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John Krahn is hard to miss.
The nearly 7-foot, 440-pound football lineman at Portland State University who gained some regional renown for his size has set his eyes on joining World Wrestling Entertainment, the part-scripted professional sport where two men square off in a cage and fake-smash each other with folding chairs.
Krahn graduates from PSU this fall with a degree in criminal justice. He hopes to become a California Department of Corrections officer and eventually a jail warden—a job in which he believes he can help people get reintroduced successfully to society after serving time.
But not before doing a stint in the WWE. Krahn signed in December to the WWE’s “Next In Line” league, created just last summer in the wake of the NCAA ruling that college athletes could earn money using their name with partnerships and branding. That contract runs out when he finishes his degree this fall, which he’s completing remotely. (He’s currently working as an auto body mechanic in Riverside, Calif., his hometown.) He’s scheduling his tryout for the WWE in hopes of entering a circuit.
Portland State was the only school that offered him an athletic scholarship: “I’ve been where it’s hot, I’ve been where it snows. Why not go where it rains?”
He lived in downtown Portland for a while, but says he didn’t like the noise and all the people. He mostly just played football, ate and slept.
Besides a few musicals in kindergarten, Krahn admits he has no acting chops that might prepare him to keep kayfabe. He’s working on it. When he gets home after work these days, he talks in front of a mirror—animatedly—about something he saw that day.
“I have to get over the shyness I have when you’re new to something,” Krahn says. “But I have no problem with being over the top.”
We wondered if he ever gets tired of people talking about his body. After all, it’s the first, and sometimes last thing, that people approach Krahn about.
“Some days, yeah, it gets on the last nerve,” he says. “If you’ve had a long day, you’ve been working, and someone comes up to you in a restaurant and is like, ‘Can I take a picture with you?’ I’m like, ‘I kinda just wanna go home.’ But those days are very few and far between.”