‘For the love of the craft’: Miami wrestling fans find a home in local breweries
To claim her seat by the wrestling ring, Tiffany Tarver takes a path she knows well: through the taproom at Unbranded Brewing Co. and into the brewhouse. She joins the crowd gathering among stainless steel kegs and industrial-sized fermentation tanks to watch a two-hour professional wrestling show hosted at Unbranded every first Saturday of the month.
The lack of air conditioning doesn’t deter attendees as they fill the room with body heat, eagerly awaiting the booms of body slams and diving elbow drops. Like many fans, Tarver, 37, goes a step further than buying her $20 ticket and a 12 oz beer can. At each show, she sports a T-shirt with one of her favorite wrestlers’ names emblazoned — tonight, it reads “Domino.”
The shirt’s colors pull from Domino’s signature look: a pair of hot pink and cyan pants patterned with tiles from the favorite game of South Florida’s Cuban community. The 6-foot-tall wrestler emerges with his half-green hair pulled back and his torso bare, as sweat glistens over his patchwork of arm tattoos (among them, a cafetera with biceps). Cries of “305!” and “Ponte las pilas!” (“Get it together!”) erupt from the crowd, who rise to their feet before washing their screams down with gulps of cherry cola hard soda and guava wheat ale.
The Unbranded event, dubbed Bash at the Brew, is one of four regular shows produced by Coastal Championship Wrestling (CCW) at Florida breweries. The shows take on a different name at each location, which include Tripping Animals Brewing Co. in Doral, Miami Brewing Co. in Homestead and Magnanimous Brewing in Tampa. At the spots in South Florida, hundreds of Miami-born-and-bred wrestling fans unite with performers who bring their hometown culture into the ring.
Bash at the Brew, which launched in February 2021, is the oldest of these brewery shows — and it’ll be the first to end. The final Bash at the Brew is set for Aug. 31, scheduled to coincide with Unbranded’s closing, a shock for not just Miami’s beer lovers but local wrestling fans.
The shows have developed a small but raving cult following of locals who love to see WWE-style wrestling but with Miami flavor. Cafecitos get thrown, day-old Cuban bread gets used as a weapon, wrestlers have their mamis in the audience and half the time, the crowd cheers in Spanish.
For fans like Jonnathan Veloso, a “loyal to the soil” Kendall native, these relatable roots make up the magic of the shows, he said.
Veloso, 27, discovered Miami’s wrestling scene thanks to his first CCW show at Doral’s Tripping Animals in June. By his third show, he stopped at the merch table to purchase a “Domino” handheld fan. Now, he buys his show tickets a month in advance.
“What more culture is there than a wrestler who is like, ‘Hey, my name is Domino’?” he said.
Birth of a ‘DomiNation’
Before he’d touched green hair dye (the color symbolizing mental health awareness) or taken a chair to the head (a sneak attack from his nemesis), Domino, whose real name is Adrian Castro, dressed for work each day in a button-up and slacks.
The 36-year-old graduated with a degree in human resources from Florida International University and spent the first decade of his career in the corporate field, eventually becoming Miami Dade College’s senior employment specialist.
But still inside him was the kid who’d spent countless days walking to Blockbuster to rent the same WrestleMania tape (a legendary ladder match between Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon). When it was time to clock out of his office job, he felt another side of him return, one that told him his true passion was in creating.
“It’s very hard for me to sit still — I need to burst out and put pieces of my soul onto everything,” Castro told the Miami Herald in 2022.
So when his friend David Rodriguez announced he’d be opening Union Beer Store in Little Havana, Castro saw his chance to break out, he said in 2022. He pitched himself to Rodriguez in an email, hoping his third time asking to work at the bar would be the charm. It was.
Fans of the recently closed bar soon grew to know Castro, or at least his face: first as “Manolo,” the Scarface character he played in a running bit on Union Beer’s Instagram, then as “Panolo,” for the pan-con-bistec pop-up he started at Union in 2020.
With Union’s launch in 2017, beer and wrestling — like many a Miami couple — met at a local bar.
Union patrons sipped beer while watching a never-ending replay of pay-per-view matches and set their drinks down on coasters picturing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Behind the bar, vintage action figures lined any flat surface available.
The bar eventually collaborated with Unbranded and CCW in a series of crossover events, including a beer release, which Castro often attended as a Union vendor. In December 2022, he got the chance to serve as an “extra” in the ring — the encounter was enough to convince him to pursue a career in wrestling.
“I wasn’t getting any younger. I didn’t want to live my life as an old man and be like, ‘Damn, I wonder what would’ve happened if I would’ve taken that opportunity,’” Castro said.
He began training with CCW in January 2023 and won rookie of the year that December. The last Bash at the Brew will mark the one-year anniversary of Domino’s wrestling debut. Some matches get bloody, and he has broken a few ribs, but Castro’s justification for sticking with it is simple: “for the love of the craft.”
He fills the front rows of shows with loyal members of the “DomiNation,” devoted fans like his own mother, who can be spotted by her blue domino earrings and cheers so fervent they nearly take her over the edge of the railing.
To Castro, a self-described craft beer fanatic and co-founder of Miami Beer Week, beer and wrestling make a natural pair, given the passion characteristic of both communities.
“They talk about it very similarly. They will critique a beer just like they critique a [wrestling] storyline,” he said. (Domino is like a guava sour beer, he added.)
Fans of each appreciate a true craft: “It’s a lot of art that’s put into a lot of these recipes for beer,” Castro said. “And what [wrestlers] do is art. We’re storytelling.”
Go for the show, stay for the story
The first Bash at the Brew broke Unbranded’s food and sales record, according to CCW executive director Nelio Cuomo Costa. The taproom, expecting no more than 60 extra people, ran out of the brewery’s signature Hialeah Light.
Emmanuel “Gully” Senra was in the crowd that night, after discovering CCW from a flier at a different wrestling show. The 41-year-old has previously traveled across coasts to attend WWE’s Wrestlemania. Hooked on televised wrestling since he was a kid, he once told his mom he was eating more steak because he wanted to “be bigger and stronger than Hulk Hogan,” he said.
Since his first Bash at the Brew, Senra has returned for almost every show. (His only exceptions were for a vacation and a wedding, he said.)
He still remembers how that opening night made him feel: “Immediately, I got sucked in.” He said the show’s characters, gimmicks and storylines kept him coming back.
“I’d rather watch CCW or go to a CCW show than watch WWE on TV,” Senra added. “It’s just more real. It’s more personal.”
To follow the antics of the shows, some fans drive across the county and even to Central Florida.
Sisters Ana Maria Garciga, 38, and Laura Garciga, 37, have been to CCW shows from Hialeah to Doral and a non-brewery show in Pompano Beach. They even went to the company’s first brewery event in Tampa, leaving right after work to make time for the four-hour drive from Little Havana.
The wrestlers’ investment in their storylines fuels the excitement of fans, Ana Maria Garciga said.
The shows include tales of heroes “turning heel” (wrestling lingo for going bad) and if-you-know-you-know call-outs from the audience (like “rata” or rat for some of Domino’s rivals, started by one fan’s Instagram comment).
“It’s like a whole reality TV, live-action novela all mixed together,” Ana Maria Garciga said.
To Costa, Miami was known for being an “almost impossible” market for wrestling. Between the beaches, bars, clubs, restaurants and grills, locals can always find something to do. Costa adapted the matches, making them fast-paced with a “mix of violence and sex and music,” he said. Moments are key, driving the show through a series of memorable crescendos, like the time Domino went viral for getting a cafecito thrown in his face.
CCW wrestlers come with a variety of styles, sizes, shticks and sexualities. Like Domino, many of them — from the Dominican Cha Cha Charlie with his straw hat, to Carolina Cruz representing Cuba with its flag on her shorts — maintain a persona intimately tied to their Hispanic background.
“That means people are receptive to the culture, not necessarily the character,” Castro said. “I’m just a vessel that you can experience that culture through.”
So when the crowd yells, “Vamos pipo, dale!” (“Let’s go, man, get it!”) and “Espumita!” (the foam on a Cuban espresso), the wrestlers don’t just understand them; sometimes they talk back.
New and returning CCW fans can expect an “air-conditioned future,” Costa said. A new series will begin Oct. 5 at The Tank Brewing Co. on 5100 NW 72nd Ave, set to run on the first Saturday of every month.
Until then, fans can still find their favorite wrestlers performing in South Florida at Tripping Animals Brewing Co., Miami Brewing Co. and two non-brewery locations, the CCW Arena in Pompano Beach and MidFlorida Credit Union Event Center in Port St. Lucie.
Tarver has been to shows at all of these venues.
She packs her Domino tee into a drawstring bag with more than eight other wrestlers’ shirts. The bag comes with her to every show she attends, and before each match, she changes into a different wrestler’s merch.
Tarver said the loss of Bash at the Brew is “heartbreaking.” Still, it doesn’t stop her from getting excited for what’s next.
“Whether they move to a new location, they definitely have a lifelong fan in me,” she said.
Next South FL Brewery Show
When: Aug. 24, 8 - 10 p.m.
Where: Tripping Animals Brewing Co., 2685 NW 105th Ave, Miami
Info: Tickets start at $20. https://www.coastalchampionshipwrestlingfl.com/
Bash at the Brew No. 44
When: Aug. 31, 8 - 10 p.m.
Where: Unbranded Brewing Co., 1395 E 11th Ave, Hialeah
Info: Tickets start at $20. https://www.coastalchampionshipwrestlingfl.com/
This story was originally published August 7, 2024 at 4:30 AM.
