heart right out of us when Frank passed,” Shapiro says. “Probably the toughest week I ever had. It was like losing a brother. We were not only a wrestling group, we were friends. Our families grew up together. We went to each other’s weddings, birthdays, we traveled together. Sometimes you just think, I don’t want to do this anymore because we lost our cheerleader, but I know that Frank would want JAPW to continue and we hope to do so.”
“This is it coming full circle,” says Jenn Iadevaia, Frank’s widow, who joins Shapiro, staffing the door and greeting longtime friends and fans. “This is what he wanted to do, just come back one more time,” she says.
“We all have jobs, we all have kids, it’s like you come home from work and you start work again,” Shapiro says. “I run a promotions agency that specializes in sweepstakes, games, and contests on social media sites. Pierre is a longshoreman. He just got off the boat. Jenn is director of an after-school program in the Beechwood area. So everybody is really busy.”
Lopez had an especially busy day. He competed in a match in Rahway before taking to the ring at the BCB Bank Pavilion. He says it’s not the first time that he’s competed in two events in one day, but this time he did it because the event was so meaningful to him.
“JAPW in Bayonne is where I started my career, so once I heard that they were doing a reunion show, I knew it would have been so important to Frank,” Lopez says. “There’s no way I was going to miss that. I think he was looking down on us and smiling. Da Hit Squad was something that Frank put together. Without him this unbelievable wrestling journey we’ve been on would have never taken place.”
“I know that Frank would want JAPW to continue and we hope to do so,” Shapiro adds, noting that plans for a 20th anniversary show are underway. “I think Frank would have been absolutely ecstatic,” he says. “That’s the biggest crowd we’ve had in Bayonne.”
The event presold nearly 200 tickets, and about 300 more people attended, making it JAPW’s largest event in Bayonne.
Bayonne’s next JAPW show is slated for Marist High School on October 1.
After all of these years the strength of the name is still out there,” Shapiro says. “It keeps growing and growing. We have the best fans around.”—BLP