Pollo Del Mar makes meaningful connections through trading cards

The last time SlamWrestling caught up with Pollo Del Mar, Del Mar was paired with “Thrillbilly” Silas Mason in the midst of a red hot storyline in the National Wrestling Alliance.

Those were great days.

“I would dare to say that Silas and I were one of the most charismatic duos that the NWA has seen in the Lightning One era,” Del Mar said, “and I think that we captivated people’s attention. Of course, that came to an unsightly ending, and since that time he went on to work with the Southern Six and I have focused my attention as a professional wrestling manager outside of NWA.”

Del Mar, real name Paul Pratt, wants his legacy to be something that he has a little bit more control over, because what he’s doing represents not only professional wrestling fans, but speaks to communities of people within whom Pratt is personally involved.

“I want any kind of legacy that I leave to be something that we collectively, as a community, can be a little more proud of,” Pratt added. “I’ve been working with a variety of wrestling promotions, coast to coast. I work for Coastal Championship Wrestling in Florida. I did a variety of tours throughout Florida, which was a lot of fun for me. And of course, I’m based on the west coast, so I have a lot of activity here, as well, with some of these promotions.”

But even though we haven’t seen much Pollo Del Mar on NWA lately, Pratt is still very much involved in the product, especially via the NWA Official Wrestling magazine, which he created.

Pratt said the NWA Official Wrestling magazine was something suggested by Billy Corgan, owner of the National Wrestling Alliance, and he and Pratt touched base about that project almost three years ago.

“I pitched a proposal to him and it sat on the shelf for a year until we moved forward with it in February of 2023,” Pratt said. “So, that is something where I love the creativity that it allows me to exhibit. You know, I’m a creative writer. I love character development. I love the ability and opportunity to shape the characters that we present in the way we present our talent in the National Wrestling Alliance through the magazine in a way that really reflects the style of old-school professional wrestling magazines that I grew up loving. It’s definitely shaped and influenced by the Apter magazines of the ’80s and the ’90s, and I think that people, when they read it, they’ll get to experience some of that. But for me, it’s a lot of fun because it’s an ability to flex my creative muscles within the National Wrestling Alliance, and in the landscape of the world of professional wrestling that I grew up loving.”

Pratt is a team of one when it comes to NWA Official Wrestling magazine.

“Every single thing that you see,” Pratt said. “Basically, I conceptualize the entirety of every issue, then I storyboard it, and plot it out. I am basically overseeing all elements of the creative writing, the visual presentation of it, all elements of the editing. It’s a passion project for me, it’s something I love, that kind of creative writing. And again, when it comes to the on-air presentation of our talent, I have no say in that, I have no involvement in that other than sitting in on our really, pretty incredible meetings that we have to kind of determine what the television is going to be and things of that nature.”

“But when it comes to presenting our talent in print, in this way, this is almost entirely my doing. So I think that when I look back on my own experience growing up as a wrestling fan, there were various facets of how I perceived the wrestlers that I would see on television, but at the time, print media was so significant in developing professional wrestling characters and their lore, and the way that we saw them, so this is something in the context of NWA which is so based in our history, legacy, and tradition that we can add another layer and throwback to an era gone by.”

For now, NWA Official Wrestling magazine is a digital-only publication. Still, Pratt said there’s been conversation about printing and selling these as merchandise, which Pratt is confident both fans and the NWA wrestlers would love.

“Speaking only for myself,” Pratt said, “but I know to this day, when wrestlers come into the industry, even though times have changed and we’re more accustomed to looking for our pro wrestling news from wrestling fan websites, or the dirt sheets, seeing your name and your face and your story in print is something that is beyond compare. For example, I know Tiffany Nieves, who is one of our brightest up-and-coming stars, had a one-page feature in a recent issue of NWA Official Wrestling, and I know it’s printed out and framed in her home.”

In addition to the NWA, many wrestling fans became familiar with Pollo Del Mar through Game Changer Wrestling (GCW), and her stints as hostess of EFFY’S Big Gay Brunch, and Pratt had much to say about that.

“If you are familiar with the trajectory that I’ve had with Big Gay Brunch,” Pratt said, “you know that it’s gone from being the ‘hostess with the mostest,’ to involvement in matches and interactions with some of the great GCW stars, some of whom I’ve known since they were in the National Wrestling Alliance. … I consider EFFY a tremendous personal friend, and so many of the people who are on the Big Gay Brunch roster. Again, that comes to me from a different thing. It’s a combination of my professional wrestling love and my personal identity. It joins the two together and I think that that’s really important.”

Pratt added, “Those experiences have gotten me as much exposure and grown my fan base as much as anything I’ve done with the NWA because it is a targeted audience of people who are predisposed to want to love what I do, and more importantly, in some facets, to me being inspired by what I do and who I am because, for many people growing up like I did, who felt that they were excluded from the world of professional wrestling, based on identity, Big Gay Brunch is a very definite green light that you can be who you are and still love professional wrestling.”

According to Pratt, from the talent perspective, Big Gay Brunch is widely considered one of the biggest achievements and goals in professional wrestling.

“If you are a member of the LGTBQ community and you work in the world of professional wrestling,” Pratt said, “it’s almost a rite of passage to be part of Big Gay Brunch, so for me to be such an integral part of that is pretty astounding, and I consider it one of the high points of my career.”

On that note, I asked Pratt if he was familiar with his Pollo Del Mar Big Gay Brunch trading card from 2022. “The one with the yellow hair? It was from my very first Big Gay Brunch. I will say this, the difference between that trading card and the trading cards that I’ve had a hands-on producing and real active involvement is that I hated the photo, and it’s not a slight to the company that produced [the card], it’s about the fact that the reality of that situation is it was 98 degrees outside in broad daylight, Tampa, Florida. I was literally a melting candle, and they caught the moment. For that, I give them credit.”

Pratt found out about the card a year later in Dallas. They were like, ‘Look at your card,’ and it was literally the people in charge of creating it, and they showed me the card, and my face reads like a teleprompter, you can just read everything, and I’m very excited that a company, and a group of people, think that my work is worthy of being captured on a trading card — and that continues to this day, with the line of trading cards that are just coming out, but when I saw that photo, I was like, Oh, this is not how I want people in 30 years to remember me, the melted candle from Beauty and the Beast!”

So, Pratt recently took matters into his own hands and created a new line of Pollo Del Mar trading cards.

“The idea came about because of the fact that I’m a collectibles person, too,” Pratt said, “but I have to preface that by saying that there are some people who are avid collectibles people and there are people like me who are casual collectibles people. I’m somebody who only collects action figures that are of people who are meaningful to me. I have cards of people who are meaningful to me.”

On the video call, Pratt showed off a couple of items from his collection, including autographed trading cards of Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton.

“I’m a massive Midnight Express Fan. My all-time favorite wrestler is Beautiful Bobby Eaton.

Pratt then pulled out an autographed copy of Ricky Morton’s Wrestling All-Stars trading card.

“So, the fun part about that Ricky Morton card is that I’m not a Rock and Roll Express fan,” Pratt said, “but I adore Ricky Morton as a person. [Morton] said [to Pratt], ‘Oh, you’re one of those people,’ because I told him I spent my entire childhood cheering for him to get his butt kicked, but somebody knew that we’d become friends and sent me this card, and when I showed it to Ricky, he was like, ‘Give me that, it’s gonna be a lot more interesting to people now!'” While telling the story, Pratt pantomimed Morton signing the card.”

“I am somebody who, when I’m a fan of somebody, I want to collect something about them, and I have been so blessed over the last almost ten years, as a professional wrestling manager and personality, to amass a core group of really incredible people who support everything I do in my career, and they want to participate in it and want to remember elements of it that were important to them.”

What Pratt did with the new Pollo Del Mar trading cards was conceptualize a series of trading cards that will each encapsulate different parts of his wrestling journey, and a big part of it was because he wanted to someday look back and be like, “Oh, yes, I did that,” and he wanted his fans to be able to do the same.

“When it came to design,” Pratt said, “I’m very controlling of my image. I’m very controlling of a lot of facets of my career, so I worked to design them. I worked to choose all the imagery, and so when fans are buying these, everything about this is me. The pictures are me. The work is me. The writing is me. But the part that is not me is that somebody is choosing to make me part of their collection of wrestling history. And when I think about it, I get a tinge of emotion because I know how avid wrestling fans are, I know how avid collectors are, and for somebody to want to include me in (their) collection, that’s so important to me. It means I’ve had an impact on them.”

Each limited-edition trading card sells for $12 (which includes a protective case, autograph & shipping in the U.S.) and the easiest way for fans to purchase them is to contact Pratt/Pollo Del Mar directly on Instagram or Facebook. There’s a three-pack for $27 too.

“That might sound confusing or convoluted because a lot of people are accustomed to going to a website, but the reason I think that can be beneficial in the long run is because every single card that’s purchased from me is autographed, it comes in a protective case, and they’re coming directly from me, so I’m sending them, and everybody gets a little personalized thank you note, so it’s not just the card that they’re getting in the mail,” he explained.

“If I were operating under the umbrella of a humongous organization like WWE,” Pratt continued, “this would be getting shipped out of some third-party place that doesn’t even know me. But they’re not. And that’s the other benefit of doing it directly through me. If these are individuals who want to support my career enough to purchase one or multiple trading cards from me, they get to come to me, and it starts the formation of a personal connection.”

Each card in the series, at the moment, is supposed to be a series of six, with each card numbered, named, and including a photo that encapsulates a specific time in Del Mar’s career, so if a fan orders all of them, they’ll experience the breadth of Del Mar’s career up until this point.

“The first one is called NWA All-Star,” Pratt said. “This is my very first ever official NWA promo photo, and to me that was such a career defining moment because I’d already worked with NWA before, but I never got into a photo shoot, and the fun fact that’s included on the back of the card is that, that hat was borrowed from Mickie James. I had to text her. I was like, ‘Mickie, I need a cowboy hat,’ and she’s like, ‘I got you, girl!’ She ran over and brought me this gorgeous cowboy hat.”

The next three cards in the series are considered a trio. Pratt said they do sell individually, but they’re meant to go as a three-pack.

The next card in the series is named “Queen of the Underground.”

“I love this photograph,” Pratt said. “It’s very dark. That’s from Underground Wrestling Alliance.”

Pratt added, “I’m so critical of myself. I was like, I hate my facial expression, I look like I’m in pain and bitter, but it’s probably appropriate because I’m holding a kendo stick.”

These cards look like a great addition to any independent wrestling card collection.

“I know that a trading card that’s going to be coming out that I would consider one of the more well-known photos of me from a Big Gay Brunch,” Pratt teased. “There’s an image of me sitting on the ringside with my dress draping over and I was doing an address to the audience, which went semi-viral, because I talked about the impact of wrestling on me as a child in the way that there was not representation for me, and that clip went viral, it’s included in a documentary film, and I’m fortunate enough to have a really beautiful photo that somebody took, which is going to be one of the trading cards.”

Pratt added, “I think that one has to be special in a certain way because I don’t really politicize much of my career, but that moment in time, simply by who I am and what I’m doing, is a statement.”

“When I was a kid,” Pratt said, “I had a book filled with autographs, and most of the people that were in my book were never huge stars. They were never the WWF champion or an NWA superstar or something like that. These were people who were out there growing up at the local shows that I went to and I got so much enjoyment out of my experience, those shows with my dad and my family, and those people were stars to me. I had their autographs and some 8x10s and things like that, and now, as an adult who works in the world of professional wrestling, I have my own collectibles, because those are the people who impacted me and inspired me to want to do what I do.”

“I was blown away the first time EFFY, specifically, was like, you need 8x10s,” Pratt remembered. “I was like, ‘Nobody wants an 8×10 of me.’ He’s like, ‘The hell they don’t! You need to make 8x10s.’ And I was shocked because I’ve sold many, many 8x10s. But when it comes to cards, and collectibles like this, it really is one of the most humbling things when people want to order, because I know how people think about their trading card collections. I know what it means to them when they want to add somebody. And it’s a very humbling experience that my wrestling career has impacted people in a way that would make them want to put me in their collection.”

Pratt paused for a moment before relaying a personal story.

“When I was in college,” Pratt began, “I was a member of a fraternity and, very, very actively involved in that fraternity, and when I came out, that did not go so well, and so fast forward many years, and now I’m a professional wrestling personality. I work for the National Wrestling Alliance, I work for Game Changer Wrestling, and I decide that I’m going to release a trading card collection, and out of the blue, one of my fraternity brothers, who I have not spoken to in years and years, but who I knew was a pro wrestling fan, reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I would like to order two of your trading cards!'”

“I was shocked because, what it showed me, number one, is time does heal some things, and number two is that fandoms, and being a collector, can obliterate people’s personal feelings because this is a person who never treated me poorly, but I haven’t spoken to in years, but our interaction was reignited by his love for pro wrestling, and his being a trading card collector, and now I’ve got two trading cards in his collection, which I know is pretty massive, because it was growing even when I first met him, and that was something that was so incredibly meaningful to me. I was like, I had to pause and reflect on the fact that now this person sees me in a different way because of what I do and because he’s a fan.”

As a wrestling collector, myself, I had never really thought much about what it means to the wrestlers when I order their trading cards and collectibles, other than the financial transaction, so Pratt’s story resonated and moved me.

“When I was growing up,” Pratt said, “I had WCW trading cards, and WWF trading cards … And I don’t want to give away my age, but I grew up with Garbage Pail Kids and, oh my God, every child in my neighborhood was collecting and trading, and for me, it was a phase I went through because it was popular at the time and it gave me a way to interact with other kids, but I never had a personal connection other than what my sentimental feelings were for a particular card.”

It’s not about the money.

“It’s very different when the person who is on the card is personally excited that you want to have them in your collection when it’s mutually meaningful. … I’m not making five million, you know, there’s 100 of each (card), right? So, they’re going to get something that’s special and unique, but they’re getting it because they want to add me to their collection, and that interaction is meaningful to me.”

“Because,” Pratt said, “somebody is willing to help financially support my career and me as a person and a performer, and most importantly, it’s a sign to me that what I’m doing is impacting people, and as much as most of the time, I might portray a heel, and don’t care what people think, there’s something to be said for not doing what you love in a vacuum. Like, when you’re doing what you love positively impacts other people, or gives them memories that they can reflect back on and it elicits some kind of an emotion, whether it’s positive or negative, I think that that’s really what it’s about. And in a lot of ways, these trading cards each represent a moment in time when my career intersected with the audience. That is meaningful.”

Pollo Del Mar’s trading cards are available now for $27 each via Instagram and Facebook, and NWA Official Wrestling magazine can be read on NationalWrestlingAlliance.com.

RELATED LINKS

• Aug. 25, 2022: Pollo Del Mar getting a ‘Thrill’ managing in the NWA
• SlamWrestling’s Not Another Collectible! section