Joe Dinkha
Joe Demaro
“Everything in my life has been a progression.” - Joe Dinkha
photos by stills to story
Joe Dinkha grew up like most traditional middle-class American kids but with a cultural twist. He lived in South Warren and spent his days riding bikes, hanging out on the playground, playing video games, and watching WWE Wrestling. Throughout elementary and high school he says, “I was reserved and shy, I wasn’t not the kid jumping off monkey bars or climbing fences, I was more reserved.”
Dinkha attended Fitzgerald Public High School and there he became serious about being an athlete. He started with Soccer. After attending a few summer scrimmages he realized he needed to get better at cardio which led him to the Track and field team. He realized in Track that he needed more willpower to make it through the track meets strong. So he joined the swim team junior year. The same year on the track team they needed people on the cross country team so he did that because he knew cross country long-distance running would help him in every other sport he was in. “Everything in my life has been a progression,” Dinkha went on, I always had the mentality of I need to do this to get better at that.”
High School graduation was approaching and Dinkha had an interest in technology, engineering, and computer science but deep down he wanted to be a professional wrestler. He would often research the top wrestling schools in Michigan. He says, “I would look up the House of Truth Wrestling School which was 3 miles from my house, I would look at that video of how they run the school and who came out of there.” Being a wrestler seemed like a faraway dream so he left for Michigan State in the Fall of 2012 to pursue a degree in Computer Science Engineering.
Every summer in between school Dinkha would apply and receive internships. The first internship was designing QR code tags for airport luggage. He says, “it gave me responsibility, I knew I needed to do that internship for experience for the next opportunity.” The next experience would come the following summer with a General Motors internship, his second internship which led him to Austin, Texas. He was asked back the following summer which led to a full-time offer with GM in Austin after graduating with a degree in Software Engineering.
It was 2016 Dinkha was working at GM. He says, “I don’t think humans are programmed the same job, same office, same desk, same cube, act a certain way, not themselves, act a certain way, not themselves.”
A year into the job he found himself thinking, “why did I move across the country for this?”
He was emotionally, physically, and mentally unfulfilled and then a tragedy occurred. His father and role model passed away unexpectedly. He says, “that was the first time I lost someone that close to me, he was like my best friend.” He went home to spend time with his family and the moment he came back to Austin his car got vandalized.
It was Christmas time and Dinkha stayed in Austin. He decided to have a day of self-care. He filled his day with activities that made him happy, at the end of the day he went to get a coffee. He sat down in a random Starbucks next to a guy watching a video on his iPad. Dinkha was minding his business, but something was telling him to look over. The man was watching WWE Monday Night Raw from the previous week. He thought to himself, “the only thing that could make me happy at this lowest point in my life is starting my wrestling career, something I think about every day.”
He rushed straight to his car to call a wrestling school in Austin he was keeping his eye out on, America's Academy of Pro Wrestling. He left a voicemail as no one answered. About 10 minutes later, George De La Isla (former wrestler and trainer) called him back and they talked for 45 minutes about everything on his mind. Dinkha started training a few days later on January 2, 2017, loved it, and never looked back.
“I was starting to see I get more fulfillment going to wrestling 4 days a week than I was earning a paycheck at work,” He says. He began doing Wrestling shows in Austin and looking for a way out of GM. After 6 years in corporate America he decided he would leave Austin in 2020 and travel the country wrestling.
When COVID hit all of his wrestling gigs were canceled. He lived minimally and slept on his former roommate’s couch. He says, “it helped me leave my job and disconnect from things that were taking up my day, I started stretching and meditating being more mindful and I came home to Michigan for a reset.”
He started training at The House of Truth Wrestling School, the same place he would look up years ago when wrestling was a faraway dream. He now trains with TV-experienced wrestlers and is exposed to bigger names. He says, “I used to tell people yeah, I was an engineer and now I am trying to make this wrestling thing work. Now, I tell people I am a Professional Wrestler, sometimes I forget I went to MSU, I don't identify with engineering anymore.”
There are certain milestones you hit in your wrestling career and WWE wrestle mania weekend is a right of passage. The weekend brings on independent shows that run in the same city every year.
Joe Demaro made his WrestleMania weekend debut in April 2021, wrestling on three shows that weekend. Dinkha is finally starting to see shows regularly running again and knows that now is the time to put the last year of training to the test, gain new opportunities, and advance his career.
“I want to get to the top I wanna be a champion, I wanna be WWE and go to Japan, this year. 4 years have benefited me to be more open-minded braver, happier me being middle eastern Assyrian Chaldean, the culture generally pushes you to do something secure to take care of yourself and your family. . People are going to support you or they won’t. The way I go about life is completely different.”
“I want to inspire people to know, that you can go to college, get a good job and take care of yourself and put that aside to do something that makes you happy. Pursuing your passion makes it easy to get up in the morning.”