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The Crist brothers, originally from New Carlisle, faced each other for the final match last Wednesday in Dayton, as one of them will soon retire from the professional wrestling circuit. A love of wrestling born in New Carlisle nearly 15 years ago has led the Crist brothers across the globe to perform in venues they once dreamed of.

Dave and Jake Crist have traveled as far away as Japan to wrestle professionally, even spending two nights at Korakuen Hall, a Tokyo venue famed in the wrestling and martial arts worlds, as it has become Japan’s most notable wrestling arena.

Dave said that the Crists entrance into the world of pro wrestling began when they were teenagers.

“We were just watching wrestling one day when my brother and one of his buddies started wrestling in the backyard,” Dave said of his younger brother Jake. “They wouldn’t let me play at first because they said I was too rough.”

He said that soon after being barred from wrestling with his brother and his friends, an older “bully” approached Jake and his friend and began picking on them one afternoon, prompting Dave to intervene.

“This guy was like 19 years old, and we were like 13,” Dave said. “I won’t say that we defeated the bully, but we definitely gave him a run for his money.”

After the bully incident, Dave was then allowed to wrestle with his Jake and his friends, and they spent the next few years traveling around New Carlisle searching for places to wrestle, even building a ring out by the granary.

They later began training in Cincinnati, which Dave said was difficult at first as their trainers and the more experienced wrestlers showed the two newcomers no mercy in their first days of training. “They were picking us up, tossing us around, punching us in the face—just to see if we were tough enough to make it,” Dave said.

Dave said they are usually sought out by promoters hoping to book them in their venues across the nation. He said they have upcoming shows in New Jersey and Chicago booked, as well as several gigs with the Insane Clown Posse band, whose tour now includes wrestling gigs with the Crist brothers. The Insane Clown Posse is known for dousing its spectators with Faygo soda pop during each show, a gig that Dave now calls his own, saying: “We use diet—it’s not as sticky.”

He said that it was surreal to think that two kids from New Carlisle could travel the globe through wrestling gigs, noting that many of their high school teachers told them that they did not stand a chance of making it in the wrestling world. “They told us we’d never make it—they said we were too small,” Dave said, adding that if it weren’t for the brothers’ “hard determination,” that their teachers would have been right.

Jake Crist will retire from the pro wrestling circuit in November, and the brothers faced each other for the last time in the ring at the Rockstar Pro Arena in Dayton last week, with Jake defeating his older brother during the match.

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