Chiefs OL Trey Smith honored in Wrestlemania 40 with boy he helped at SB parade
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Chiefs offensive guard and the boy he helped at the Super Bowl parade shooting got a bright spotlight on Saturday.
Smith and other Chiefs players helped calm down young Joey Borgonzi, the son of Chiefs assistant general manager Mike Borgonzi, during the panic of the shooting after they filed onto team buses.
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During Wrestlemania 40 on Sunday, Smith and Joey were featured about their bond.
Joey described his feeling as “really, really nervous and all riled up” while team players and staff hid in a closet.
“We just saw people running, like running to their cars and people were rushing out of there,” Joey said in a WWE interview. “We saw a million ambulances and I was just nervous.”
Smith sat next to Joey on the back of one of the buses. Mike said he thought that Joey feared that the shooter would be on the bus. Joey’s mom and Mike’s wife, Jill, said nothing they did would calm Joey down.
Smith was holding a commemorative WWE championship belt that was sent to the Chiefs in honor of their Super Bowl LVIII win. He gave Joey the belt and they began discussing their favorite wrestlers.
Rey Mysterio is Joey’s favorite wrestler. At a previous WWE show, Joey caught a Mysterio shirt and got it signed from Mysterio on Sunday at Wrestlemania.
“Wrestling is just sort of that common factor,” Smith said. “[Joey] started calming down. He started chuckling a little bit. That was just the best moment.”
“You’re the champion,” is what Smith told Joey on the bus. “He said it so much that I started to believe it and I really forgot about what was happening outside.”
Jill had audio footage where Smith can be heard in the background telling Joey “You’re the champion of the world man.”
“Thank God for Trey,” she said. “It really did calm Joey down unlike Mike, unlike I had been able to do, and it was such a blessing.”
“It took me to my happy place,” Joey said. “WWE and football combined in one thing. And I just started thinking about those two things and I started to feel braver and braver and braver.”
“When asked about that day, the very first story he tells is about Trey, about the WWE belt,” Jill said. “And that when the bus ride ended, Trey handed Joey the belt and said ‘You just got through that. you just did that. This is yours because you’re the champ.'”
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Joey sleeps with the belt now and it makes him feel brave. When asked to describe what a hero is, he described what Smith did for him.
“A hero is somebody who can, like Trey did, calm nervous people down. He made me feel happy. Really, really happy in a really, really scary time and I’d say that’s what a hero is.”
