Matt Cross(IX)

In 1999 Matt won gold medals in both the Rings and Vault at the AAU National Junior Olympics. This capped off a successful ten year gymnastics career and it became time to lay the foundation for what the world would later know as MDogg20. Out of sheer boredom and an ever-burning athletic drive, Matt took to the backyard: brawling with his friends, denting ladders, and forever revolutionizing the pastime of backyard wrestling. With his gymnastic background and apparent disregard for heights and the law of gravity, Matt became MDogg20 and the world took note. Recently his days as a backyard wrestler have been immortalized by the Eidos Interactive release of "Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This At Home" video game available worldwide for the PS2 and XBox game consoles. MDogg and his long time friend/rival Josh Prohibition grace the cover of the video game and at the time of this writing 300,000 copies have already sold worldwide. After his feats received national exposure with the release of the Best of Backyard Wrestling video series on which he's prominently featured, MDogg20 decided to take professional wrestling from a hobby to a career. The first step in this new direction meant going to the Cleveland All Pro Wrestling Training Center and learning the business from head trainer, JT Lightning. After about a year of training MDogg20 was ready to hit the Independent wrestling scene in May of 2001. After traveling across the Midwest and learning wherever he went, monthly bookings became weekly excursions to places as far away as London, England. He now travels regularly everywhere from Los Angeles California to New York City and between. This year looks to be yet another positive one as he continues to climb the independent ranks. In his short two years in the business MDogg20 has gone from the podium, to the backyard, to the company of Mario and Zelda, and there are no signs of slowing down.