It’s a question that had to be asked. When Slice Boogie and Danny Limelight team up for matches south of the border, how are these two Puerto Ricans received in Mexico?
“They need somebody to boo,” Slice responds, not missing a beat. “They hate us because we’ve been kicking their ass in wrestling and kicking their ass in boxing since the beginning of time.”
If you think that’s the heel talking, no, that’s Milton Troche, a New Yorker in his mind, heart, and soul, even if he’s made his home in Los Angeles since 2015. That is nearly a decade, but don’t call him an honorary Californian. In fact, it’s his refusal to give up his NYC attitude that has made him popular out west. “They love the way I act,” he said. “We’re literally a fucking caricature. We grew up watching LA as kids in California movies. It’s the same way here. They grew up watching New Yorkers.”
More and more people are watching Slice Boogie since Troche began wrestling three years into his California stay, and while he admits to starting “very late” in the biz, he is making up for lost time. “I’m becoming the man on this side of town with all the indies,” Roche said. “Danny (Limelight) and I are about to take over Mexico and AAA. But as far as just on the West Coast right now, I feel like I’m just building my singles reputation more and more.”
It’s a good place to be in, and while all is sunny at the moment (cue California reference), the road wasn’t easy for someone starting out late in what is a young man’s game on the indie circuit. Add in a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered in the summer of 2022, and Roche raised his degree of difficulty significantly. “I was out for a while, seven, eight months,” he said. “So I’m trying to regain all that momentum that I lost as both a single and a tag. I’m not just settling for mediocrity, so I’m just trying to build up right now.”
It’s an injury that could end a career, but he was back in the gym two weeks later. “I was limping around, so I was just doing upper body,” he said. “It’s a real bad injury, but I still made my way to the gym. Somehow, I was able to try to drive. That was the only place I really went, though. I would go to the gym to keep my sanity and then I couldn’t really go anywhere else.” Getting back in the ring was the driving force, and while he had already made noise with various promotions, including MLW, there were bigger goals to chase that hadn’t been fulfilled yet. So he worked, worked, and worked some more. And now that he’s back, the work hasn’t stopped.
“I’ve never wrestled in Japan; that’s my number one goal right now,” Troche said. “I feel like I’m definitely good enough on the mic and good enough in the ring to make some real, real money in this business. So if I’m going to be going out, it’s because I can’t walk anymore. There’s a lot of wrestlers who wanted to quit after a few years. I remember reading about Kenny Omega; after five years, he was ready to hang it up, and then he got the call to Japan and s**t popped off. But even then, it took this guy 17 years to become a household name.”
That’s a long time to do anything, especially something where there’s little money, long nights, long trips, and plenty of bumps on the way to the top and making it a full-time gig. Troche knows and he’s not going anywhere.
“Yeah, I can’t quit,” he said. “I love this s**t too much. Right now, I help train at my school (Santino Bros Wrestling Academy). I train different levels of kids while I’m still working, and whenever we have a trainer come in that has way more experience than me, I won’t even train, and I’ll be like, ‘Take over the class, and I’ll participate.’ So it’s the love of the game. It’s no different than growing up loving basketball. I played basketball my whole life. And when you’re a 28, 30-year-old man playing street basketball, it’s not for money or anything else, it’s just the love of the game. But wrestling pays me more than a pickup game at the park. At least wrestling’s given me some bread, but it’s not just the potential of that full-time bread; it’s the fact that I love it, and you get to perform. I can’t even describe it. There’s nothing like it.”
Once it’s in you, it’s in you, whether you’re 18 or 80. I tell him I saw a Warriors of Wrestling show in Brooklyn several years ago, and signing autographs at the venue was the late, great Vader. Towards the end of the show, he got up and walked slowly, cane in hand, to the back. You had to feel bad for the legend, his body ravaged by the years in the game…at least until he returned a few minutes later in his wrestling gear, mask and all, and proceeded to enter the ring and Vader bomb his poor opponent. Then it was back to the locker room and off into the night.
“You know what got him do that?” said Troche. “Adrenaline. I’m telling you, you could do crazy things when you come out when it’s time. Once the lights are on, trust me, I wake up. I walk like an old f**king geezer, but when I walk through the curtains to wrestle, I’m like Superman. You get that little adrenaline, and you could ignore the pain, and then a few hours later, you come back to normal.”
Sometimes, it’s that half-hour of adrenaline that makes it worth it. Actually, that’s always what makes it worth it. When Troche talks about the future, it’s never about money; it’s about getting that adrenaline fix not just in LA but around the world.
“If you think about it, there’s three major countries in the world for wrestling,” he said. “There’s America, there’s Mexico, and there’s Japan. Pro wrestling is humongous here, with a big, rich history. Obviously, I wrestled in America. I haven’t wrestled all over Mexico, but I’ve wrestled in Tijuana multiple times, and with the AAA thing, it’s only a matter of time before we start going to all the shows. But Japan is just…it’s on that bucket list. Would I sign there? I don’t know. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have a kid. If I could sign a full-time contract and live out there, who knows?”
Then we’ll see if Japan is ready for a Nuyorican.
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