Not many people get a chance to live their childhood dream, let alone succeed at it, but Dauphin’s Steven Stashko is doing just that.

Stashko began training as a professional wrestler in 2020, making his in-ring debut in August of that year.

Less than two years later, the 27-year-old, who wrestles under the name Bryce Bentley, teamed up with Sammy Peppers to win the Canadian Wrestling Elite tag team championships, Feb. 4, in Stonewall.

Wrestling professionally was a childhood dream for Stashko.

“Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to do professional wrestling. I’ve always been a huge die hard fan ever since I was really young. I finally got the opportunity to start training with A.J. Sanchez and the rest has been history so far,” he said.

Training to be a wrestler was some of the most gruelling days Stashko ever experienced, from having to set up and then tear down the ring to actually getting in the ring to “get beat up when I was in the ring.”

Among his childhood idols were Christopher Daniels, Chris Jericho, Elix Skipper and Jeff Hardy, and he has patterned his style of wrestling after Jericho and Hardy, especially.

“Those are two of the top guys that I definitely try to do my style closer to,” he said.

Besides CWE, Stashko has also wrestled for Real Canadian Wrestling out of Calgary, as well as Premier Championship Wrestling, another Winnipeg-based company.

Because of the pandemic, Stashko has not had the opportunity to wrestle in his hometown yet, but he hopes that will become a reality this year.

“With restrictions opening up, we have a good chance of doing a tour in Manitoba, so I’m hoping to hit up Dauphin,” he said.

Collectively known as Red Hot Summer, Stashko and his tag team partner and best friend Peppers, who hails from Portage, won the tag team titles from CWE veterans Sanchez and The Boston Bruiser Kevin Doyle. Becoming a champion was a dream come true.

“You idolize watching these wrestlers and then one day seeing it be you, it’s crazy to know that I was able to achieve a childhood dream of mine, becoming a tag team champion,” Stashko said.

Stashko has always been more interested in tag team wrestling than singles.

“I’ve always more enjoyed watching tag team wrestling as opposed to singles wrestling. So I’m really just living my dream of being in a tag team,” he said.

The Bryce Bentley moniker came about when he and fellow trainees were throwing names around.

“It turns out Bryce Bentley was what kind of stuck. I like having Bentley as the last name and then we just found a first name going back and forth with the rest of the trainees and that’s the name we came up with,” he said.

One of Stashko’s goals as a wrestler is to compete in as many places as possible. While WWE is widely regarded as the ultimate destination for young wrestlers, for Stashko, he dreams of some day making it to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), which he feels is a better fit for his style of wrestling than WWE.

Stashko is also open to some day wrestling overseas.

Entertaining people while he is in the ring is what Stashko enjoys most about what he does.

“Being in front of a large audience and getting people to cheer and them knowing that I’m providing a form of entertainment, it’s just a real good thrill that I get knowing that people are having fun and getting to cheer me on,” he said, adding he enjoys interacting with the crowd during his matches. “That’s one of my favourite parts,” he said.

Stashko is continually training to be in the best physical shape possible.

“It’s something I work very hard on is just strict diets, having to do intense training. I go to Iron Age Strength, which is one of the best gyms in Winnipeg, I’d say, because it’s ran by one of the strongest men in Manitoba, Tyler Colton,” he said. “Tyler Colton, he’s really helped change me as a person and really helped me start hitting my goals in the gym and really changed the physical side of my life.”