Colin West Exposed As Registered Sex Offender
Synergy Pro Wrestling has ceased operations.
Apparently, I’ve been working with a child molester.
Colin West, or as most people (myself included) have learned over the past 24 hours, Patrick Shea, was convicted in 1999 of sexually assaulting three boys between the ages of 6 and 10. Five years later, when he was 21 years old, Shea was arrested for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy, causing or permitting him to send nude photos, as well as images of himself masturbating, New Jersey Hills reported.
According to the New Jersey Sex Offender Internet Registry, Shea is a tier-2 offender, meaning he poses a moderate risk of re-offense. Tier-3 is a relatively high risk and tier-1 offenders are excluded from the registry.
I encountered Colin West in 2016, when I reached out to New Jersey-based wrestling promotions to see if they’d advertise on Wrestledelphia Radio on WNJC. At the time, West was running CTW Wrestling, an annual charity event that raises money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He paid for a commercial and invited me to the August event at the Parlin Knights of Columbus. I brought my teenage brother with me and certainly regret that now.
In the fall of 2017, around the same time that The Wrestling Estate began, West reached out for coverage of a new promotion that he was involved in. Synergy Pro Wrestling was founded by Dan and Heather Funkenstein, owners of Funkenstein Wrestling Superstore in Englishtown, New Jersey. Having sponsored CTW Wrestling, they trusted West’s vision and management and hired him as creative director.
The goal was to provide a family-friendly wrestling promotion with a stacked roster. Having worked in the industry since 2011, West was able to use his connections at CZW Dojo Wars, On Point Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Magic, and the first indie promotion he ever discovered, UWA Elite, to book reputable names like Matt Tremont, Frightmare, KTB and other local talent. In May 2019, West took over the company from the Funkensteins.
I claim to be a leader in this community, I need to be a leader. Even when it’s with a broken heart and angry soul.
— Queen of the Dinosaurs 🦖 (@TerraCalaway) March 5, 2021
I am ashamed to have ever allowed Colin West aka Patrick Shea, the owner of Synergy Pro, into my life and my locker room.
Pro wrestling deserves better. pic.twitter.com/tqGffRG7hW
From Synergy’s second show in December 2017 to early January of this year, I interviewed Colin West before almost every event. (There’s an entire Synergy section of our website.) As a matter of fact, after a decade in journalism, he’s the person I’ve interviewed the most. He’s the first promoter I built a relationship with, paving the way for The Wrestling Estate’s esteemed coverage of the independent wrestling scene. As announced last week, we were going to expand that coverage via the Territory Championship – a collaboration of Synergy, ECWA and UWA Elite. Obviously, Synergy and West have been removed from that equation.
I can’t say I consider him a friend because we’ve never hung out before. My only interactions with him were at Synergy events, over the phone, texts and via Facebook Messenger. All I know about his personal life is that he loves his niece, he has a boyfriend and whatever job he had outside of wrestling was impacted by the pandemic. But then again, what do I really know? I thought his name was Colin West!
What’s really been bothering me is how much he knows about my personal life. Whenever I spoke with him, he asked how my brother was doing. Now I’m sickened by it. West also sent my girlfriend a friend request without ever meeting her. My friends and family have done that, too, but they’re my friends and family.
Colin West has since deleted his Facebook account and deactivated Synergy’s Twitter account, which he operated. His only statement on the matter can be found on Synergy’s website, where he blames being abused as a teenager for what he’s done. He also claims that we weren’t deceived, and that he is who he portrays himself to be.
If that’s true, then why does “Colin West” exist? Why would he insist on marketing a product as “family-friendly” without informing his customers about his past? When the #SpeakingOut movement emerged last summer, why didn’t he take the opportunity to acknowledge his own mistakes? Why would a registered sex offender hire a 15-year-old boy to handle production for his events?
This is now the third instance of Synergy personnel being involved with sexual misconduct.
In November of 2018, Northeast-based independent wrestler Stevie Shields was outed for preying on a 14-year-old girl and sending nude photos to her. When her father found out, he confronted Shields via instant messages. Shields admitted to sending the photos and claimed it was all a mistake. Her father posted screenshots of the conversation and Shields was instantly blackballed by the wrestling community. Synergy, which Shields had been a rising star in, took swift and decisive action, canceling his future obligations.
In June 2020, well-known ring announcer Mark Adam Haggerty was accused of having inappropriate conversations with a 15 year old. As part of the #SpeakingOut movement, wrestler Sully Banger tweeted screenshots of the messages between Haggerty and the child. MLW and other promotions, such as Synergy, announced that they were cutting ties with Haggerty, who instantly deleted all of his social media accounts.
In an interview that I can’t believe Colin West had the audacity to accept, I asked him what it was like handling these situations. “It’s just a matter of if Synergy is going to be a family-friendly promotion, if all ages are going to be welcome, all genders and races and sexuality, then we have to be a little more hard-lined than some people. No wait and see here. This is a place where we want people to feel safe,” West said on Corrigan’s Corner (beginning at 12:02).
West continued: “It proves to me that there isn’t a type of person who’s capable of doing something like this. I don’t think either of these individuals is a monster. These are two human beings, who through a series of their own bad choices, have really hurt some people. I’m just as capable of making bad decisions, but I would like to think I wouldn’t make the same bad decisions.”
Unfortunately, as we’ve now learned, Patrick Shea made the same bad decisions.
I don’t regret working with him over the past half-decade because a lot of good did come out of it. The charity show was legit and deserved the publicity. Synergy’s performers, who all busted their ass to put that promotion on the map, have deserved as much coverage as possible. And if you’ve ever been to a Synergy event at the Polish Falcons Nest in Hillsborough or The Monster Factory in Paulsboro, you can attest that Raze Lighting creates a thrilling experience.
It’s just a shame that all these memories will forever be tainted by someone we thought wanted the best for pro wrestling. His removal from it is a step in the right direction.
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