Anyone who’s watched even a few minutes of a wrestling match knows that the sport is a physically taxing one. The wear-and-tear that the sport puts on the bodies of athletes has to be experienced to be explained. What many don’t know is that the sport wreaks just as much havoc on the mind as it does the body. Historically, not much has been done to combat that fact.
That’s something Darius Lockhart aimed to fix when he launched ASÉ Wrestling.
ASÉ (pronounced ah-SHAY) Wrestling is an independent wrestling company founded in the Queen City by Lockhart, a Charlotte native. Wrestling fans likely recognize his name; Lockhart got his start as a professional wrestler with companies like NWA and AEW.
As someone who took part in the wrestling industry himself for 10 years, working alongside friends and acquaintances such as Jade Cargill, Matt Hardy and Mark Henry, Lockhart knows how demanding this business can be.
“I was having a lot of people in my social circles and professional wrestling that I admire and like to work with coming into mental barriers and not feeling understood, not feeling like the opportunity was viable for them to be who they wanted to be in this pro wrestling space or to be seen for their full potential,” Lockhart told Queen City Nerve.
“I was thinking off the cuff, ‘What could provide that as well as also update pro wrestling a little bit?’ I felt like pro wrestling is always a little behind in terms of cultural awareness.”
He founded ASÉ Wrestling in 2023, purposefully centering mental health as a priority for his wrestlers. Since its first event in December 2023, ASÉ has continued to mix wrestling with culture, collaborating with local artists such as Dreamville rapper Lute, neo-soul singer Cyanca, visual artist Marcus Kiser and also bringing in nationally known wrestlers.
Having seen the “same 10 faces” running wrestling organizations throughout the country, Lockhart launched his company with the goal to bring a new vibe to wrestling that he couldn’t find elsewhere.
“For things to really change on screen, you have to change who’s behind the screen,” he said. “I didn’t really see too many people who look like me, a young Black man, in those positions to make creative decisions behind the scenes. I took it upon myself to try to create that lane.”
Darius Lockhart makes moves
Lockhart, who turned 29 in September, fell in love with the art of wrestling at age 12 and has been wrestling since he was in high school.
In 2012, he began training at Highspots Pro Wrestling School, a Charlotte-based school where he trained under the tutelage of “Mr. Number One” George South, WWE star Cedric Alexander, and Impact Wrestling star Caleb Konley. The school shut down in 2022 after two decades of continuous operation.
He landed his first match in 2013 while attending college at UNC Greensboro. Because he didn’t have a car, he “coasted” with local and regional independent wrestling companies.
“I’d have means to make bigger things, but was also trying to balance that with just getting a degree,” he said. “Once I graduated, then I started really making my way up through the independents, and that really helped.”
Things became a little easier for him after graduation. He began to get more recognition, ranking on Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s top 500 singles wrestlers list in 2018, 2020 and 2022. Despite building his name, Lockhart was unable to capitalize off of his success. His own mental health played a role in that.
“I was going through a lot of personal stuff in my life,” he said. “I lost my father. I was going through things on the back end of that, and it just got a little weary for me.”
He took time off to get himself in the right head space. What was supposed to be a two-month break turned into a year and a half. But he didn’t tap out; it was during that hiatus that he began wrestling with the idea of launching his own company in the industry.
Lockhart said the plan was conceived in summer 2019.
“It started as one concept between a friend and I just batting ideas of what a culturally relevant or a cooler show would do,” he said.
They started with sillier concepts involving the commentary to more creative ideas that encompassed different aspects of their culture. For example, Lockhart said he was influenced by the sketch comedy show, In Living Color.
“[We pulled] from different things we grew up with and enjoyed that felt relevant to us, that felt real to us, that felt natural to us,” he said.
Lockhart acquired the license for his company in September 2023 and they hosted their first show in December of that year. Occasionally, he still wrestles, but running ASÉ takes up the bulk of his time.
“I’m still just getting back in the swing of things,” he said. “It’s been a journey to balance all this with moving forward in your mental health as well.”
Having minored in African Diaspora Studies in college, Lockhart also brought a certain awareness around political and social issues to the way he wanted to run ASÉ, all under the tagline “Be a Revolutionary.” With the goal of evoking change on a social and political level, he set out to spread a positive message of hope and resiliency against hate.
“I couldn’t attend every protest, so I took the protests with me,” Lockhart wrote on his website.
ASÉ Wrestling is about more than entertainment
A Yoruba word that loosely translates to “life force” or “energy,” ASÉ was not the original name that Lockhart had envisioned for his organization. There were several names in the running, the most prominent one being Vendetta, but he decided against that when he began to take his idea more seriously.
“I think initially, I had a bigger chip on my shoulder when I initially created this,” he said. “Because at first it started as fun, and then I started to see how unserious the world, the wrestling space, was taking Black wrestling, especially on an independent level. And I was just really like, ‘All right, you know what? Let’s do this, and let’s do it big.’”
He didn’t feel that the word “vendetta,” with its negative associations, could properly communicate the vibe he wanted to cultivate with his company, so he tapped into his collegiate experience — not only the minor in African Diaspora Studies but the Bachelor’s degree in Communications.
“I was looking for one word that would describe the feeling and the emotion and the intentionality behind what this brand is, what I wanted it to be,” he said. ”I wanted to look at this through a lens of celebrating the diaspora at large, and that’s every element of the diaspora.
“I thought it would be a beautiful thing if everyone was here, if they could represent themselves and everyone could be seen,” he continued. “That takes a lot of creativity, takes a lot of optimism, and it takes a lot of just vision. And ASÉ is all about that. It’s all about life force and life energy, and speaking things into existence and affirmation.”
He also said that some people use “asé” the same way others use “amen.”
“When you agree with something, you’re speaking something to life.”
One thing Lockhart wants to make clear is that this organization isn’t just for Black wrestlers. It’s open to all races and nationalities and he wants everyone to experience it, but it remains important to him to showcase Black wrestlers because they often hit a ceiling in other organizations.
His goal is for Black wrestlers to have a place to flourish, yet his organization still faces judgment from the outside for its willingness to highlight Black wrestlers.
“I do want Black people to be able to look at this product and feel like this is somewhere they can see themselves and not be held back to maybe a stereotype,” he said. “I put a bunch of Black faces on a poster and everyone automatically minimizes it to, ‘It’s all Black wrestling,’ and I hate that we have to have that lens just because I’m platforming Black people.”
For Lockhart, ASÉ Wrestling is all about community. He’s not just trying to create a safe space for wrestlers, he wants to cultivate an entire cultural experience for fans, bringing on musicians, radio personalities and larger-than-life figures from the wrestling world.
In July, he hosted the ASÉ Family Block Party at Piedmont Open IB Middle School in Uptown, creating a whole day of festivities centered around family-friendly wrestling.
“It allows the world to be a little bit bigger,” he said. “It gets to be more than just pro-wrestling.”
ASÉ Wrestling has two upcoming shows scheduled for Oct. 26 and Dec. 7. The first show will feature wrestlers fighting to qualify for December’s one night, eight-man tournament to crown the first ever ASÉ men’s champion.
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