When Steve Barone graduated from Boston College in 1993 with a degree in history, he had no idea he'd become a wrestling champion just more than a decade later.
But Barone isn't your typical wrestler; he chooses to battle in a different type of ring - a 2-foot-deep pit of mashed potatoes.
"I see it as food wrestling," Barone said Friday in a phone interview from Minneapolis, Minn., where he's lived since 1994. "So if we went to Japan, we'd have sushi wrestling. If we went to Italy, we'd do pasta."
Barone, 35, who calls himself Steve-O Gratin in the ring, declared himself Mashed Potato Wrestling Champion of the Universe after a victorious match last summer at the annual Potato Days festival in Barnesville, Minn.
A two-minute video of the match is now featured on the Web site My Favorite Minnesota (www.exploreminnesota.com/myfavoriteminnesota), a user-friendly sub-site of the state's tourism page, Explore Minnesota Tourism. Barone has also posted the video on YouTube.com.
"I'm just kind of rolling with it," Barone said. "It's just kind of funny. It's funny because you don't normally think of Minnesota as a potato state."
The potatoes, Barone said, are made from the scraps of potato plants, and are inedible for humans but are fed to local cattle after matches so they are not wasted.
Barone will be returning to the ring twice more next month, first defending his title at Clark Potato Day in Clark, S.D., on Aug. 4, then returning to the annual festival in Barnesville on Aug. 24.
And this time, he'll have more competition. In an attempt to expand the mashed potato wrestling market, Steve-O Gratin will be battling alongside characters Rowdy Roddy Potato Head, whom he defeated last year, Yukon Golden Boy and The Big Kahuna, all friends of Barone's.
But Barone said he's also thinking about stepping up his game.
"As an athletic advantage, I'd gravy up," he said, chuckling. "Just have a bottle of gravy in the corner."
The My Favorite Minnesota Web site allows state residents to upload their own content on their favorite features of Minnesota in blog-like fashion.
"We're asking people to create a list of their favorite things to do and places to go in Minnesota, and to provide potential travelers with ideas that are authentic and experience-based," said Leann Kispert, senior marketing manager for Explore Minnesota Tourism.
Barone, a creative content manager for the Clarity Coverdale Fury ad agency that helped launch My Favorite Minnesota, said he was asked by Explore Minnesota Tourism to compile a list of his favorite festivals in the area, one of them being Potato Days, for the site, as he knew the scene well.
He said for years, he was a backstage caterer at several concerts and events, supplying food behind the curtains for performers.
"I'm the festival junky, I just went to these different places," he said, adding he's even working on his own site, www.mashedpotatowrestling.com, which should be up and running in the coming months.
And while he said he enjoys My Favorite Minnesota, Barone is unsure if his potato video is attracting a crowd to the state.
"I think it's more just kind of you can add your own quirky things to the Web site," he said. "No one in the tourism industry is really doing a YouTube thing on their state. I don't know if it (the potato video) is just making Minnesota a place to go or not."
But Kispert says otherwise.
"It's definitely garnered us immense attention," she said Friday. "It's by far blowing our other videos out of the water in terms of attention. It's just been a great buzz-worthy piece, and we have turned it into a (15-second) television spot that's included in a pretty heavy rotation with eight other spots. It's been aired all summer long, and either people think it's really cool or it's really gross."
And Barone said that actually diving into a 10-by-20 pit of carbohydrate mess is, indeed, gross.
"I wouldn't advise wearing shoes," he said. "It's just kind of, you plan all these moves out, but you can't because if you're wearing shoes, they just fill up with potatoes."
Although he wasn't a wrestler in high school or college, Barone, a New Jersey native, said he's enjoying the sport now. He's also hoping to attain more sponsors, and would even like to see teams formed in several states.
To see Barone's video of his wrestling match in last year's Potato Days festival, visit www.exploreminnesota.com/myfavoriteminnesota, or see it on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSc1W3Xv578.
Matt Perkins can be reached at 781-398-8009 or at mperkins@cnc.com.
