We were lucky to catch up with Jhonny Puttini recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jhonny thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
I have been working in the pro wrestling business for 15 years, not only as a referee, but also as promoter, manager, and I even founded my own federation here in Italy. I basically did all I could do here, I achieve all I could here. I found my self wanting to do more, I always had the dream to work as referee overseas and maybe move in USA, the land of big opportunities. So I decided to take a big risk, I quit my job, sold my car, took a plane and went to America for a 2 months long wrestling tour. I am the only Italian wrestling referee that ever managed to do this, a tour coast to coast of the land where pro wrestling was born. In 7 weeks I refereed a total of 18 matches, in 8 show across 6 different states.
This was my dream and having it coming true before my eyes had been the biggest reward for al those years of sacrifices. I saw lots of beautiful places, manage to meet some of my childhood heroes ad I even ask my girlfriend to marry me during Wrestlemania.
When I came back home to Italy I realized that what I did is actually what I want to do for the rest of my life so now I am planning to move either to The USA or London (there might be easier with the visa etc). My life, my future is on the ring, that I know for sure. I to a big risk and I hope to make it, I am sure I will never regret it.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In Italy the wrestling business has a huge potential, but unfortunately the people working in it don’t have the entrepreneur set of mind. I always had big dreams an often had good ideas on how make things work. In 2012 I founded my own wrestling federation, it was my creature and had so much potential. I started to apply all the lessons I did learn from the many seminars and web-seminars I did with American wrestling’s legends and so I was able to bring to my promotion a lot of success and popularity. We ever reached the main national tv channel on Saturday evening which was the very first time done ever in this business. Unfortunately the people working with me thought that that was just a point of arrival, that the maximum success was reached and nothing more was achievable. With that in mind they were able to fire me from my own promotion, and started doing shows all around Italy using the popularity that my strategies and efforts gave the promotion. Doing that they ruined the promotion, which now I just one other small wresting promotion in Italy, with no popularity and no talent, that just does wrestling to waste time and not so seriously. I was devastated. I invested so much in that project: time, money, efforts. It meant so much to me and I was so tempted to quit, to quit the business. But I always knew that the wrestling business was my future and that all the achievements I reached weren’t an arrival point. So I made a new plan to reach my dream, to get on a higher professional level, and I understood that the only way to reach new achievements was to move overseas. So here I am, with new motivation ready to get to the next step.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
The goal that is driving my creative journey is to be the very first Italian wrestling referee working in WWE (World wrestling Entertainment) which is the biggest reality in this business in the world. I know this is a big goal but I want to apply all the things I learned in the past 15 years and try to make my dream come true. Working there will be an arrival point in this career, I want to show myself and others that when you really try nothing is impossible, even reaching a dream as big as mine is.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jhonny_puttini/
- Facebook: https://it-it.facebook.com/PuttiniJhonny
- Linkedin: https://it.linkedin.com/in/jhonny-puttini-452580204
Image Credits
Santhel Della Sale – Enrico Bertelli – Luisa Zermiani