Sylvester Lefort
| Tom LaRuffa | |
|---|---|
Lefort in 2014
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| Birth name | Thomas Sylvester La Ruffa |
| Born |
May 4, 1984 Nice, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France |
| Residence | Tampa, Florida |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | Basile Baraka Eagle Mask French Stallion Sylvester Lefort Tom LaRuffa |
| Billed height | 1.80 m (5 ft 11 in) |
| Billed weight | 200 lb (91 kg) |
| Trained by | Lance Storm |
| Debut | November 19, 2006 |
Thomas Sylvester La Ruffa (born May 4, 1984) is a French professional wrestler currently wrestling under the ring name Tom LaRuffa. He is best known for his time with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) under the ring name Basile Baraka and for his time in WWE, in their developmental territory NXT as Sylvester Lefort.
La Ruffa was trained by Lance Storm at the Storm Wrestling Academy and finished training in 2006.
On November 19, 2006, La Ruffa made his debut in the squared circle as he lost a match at Power Zone Wrestling in Canada.
On January 13, 2007, La Ruffa made his debut for International Catch Wrestling Alliance, during a 2 weeks tour of the French island La Réunion in the Indian Ocean, under the name of Eagle Mask and teamed with Pierre Fontaine to lose to the UK Pitbulls. La Ruffa teamed up with Robert Ray to take part in the Lethal Lottery Tag Team tournament and reached the finals of the tournament before being knocked out by Big Dave and Charlie Rage. As a singles competitor he participated in the ICWA 16 Carat Gold tournament, in the preliminary qualification match he would lose to Bulk. For most of 2007 he competed in various other French promotions such as Association Biterroise de Catch, Fighting Spirit Federation and Queen of Chaos. In the summer of 2007, he toured with Nu Wrestling Evolution in Italy, where he faced the world champion Romeo Roselli. His final matches in 2007 were at the Spanish promotion Super Wrestling Alliance where he competed as both Eagle Mask and Tom LaRuffa and didn't suffer any losses in the promotion.
He returned to France in June 2008. In the semi final of ICWA's Japan Expo 2008 tournament in Paris, he lost to Metal Master. On the same event, he also teamed with Bryan Danielson. On August 2, he took on Joe E. Legend in an unsuccessful challenge for the ICWA World Heavyweight Championship. LaRuffa took on Yan Colby in a no disqualification, loser leaves ICWA match which Yan Colby won.
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