Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 822 is my conversation with Hunter Smallback, a Florida-raised lifelong angler, surfer, and former Division I football player who is now training to become a professional wrestler. We trace a life built entirely around the outdoors — he was strapped to the bow of a boat in the Keys as a baby so his parents could keep fishing — and then get into the wild left turn: learning the brutal, athletic craft of pro wrestling, taking bump after bump, and discovering how much it has in common with everything else he has chased.
▶ Watch on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
Hunter Smallback is a Florida-raised outdoorsman — a lifelong angler and surfer who grew up fishing the Keys, Mosquito Lagoon, and the causeways and inlets around New Smyrna and Ponce Inlet. He earned a Division I college football scholarship, choosing a school partly for its proximity to 23,000 acres of public hunting land, and he is now training to become a professional wrestler. He also appears in a shark-focused TV project he references in the episode.
It was never a choice — it was his entire upbringing. He describes being ratchet-strapped into a pack-and-play on the bow of the boat in the Keys at six months old so his parents could keep fishing and going to the sandbar. From there it became a burning passion: pedaling his bike to the neighborhood pond, later trailering a little john boat to Mosquito Lagoon and the inlets to drift for big snook, and getting more excited over a redfish or snook than almost anything.
Hunter, a highly athletic former football player, is taking on pro wrestling as a brand-new craft. He is candid that it is a steep learning curve — you walk out of your first class feeling like you understand it, then realize at the next class you know nothing again. He describes taking bump after bump, which is hard on the body, and leaning on the idea that you only get good after thousands of reps.
He treats recovery like the lifelong athlete he is. Hunter talks about regular massages, getting adjusted, constant stretching, and continuing to lift — the same habits that have protected him through football and other sports. We also get into how recovery protocols across pro wrestling have improved dramatically, referencing the DDP Yoga work that helped wrestlers like Jake the Snake regain mobility.
Hunter chose his college partly to be ten minutes from 23,000 acres of public land and twenty-five to thirty minutes from where he grew up surfing. In the episode he compares the physical demands of chasing permit on the flats — long, hard poling — with elk hunting, where you are scaling miles up mountains and down the backside. Both are brutally physical, but he draws a clear distinction between them.
Hunter teases a television project involving sharks without giving away the surprises. He says he has never seen sharks that ferocious or that on top of the crew, calling the experience very interesting and clearly memorable. He is careful not to spoil it for the show's eventual audience.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 822 with Hunter Smallback is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. The video version is embedded at the top of this page — press play to watch.
I have a real fascination with wrestling — I grew up with only three channels, and you would wake up to the fishing shows early and wrestling later. So a guy who lived the fishing life as deeply as Hunter did and then walked into pro wrestling is exactly the kind of crossover I love. He is wildly athletic, he came up the way a lot of us did chasing snook and redfish in Florida, and now he is learning to take bumps for a living. Press play in the YouTube player above to hear how those worlds connect.
Hunter's origin story is one of the better ones I have heard. Strapped to the bow of a boat as an infant. Sneaking onto a golf course — step stool at the base of a wall, muscle-up over the top — just to fish the best creek he had ever seen. Trailering a john boat alone to Mosquito Lagoon the second he got a car. He explains how that obsession shaped everything that came after. Listen to him tell it in the episode.
This is the part I kept pushing on. Hunter is a D1 athlete, and even he describes the wrestling learning curve as humbling — confident after one class, lost again by the next. He talks about taking bump after bump, the toll on the body, and the brutal honesty that you only get good through thousands of reps. Watch that section in the YouTube player above.
Hunter treats his body like the instrument it is — massages, adjustments, stretching, lifting, the works. We get into how much pro wrestling recovery has evolved, including the DDP Yoga approach that helped older wrestlers reclaim mobility after years of damage. If you train hard at anything, this part is worth your time. Listen to the full conversation.
▶ Watch the full conversation on YouTube · 🎧 Listen now
Hunter and I both know how physical fishing can get — poling miles for a shot at a permit on fly is no joke. But he draws a sharp line with elk hunting, where you are scaling miles up a mountain and down the back to reach the next animal. It is a great window into how he thinks about the different kinds of hard. Watch it in the player above.
The day after talking with Hunter, what stuck with me was how seamlessly he moves between worlds that look nothing alike — the flats, the football field, the mountains, the wrestling ring — and treats all of them as the same project: do the reps, protect the body, chase the thing you love.
The wrestling chapter is the surprise, but the through-line is the Florida kid strapped to the bow of a boat who never stopped wanting to see what was out there.
Watch the whole thing in the player above. It is one of the more fun crossover conversations I have had.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Hunter Smallback is a Florida-raised outdoorsman and athlete. A lifelong angler and surfer who grew up fishing the Keys, Mosquito Lagoon, and the inlets of central Florida's Atlantic coast, he went on to earn a Division I college football scholarship and now trains to become a professional wrestler. He brings an athlete's discipline and a deep outdoor background to everything he pursues, from chasing permit on the flats to learning to take bumps in the ring, and he is involved in a shark-focused television project.
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