“I had never really considered it an option for a career until he mentioned that I could do it,” Nowinski says. “I thought, ‘Who knows but I’ll give it a shot.’ I knew I could be a good enough consultant…but wrestling I had no idea whether I’d be able to succeed or not.”

With Corker’s assistance, Nowinski launched himself into the wrestling world, working part-time and training in the evenings.

“[I] had some friends who worked in the television industry,” Corker says. “I had also done prior work in the development of pay-per-view television. As such, I had more knowledge than the average fan about how the industry works… I helped him get a preliminary tryout with the wrestling organization owned by Turner Broadcasting (WCW).”

Introduction to Wrestling

Adding Killer Kowalski’s four-night-a-week workout regimen to his scaled-back job schedule, Nowinski turned in 14-hour days on a regular basis, pushing himself to the limit.

But even then it was not inevitable that Nowinski would pass between the ropes on his way into the ring.

In fact, Nowinski’s fascination with wrestling was relatively nascent even as he made great strides in his efforts to make the big time.

Unlike many youths, he never imagined himself as a professional wrestler, never donned a cape while imitating Hulk Hogan and certainly never looked forward to watching the sport on television.

“My mother banned [watching] it,” Nowinski says. “I guess it was a blessing in disguise. You pretty much can’t watch something like that if you want to get to a place like Harvard.”

And for three years after leaving home, the habits engrained by his mother endured, thanks largely to the lack of cable access in standard Harvard dormitories.

But during the summer prior to his senior year, Nowinski and a group of his teammates—including his partner in the famed “Polish connection” defensive tandem Isaiah Kacyvenski ’00—remained in Cambridge to train for their upcoming season in DeWolfe.

With access to cable television and surrounded by friends obsessed with “Monday Night Raw” and “Smackdown,” Nowinski had little choice but to watch, idolizing rising stars Triple H and Kurt Angle.

“It was quite an experience,” Nowinski says. “They all watched wrestling, and we had cable and I got hooked on it.”

But at that time, his thoughts were not of a future in wrestling but hopes of a career in the National Football League. Though the idea did not occur to him prior to his junior year, Nowinski trained with a professional career as his ultimate goal during his final two seasons.

“During junior year, I became good,” Nowinski says. “So that became my focus the last two years I was there. But it wasn’t a lifelong dream for me.”