SAN DIEGO — Can a Hungarian-born heavy metal fan who grew up as a professional wrestling devotee in a San Marcos trailer park achieve success as a stand-up comedian signed to the same record label as Eric Clapton and the Stray Cats?

This question itself might sound like a joke. But it’s an accurate thumbnail description of Zoltan Kaszas, whose most popular routine, 2017’s “Why Cats Are Better Than Dogs,” is nearing the 70 million views mark on Facebook. His 2026 winter tour includes performances in San Diego, Vancouver, Honolulu, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and other European capital cities.

“Honestly, it doesn’t feel real,” Kaszas said. “I have a real hard time grasping how cool something is until after I do it.”

The first of Kaszas’ two upcoming March shows in his hometown of Budapest — both of which he will perform in English — is already sold out. So is his Valentine’s Day performance on Saturday at the 1,339-seat Balboa Theatre in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, which sold out more than a month ago. The historic venue is barely three miles from the North Park home that Kaszas, 38, shares with his wife, Emma, and their two cats, Mooshi and Miso.

“Everything seems to be moving very fast, but it’s been a slow build,” he said.

How slow?

“My wife compares my career to the stock of a company that has gradual growth,” replied Kaszas, whose observational humor relies on wry storytelling, not gimmickry or bombast.

“My career is not like Peloton, where it seems to spike and then crash two years later,” he elaborated. “If my career was a company, it’s one you would want to invest your retirement money in. It’s not going to make you any money in the first 10 or 20 years. But in 30 or 40 years, you might get a nice return on it.”

A Hollywood screenwriter would be hard-pressed to dream up a script as intriguing as Kaszas’ real-life story. It’s a classic tale of immigration and cultural assimilation that began near the end of the Cold War.

Striking out on his own

Kaszas was born in Budapest in May 1987, two years to the week before the Iron Curtain crumbled and Hungary’s Communist regime ceased to exist. His parents split up when he was born and his mother’s subsequent marriage to a Hungarian American man brought them to Pittsburgh when Kaszas was 4 years old.

That marriage last just seven months and prompted a brief return to Hungary for Kaszas and his mother. They soon resettled in Pennsylvania after a wealthy Pittsburgh woman — for whom Kaszas’ mother had been working as a housekeeper — offered to sponsor them. When he was 8 years old, he and his mother moved to San Diego. They lived briefly in Rancho Bernardo, where his mother was also a housekeeper, before settling in a trailer park in San Marcos.

“Because we’d already moved so many times, I honestly didn’t think we would stay there for more than a year, tops.” Kaszas said. “And then I slowly started to realize: ‘We’re never leaving. This is home,’ and had a love-hate relationship with it. The trailer park home is where my mom still lives now.”

Kaszas graduated from San Marcos High School in 2005. He moved into an apartment two weeks later — on the same street his mother lives on — and paid his rent by working at a retirement home as a waiter and a maintenance man.

Had his childhood dream come true, Kaszas would be supporting himself by executing body slams, headlocks and double leg takedowns as a professional wrestler.

His love for wrestling took root when he was 4 years old, shortly before their move to Pittsburgh in 1991. In Budapest, Kaszas was captivated by two American TV shows. The first was the police procedural “T.J. Hooker,” which starred William Shatner and was dubbed into Hungarian. The second was WWF wrestling, which he watched on satellite TV at his uncle’s home.

“I remember watching Hulk Hogan rip his shirt off,” Kaszas said. “And my uncle said: ‘All the crazy Americans like watching this, so when you move to America you’re really going to get into this, too.’ And he was right!

“I think what really drew me to wrestling is that you didn’t have to understand what everybody was saying, because I was still learning English when I was very young and wrestling is really easy to follow. It’s two guys fighting and one guy seems like a good guy, the other one seems like a bad guy. And then, as I started to learn English and knew what they were saying, that made it more entertaining. I was hooked.”

But Kaszas’ ultimate destiny had nothing to do with inflicting — or receiving — bruises, contusions or broken limbs.

His brand of humor is designed to create a bond with his audience by telling stories about — and lampooning — the absurdities of everyday life, not by hitting them over the head, figuratively or literally. Witness such winning Kaszas routines as “Costco Samples,” “Exercise Injuries,” “Vaccine Panic Attack,” “Binge Watching the U.S. Elections” and “Moving Back to San Diego.”

Tight end for the Knights

“I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after I graduated, but I always had the dream of being a pro wrestler. That was my ultimate first dream.” said Kaszas, who played tight end for San Marcos High School’s football team, the Knights.

“But I was going to have shoulder surgery because I have a bad shoulder, and I realized I needed to do something while I was going to be in rehab. Since I always loved stand-up comedy, I was like: ‘Oh, maybe, I’ll go check out an open-mic night.’

“So, I went and did an open-mic, fell in love with it and kept doing it. Then, I got booked for a show that fell on the same day as my surgery, and I ended up canceling my surgery and going to do the show instead, and I never looked back. From then on, it was all comedy and no more (dreams of) pro wrestling.”

Does Kaszas see any similarities between comedy and wrestling?

“They are both done in front of a live audience, but I think their jobs as wrestlers are a lot harder,” he said. “I can’t imagine having to control an audience by just what your physicality is in the ring. At least I get to do it with words. I think that’s a lot easier!”

It was Kaszas’ ability to connect with an audience — if not quite control them — that in 2022 earned him a management deal with Surfdog/DKM and a contract with Surfdog Records, both of which are headquartered in Encinitas.

Founded by veteran talent manager Dave Kaplan in 1993, Surfdog has released albums by everyone from Eric Clapton, the Stray Cats and Joss Stone to such San Diego artists as Slightly Stoopid, Agent 51 and Sprung Monkey.

The label has thus far put out four albums by Kaszas — “White Lies,” “Greatest Hits (SiriusXM Exclusive),” “Honorary Jones” and “London Fog.” Each of them was also filmed and released as comedy specials on YouTube.

“I first saw Zoltan perform live when he opened for Mark Normand at the La Jolla Comedy Store. I was so blown away by his show that I was determined to find a way to work with him, and reached out to him shortly thereafter,” said Mark Kaplan, the company’s head of artist relations and comedy.

“We are honored to have his albums as part of our catalog and proud to have helped expand Zoltan’s exposure through creative partnerships with comedy powerhouses, such as SiriusXM. We have also produced unique physical vinyl editions for three of his albums, which is increasingly rare in comedy today.”

The career Kaszas has forged has been anything but an overnight success story.

It wasn’t until he was 28 that the Budapest native was finally able to devote himself fully to comedy as his vocation.

In the decade prior to that, Kaszas worked a variety of day jobs, including steam-cleaning velour track suits and changing oil at a Sears automotive department. At night, he honed his comedy chops, doing as many low-paying bar and nightclub gigs as he could, and developing the everyman delivery that has become his trademark.

Kaszas did two recent interviews with the San Diego Union-Tribune, including one on Feb. 2. They have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Do you recall the first comedy open-mic event you went to?

Kaszas: Definitely. It was in Sorrento Valley at a place that’s now closed that was called The Comedy Co-Op. It was in a kind of garage where this guy had built a comedy club in the back of his law office.

Q: That almost sounds like a routine in itself!

Kaszas: It was pretty ridiculous, but I loved that place. They gave me so much stage time. It was a great, really encouraging place to start doing stand-up.

Q: Was there a routine or joke you did your first time there that either did really well or really badly?

Kaszas: My entire six-minute set was about immigration, how I thought we were focusing on the wrong border and that I was actually more worried about all the Canadians sneaking in and taking all the jobs here. It did OK, at best. Everyone laughed at all the parts I didn’t think they would laugh at. And then all the parts that I thought were like the punch lines got nothing. So, it was a real learning experience, because I thought I was going to walk in there and do really well, and I did not.

Q: How did your gig go on the night of the day that you had canceled your shoulder surgery?

Kaszas: it was the first show that I was going to do that wasn’t an open-mic night; it was a showcase of local comics and I was one of them.

Q: How did that go?

Kaszas: I don’t remember! But I remember my first two open-mic sets. I was trying out all these different personas, deliveries and different jokes. Maybe six months in, I told a story at a show I was booked at in Encinitas and the story hit really well. I was like: ‘Oh, maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do. Maybe I’m supposed to tell more stories.’ That was a big shift in the way I approached comedy. I think the story was about going to buy clothes at a mall, and it really connected with people. They got on board with it a lot more than the other stuff I was doing.

Q: How did you fare with your day jobs?

Kaszas: I was a bad employee at every job I’ve ever had, because I’ve always been in my head and I’m always thinking of either jokes or just daydream about other things. So that’s why I don’t have a day job anymore. I just do stand-up. But I do think of a lot of material while I’m doing manual labor, cleaning the dishes, sweeping the garage, taking out the trash.

Q: You moved from San Diego to Los Angeles for a few years.

Kaszas: I lost my job with the velour track suit company and had to move back home. I moved back into the trailer park with my mom for a couple of years.

Q: Was that humbling? Or did it make you more determined than ever to succeed in comedy?

Kaszas: I felt like a failure. I felt like an utter failure, having to move back home and be back here. I didn’t succeed in comedy in L.A. I didn’t succeed in even keeping a day job. So, it was very humbling. But a great thing happened when I moved back. The San Diego comedy scene was seeing like kind of a boom. The Comedy Co-Op was gone by that point, but we had The Mad House, and The Comedy Palace, which is now the Mic Drop Comedy Club. And, of course, we had The Comedy Store. And oddly enough, I started getting a bunch of stage time here because people looked at me as a comic from L.A. — because I had just moved back here — instead of just a regular San Diego comic. And it was ridiculous, because I wasn’t any funnier. It was just, I guess, that the perception of my being ‘an L.A. comic’ got me a lot more stage time.

Q: Is it a bigger creative impetus for you to succeed or to fail?

Kaszas: I think failure. Because failure pushes you in the direction you’re supposed to go. So, because I never had any luck in L.A., I put my energy there more towards going on the road for very little money, doing one-nighters at low-paying comedy clubs. I think being on the road made me a better comic helped push me where I needed to go to succeed later down the road … At first, my goal was just that I wanted to not have a day job. And then once I started being a working comedian on cruise ships and at colleges, I was like: ‘It would be nice to perform in front of people that actually want to see you perform.’ And then once that happened, it’s been amazing. When I step back and look at it all now, I see how lucky I am.

Q: Who is the tougher crowd, the college kids or the cruise-ship audience?

Kaszas: Both, in different ways. They can both stare a hole through you, like you’re not alive. It’s just that one of them doesn’t have any facial hair and the other one’s sunburned. At least you get to leave the college the next day. On the cruise ship, you’re stuck, and you see them at the buffet the next day. So, it’s a little tougher.

Q: You are performing a sold-out show at the Balboa Theatre. Have you ever gone to a comedy show there?

Kaszas: Yeah. I watched Louis C.K. there in 2011 or 2012, somewhere around then.

Q: Was it even in the back of your mind then that, one day, you would perform there?

Kaszas: I assume that thought must have gone through my head. But it also seemed light years away at the same time, because in 2012, I wasn’t doing comedy full time. I still had a day job. But I felt like I was good enough to have it be my job. So, being a full time comedian felt like looking at the moon where you can see it, but you don’t know how to get to it.

Q: Have you at any time had an agent or manager encourage you to change your name to something that is easier for most Americans to pronounce?

Kaszas: Thankfully, that’s never come up. The first time I did an open-mic night, they would draw your name out of a bowl on a slip of paper and I wrote my full name. They had such a hard time saying my last name that the next time I only put Zoltan on the slip of paper. And then, after I did that, a comic came up to me and said: “You are just going by one name? Like, who do you think you are? Sinbad? Or Cher?” Ever since then, I’ve always tried to go by my full name.

Q: When my mother moved to New York from Budapest, she was 24 and knew exactly one sentence of English: ‘London is the capital of the British Empire.’ How much English did you know when you when you moved to the U.S. at the age of four with your mother?

Kaszas: I don’t think we even knew a sentence. When we landed at JFK airport, my mom wouldn’t give our passports to the customs officers because she was given instructions in Hungary not to give your passports to anybody. That led to an hour-long argument at JFK and they almost didn’t let us into the country, because my mom wouldn’t hand over our passports. She didn’t even know enough to say: ‘No!’ But that obviously got resolved.

Q: You have no trace of a Hungarian accent. Were you accepted pretty quickly as a kid in school?

Kaszas: Yeah. At the school that I went to in Pittsburgh, I got put into ESL classes, English as the second language. I think they created that class for me and a Japanese kid named Simon; he and I were the only ones in it, and we were accepted pretty quickly. I don’t remember anyone calling me out for having an accent or saying anything wrong. I really don’t remember that at all. They only made me take that class for a year; by second grade they didn’t have me do it anymore.

Q: Are you and Simon still in touch?

Kaszas: No. I did a joke about it in ‘Honorary Jones’ where he and I kind of pantomimed our way to friendship. And then, as we both learned English, we found out we didn’t like each other.

Q: Do you speak any Hungarian now?

Kaszas: Very little, just enough to say “hello” and “thank you,” just enough to talk to people for a sentence or two when they come out and see me and they speak Hungarian.

Q: So, are you boning up on Hungarian for when you perform in Budapest?

Kaszas: No, not really. I think I’m gonna go with what I got, and we’ll see how they accept it. But those shows are in English, so I should be all right. I think the audience (in Budapest) is going to be mostly Hungarian — Hungarians that speak English. I honestly don’t know. I’m just basing that off of the messages that I get on Instagram and Facebook from people that have bought tickets to my show. But it’s hard to find out who exactly is going to be showing up.

Q: Have you ever met Eric Clapton or the Stray Cats?

Kaszas: I’ve never met Clapton. But I met (Stray Cats leader) Brian Setzer at a concert in New York. My management works with him and we got to meet him and his band after a show there.

Q: Clapton, Setzer and you are all on Surfdog Records’ roster, and you and Setzer are managed by DKM, which is headed by Surfdog founder Dave Kaplan. Is there an advantage to being a comedian signed to a record label and management company that are primarily music-oriented?

Kaszas: I can’t compare the two, because the only management I’ve had is Surfdog. But I’ve talked with fellow comedians that are with bigger comedy management companies, and Surfdog is way more hands on and way easier to get a hold of when I need to. They go above and beyond for me. They are excited to help me with anything I’m excited about.

Q: Your Balboa Theater show this coming weekend is your biggest gig so far. Will you treat it differently than your other shows?

Kaszas: Definitely. I can’t just go up there and do my regular act. Twenty years ago, I stepped on a stage for the first time at an open-mic night in San Marcos. And now, here I am headlining in a big theater in San Diego. It’s very special. My wife, mom and brother will be there. My friends will be there; some people I haven’t seen since I graduated from high school. There will be a bit of pressure, but I know all those people are going to be there to cheer me on. So. I’m going to try to have as much fun as I can.

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