Hometown boy Teddy Goodz and his friends brought big-time wrestling to Westport Saturday night, when they got down and dirty in — and sometimes outside of — a ring set up for the event in the high school auditorium. The place was packed with nearly 500 people.

Apart from Goodz — outside of the ring he’s known as Ted Bolduc — there was Little Mean Kathleen, World Class Channing Thomas, Number One Ichiban, Dirty Dango and others, all professional and semi-pro wrestlers from up and down the East Coast, and further afield.

The match was Goodz’s first in Westport since he graduated 23 years ago.

“I watched wrestling as a kid,” said Bolduc, who also owns a toy store, Cojo’s Toy World, in New Bedford. “Wrestling was something I always wanted to do but when I was in school it wasn’t cool.”

He loved it anyway and after graduation, found out about a local wrestling school in New Bedford, where he tried out and was trained for free, along with a friend who worked with him at Lee’s Market.

Bolduc went all in, learned the business and sport, traveled the world, and never looked back. Along the way, he earned a degree in audio and video production from the New England Institute of Technology, and last year opened his own circuit, LIVE Pro Wrestling.

Bolduc now stages a few dozen matches per year and came back to his alma mater at the invitation of the Westport Athletic Boosters, who were looking for a fun fund-raiser that would bring kids and adults into the door.

The match had that in spades. Goodz and his crew came to the school to hype up the student body about a week before Saturday’s big match, and on the big day the gym was packed for hours-long event.

Though he was on the card Sunday evening, Goodz’s wrestling days may be running out. He’s 41 now — “too old to be doing this,” he joked — and wants to start a family with his wife. But wrestling is in his veins, and it’s given him a life he could only dream of.

“My exposure on TV, combined with the toy store, kind of caught up with me and I’ve had more fun and more success in the past few years than I’ve had in the last 20.”