Mentor. Trainer. Promoter. Business owner. Teacher.
LaBron Kozone is a man who wears many hats. But the most noticeable of them is professional wrestler.
For most, perhaps the first thing that stands out about the 34-year-old Greensboro, NC native is his name. And yes, he’s heard all the jokes. In a recent interview with SlamWrestling,net, Kozone shared the meaning behind his ring name:
“I was actually named after my great grandfather. His name was Labron [pronounced LAY-brun].” Kozone got the all-clear from his mother to pronounce it the same way as the NBA player when he was in high school.
“As far as Kozone, I’ve been known as Kozone ever since my younger days. Kozone stands for knockout zone. My very first email back in the AOL days that my father made for me was Kozone blah blah blah at aol.com. We used to have the Insta chat on AOL back in the download days. It only showed the emails, so people would know you as your email name.”
From his teens, Kozone saw himself getting involved with the sport beyond just in the ring:
“I started my little backyard wrestling promotion when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. I was thinking, well, what am I going to wrestle as? Well, Kozone, it’s kind of already there, so I started doing the backyard wrestling as Kozone. We used to upload clips of our backyard stuff on YouTube back when YouTube was brand new.”
In January of this year, Kozone signed a long-term deal with MLW. He attributes this decision to timing:
“[J]ust being in the right place in the right time, and looking at different perspectives. Because I don’t just wrestle for myself. I’m a business owner. I’m a teacher. I’m a trainer … I feel like, with what they want to achieve as far as being a growing company, I feel like I’m more effective at MLW and it’s it’s showing proof. Every every time I go to a MLW show, it’s a sold out crowd.”
MLW has recently struck streaming deals with Veeps and Tubi, on top of hosting all weekly Fusion episodes on their YouTube channel.
Despite all his experience, Kozone is just now becoming a more well-known name. That’s something he doesn’t take lightly:
“With my story, it’s a little bit different. In a lot of professions, guys come in as the young kids with experience. You know, they make it. They get this grand contract, and then they become the top star at an early age, and then they they make a name for themselves until they can’t, and then they become a trainer promoter in their later years. That is not my journey.”
Kozone’s path to where he is now is not at all conventional, but he has no regrets:
“My journey is very different. I started training in 2008. At 18 years old, I started running my own events. I started dabbling with them promoting. At 18 years old, a black young kid in in North Carolina, doing that. At the age of 22, I started teaching pro wrestling. I had a couple of students make it to Ring of Honor before I turned 25. I had guys that were just a few years younger than me, achieving more greater success than I as a wrestler, just based off of how well of a teacher that I was. A few years ago later, I have a couple of students get contacted by WWE.”
In case some might be wondering, the first match Kozone ever booked was Cedric Alexander vs. Adam Page.
Teaching, though a gift, has always come naturally to the one they call “The Ring Warrior”:
“So it’s just like with my stages and how I did certain things, I found that I was a very effective teacher at an early age. It wasn’t until 2023 where I really started reaching the potential, trying to find the potential as an international wrestler myself, especially with my journey through Deadlock Pro Wrestling. They hit me up at a time where I was just ready to be a full-time coach. I was going to be content with that, but Deadlock saw something special in me that I really didn’t see in myself.”
Despite it all being in a quick burst, Kozone has already had a wealth of experience against some of wrestling’s most recognizable names.
“I had a lot of different opportunities to get in the ring with guys like Andrew Everett, Tom Lawlor, Trevor Lee, Diego Hill, all guys that I see almost every month at MLW, and then being able to get in the ring with guys like Timothy Thatcher, Speedball Mike Bailey, Calvin Tankman, Jake Something [now known as Jake Doyle], and Leon Slater. Being able to travel to Japan and do my thing, to go to Germany and hearing the crowd be very receptive to what I had to bring to the table.”
“All of this has transpired in less than five years. I’ve been a pro wrestler since 2011, and last year was the first time I’ve ever made it to the PWI 500. A lot of people are discovering me at a very short amount of time, but I’ve been around. I’ve done this.”
“I’ve been very blessed to be affiliated and associated with so many great people in our industry.”
As for his goals in MLW, Kozone currently has his sights set on MLW Southern Champion Joe Coffey and is not afraid to ruffle any feathers:
“I believe it needs to come back to the South. Me being from good old North Carolina. He knows nothing about the South. Wherever he’s from, he should not have that title. The title has my name on it. It just doesn’t seem right around his waist. Doesn’t even look right. So I’m definitely gonna take that from him.”
Aside from aiming for the MLW Southern Championship, Kozone is not showing his hand aside from saying simply:
“Expect the unexpected. Enjoy the ride, because I’m most definitely going to enjoy this this journey at MLW.”
