I don't talk about it much these days, but I was always a fan of professional
wrestling. Not so much these days because the product is different enough from
what I grew up with that it's mostly put me off of it.
But, for a brief time in the late 90's, when professional wrestling was at its
peak, I got the chance to actually work at a show, so I jumped on it.
It was in the summer of 1998 or so and I worked with a pair of siblings who were
Superfans(tm) of wrestling. They talked about it all the time, about this
wrestler or that wrestler, and how much they liked to have pretend matches
(which, were, of course, extreme style, since that's kind of what was popular at
the time). They had gone so far as to buy a wrestling ring and had it set up in
their back yard so that they could play wrestler on it. I kind of lost track of
them that fall when school started and I moved to another location within the
same company that had hours more suited for a student, and they stayed at
headquarters mostly talking about how cool wrestling was instead of doing any
actual work.
After a few months I had kind of forgotten about the siblings and their backyard
ring, until I got The Phone Call(tm). The siblings were going to put on a
wrestling show, and since they knew that I was a fan, too, they wanted to know
if I wanted to help out. I wouldn't get paid, of course, but I would get into
the show for free. Of course, I accepted and when the time came, I headed down
to the venue. Well, I got a ride down to the venue. I was 19 or so, but didn't
have a driver's license or a car, so they sent some scrawny guy who I'd never
seen before or since to pick me up and take me down to the venue.
The venue was the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Evansville, Indiana. I had gone
there a lot as a kid to watch the Wednesday night shows that the USWA would put
on. Mostly because it was cheap ($5 for a floor seat, $2 if we wanted to sit in
the balcony), but the USWA was defunct and there hadn't been any Wednesday night
wrestling in a while I was excited to help bring it back in my own small way.
I go in, and the first thing to do is to set up the ring. The same ring that had
been sitting in the siblings' back yard for a year or so. When we started, there
were four posts, labeled North, South, East, and West. There was some confusion
about how these were to be installed. I suggested that since the ring is roughly
plus shaped, that you put the North post wherever you want, you put the South
post opposite of that, then you put the East and West opposite each other,
respectively.
N-----E
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| |
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W-----S
They said that I was wrong, and that they had to put the North post on the north
side of the building, then go clockwise and put the South post in, then East,
then West.
Since I was just a dumb teenager and they were super smart 20-ish-year-olds,
clearly they were right and I was wrong and they started setting it up their
way.
Fine, no skin off my nose. They set up the ring posts whichever way they decided
they wanted to, and I helped bring in the crossmembers to put into place and
that was that. I kind of wandered off a little bit after that since they didn't
need my help to tighten down the bolts or stretch the canvas or put up the ropes
or anything like that, and since none of them really knew what they were doing,
either, setup went pretty close to bell time. By the time I wandered back in,
Tracy Smothers was ratcheting down one of the cables that holds the ring
together and got his ratchet stuck, but mentioned that it would be alright
because that would give some good extra noise when someone hit the mat.
While they were finishing up the ring, I got my instructions. I was to work
'security'. I had to keep order and if anyone got rowdy, I was supposed to keep
them back (how a 19 year old kid was supposed to keep a properly motivated fan
back is a mystery to me). I was also given an orange trucker hat to wear that
would let everyone know that we were the security team, since nobody else would
ever wear an orange hat to a wrestling show. I was also instructed to not get
the hat dirty or crease the brim or anything like that because they had
'borrowed' the hats from work, and they needed to take them back in the morning.
So far so good.
The night started, and I don't really remember much about the show itself. I was
actually more interested in watching the show instead of pretending that I could
do anything to anybody as a 'security' person. I remember telling some people to
back off of from the rope that cordoned off the fans from the performers, but
that's about all.
All I really remember about the show was that there was a wrestler called
'Billy the P' who came out in a recliner that was being pushed along the floor
by some of his 'associates'. Even though the recliner was on a rug, probably to
help it slide better, it kept getting stuck and scarring up the floor of the
coliseum, so he had to abandon it and walk to the ring. They never said what the
'P' stood for (if anything), but they implied it heavily. I found out that he
has a Youtube page if you're interested (trust me, you're not).
I also remember that the ring announcer was some befuddled guy who had the worst
delivery I'd ever heard on the mic. I remember him announcing a wrestler as,
"Rain. From: The Sky" in a deadpan western Kentucky drawl. He sounded like the
real ring announcer was stuck in the bathroom and couldn't make it out there, so
they just found someone in the back who was a friend of Rain to run to the ring
and say something (anything!) to announce the match.
The last thing I remember about the show was that there was a 'hardcore' match
that ended up with one of the wrestlers wearing half a watermelon on his head
like a little helmet.
The show ended, and it was getting late, but we had to tear down the ring since
the Coliseum owners didn't want to have it set up until the next show happened,
whenever that was going to be (spoiler alert, it wasn't for several more
months). So we started the teardown, and it went a lot faster than the set up.
We weren't actually going to take the ring back to The Siblings' house since
they planned on making this a regular show, so we stacked up the pieces in the
back so they could be easily assembled the next time. When I stacked one
particular crossmember on the pile, I saw a water bug run out from a gap in the
plank. It was apparently there all night, and had one of the worst seats in the
house.
After that, the guy who drove me to the event took me home. It was about 2:00 in
the morning, and I was glad to finally be home. And although I didn't go back to
the locker room and I didn't meet any of the performers, and I didn't get paid,
it was a kind of terrible experience and I never went back as a crew member or
anything. I did go back a couple of times as a fan, though.
A couple weeks later I went to one of their shows, since the people in town were
so hungry for wrestling that they would watch just about anything. They still
had the same rotten ring, and for some reason on this night they decided to
bring out everyone that was on the card to have them all stand in the ring at
the same time to show off who you were going to see that night.
Well, as the wrestlers piled into the ring the center of the ring started to
sag. Each wrestler would enter and the center of the ring would sag a little bit
more. Eventually they had something like 20 guys in the ring and it looked like
they were standing in a giant bowl. The guys in the middle were looking directly
into the chests of the guys on the edges. They all exited the ring before it
collapsed and had an intermission while the crew came out and tightened
everything down. While they were doing that, Buff Bagwell came out and did an
autograph session with the fans to keep them calm, which I thought was a really
smart move, especially since it took something like a half hour to get the ring
fixed.
I went as a fan for a few more weeks, but school started to get in the way and I
had to stop going. Plus, a guy can only watch so much garbage wrestling.
However, a year or so later I found out that The Siblings had actually somehow
been successful enough that they had conned the local public access channel into
putting on a weekly show on Saturday mornings. I watched one episode, and one of
The Siblings was editor and the other was 'camera person' (who did zooms in and
out by walking closer and further and who twisted the camera around to get those
'Batman' Dutch angles). I don't know how long it lasted after that since I had
by that time moved away from that company and lost contact with The Siblings
(thankfully). But they did give me my one night in the Professional Wrestling
business (such as it was), so at least I have that going for me.
