Spartan: The Warrior Name That Never Went to War
After that last one, we needed something stupid. So let’s talk about Spartan. Will Ferrara is a real wrestler. Solid worker. Johnny Rodz and Taz trained him.
He was in ROH for years, tagged with Cheeseburger, turned on Cheeseburger, became one of The Dawgs with Rhett Titus, and now he’s producing for TNA….which uhhh….you can read about here.
The name, though.
He debuted July 1, 2006. He was fifteen. Fifteen-year-old kid from Queens walks into Gleason’s, gets the Rodz stamp of approval, and somebody looks at a 5’9”, 178-pound teenager and says, “Yeah. Spartan.”
Not “Kid from Queens.” Not “Ferrara.” Spartan. Like he just crawled out of Thermopylae with a shield and a six-pack of attitude.
Why “Spartan” Is One of Wrestling’s Most Mid Ring Names
It is the most 2006 New York indie name imaginable. Every third guy on those cards was a Gladiator, a Destroyer, a Nightmare, or some other word you find on a $12 Halloween costume.
Spartan sat right in the middle of that pile: generic warrior cosplay with zero irony and even less character work attached to it.
And that’s the problem. The name isn’t historically cursed. It’s not Bastion Booger. It’s not Beaver Cleavage.
It’s not the Shockmaster eating a wall or Gobbledy Gooker doing whatever the hell that was.
Those names are so bad they became folklore. Spartan is worse in a quieter way. It’s just… nothing. A default character select. The wrestling equivalent of naming your first Xbox gamertag “xXDarkWarriorXx” and never changing it.
He had the good sense to drop it around 2013 and just be Will Ferrara. Correct decision. The second you put “Spartan” on a modern graphic next to “TNA Producer,” the whole thing looks like a mid-2000s MySpace layout that escaped containment.
So no, it’s not the worst name in wrestling history. It’s just one of the most aggressively mid ones ever given to a kid who actually made it. That’s its own special kind of embarrassing.
We’re still writing the bigger piece. This was the intermission.
