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Scott Garland always wants to create moments for his fans. 

Whether they know who he is or not, he wants the audience to leave a venue satisfied, just like he did when attending pro wrestling shows with his dad at the Portland Expo.

“There’s still things that I remember from when I went (to the Expo) as a fan,” said Garland, 52. “I was in fourth grade, I think, maybe, when I used to go to shows there with my dad the first time, and there’s still stuff I remember from those shows. And to me, that’s my job.”

The Westbrook native known as Scotty 2 Hotty will get another opportunity to put on a show for fans when he wrestles his 21-year-old son, Keagan, at the Expo at 7 p.m. Friday. The match is part of Limitless Wrestling’s “WARZONE” event. 

Garland, who is best known for his time competing during World Wrestling Entertainment’s famed “Attitude Era” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, made his professional wrestling debut in Portland on Nov. 23, 1989. He last wrestled at the Expo in May 1993.

“To be able to go back (to the Expo) and wrestle my son, it doesn’t get much better than that. … It will be a really cool moment for me,” Scott Garland said. 

It also will be cool for the 21-year-old Keagan Garland, who will make his Expo debut. 

“We talked about it months ago, and then it became real when (Scott) challenged me …” Keagan said. “But thinking about it, it is pretty surreal. In wrestling, not too many fathers get to wrestle their son. … It’s only happened a couple times, so to do it is really cool, and to do it in his hometown is even cooler, to have our family there and friends. Out there, I think I’m probably going to get emotional just because of how cool of a moment it is.” 

Keagan is from Florida but has visited Windham and Portland often in the summer. A little more than two years ago, he started training at the Foundation of Professional Wrestling school in Orlando, and he’s now working his way around the independent wrestling circuit.

During a trip to Europe three years ago, Scott involved Keagan in one of his shows, which made Keagan think about a career in wrestling. Prior to that, however, it had always been in the back of his mind.

“I always have a funny story — I met The Undertaker and Kane, and I basically hid behind them because I thought they were cool. I didn’t think they were scary at all,” Keagan said. “And now it’s even cooler to just be able to go to AEW (All Elite Wrestling) with (Scott) and just hang out with everybody. And it’s cooler now, in my opinion, than it was when I was a kid even though I’m in the business now.”

Entering the wrestling industry has its ups and downs, Keagan said. 

“It’s not as big of a thing to me, just because I’m still having fun with him,” Keagan said. “But it is a struggle because some people think you get stuff just because of who your dad is … But in my opinion, I work just as hard as anybody else does. We’re in training four days a week. But, yeah, it does stink sometimes just because people do think that’s why you get what you get.”

Randy Carver, who started Limitless Wrestling in 2015, wanted the company to put on more shows at the Expo prior to this weekend — the venue hosted the organization’s four-year anniversary show in September 2019 — but the pandemic threw a wrench into those plans. Now, with Scott and Keagan’s match set as the backdrop, this Friday ended up being the right time for a return. 

“Some of (Scott’s) first matches on the main indie scene were in the Portland Expo, which used to be a wrestling hub back in the day,” Carver said, “so it’s full circle how it all comes back, and now 1-on-1 with his son in an arena that’s meant so much to him throughout his wrestling days.”

Scott said there was virtually no independent wrestling scene in Maine early in his career, so he often had to travel to Boston to find places to wrestle and put in reps.

Limitless, meanwhile, has grown to the point that it is regularly putting on shows at some of the state’s largest venues, like The Colisee in Lewiston and Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. Scotty 2 Hotty left WWE in 2007 and has mostly competed on the independent circuit since.

Scott isn’t sure what to expect Friday. He doesn’t know whether he’ll be cheered and Keagan booed, or vice versa. Do people actually want to see a father-vs.-son battle? Is there enough of a backstory between the two of them? 

What Scott does know is that he will aim to create special moments for fans, just like the ones other pro wrestlers created for him over four decades ago. 

“Even though I’ve been wrestling for, God, it’s crazy, going on 37 years or whatever it is, there still will be people there that night who have no idea who I am, and I’m just another guy on the show,” Scott said. “And every time I go through that curtain, that’s what I tell myself, that nobody out there knows who I am. I have to go through that curtain, I have to tell them through my body language and through my motion or whatever, what my story is, who I am … and just try to create moments and create memories.”