Carmine Azzato: From Wrestling to Redemption
From an early age, Carmine Azzato had his identity tied to sports. “I dreamed about the NFL,” he recalls. “From the time I was ten, everything in my life was geared toward that goal. I put the work in, I had the size and strength and life felt like it was on track.”
That track was derailed when an ankle injury ended any hope of playing football at the highest level. “That was my first real obstacle in life and I didn’t know how to handle it. Football was everything to me, and when it was gone, I felt like I had nothing left.”
Professional wrestling filled the gap. Under the name BLAST, as part of the popular tag team The NEW DEMOLITION, Carmine shot up the rankings, winning nine World Championships. He wrestled in arenas across the country and around the world, in front of crowds of up to 90,000 people.
Fans saw a star. Carmine saw something else. “Wrestling gave me a platform,” he admits, “but it also gave me a mask to hide behind. I was making money, but it only gave me more to spend on drugs and alcohol. Addiction and depression were eating me from the inside.”
9/11 and the Search for Answers
Then came September 11, 2001. Carmine will never forget the view from the rooftop of his mother’s apartment in New York City as the second tower was struck: “I saw it with my own eyes. I felt the shock of it in my chest. That day marked me forever. It forced me to face questions I had been running from: What is life really about? What happens when it ends? Where will I spend eternity?”
For over a year, those questions haunted him. The noise of wrestling fame and the grip of addiction couldn’t drown out the reality that something in his life had to change.
An Unlikely Messenger
The turning point came through someone Carmine never expected. “It wasn’t a pastor or an evangelist who told me about Jesus,” he explains. “It was two co-workers, one named David and the other Luis.”
Luis’s life was far from picture-perfect. An immigrant from El Salvador, he had come to the U.S. illegally and carried a record as a nine-time convicted felon. Yet God used him to speak into Carmine’s brokenness.
“By every standard, the world would have said he wasn’t qualified to talk to me about God,” Carmine says. “But he’s the one who did. Here I was, a big white guy from America, addicted and broken. And God used a man from El Salvador — someone I never would have expected — to lead me to Jesus. That’s not coincidence. That’s grace.”
Through simple conversations at work, David & Luis shared the gospel and his own story of transformation. His faith stirred hope in Carmine’s heart.
A New Identity in Christ for Carmine Azzato
In November of 2002, Carmine Azzato surrendered his life to Christ. “I ran to the altar,” he remembers. “That night I experienced healing, deliverance and freedom. It was the beginning of my new identity in Christ.”
For Carmine, that was the start of a different kind of fight: the battle for his identity. “When I left wrestling, I lost my identity,” he admits. “I wrestled with the thought that I was nothing, that I was no one. But God began to show me who I really was in Him.”
Ephesians 6:12 gave new meaning to his journey: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age.” Carmine realized his fight was not against the shadows of his past, but for his radiant future in Christ.
Sharing God’s Love
Today, Carmine’s life tells a different story. The fame of wrestling has been replaced by a calling to share God’s love: “I always remind people: this isn’t coincidence. God knew exactly where I needed to be, and He knows where you need to be too.”
From broken NFL dreams to wrestling rings packed with fans, to a rooftop during 9/11 and the quiet moment Luis told him about Jesus — Carmine’s story is proof that God can turn any life around and give it new meaning in His love: “Everything I thought defined me — football, wrestling, fame, money — it all failed me. But Jesus never fails. He gave me a new identity, and now I wrestle for souls.”
Carmine Azzato has joined the Millwood family as an Outreach Evangelist. Carmine has previous experience as a professional wrestler and minister. He leads Hitting the Pavement ministries, whose mission is to ignite the Holy Spirit within people and help lead all God’s children to His light. Carmine and his wife, Jules, have been married for seven years, and he has three children, Meadow (21), Austin (24) and Chandler (27). Outside of work, Carmine enjoys boating, fishing, traveling with his wife and spending vacations with his family. A quote Carmine lives by is, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi.