INTERVIEW: Showtime Eric Young, wrestler turned extreme angler

Showtime Eric Young is off the hook, and that’s not just because he hosts the successful Animal Planet series Off the Hook: Extreme Catches. The 33-year-old lives life to the fullest. Action, suspense, challenging, ridiculously difficult … all quality possibilities for Young’s middle name. Heck, maybe even Danger is his middle name.

On the second season of Off the Hook, Young faces some unique adventures on the freshwater and saltwater highways of the United States. The episodes this summer, airing Sundays at 8 p.m., up the ante from last year’s inaugural season.

“I guess it’s like anything; if you do something once, you’ve got to do it bigger and better the second time around,” Young said recently during a phone interview. “I mean we do some real crazy stuff coming up.”

The angler, who also earns a living as a professional wrestler, sees his weekly fishing obstacles as a “welcome challenge,” and he’s particularly happy with how the fishing community has embraced the show. “The first season did very well, and it was very well-received,” he said. “So people in the fishing community support the show, and they started coming out of the woodworks, saying, ‘Hey, if you guys are interested, I do this. And I know a group of guys that do that.’ So that really helped, the fact that the fishing community embraced the show. There’s a lot of crazy people out there.”

This season, Young travels to Hawaii for some opihi picking, a form of fishing that the TV host said is perhaps the most dangerous activity he has ever come across. “Now opihi translated in Hawaiian is fish of death, and they say if a lot of people did it, they say that more people would die,” he said. “The opihi picking is likely the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in my life. I mean you’re just loaded with adrenaline, and they’re pretty good to eat, too.”

Young said when he’s faced with a challenge on the show, he’s not exactly scared. Instead, he relishes the obstacle and feeds off the enthusiasm.

“It says in the open of the show I’m an adrenaline junkie, and that’s the truth. … I love that feeling of being excited and kind of scared at the same time. I guess I get that feeling on a lot of the stuff that we do. And we did a lot of adventure stuff this year, not just fishing.”

In season two, Young takes part in ice bike racing and some interesting diving activities in Hawaii — all challenges that he called “really cool,” “adrenaline packed” and “fairly scary.”

Each episode of Off the Hook: Extreme Catches takes approximately a week to film. He started filming season two back in October and recently completed the episodes. “Anybody that thinks being a host on a fishing show is easy, I can assure you it is not,” Young added. “We have a saying everywhere we go, it’s called fishing not catching. And obviously catching the fish is a massive part of the show. That’s why we do it. So there’s going to be long, tedious hours. There’s going to be very hard, physical hours. It’s a very hard show to make, but it’s worth it man. I don’t know think I’ve ever been prouder of anything in my life.”

Sometimes catching that elusive species of fish can be trying. No fish on the end of the line means no climax, and that’s an adrenaline killer. “We dealt with it on an episode this year, with the goliath grouper. We were in Florida just after Hurricane Sandy, and there was a red tide where just basically all the water washes over the mainland and basically scares off or kills all the aquatic life in the area. So the goliath grouper got pushed way, way off shore, and we weren’t equipped to go after them. So we ended up having to come back and go after them again. But I can say this, that the goliath grouper episode from Florida ended up being one of my favorites and one of the coolest fish I’ve ever caught. We did end up catching it, but it took us having to come back and go after it.”

On the show, when Young hits the ocean or river, he strikes a balance between “fish-out-of-water” humor and crazed angst. He often hoots and hollers in excitement when the fish is “on.”

Is that humor all part of a character? Perhaps an identity pulled from the wrestling ring?

“The person you see on the show is pretty much me. Obviously I’m not insane every second of the day. You know, I don’t drink all the time, and so on and so forth. The person you see on the television, that’s who I am. I like to meet new people. I like to do crazy stuff. I like catching huge fish, and I love to joke around and have a good time. And this show allows me to do all those things all at once. So it’s a fun, fun show for me to do.”

Nowadays Young is noticed by the public for both his TV hosting job and his pro wrestling, and it appears he’ll continue both lifestyles. He loves the TV fishing life, but the wrestling ring is his first love.

“I started pro wrestling when I was 17, and I started doing it full-time in 2004. But I’ve taken pretty good care of myself. I’m very durable. … I was created in a lab for this. I may not be the tallest guy, or the biggest guy, or the leanest guy, but I can take a lot of abuse. And that’s something I’ve always kind of prided myself on, which is a good thing becauase both my jobs are pretty treacherous. But I’ll wrestle as long it will allow. It’s my first love. It’s all I’ve really wanted to do since I was 6 years old. So every time I do it, I live my dream, and not a lot of people can say that. But this is definitely another huge part of my life. I’ve always wanted to be on TV or act in movies or be on a show, so this is fulfilling another one of my life’s dreams.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

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