In a recent interview with Sportico, Real American Freestyle (RAF) CEO and co-founder Chad Bronstein addressed some of the most-discussed topics surrounding the promotion, including athlete pay, viewership figures, and the use of influencers in what he described as a broader effort to grow the sport.
On athlete salaries, which have generated significant online speculation, Bronstein refused to confirm specific figures while making his position on compensation clear.
“Salary wise, no one knows what someone’s getting paid,” he said. “I’m not going to talk about who gets paid what, but what I will say is when we started this, the whole vision was that athletes, wrestlers deserve to make and be professional athletes.”
He went further, framing wrestler pay as central to the league’s purpose.
“Our goal is to have them make tons of money. That is our end. I think we’ve done it, but we want to keep making it more and more and more because they deserve it. That’s what professional wrestling or unscripted wrestling should be.”
On viewership, Bronstein shared figures that represent what he called RAF’s dominance on social media.
“We’re driving at least 250 million to 300 million views every 20 days,” he said. “We’re the number one promotion on Fox Nation. We’re definitely the number one on all, I would say, in social media for any of their assets. We’re their number one promoter.”
He attributed a portion of that growth to a strategy involving influencers, an approach that initially drew resistance from wrestling purists.
“I think the cool thing about wrestling is you don’t always have to see the Olympic gold medals versus Olympic gold medals,” he explained. “Let’s just say for example you have an influencer that really wants to take it serious to wrestle. You get great content from them, they take it seriously, then it only draws more eyes to wrestling.”
Bronstein acknowledged the skepticism but suggested the results have brought people around.
“I think what we’ve proven is that people and the purists were like, ‘Okay, I get it now. I get why they may put an influencer because now you saw Arman and 6ix9ine at a Brand Risk event wrestling, right? You see, and you’re being tagged.’ So I think RAF’s making wrestling cool again.”
He tied the influencer strategy back to a larger goal for the sport overall.
“That brings in new audiences and new kids to come wrestle at clubs and just draws more audience, more momentum to the sport. Our goal is to grow the sport, make it fun for the kids, make it amazing for the athletes, and just create a good culture.”
