Exclusive Interview: Ring Of Honor's Dalton Castle On Summer Supercard, Chris Jericho Cruise & More

by Darren Paltrowitz
dalton castle
ROH

Now are you originally from upstate New York?

Dalton Castle: Yeah, I was born in Rochester, New York.Does it feel like a hometown show of sorts when you're playing places like Toronto and Canada?Dalton Castle: Well I mean, I don't know if you know geography, but Rochester, New York is within the United States. Toronto is in Canada. Not exactly my hometown. I'm very familiar with the area in that I grew up so close to it...

Well Rochester has interesting ties to entertainment. If you want to talk about Kristen Wiig growing up there and the band Longwave's singer [Steve Schiltz] is from there and all that, but Rochester at the same time doesn't seem to be very connected with entertainment as whole. Growing up were you very aware of House Of Guitars and all these connections to entertainment?

Dalton Castle: Of course I was aware of that. You couldn't turn on a radio station or a TV station without seeing one of their commercials for the place [House Of Guitars].But a lot of people, when they grew up in a town that's not half a million people, they don't really know a lot of people who made it within entertainment.

So in your case did you know, "Hey I'm going to make it because this person and that person are from there?"

Dalton Castle: I don't know. I never looked at my surroundings as the recipe for my success, just because other people in my town made it out of there and made a living in the world of entertainment. It didn't mean necessarily that I wasn't already destined to do so. I guess it shows that it's possible. I was never discouraged growing up in Rochester, I wasn't thinking, "No way I can make wrestling my life because I live here now."

Isn't Luke Harper originally from that area as well?

Dalton Castle: Yeah, Luke Harper and I came up together. He's actually pretty instrumental in the very early years of me starting my wrestling training.

Are there other wrestlers who are from that area that listeners of this may know about?

Dalton Castle: Yeah, Colin Delaney. He came from there. I don't know if everybody's familiar with "Bad Boy" Barry Hardy. He teamed with Duane Gill back in the day... I had a great carload of guys that kind of helped me when I first started because we were really passionate about wrestling... There's Jimmy Olsen and Cheech & Cloudy. It was a great little group of wrestlers who really wanted to get out and do more and travel to more cities and get their faces seen as much as possible.

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Darren Paltrowitz is a New York resident with over 20 years of entertainment industry experience. He began working around the music business as a teenager, interning for the manager of his then-favorite band Superdrag. In the years following, he has worked with a wide array of artists including OK Go, They Might Be Giants, Mike Viola, Tracy Bonham, Loudness, Rachael Yamagata, and Amanda Palmer. Darren's writing has appeared in dozens of outlets including the New York Daily News, Inquisitr, The Daily Meal, The Hype Magazine, All Music Guide, Guitar World, TheStreet.com, Format Magazine, Businessweek, The Improper, Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times, and the Jewish Journal. Darren is also the host of the "Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz" podcast, as co-produced with PureGrainAudio. He is also the author of two published books, including 2018's "Pocket Change: Your Happy Money" (Book Web Publishing) and 2019's "Good Advice From Professional Wrestling" (6623 Press).