Tony 2.jpg — Tony Rotundo, the man behind the camera.

by Derek Levendusky, AWW Staff Writer

Anyone who follows wrestling has seen the name “Tony Rotundo” somewhere, sometime—or at least you’ve seen his work. “Photo courtesy of Tony Rotundo” is the frequent credit given to the images that have helped tell the story of our sport for the last 15 years.

Helen’s tears of joy, Kyle’s gold flex, Adeline’s game face…all these moments have been captured by Rotundo, and there’s a good chance that the images you have in your mind were put there by his photography.

With an artistry and creativity that goes beyond simply aiming the lens, the images he’s captured have gained the attention and respect of wrestling journalists and organizations at all levels, including USA Wrestling, United World Wrestling, and the NCAA, not to mention countless wrestling fans. His pictures are marked by impeccable timing—the timing of a photographer that knows the sport—and capture the elegance, power, and action of the highest levels of wrestling.

His path into the wrestling community started in Akron, NY, a small western New York town just outside of Buffalo. There, under his father’s tutelage and passion, he was thrust into the youth wrestling scene.

“My father was a coach, so I started wrestling before I was born,” said Rotundo, who now lives in San Francisco with his wife Rochelle and their two rescue dogs Rudy, a chihuahua/rat terrier mix and Leo, a dachshund/beagle mix. “I spent a lot of time climbing on mats and being babysat by cheerleaders (of course with the obligatory embarrassing fawning over my "cute cheeks").”

While he was learning to color inside the line in kindergarten, he was wrestling inside the lines at youth tournaments. “I started competing at five-years-old,” said Rotundo, “started losing a little weight at 10-years-old. I was successful in the earlier arch of my career—mostly I knew moves and positions better than other kids because I literally learned, relearned, and taught them from a very early age. I had a really good back-arch and quick hips, so I was pretty good in freestyle and Greco.”

But in some ways he only tolerated the sport, especially in a wrestling culture that wasn’t fun for a kid. “I didn't really love it,” admits the man behind the camera. “I was also in a generation that losing weight was par for the course, so that takes a toll mentally.”

In high school, Rotundo competed for Clarence High just outside Buffalo, and he eventually wrestled for a few years at the University of Buffalo. After graduating, he coached kids for several more years, but then took a break from the sport. “Besides watching the Olympics,” Rotundo remembers, “I didn't follow any wrestling for about 10 years. I feel that that break was what recharged me to love the sport again, on my terms, by my own volition.”

He moved to Northern California in 1992 and it was then that he tried his hand at being a referee. “That was a disaster,” he remembers. “It's a thankless job and as much as coaches scream at officials, they really should thank and praise them for performing a role that's vital to keeping this sport alive.”

Seven years later he started coaching again at Berkeley High, just north of Oakland. That’s when, in 2004, a conversation with a friend opened the door to a new opportunity. “[While coaching] I ran into John Sachs of Tech-Fall.com shooting from the stands at the North Coast Sectional tournament,” recalls Rotundo. “I had been thinking of other ways to contribute to the sport besides coaching…I hadn't really figured out what I wanted to do, but when John said he was taking photos and posting them on the internet I knew in that instant that's what I was destined to do. It was clear as a fog-free day to me, and after one more year of coaching, I never doubted it was my destiny to be a wrestling photographer. I've never second-guessed that this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing for myself and for the wrestling community.”

Rotundo calls his photography work a “very advanced” hobby. He is primarily bi-vocational, managing a 14-unit apartment building in the center of San Francisco, just below Twin Peaks. He’s also worked in the technology industry since the mid-1990s, currently employed by the streaming division of Disney (Disney Streaming Services) as a Director of Media Operations.

Rotundo’s hobby has taken him all over the world, covering events in places like Moscow, Budapest, Rio, Istanbul, small towns like Herning, Denmark (his first Worlds), and last fall, the 2019 World Championships in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.

He’s always had respect and a love for women’s wrestling. “My enthusiasm for women's wrestling probably started when I was a youth,” he says, “and everyone was making a really big deal about Tricia Saunders wrestling at a youth tournament in Michigan. I just couldn't figure out what the big deal was, so from a very early age I thought it was great that girls wrestled. Later, I was happy Berkeley High trained very solid girls along with the boys team.”

Rotundo has found what he loves to do, and the wrestling community is glad he has. Next time you see a picture that takes your breath away and makes you cheer for your favorite star, check the credit. You might be looking through Tony Rotundo’s window to the wrestling world. And whether it’s Tony, or any other great photographer that serves the wrestling community, thank the man behind the camera.

Rotundo took some time to answer more questions that photographers and wrestling fans may find interesting.

Why do you think a photo can be such an important part of telling stories?
Great photography can capture light and emotion in ways that writing and video cannot (and vice versa). I think they all work together, and without one leg, you can get an incomplete news story (unless it's written really well).

Why do you think a well-done photo can be so captivating to an audience and what elements of a stellar photo make it stand out?
People are drawn to emotion, so a great shot with lots of specific or circumstantial emotion will draw people in…the light needs to be right for the artistic expression the photographer is trying to convey.

How many pictures do you take, on average, per event?
I've kept and posted stats of shots taken and shots kept from large events. There are variables that affect the number of shots I take, such as if I'm using a flash or not (which would mean I take fewer shots), but I'll take a couple thousand shots per round of wrestling (NCAAs, Worlds, etc) and then edit those down to 10% or less. The cameras I use (Nikon D5) can shoot upwards of 8-12 shots a second, so it's easy to over-shoot and end up with 5,000 photos from a particularly exciting round, but then I have to go through and pick the winners, usually that needs to happen very quickly for the media outlets that use my photos. That editing component—ditching the ones you don't want to keep, can be a barrier for some new photographers—it's important for me to make very fast, decisive decisions about which shot is best out of a series of three or four (or eight).

What do you do to be sure you “capture the right moment”?
Capturing the right moment starts way further upstream than you might imagine. It starts with picking which events you want to attend throughout the year, then making smart travel plans; choosing the right flight, hotel, etc. because if you're not at the event, you can't take the photos. You need to make sure your gear is ready to go, and have redundancy at hand (spare camera, batteries, cards, etc.), you need to know the right matches to capture, then move to get yourself in a good position with the available light and background, and then you start shooting and hope for great action and emotion.

In those moments you need to remain calm, breathe, and anticipate what might happen at any given time. The best shooters know the athletes and their tendencies. For example, Sarah Hildebrandt will almost always hit her slide-by in a match, so knowing that is coming, hoping (and yes, sometimes "willing") that she hits it coming at you, and that there is not an official in your way, is all part of getting shots like these:

Sara Hildebrandt at the 2020 Pan Am Qualifier in Ottawa, Canada. Photo courtesy of Tony Rotundo / WrestlersAreWarriors.com. — Sara Hildebrandt at the 2020 Pan Am Qualifier in Ottawa, Canada. *Photo courtesy of Tony Rotundo / WrestlersAreWarriors.com.*

Sara Hildebrandt at the 2019 World Championships in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. Photo courtesy of Tony Rotundo / WrestlersAreWarriors.com. — Sara Hildebrandt at the 2019 World Championships in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. *Photo courtesy of Tony Rotundo / WrestlersAreWarriors.com.*

Talk about some of your favorite trips you’ve taken and why you enjoyed them.
I love to travel, so every trip I've taken has been fun and exciting. That first Worlds in Herning was super cool, though I wound up shooting from the stands much of the time, because they hadn't planned on where to put the photographers until the start of the first day, and then we were relegated to behind the passing coaches and athletes. Herning is a tiny town in Denmark, so it was cool to hang out with the athletes and coaches—there were only two bars in town, so I ran into a lot of heroes that trip (e.g. John Smith). Moscow was very cool, Budapest is really neat with decent food, but Istanbul in 2011 was my favorite. The people, food, culture, history—it was really hard to spend 95% of the time in an arena, though Burroughs beating Tsargush and winning his first worlds was a pretty fair trade-off. I coincidently had a friend staying in the old city, and so I spent a night there and woke up the next morning and literally ran through the Hagia Sophia and Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarnici) before high-tailing it back to the arena for more wrestling.

2011 ISTANBUL GALLERY

Talk about some of your favorite moments shooting wrestling events.
My very first NCAA championship was 2007 in Auburn Hills, MI and literally (true story) I bumped into Dan Gable as I walked, wide-eyed into the arena on the first day. Being on the floor of the NCAA finals does not lose its appeal. The other highlights are shooting my first Olympics in Rio and being on the floor when Helen Maroulis beat Saori Yoshida. (I promise you this, it's difficult to shoot when you are balling your eyes out during a medal ceremony. Breathe.) It was also special that Kyle Snyder won gold, and I was invited to the after party when he finally had a chance to see his family. In terms of most powerful moments, it has to be the 2017 World Championships, when Kyle Snyder beat Abdulrashid Sadulaev in the last match of the tournament to clinch the Men's Freestyle team title for the USA. That was hard to shoot, given the excitement of the moment.

Shooting through tears (it still chokes me up years later):

Helen vs Yoshida:

2017 Worlds - Snyder vs Sadulaev:

With Team USA:

What’s your top 5 favorite photos you’ve taken?
Rotundo had previously posted the gallery below on his website. You’ll notice that he also shoots MMA.

Rotundo: The idea with these photos is they should resonate with people 100 years in the past, and 100 years in the future, ideally without context.

FIVE TIMELESS PHOTOS

What else do you shoot besides wrestling?
I love to shoot stationary objects!

FINE ART AND FUN STUFF

Rotundo’s was the recipient of the 2012 Irv Orliner Award given to those that have made an outstanding contribution to California wrestling. He also received the National Wrestling Media Association’s “Photographer of the Year” in 2011.

You can see more of Tony’ Rotundo’s work at WrestlersAreWarriors.com.