Farmingdale man wins $18,700 on 'Wheel of Fortune'

A Farmingdale sheet-metal worker and independent wrestling promoter competed on “Wheel of Fortune” Thursday night, pinning down a second-place prize of $18,700 in the syndicated Hangman-like game show that airs locally on WABC/7.

“I grew up with ‘Wheel of Fortune’ in my house,” says the West Islip-born, West Babylon-raised Anthony Canerossi, 40, a member of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers Local 28. “We would have our family nights and my grandmother and everybody, we would watch it. And I was, like, ‘Maybe I could get on the show at some point.’”

Eventually he applied. “After many stressed-filled interviews, I didn't hear from them for almost two months. So, I thought I didn't get picked,” he says. “But then they called and gave me the good news that, ‘Hey, listen, you have been selected to come to L.A.,’ and everything after that was fast. I [even] had to send them pictures of what I was going to wear.”

But, he learned, even being flown out to Sony Pictures Studios in suburban Culver City, California, where the show is recorded, “is not a guarantee you're going to be on the show,” since those who make it on air need to be lively and telegenic. “So I was stressed until it was done filming.”

Fortunately, he has an outgoing personality. “I'm a personable guy,” he says, “and I like to talk and I like to hear myself talk. I think that helped me.”

In addition to his sheet-metal company,  Canerossi, who went on to Nassau Community College before earning a teaching degree at St. Joseph’s University New York, has an “extreme” sideline: Extreme Annihilation Wrestling, which he founded in 2018. The Deer Park-based outfit staged its first match just before the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. EAW resumed matches in late 2021, and currently stages them “about once every other month,” he says, adding that the next is set for Brooklyn in December.

“We had a great combination of up-and-comers and established names, but most of what ]e work with are people that are really trying to go and claw their way up to [major organizations like] the WWE. It's really cool,” he said. Among the bigger names who have wrestled for his indie outfit are Willow Nightingale (aka Danielle Paultre), originally of North Valley Stream, who competes with WWE main rival All Elite Wrestling, and Joey Conway (aka Joey Blanchard), of Bethpage.

 Canerossi also makes custom action figures of wrestlers, in what he calls the style of the fabled 1984-1989 LJN “Wrestling Superstars” line. With permission from wrestlers — some of whom specify the figure is only for him to show, not sell — he creates 3D-printed heads and sculpts bodies by using an epoxy resin sculpted onto a rubber-formed base; with that as a mold, he pours rubber polymer in and lets it harden. The, “I do all the painting myself" he said.”

Next on his to-do list? Possibly ABC’s “The Great Halloween Fright Fight.”

“My house is a huge Halloween house,” he beams. “Every year we put out a huge display with tons of decorations, a lot them DIY stuff. So that [show] might be the next thing I apply for!”