Tri-Valley Man Puts Dublin On The Map In Professional Wrestling

DUBLIN, CA — “From Dublin California…A.J!”

Those are some of the first words in a video highlighting a super fan contest with professional wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling. A proud moment for Dublin native A.J. Datanagan

“It was a cool experience to put Dublin on the map just because it's a small town on the come up now and it's cool to be able to say I represent it,” Datanagan said.

Datanagan has been a fan of wrestling for as long as he can remember.

“I’ve been in love with it since at least the late 90’s. I’ve had ten million trends come and go whether it was Pokemon, magic or whatever but this was one of the only things that always stayed cool to me,” he said.

He wanted to be involved in the world of wrestling but had to be creative in deciding which of his talents would get him there.

“I knew I'm not a big guy, it’s not really who I am, but I've always been loud and a lot of people think annoying so I said let me use that to my advantage,” he said.

One day while scrolling online, an add came up for the superfan contest with All Elite Wrestling, based in Jacksonville Florida. As a traffic reporter, Datanagan has the voice. He submitted an application and was picked to fly out to Jacksonville.

Datanagan spent a full day in the life of a professional wrestling announcer, and telling people where Dublin California is.

“The first thing I did was announce a tag team into the ring. The second thing I did was play-by-play commentating on a match that was prerecorded. And I did a post-match interview with one of the superstars, Scorpio Sky,” he said.

You can probably guess what Datanagan’s hopes for the future are. Yes, it's working in the wrestling industry. But for now, he's basking in this spotlight.

“It really was a dream come true,” he said.