Wrestling star from Dresden: “In the East I’m the good guy”

Wrestling star from Dresden: “In the East I’m the good guy”

Axel Tischer delivers food in the morning and fights in the ring in the evening. The wrestler from Dresden is a star of the scene, was the first German in the USA – and is now performing in Coswig. Is it all just a show or serious sport?

Dresden/Coswig. It's not quite the rags-to-riches story. But Axel Tischer's life could have been very different. A boy from Dresden who grew up in a housing project, didn't care much for learning and left school after the ninth grade with a secondary school certificate. Without the big money.

Now, more than 20 years later, he sits in the swing chair of his wrestling school in a former commercial kitchen on Dresden's Stauffenbergallee – just a stone's throw from the apartment where he grew up. There are many photos on the wall showing him rowdy or partying in the ring. Axel Tischer is probably the only wrestler in Germany who could currently make a living from sports shows alone. But the 37-year-old doesn't do that.

In the mornings he delivers food in the greater Dresden area. And very few customers are likely to know that the nice bearded guy gets into the ring in the evening – and shows a completely different face there. “I have a responsibility for the family, my wife is at home and looks after our two children. That's why the part-time job is important to me,” says the father.

The boy from Dresden lived his dream in the USA

Axel Tischer was a professional wrestler for many years, lived in the USA and earned a lot of money. But he also knows the other side of the coin, that money alone really doesn't make you happy. “People tried to fill emotional holes with materialism,” he says. Today he doesn't care about designer clothes anymore. At the beginning of his career, things were different.

His path into show business led via cable television. When German private channels began broadcasting wrestling shows from the USA in the 1990s and Hulk Hogan became a hero in many children's bedrooms, Axel Tischer also found himself sitting in front of the television. “I immediately fell in love with the muscle-bound guys who were throwing and fighting. I was hooked,” he says.

Tischer tried wrestling for the first time when he was 14 – and immediately got the answer to all questions. Is wrestling just a show or is there more to it than meets the eye? An activity that is comparable to other martial arts. His answer, then and now: “You have to be athletic like a martial artist, entertaining like an actor and robust like a stuntman.”

There is a script for every show, the more professional, the more sophisticated. He learned that over the years. After school, Tischer trained as a specialist in protection and security and then enlisted as a soldier in the German army. The fighter with the ring name “Axeman” took his first steps at this time with the German Wrestling Association in Berlin.

And there he caught the eye of the big show makers from the USA and achieved what almost every wrestler dreams of: in 2015, the Dresden native signed a contract with the world's most successful wrestling league, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). At the age of 28, he and his wife moved to the USA. “I was also a bit lucky. They were looking for international talent at the time,” says Tischer, “as a blond, tall, blue-eyed guy, I fit the profile.”

The first contract was not a guarantee of success, however: At the training center in Orlando, Florida, Tischer, like all talented wrestlers, had to prepare for the challenges of a wrestler before he was allowed to gain his first experience in front of cameras in the junior league and was made fit for appearances in the main shows as a TV product.

“Axeman” prefers to play the villain

“We had a lot of acting lessons. You also learn when to look into which camera,” says the Dresden native. The training also includes being able to verbally tear opponents apart. Tischer, who performed in the WWE under the name Alexander Wolfe, had the talent. He was the first German to win a title at the show fight market leader in 2017. And it was also evident at the main shows where the superstars meet.

He prefers playing the villain, but he can also play the good guy – as the script dictates. And there is a creative team for that. A script is written for every big show in which the sequence is laid out in detail. This includes the fights, the winners, the course of the interviews and fights that take place outside the ring. Ultimately, it's about more than just entertaining the audience. “It's a bit like the cinema. Everyone knows it's not real – and yet you immerse yourself in the film.”

In the USA, Tischer earned six figures a year and lived in a house in Miami. “Companies treat you like royalty,” he says. However, when he was out of work for a longer period with a broken collarbone, his income immediately stopped. And he hadn't saved much during that time. After the birth of his first child, he wanted to return to Germany anyway.

However, his departure from the big wrestling stage came quicker than planned. In May 2021, he fell victim to a wave of layoffs due to Corona and returned home with his family. But the professional did not struggle with the situation for long and had long since made new plans.

He founded a wrestling school in Dresden with friends

Tischer has been passing on his experience in his own wrestling school in Dresden since May 2023. “The opening was actually planned for 2022, but bureaucracy and the search for a suitable building held it back,” he says. Tischer is the head coach of the “Sport Center Dresden” training center, which he built up together with two business partners. The club has around 25 members.

As a freelancer, the 95-kilo man can now often be seen in the ring again. This Saturday (September 14), for example, he and his friends organized an event at the Coswig Stock Exchange for the second time. “We guarantee a professional wrestling show with lots of action. Every spectator will go home with a smile,” says Tischer, who also performs himself.

His role at home is probably clear. “As a boy from Dresden and in the East, I'm the good guy. In the West, I tend to play the bad guy, and that suits me better. I'm in control there and can make my opponents look good,” explains Tischer. The local hero knows what the audience wants to see: “It varies from country to country, but in the East they want more Bud Spencer style than party.”