Black Diamond Entertainment makes it their business to cause a scene. When they arrive at an Arena, they’re dressed to the nines, decked out in fancy hats, fur coats, and platform shoes. They look less like indie wrestlers and more like a trio of pimps arriving at Studio 54 circa 1978.
Which is exactly the impression Devlin Deville, Louis Boudreaux, and Ty Vance are going for.
The day we met over Google Meet for an interview, they were more pimp casual on camera, but they still had their championship gold on display, along with some very nice, very serious looking podcast mics.
“These are just props,” Deville admits, holding up a mic with no cord connected on the back. “Just keeping up appearances.”
Keeping up appearances they did. Throughout our forty eight minute conversation, Deville and Boudreaux spoke into and adjusted the prop mics as if they were wired for sound. Because in Black Diamond Entertainment, living the gimmick is a way of life.
“We’re dressed for the show from the moment we leave home ’til the moment we get home,” Deville tells me. “You should see the looks we get stopping for gas at 4 a.m. in Illinois.”
The men of Black Diamond Entertainment have been in the business less than four years but have the chemistry of tag teams that have been together for decades. That closeness developed from the very beginning, when they met at OVW in the fall of 2021.
“We were the first class back after COVID,” says Boudreaux.
“There were five of us to start,” says Ty Vance. “But by the end, in the spring of 2022, it was just us three.”
Kyle Bussiere, alias Ty Vance, was a fan of wrestling growing up but never thought about being a wrestler until he heard about a tryout at OVW. “I didn’t make the cut, but when I learned about the school, I thought I would give it a try.”
Nicholas Cleveland, aka Louis Boudreaux, had no intentions of becoming a wrestler either. He went to college after high school for theater – and quickly dropped out because, in his words, “College during COVID was not very fun.”
“I wasn’t allowed to watch a lot of wrestling as a kid because my mom thought it was too violent,” says Boudreaux. “But now the joke’s on her. I’m a wrestler.”
Ironically, Boudreaux’s mom became one of his biggest supporters when he told her he was enrolling at OVW. “She was like, ‘Oh, you’re doing theater where you hit people. That’s cool!’”
Boudreaux’s farther, who was a wrestling fan, was less enthusiastic about the decision to attend OVW at first. “Now he thinks it’s cool,” says Boudreaux. “He calls me almost every day to pitch me ideas.”
Dashawn Kelley, aka Devlin Deville, was also a theater kid growing up. The oldest of the group by five years, he offers a different take on his career choice. “I got into wrestling because I did not get enough attention as a child!”
Being in such a small class at OVW helped the three men bond over the course of their training. They weathered Cash Flo’s beginner’s class, where they learned the basics like how to bump, how to move around the ring, and how to protect themselves. They learned how to execute moves – and the psychology of why you use those maneuvers – in Tony Gunn’s intermediate class. Then Doug Basham brought everything they had learned together in the advanced course.
“We learned how to work the camera, how each match on a card should be structured, and why, all these things,” says Devlin Deville.
“They really have structured it like a trade school,” says Ty Vance. “Alongside those three courses, we had a fitness class, a production class, and other things, all taught by different teachers. It made us well-rounded in terms of being able to work with anyone, anywhere.”
The advanced class brought an added bonus: a chance to get into the ring and lock up with the main OVW roster members. “It was nerve wracking,” says Devlin Deville, “But it was iron sharpens iron because we were working with Luke Kurtis, Kal Herro, and all these guys who already had TV experience. The experience made us more comfortable for later when we worked with guys like 2 Tuff Tony, Kongo Kong, and Jessie Godderz. OVW really is the Harvard of pro wrestling schools.”
After graduating in the spring of 2022, Boudreaux, Vance, and Deville wanted to work as a faction. “We were already thinking about the Studio 54 look, but we wanted to be the Black Diamond Club,” says Deville.
The problem was they were moving up into a crowded, competitive environment where everyone was competing for TV time. “There’s a lot of camaraderie, but it’s also very competitive,” says Vance. “We got some individual opportunities on house shows and TV, and I’m incredibly grateful I got to work a few pay-per-views, but every time we pitched ourselves as a faction, they told us they’d rather see us work on ourselves individually.”
Black Diamond started looking beyond OVW for new opportunities. “I actually left before they did, but it was because I almost died,” says Deville. “I pushed myself so hard in training, trying to keep up with these two, that I tore a bunch of muscles and developed Rhabdomyolysis. My doctor thought initially I had a UTI, and I was nearly in kidney failure by the time they figured it out.”
Deville’s issues with Rhabdo flared up again during their advanced class with Doug Basham. He dropped out of class and started considering whether his wrestling career was over. “Louis kept calling me every day, telling me, I better not quit,” said Deville. “I came back initially as a manager, but seeing my boys working in the ring, I had to get back to wrestling myself.”
Meanwhile at OVW, Ty Vance and Louis Boudreaux were itching to bet on themselves and seek new pastures. “I was struggling with a lot of body dysmorphia then,” says Boudreaux. “And I was frustrated by how they were using me. I’d have a match, and I’d get all kinds of great feedback, but then they wouldn’t put me on TV again for another three months.”
Ty Vance approached Doug Basham to ask if he and Boudreaux might team with Deville across the river at Grindhouse Pro Wrestling. “I’d been on TV for a while, so I asked if we could work at Grindhouse if I work under a mask,” says Vance. “Doug said yes.”
Deville and Boudreaux had already done one match at Grindhouse, taking on Ruffhouse (Brandon Wolfe and Kash Jackson) for the Tag Team Championship. “It wasn’t supposed to be for the titles,” says Deville, “But we were downstairs, watching Ruffhouse cut a promo on the TV monitor, and they declared that they’d defend their belts against anyone. Ronnie Roberts, the booker, shook his head and said, ‘Well, boys, you’re getting a title shot!’”
With Vance now under a mask, the three men put together a video promo and pitched themselves as a faction to Roberts and 2 Tuff Tony, hoping to get on with Grindhouse. Roberts was interested in using them, but the timing was right. “Everyone was fighting for spots there, same as OVW,” says Deville. “So we were like, ‘Well, now what do we do?’”
Black Diamond started seeking other opportunities beyond the Louisville area. “They have a saying at OVW, ‘You can only get better by wrestling,’” says Boudreaux. “We could only get so much better wrestling in class in front of our peers. We knew we had to get out in front of the crowds. I spoke to Doug Basham, and he said, ‘Go and do it.’ It wasn’t a, ‘You’re not wanted here,’ thing either. It was, ‘Get out and do it.’”
Reunited, and rechristened as Black Diamond Entertainment, the OVW Class of 2022 hit the road. “We started with one promotion a month,” says Deville. “Then it became one a week. Now, sometimes it’s three in a weekend.”
Powerhouse Wrestling was one of the first to embrace Black Diamond. Then they became regular at Stricktly Nsane Pro Wrestling. Stricktly gave them the chance to tag up against Ronnie Roberts and 2 Tuff Tony, which opened the door to come back to Grindhouse, where they are now regulars.
“Strictly opened a ton of doors for us because so many guys go there,” says Boudreaux.
“Everywhere we go, we meet people who are like, ‘I have a promotion, you should come work for me,’” adds Vance.
“It went from having an anxiety and wondering, ‘Am I ever going to feel wanted in wrestling?’ to having promotions scrambling to bring us in,” says Boudreaux.
“The thing we hear over and over is that no one’s doing what we’re doing,” says Vance. “We live the gimmick, and that’s what gets us over every time.”
During that first year in the OVW Academy, the boys attended a workshop with former WWE star Scotty 2 Hotty. The biggest takeaway from the workshop was the importance of connecting with the crowd and entertaining versus working in the ring. Black Diamond Entertainment truly embraces the Entertainment factor of pro wrestling in everything they do.
“When we’re at a show, we’ll spend maybe five minutes going over our match,” says Ty Vance. “Then we’ll spend the next ten, fifteen minutes on, ‘Hey, should I wear this for our match? What song are we going to use? Who’s going to go to what side of the ring?’”
“At OVW they told us that fans remember two things: the entrance and the finish,” says Louis Boudreaux. “That’s why we focus so heavily on that. It’s the in-between moments that matter the most. You can be the worst wrestler in the world, but if everyone loves your character, that will get you over.”
Fashion is a big piece of what makes Black Diamond unique, and the members take care to make sure they coordinate their outfits.
“It took a while for us to get used to always dressing the way we do,” says Deville. “We were shooting one of our first video vignettes. Ty was in a lucha mask. Louis’s wearing this velvet coat, and I’m wearing this paint splatter hat. This old lady sees us and asks, ‘Y’all in a band?’ And web were like, ‘Yes we are!!’”
“We got called some slurs that night, too,” says Vance.
“Yes we did,” says Deville. “Now, we don’t think anything of walking in a 7-11 in our full regalia.”
“We had a story at Indiana Powerhouse where we stole the tag titles,” says Boudreaux. “We went to a gas station on the way home in our gear and bought celebratory booze. There’s a photo of me holding Ty up, getting something off the top shelf.”
Deville is a film buff with a passion for artists like John Waters and William Castle. Initially, the group’s video vignettes were his brainchild, but the creation of video content quickly became a team effort as well.
“Louis came up with a video recently where we ripped off the volleyball scene in Top Gun,” says Deville. “We all have our own style, and sometimes we clash, but nobody’s ever really wrong because it’s all art. It’s all subjective.”
The trio also has several friends who help out doing camera work. “Phil and Derek, they deserve a shout out,” says Bourdreaux.
All the hard work is getting Black Diamond noticed by fans, even outside of wrestling events.
“I had a girl come up to me in public, like a year after I left OVW,” says Boudreaux. “She said, ‘Are you Louis Boudreaux from OVW?’ I said, ‘Yes… and no!!’”
When the boys made a trip back to OVW just to watch the show, they were told by security that they had to keep a low profile as some fans recognized them.
“This girl came up to us and said, ‘You guys suck!’” says Deville. “I said, ‘I’m sorry. Do I know you?’ She said, ‘You’re the guys from Grindhouse!’ So of course I looked for her at the next show.”
Betting on themselves is clearly paying off for Black Diamond Entertainment, and the three men are fully committed to seeing how far they can go as a trio. They’ve conducted business the right way, not only doing right by OVW but keeping in touch with their mentors at OVW and beyond. All options are open for the future. They’re eager to visit more promotions, but they have some personal goals as well.
“Pretty early on, we had a conversation of what we wanted out of wrestling,” says Ty Vance. “I always thought it would be so cool to see myself in a video compilation that some fan made.”
“Botchamania?” asks Boudreaux.
“Botchamania would work,” Vance laughs.
“I’d love to see us work for one the big companies as us,” says Deville. “We have to, because when we turn on each other, which we will because there are too many egos in here, it has to be on a big stage.”
A handful of companies have asked the boys to split up, wanting to use the break up of Black Diamond as an angle. But so far, the boys have refused. They know their friendship, in and out of the ring, is a big reason why they are seeing success.
“I don’t think I’d be as far as I am in wrestling if it wasn’t for these two,” says Ty Vance.
Adds Louis Boudreaux, “I think all three of us feel the same.”
DevlDeville smiles wickedly. “I’m going to stab them both in the back next week.”