Wrestler Sheds Pounds, Gets Bout

About seven months ago, local professional wrestling personality "Roughhouse" Ralph Mosca decided it was time to lose some of the 285 pounds that had accumulated on his 6-foot-2-inch frame.

The promoter of World Wrestling Entertainment's local Florida Championship Wrestling events, Mosca could still smash a trash can upside somebody's head as well as anyone, but not all of his bulk was muscle.

Besides, the shaven-headed brawler-turned-promoter harbored an unspoken aspiration: He wanted to get back in the ring.

And not just any ring with any wrestlers.

At 38, he wanted a chance to finish his career inside the squared circle with Vince McMahon's wildly popular and sometimes controversial organization. Now a trim and ready 225, Mosca is getting what amounts to a second chance at sports entertainment glory.

On Tuesday, he will face Orlando's Byron Saxton, part of a stable of potential WWE stars trained at the organization's facility off Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa.

Florida Championship Wrestling boss and former big-time wrestler Steve Keirn, who once wrestled as Doink the Clown, said Mosca probably wouldn't be getting a chance in the ring if he hadn't dropped about 60 pounds - mostly through diet and moderate exercise - during the past seven months.

"When he told me awhile ago that he wanted to get back in there, I told him two things: 'You're too fat, and you're too old,'" Keirn said. "I tell it like I see it."

What many people would have taken as a no, Mosca took as a challenge.

After all, he has brawled in the limelight before.

In 1993, he wrestled several times for McMahon's World Wrestling Federation, sharing the ring in singles and tag-team action with the likes of Iron Mike Sharp, Razor Ramon, Diesel, The Steiner Brothers and The Head Shrinkers, among others.

Less than a week before his showdown with Saxton, Mosca sounded as if his trash-talking skills had been honed as effectively as his new physique.

"He's a loudmouth," Mosca said of Saxton. "He's cocky and arrogant in and out of the ring. I really don't get along with him that well. He's disrespectful."

Mosca hopes to defeat Saxton with "The Big Bamboozle," a finishing move involving a headbutt that he has been perfecting.

The event begins at 8:30 p.m. at Bourbon Street on U.S. 19, home of the organization's weekly shows, which are taped and critiqued by WWE.

"At least I'll be getting looked at," Mosca said.

Although Mosca has been busy promoting Florida Championship Wrestling matches, he also has wrestled for smaller organizations. A few weeks ago, he made a triumphant ring return at a show at Washingtonville High School, outside New York, where he graduated in 1988.

With a snort, he dismissed a suggestion that he might be getting too old to compete with the WWE's roster of budding young stars.

"Dude," he said, "Bautista is 40. Stone Cold Steve Austin came in at 35 to the WWE, and Diamond Dallas Page didn't start wrestling until he was close to 40. Age really has nothing to do with it as long as you can perform and take care of yourself."