Brian Damage
We have seen this story happen many times in the past…a wealthy individual who was a wrestling fan invests his/her money in a pro wrestling project. That wealthy investor loses a ton of money on their investment and pulls out of the project, thus ending said project. It happened with such promotions as the AWF, XWF and the Heroes of Wrestling pay per view. You can also add Jonathan Vargas and Wrestlicious to the list of money losing wrestling ventures.
Who is Jonathan Vargas and what was Wrestlicious? Well, Vargas was a 19 year old kid that won the Powerball lottery in 2008. The jackpot was at $35.3 million dollars. Vargas was not only the first resident of South Carolina to win Powerball, but he was also the youngest person to ever win it. At the time, he worked a job in construction and decided to stop and get gas and a coffee readying his day of labor. While at the gas station mini mart, he purchased one lottery ticket. Vargas chose the numbers based on his siblings and mother’s ages. Vargas nailed every number and won the Powerball Jackpot. He beat the odds of winning which was 1 in 292.2 million. Instead of getting paid in installments, Vargas chose to take a lump sum of 17 million.
Despite his young age, Vargas seemed very grounded and vowed to spend his money wisely. In a press conference after winning the money, Vargas said, “I don’t have the temptation to go out and buy 15 cars or 50 houses, or a big mansion with 50-plus rooms… I just want to be comfortable.” With that said, he was a big wrestling fan and decided to invest some of his money into starting his own wrestling promotion. Vargas loved the classic Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) from the 1980’s and had the idea of creating a modern version of that show. Vargas claimed he initially spent around $500,000 to start up this project.
The other money came from his new business partners which consisted of Johnny Cafarella who was a former producer of GLOW and legendary manager ‘The Mouth of the South’ Jimmy Hart. Together the three men formed an all female wrestling promotion called ‘Wrestlicious.’ According to Vargas, the promotion would be a combination of Mad TV mixed with the Dave Chappelle Show mixed with a little WWE. Vargas envisioned the promotion as more character driven than just plain wrestling…much like the glory days of GLOW. It took over a year to get off the ground, but in 2009 ‘Wrestlicious was finally officially formed.
The name of the Wrestlicious show was called ‘TakeDown’ and Vargas and his crew filmed the pilot episode, then shopped it to the various television networks for sale. The Dish Network agreed to air the show on the network known as MAV TV in the United States and Bite TV in Canada. It aired at 11pm on Mondays which seemed great as it would follow Monday Night Raw and TNA which were both going head to head on that night. The booking was done mostly by Jimmy Hart who had to run the ideas to Vargas for final approval. Vargas admitted that due to Hart’s experience and status as a wrestling legend, he just nodded and agreed to everything pitched to him. That also included making Vargas himself into a character on TV.
Vargas said he was very reluctant at first, because he wanted the women wrestlers to be the focus, but Hart and Cafarella convinced him and thus became known on TV as JV Rich a rapper mogul gimmick. Hart and Cafarella also convinced Vargas to move to the Tampa, Florida area from South Carolina because the majority of the talent they wanted to sign lived down there. TakeDown debuted on March 1st, 2010 and had a roster that consisted of wrestlers like Serena Deeb, Brooke Adams, Daffney, Madison Rayne and LuFisto. Some of the gimmick names of wrestlers included Draculetta, Glory, The Bristol Sisters, Malibu McKenzie and Coco Montego.
After the debut show aired, the ratings were apparently dismal and Dish TV decided to move the show from Mondays to Wednesdays. Unfortunately, the ratings and quality of the show never improved. Many critics ripped apart the show as being very low brow…even for a GLOW rip off program. Wrestlicious TakeDown was canceled after just 13 episodes. While Carafella moved on to producing Women of Wrestling (WOW) financed by the Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss and Jimmy Hart easily moved on to other pro wrestling shows and projects…Jonathan Vargas was left out in the cold, thus ending his venture into the world of professional wrestling.
Rumors began to circulate that Vargas had been murdered, and his body parts were discovered on a beach. That was not the case at all, but sadly reports are that Vargas lost his multi-million-dollar fortune. While it wasn’t all wasted on the Wrestlicious project, he did make a series of poor investments and lost his fortune. For the most part, Vargas now lives a very quiet life in Florida with his wife and family. He has pretty much removed himself from the spotlight.
David Fullam
Of all the money mark tales, this may be the money markiest.
Kyle Prescott
Wrestling was the least of his bad investments. To be fair, getting that much money at a young age and greedy people looking to “help” you is a recipe for disaster. Sad but not the uncommon. Invested in just a simple low cost S&P 500 fund and he would be worth triple by now.