WORCESTER, Mass. - Every Thursday night, the White Eagle’s ballroom in Worcester plays host to a wrestling spectacle you truly have to see to believe.

Since launching in January, the Wrestling Open has managed to draw in an engaged fan base due to the larger-than-life personas of its fighters.

Raymond Jazikoff was an NCAA All-American wrestler at New York University and holds school records for career wins and single-season wins. In the Wrestling Open ring, he goes by the name Ray Jaz. 

“My attitude? Win, just win," Jazikoff said. "I’m addicted to getting my hand raised, so whatever it takes to get out there. I give everyone a winning lifestyle tip, and whether they choose to follow it or not, I’m still going to get my hand raised at the end of the day.”

Ray Jaz makes the weekly seven-and-a-half hour round trip from South Plainfield, New Jersey to the White Eagle for wrestling fans who have clearly decided he's their villain - and he's more than happy to play the part. 

"Something about this place, and just about the community of Worcester, I think this is something special here," Jazikoff said. "It’s a chance for everyone getting into professional wrestling, whatever level you’re at in pro wrestling, it’s an opportunity to show what you’ve got and it gives you a stage to actually show off what you have and where you look to be in the future."

The crowd can be ruthless, booing wrestlers like Ray Jaz and B3CCA, another wrestler with the Wrestling Open. She said she gives the animosity right back to the crowd. 

"Actually last year, I did some community service at the White Eagle here in Worcester, I bought some deodorant and handed it out to the fans here for free," she said.

But not everyone is typecast this way by the fans - they seem to cheer on Bryce Donovan. Outside the ring, he's a special needs teacher at an elementary school. He says in both roles, he knows he has to perform.

"No matter what goal I had in my life, it was like ‘Oh I’ll do that, and I’ll be a wrestler with that. I’ll do music, I’ll do wrestling, I’ll do art, I’ll do wrestling,'" Donovan said. "It’s cool to see I have passions outside of wrestling, but the constant thing every time was ‘And I’ll wrestle with it.' Wrestling is always going to be there for me.”

But earlier this year, Donovan's future in wrestling wasn't so certain. He punctured a lung in the ring at a different wrestling event and didn't know if he'd ever be able to return.

"The injury sucked," Donovan said. "It was very painful, I’ve got a bunch of scars from when they put tubes in me and did surgery on me. It hurt, it sucked, I was in the hospital for like two weeks."

During his hospitalization and road to recovery, fans at the White Eagle chanted 'Get well soon,' but they didn't have to wait long for his return.

"I made my return here at the White Eagle, and that was a really cool moment," Donovan said. "Seeing how much it had grown, even just the two months I had been away. Everyone being so nice and happy to see me back, and the reaction was great. It’s one of the coolest moments of my wrestling career to this point.”

Hero or villain, wrestlers keep coming back because of the passionate fans and a chance to prove they're ready for the spotlight. 

"A lot of us have been doing this all over the place on the road, working hard for years and years and years," Ryan Clancy, another wrestler, said. "We all come from different backgrounds, we’re all from different states, we’re all from different points of life. It’s just a culmination of all of our hard work together really coming to fruition with this and Wrestling Open.”

Spectrum News 1 asked the Wrestling Open's owner and operator Drew Cordeiro about future plans for the event. 

"I think we’ve got to take the show on the road," Cordeiro said. "We’ll still be here at White Eagle every single Thursday hopefully until the end of time, but I think we have to start taking the show on the road so we can start taking our great wrestlers, getting them in front of different audiences, trying to find wrestlers from other regions and bringing them in the mix up here in Worcester, Massachusetts."