This story originally appeared in The Centre County Gazette.
CENTRE COUNTY — Somewhere between the smell of sweat and canvas, under flickering lights in small-town buildings where the ring creaks like an old porch, there exists a strange kind of truth.
It’s not the kind you find on scoreboards or box scores. It’s louder than that. Messier. Built on bruises, broken sleep and long drives down dark Pennsylvania roads with nothing but adrenaline and doubt riding shotgun.
Professional wrestling lives here.
In Centre County, that truth belongs to a father and his son.
“The Enigma” Lucio Deveer and “The Carnie King/Sideshow Psycho” Malaki Gage are what the business calls larger than life. In the ring, they are spectacle known as the “Special Attraction” and part of the “Grand Plan.” But outside the ropes, underneath the personas, they are bound by something far more real than any storyline.
They are chasing the same dream.
“For me, it [professional wrestling] was the characters, the larger-than-life characters, the storylines that drew me in and made me not want to miss it,” Deveer said. “Growing up, I always watched it and knew that I wanted to be a part of it. I knew that it was something that I wanted to do.”
For Gage, there was never a clean beginning. No single spark. No defining moment.
“There’s not necessarily one moment I can pinpoint because of my dad being a wrestler. I was around it my whole life,” Gage said. “It was inevitable that I ended up wrestling. It was always something I wanted to do.”
Inevitable is a dangerous word in wrestling. Because nothing about this business comes easy.
Behind every entrance, every chant, every carefully crafted persona is a quiet ledger of sacrifice.
“It is your life, it has to be,” Gage said. “If you want to be good at it, it has to be your life. It has to be your priority. It’s watching tapes to get better. It’s dedicating time in the gym to be a professional wrestler.”
For Deveer, that sacrifice stretches back more than two decades.
“I’ve had to sacrifice my body… countless injuries,” he said. “After doing this for 22 years, knowing that I will feel the long-term toll on my body. Time with family, missing out on important things… but it’s worth it.”
Worth it.
That’s the word wrestlers always come back to even when their knees ache, their backs tighten and the road never seems to end.
Sometimes, it’s worth it because of a moment.
For both men, that very moment came in the same place, standing across from each other.
“I guess the one [match] that had the most significance was my I quit match with Malaki,” Deveer said. “There was so much story. It finally led to that match where neither one of us held back. It always sticks out in my mind as a huge moment.”
“That match was super important to my career,” Gage said. “My first huge match with my dad meant a lot.”
A father and son standing in the same ring not holding back.
You won’t find that in many places.
For professional wrestlers from Centre County, they carry that story with them. Into every match, every venue, every night where the crowd leans forward just a little closer to see what happens next and to learn more about those who choose to sacrifice to chase a dream.
“It’s super important. There’s my dad and there’s me,” Gage said. “We have to be the people to show that people in Centre County can do this. We have to be the best because we’re the example.”
Deveer feels that weight too, not just as a wrestler, but as one of the first to come out of the area.
“To be the first, to be able to do it for this long… me and my son able to represent this county as professional wrestlers… it’s a proud accomplishment,” he said.
And now, the story keeps moving.
On Saturday, May 16, under the Imagine Wrestling banner at the Juniata Civic Association in Altoona, both men step back into the chaos.
Deveer faces a familiar enemy in Jimi “The High Flying Hippie,” a feud that has stretched long enough to become something personal.
“It’s time to end this 20-year feud,” Deveer said. “I’m tired of him always sticking his nose in my business. I’m gonna end the feud when I take him out.”
Across the card, Gage prepares for a different kind of fight. One built over years against a man who helped shape him. While currently the Imagine Heavyweight champion in the singles division, this match will be a tag team match-up with Gage teaming with “The Shape” Jake Wily against CEO of Imagine Wrestling Kato and “All That” Braden Elliott.
“It’ll be me in a match that has built for seven years, my whole career,” Gage said. “I’m in there with the person who taught me — my trainer — and you’re going to see me at my very best.”
In wrestling, legacies are tricky things. They can trap you. Define you. Or disappear if you don’t fight to make them your own.
Gage understands that better than most.
“You have to be you,” he said. “You see a lot of second-generation wrestlers, they’ll be a carbon copy. But you have to be authentic to yourself. But it’s also so special to be a part of your father’s legacy and to share matches with him. It’s something you can’t take for granted.”
For Deveer, the legacy isn’t measured in wins or titles.
It’s measured in moments he never expected to have.
“I started doing this 22 years ago when he was only 3 years old,” he said. “To not only watch him wrestle, but to get to wrestle with him as a team, to share the ring with him, it’s meant the world to me.”
On nights like May 16, when the lights hit just right and the crowd starts to roar, it becomes something more than a place to wrestle.
It becomes a place where a father and a son can stand side by side and prove that some stories aren’t written.
They’re earned.
To see more of “The Enigma” Lucio Deveer and “The Carnie King/Sideshow Psycho” Malaki Gage, tune into Imagine Wrestling every Wednesday night on YouTube at 7 p.m.
