This South Jersey ‘factory’ makes monsters. It has become a pipeline to WrestleMania.

Luis Martínez plugged the small black-and-white TV into the car’s cigarette lighter and fiddled with the antenna so he could watch pro wrestling as he sat in the passenger seat. It took about two hours for Martinez and his buddy to drive home on the New Jersey Turnpike from wrestling school. That portable TV — the screen they one day dreamed to be on — was the perfect way to pass the time.

“I would watch SmackDown,” Martinez said. “And he would basically listen to it so we wouldn’t miss wrestling.”

Martínez, best known as WWE star Damian Priest, always wanted to be a professional wrestler. He just didn’t know how to become one. He thought he could just show up at WWE and tell the people there he was ready to go. His friend, Charlie Corletta, told him they needed to train at a school. Corletta found the Monster Factory, the South Jersey wrestling school that opened in Mount Holly in the 1980s and broke in a cast of future WWE stars. Martínez was in.

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“It was a tiny little place with tiny little rings,” said Martínez, who started training in 2003, when the Monster Factory was still owned by founder Larry Sharpe. “A little boxing ring that was like a foot off the ground. As solid as can be. It was basically like landing on the ground. It was brutal. But to me, it looked amazing. Looking back now, I’m like, ‘Why would I ever sign up?’ I saw a ring and said, ‘Wow. I get to do wrestling.’ I didn’t know any better.”

Martínez paid his tuition, kept his job as a bouncer in North Jersey, and drove to the Monster Factory three nights a week. His path to success was not immediate — Martínez didn’t reach the WWE until 2018 — but he enters this weekend’s WrestleMania as one of the company’s top performers at age 41. Some even expect Martínez to leave as champion as his on-screen character possesses the briefcase that can be cashed in anytime for a title shot. And it would be quite the story if Martínez became champion at Lincoln Financial Field, just a short drive from where he learned to wrestle.

“That was my initiation to this crazy world that I’m in now,” Martínez said.

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Danny Cage climbed telephone poles for Verizon, making six figures in a union job with a pension. It seemed like a good life, but he wanted to chase his dream. He purchased the Monster Factory in 2011 from Sharpe and learned three years later that Verizon was offering buyouts. Cage told his wife he wanted to focus on his wrestling school. She asked if he thought he could make it work.

“I said, ‘I think I can,’” said Cage, who learned to wrestle at the Monster Factory in the 1990s before injuries forced him to become a coach. “She trusted me and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ I took the buyout, basically put the money into the wrestling company, and here we are.”

The school now operates out of the Paulsboro Wrestling Club, sharing the building with a high school wrestling team. Cage’s students train in the morning and late at night while the high school kids take over in the afternoon. It works out for everyone — and it looks much better than the school Martínez arrived at more than 20 years ago.

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“It was almost embarrassing to be at the Monster Factory at one point, and this was one of the points,” said Cage. “It was in a strip mall [in Bellmawr] and the ceilings were so low that we couldn’t pick anyone up because the feet would hit the ceiling. One ring had no ropes. One did.”

Sharpe, a former professional wrestler, opened the Monster Factory in 1981 as one of the country’s first schools that was open to the public. Among his first pupils was Chris Pallies, a behemoth from Woodbury who became known as King Kong Bundy. Pallies headlined WrestleMania five years later in a steel-cage match with Hulk Hogan.

Sharpe’s factory produced more monsters like Bam Bam Bigelow, The Big Show, and Sheamus before Sharpe died of cancer in 2017.

“I remember so many times, Larry would just be walking through and he’d yell something like, ‘Slow down’ or ‘nice elbow,’” Cage said. “You knew when he took his time to talk to you, it was for a reason. He could see a lot in you with your training.”

Martínez wrestled his first match in 2004, a year after he first arrived at the Monster Factory for a tryout to determine if he was coachable.

“I’m pretty sure that was just to get an extra payment from us,” he said.

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Martínez watched others struggle with the coordination needed to run across the ring and bounce off the ropes before he jumped inside and did it with ease. He knew then that he had a chance. But it didn’t take long for Martínez to sour on the business. He kept training, wrestled a few matches every month, and saw little growth. He wasn’t getting paid to perform, so Martínez was losing money as he chased his dream.

“I didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel here,” he said. “How do I make it to WWE? I felt like I didn’t have a future in the business.”

And then his wrestling gear was stolen from his car in Union City, N.J. He didn’t have the money to replace it, so Martínez quit. He didn’t wrestle for a year before he watched the Undertaker — his childhood favorite — perform on TV at WrestleMania 25 in 2009 against Shawn Michaels.

“I said, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” Martínez said. “I started training again. I had been lazy, gained weight, got complacent. One day, it just clicked. I’m going to work for my dream. I’m going to stop waiting for people to hand me stuff. I lost 100 pounds in a year.”

The Monster Factory did not have a building when Cage purchased it from Sharpe. It didn’t even have a ring or any students to train.

“I bought nothing other than the name,” Cage said. “I started from scratch.”

He held a tryout for prospective wrestlers and soon built a roster of students. Cage invited Martínez, who was then wrestling on the independent circuit, to return as a coach. He made the school his own while still passing on the lessons he learned under Sharpe.

“One day I was coaching in front of him and he was just sitting back in a chair,” Cage said. “He starts giggling and laughing. I’m thinking he’s making fun of me. Finally, I turned around and said, ‘What are you laughing at?’ He said, ‘Nothing, bud. You’re coaching exactly the way I coach and you don’t even realize it. Keep going.’ It was like a father-son relationship.”

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Cage’s factory is open nightly and hosts shows on the weekends. The instructors teach students how to wrestle while also training referees and broadcasters. Cage teaches in-ring maneuvers, improves his pupils’ microphone skills, and even shows them how to build a ring. The school was featured last year in its own show on Apple+ TV and has sent a cast of wrestlers to WWE, just like Sharpe had done. The South Jersey factory is still a pipeline and it is Cage’s only job after walking away from the union gig he had.

“I always said if I get one student there, I’d be happy,” Cage said. “I got one there and then I found out I wasn’t happy. I needed to get everyone there. That was the mission.”

Martínez purchased new gear and moved to Philadelphia after his dream was reignited. He trained with Cage, helped him teach students, and wrestled in South Philly for Ring of Honor. His career took off as Martínez — known then as Punishment Martinez — became one of Ring of Honor’s champions and traveled to Japan and England.

“My journey was really long, but it was my own fault,” he said. “I was lazy. I was complacent. I was one of those people who wanted a pat on the back and hear people say, ‘You’re doing good. You’re going to be fine.’ I didn’t realize that I was my own worst enemy. It’s your dream. No one is going to work for it for you. When I figured that out, it completely changed.”

Martínez knew he made it when he could win over the South Philly crowds at the old ECW Arena on Swanson and Ritner Streets. There’s no better barometer for success, he said, than a crowd in Philly, New York, or Boston. Martínez grew up near New York, but Philly became home.

He was 36 years old when he signed with WWE and Martínez did not make it to the company’s main roster until he was 39. It took time for the Monster Factory’s current star to find his place. But Martínez is now one of the top performers in professional wrestling. Now he’s the star of the shows he used to watch on that small TV when he was chasing his dream.

“It never gets lost on me how special this is and how fortunate I am,” Martínez said. “After all these years and all the struggles and all the sacrifices to make it and the crazy life that I’ve had, I’m here today in this position. It never gets lost on me how special this is.”

“I shouldn’t be in the position I am, but I just wouldn’t stop. I willingly believed that I was meant to do this. I couldn’t see myself having a 9-to-5. Since I was a kid, I never understood the idea of that’s my future. No, I was born to do this. It just took me to actually work toward my dream. If you have a dream, I’m the perfect example of anything is possible. You just have to work for it.”