Managing Editor
Since I was small, professional wrestling has always interested me, not for the violence, but for the sideshow antics in promoting it.
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| Standing 6-foot-9 and weighing 300 pounds, former football player Ernie Ladd dominated professional wrestling in the 1960s and early 1970s.. COURTESY PHOTO |
As his football career ended, he eventually made the move to pro wrestling in 1969 and earned quite a few championship belts before Ladd convinced promoters to turn him into a heel who was known for provoking anger among fans and his opponents through his swagger and arrogant statements during televised interviews. He loved creating derogatory nicknames for opponents or accusing them of committing crimes.
On the mat, Ladd was fierce and massive and paved the way for the success of future tall wrestling superstars like Andre the Giant, Big John Studd and King Kong Bundy.
As I moved across the country to attend college, I’d occasionally check out Saturday afternoon pro wrestling airing locally. Just 5-foot-9 and weighing 239 pounds, Ricky Romero was the popular local champion of the early 1970s in Albuquerque, New Mexico, defeating ring legends Terry Funk and Fritz Von Erich to win titles. A decade later after his retirement from wrestling, I met Romero when he appeared at a car dealership for an event to raise money for Easter Seals.
When I served in the U.S. Air Force in Arizona in the 1980s, wrestling promoters would drop off free tickets to WWF matches and tapings in Phoenix. I can recall one heavily promoted card that featured Hulk Hogan, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, André the Giant, The Iron Sheik, Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Orndoff, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, Brutus “Beefcake” Barber, Mr. Fuji, Ricky Steamboat and Sgt. Slaughter all appearing at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
It was the decade when colorful wrestlers like George “The Animal” Steele would captivate audiences by ripping the ring turnbuckles to shreds and then eating the stuffing inside. Randy “Macho Man” Savage would feud with opponents who tried to poach his girlfriend “Miss Elizabeth” and Jake “The Snake” Roberts would carry a python around his next while entering the ring for a match. Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase claimed to be a fabulous and wealthy wrestler. He wore a gold-studded, dollar-sign-covered suit and later a custom-made, diamond-encrusted, self-awarded “Million Dollar Championship" belt.
Outside the ring, an array of humorous characters enhanced the bizarre made-for-cable television plotlines and outlandish schemes. There was Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, a despised manager of outlaw wrestlers who was known for turning heroes into heels, announcer “Mean Gene” Okerlund who played along with the antics of wrestlers while interviewing them before matches, and Jimmy Hart, a boisterous wrestling manager known as “The Mouth of the South.” Hart managed a stable of oddball wrestling characters in the 1980s and 1990s including Andy Kaufman, The Honk Tonk Man, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, Jerry “The King” Lawler, Dino Bravo and the Nasty Boys.
By the mid-1990s I had relocated to Florida and found it to be a hotbed for professional wrestling gimmicks. WCW was an enormous draw there and if Ric “The Nature Boy” Flair was on the card, it was guaranteed to be a sell-out crowd. While trying to compete for fan attention against Vince McMahon’s WWF, the WCW roster included stars such as Sting, Lex Luger, The Fabulous Freebirds, Dusty Rhodes, Vader, “Ravishing” Rick Rude, and the Steiner Brothers. Other WCW superstars were Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, Goldberg and Diamond Dallas Page.
Professional wrestling fans of that era were diverse and rowdy crowds made up of teenage boys, young adults and mostly men, but by the early 2000s, women attended matches too, swooning over a new generation of superstars drawing national attention. Names such as “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Shawn Michaels, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Brock Lesnar, Rob Van Dam and The Undertaker dominated pro wrestling broadcasts of that time. They were followed by a lineup of even newer champions like John Cena, Batista, Roman Reigns, A.J. Styles, and Ric Flair’s own daughter, Charlotte Flair.
These days I can’t remember the last time I sat and watched a professional wrestling telecast such as “Smackdown” or “WWE Raw” but I’m sure the audience is still there and still buying tickets to events across America. Professional wrestling will never go away, and it remains a mainstay on television schedules.
The outcomes may be predetermined and scripted for television ratings, but the sheer physicality of the sport cannot be denied as a 350-pound human jumping in the air and landing on an opponent has got to be painful.
Many years ago, I interviewed wrestler Mick Foley when he was promoting his new book. I asked him how many times he had been hit with a folding chair during his career.
“Over the head or over the back,” he replied. I told him it didn’t matter. “Metal or wooden folding chair,” he replied. Take your pick, I told him.
“More than 10,000 times,” Foley said.
That had to have hurt.
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