Dean Muhtadi, better known to fans as Mojo, knows a thing or two about pro sports given his NFL and WWE background. He is putting all that experience to use as the company he helped co-found, Paragon Talent Agency, in partnership with DraftKings, are hosting a Wrestler’s Combine on September 4. The event is run in collaboration with Black Label Pro Wrestling.
The athletic competition coincides with the card of matches, part of the Crowning Glory event in Chicago. Mojo will co-host the festivities along with “Tough Enough” winner Maven and Emmy-winning interviewer Chris Van Vliet. The show is actually streaming on Vilet’s YouTube channel.
This unique happening has an impressive list of famous faces including Moose, Jordynne Grace, Parker Boudreaux, Ash by Elegance, Xia Li (Zhao Xia), Mandy Sacs, Riddick Moss (Mike Rallis), and Jake Hager. For Mojo, the Wrestler’s Combine has been in the works for a while.
“The concept itself is pretty cool. Pro wrestling is a completely different business than the NFL, but the NFL has some cool things they do that we don’t have in the wrestling world.
One of them is the NFL Combine where they bring in all the talent and find out who is the fastest and who is the strongest as a recruiting tool to see who is going to be picked up in the NFL Draft. Pro wrestling, we don’t have anything liek that. The idea was to bring that to the wrestling world.”
– Mojo Rawley
There are four women and four men competing in the combine itself. The participants will be put through four events. This includes who can run the ropes the fastest, arm wrestling, a wrestler’s twist on tug-of-war, and a shoot collar and elbow tie-up. Mojo stresses it’s all a legit competition. There are bragging rights and reputations on the line.
Agents and the Lack of Unionions in Pro Wrestling
The big names attached to the event have connections to Mojo’s agency. Something he wanted to do for a while with the idea that players in the NFL had all this fancy representation like any other major sports. So, why couldn’t pro wrestlers have access to these services as well?
“You go to wrestling, there is no union. There are barely representatives of any kind,” Mojo explained. “There are no full-circle 360 representatives out there for people. The idea was to start the first one for pro wrestling. COVID started the company sooner than I meant for it to because COVID ended my career with WWE abruptly. I had to find a way to pivot.
I’ve always been a guy who thought out Plan B should things go wrong. I started Paragon the first day I was a free man after I called one of my best friends Steve Kaye, who has a legitimate business background as well. I told him what I wanted to do and it took him 15 seconds to hear about this thing and jumped in.
– Mojo Rawley
Mojo and Kaye put their MBAs, acumen for the biz and contacts into their new venture. It took off with Mojo saying they’ve done paid deals for 350 talent. “That tells you right there how much of a need there was for something like this,” he added. “…One is to help out the talent, but two, reintroduce the outside world to what pro wrestlers are capable of.”
WWE NIL
The landscape is a lot different place than when Mojo started his pro wrestling journey from the gridiron more than a decade ago. He is impressed with WWE’s NIL and recruitment approach, which has given them a wealth of emerging talent in recent years.
“They put a lot of weight and money behind it. Way more than they were doing before. I felt like before they were subscribing to the approach that you throw as much against the wall as you can and see what sticks.
It’s not a terrible strategy. I know that sounds like I’m downplaying the legitimacy of a strategy like that. But when you have a revolving door, you sink or swim, get in and get out. That way works for a lot of people. I think now they are doing their due diligence a lot more.
They are going out and finding these college athletes and seeing what they are about, signing them and locking them in early before they potentially blow up in their careers and go another route. It is a smart thing to do. You see college programs offering children scholarships sometimes. I had a buddy who played for the Arizona Cardinals. He was born as the biggest baby in Louisiana. I think LSU offered him a scholarship the day he was born. Guess what? He went to the school later on, so these things actually can work out for you.”
– Mojo Rawley
By the same token, Mojo thinks recruiting off the indies is also a lot more streamlined. He makes the point that we’re seeing some of the current signed WWE talent go and wrestle or do autograph signings and appearances at independent promotions. He states that was never a thing before and the “floodgates are open.” He credits this in part to the existence of AEW.
NFL Players Doing Wrestling
Before his WWE release, Mojo looked to be cooking something big with his buddy Rob Gronkowski. The Super Bowl champ ended up going back for one last, ditching his pro wrestling aspirations. However, Mojo doesn’t rule out a return for “Gronk” one day. He also assesses if we’ll see Patrick Mahomes, or Travis and Jason Kelce in the ring as well.
“‘Gronk’ is the only one that is retired. From a logistics standpoint, you have to think it’s him [first]. He loves pro wrestling. We certainly planned on doing a lot more together, but life takes you to different places and everyone goes on to the next thing,” Mojo said. “The Kelces have been to WWE shows. They’ve done well. They have the personality for it. Mohomes is probably last on the list of who you will see do stuff.”
– Mojo Rawley
For Mojo, it comes to passion and a deep-rooted desire to do it. Mostly because they surely don’t need the money.
“Honestly, with a lot of those guys, you’ll probably only see a one-off or pay-per-view with the buildup for a couple of months,” Mojo added. “It’s very hard to take somebody who is making $10 to $50 million a year and pay them a fraction of that but ask them to get their ass kicked more and train for something brand new after they already made it to the tippy top of NFL or pro sports.
“…Honestly, the person who has come close to that has been Moose. Moose was a seven-year starter in the NFL and he left football to come to wrestling and came to wrestling. He didn’t come to WWE and get offered a fat contract. He just left football because he liked wrestling better…That doesn’t happen. I give him all the credit in the world for that. AJ Francis is another example of that. He was a starter as well in the NFL. He and I were college teammates. I remember back when we were playing ball together. Even when he was in the NFL, he would say he was just biding my time until I got a shot at WWE. I would leave the NFL in two seconds to go do that. I love that more. Then he actually did…He started over to make nothing at NXT.”
– Mojo Rawley
Coming Out of Retirement
As for if we’ll ever see Mojo in the ring again, that’s another story. It’s a return four years and counting in the making.
“I’m absolutely going to wrestle again at some point,” he stated. “I don’t know when it’s going to be or where it’s going to be. I thought it would have been by now, but I’ve been so busy with Paragon, which I guess is a good problem to have. I feel like my contributions to the pro wrestling business through Paragon had been way better, way bigger, and way more important than anything I could have possibly done in-ring. With all these booking wrestlers for gigs, it just gets you reminiscent in your field a little bit. I’m going to have to do something at some point.”
– Mojo Rawley
For more on everything Crowning Glory, check out the Black Label Pro website.
