Real American Freestyle brings Olympic, UFC stars to DFW for true pro wrestling
Real American Freestyle launched on April 30, 2025, and the wrestling league has experienced massive growth over its short existence.
The league comes to Dallas-Fort Worth on Saturday with RAF09 at College Park Center in Arlington. Matches start at 7 p.m., and tickets are on sale starting at $49.40.
CEO and co-founder Chad Bronstein talked about the league’s origins, its growth and why now was the time to visit the Lone Star State.
Real American Freestyle was launched by Bronstein, Terri Francis and Hulk Hogan, the WWE superstar who died shortly after its founding. The league’s name is a nod to Hogan’s theme song “Real American.”
Unlike the scripted wrestling entertainment Hogan shined in, RAF is true professional wrestling with competition among college and Olympic athletes and mixed martial artists. RAF occupies a different space in the combat sports market, able to be more family-friendly, without the bloody violence that can be seen at time in boxing, UFC or MMA.
Bronstein said RAF is set up for the long haul.
“We just signed a deal that’s putting us up to 2030, so I would say there’s no emerging sports league in the world that’s ever done what we’ve done in a matter of a nine-show span,” he said. “We signed six different deals with Fox as a new sports league, so I don’t think anyone’s been able to execute the way we have in nine months.
“We have an amazing team, we have amazing investors, we have an amazing TV partner, and we have athletes that want to, that are starving for wrestling to win, and an audience that’s starving for wrestling to win. So it really is a full-court press of a lot of different factors that allowed us to succeed.”
A big factor in the league’s early success has been name-brand talent like Bo Nickal, Chris Weidman, Colby Covington and Gable Steveson, the latter three of whom will compete at RAF09. Steveson will meet Alexandr Romanov in the main event, and Covington and Weidman will face off in the co-main event.
The fighters are familiar to UFC fans, but Bronstein said wrestling is “their original love.”
“Gable Steveson is a two-time NCAA champion, gold medalist Olympian, now is fighting, but his first love is wrestling,” Bronstein said. “Colby Covington was an All-American at Oregon State, first love wrestling. Chris Weidman was an All-American at Hofstra, first love wrestling.”
Bronstein said RAF knew it wanted to come to Texas and brought a card that will excite and entice fans.
“When we started this, we all thought we’re going to come to Texas, we just had to figure out when, right?” he said, “[In] Texas, wrestling is very popular as well. It’s a big youth wrestling community, and this is our ninth event, and we were able to find an opportunity to come here, and we’re super excited to be here. We built a really, really good card for Texas, and expecting a huge crowd.”
Bronstein explained what’s in store for fans, whether they already have a deep love for wrestling or are checking the sport out for the first time.
“I want people to know that wrestling is the greatest sport in the world,” he said. “Showing up, you’re going to get true entertainment, and you know if you don’t know about the sport, you’re going to learn this about it, and then you’re going to fall in love with it.”
