This Week in Wrestling 2/5/17 (A Slight Return)
As many of my friends are aware, I am a fan of pro wrestling. Not only that, but I used to attend a substantial number of live events. I attended enough events that the wrestlers knew who I was. Eventually, I started a blog on Myspace about my experiences. It was a weekly blog, and about 90%+ of the time, I had at least one show to write my experiences about.
Around the beginning of 2009, I decided that I needed to get some extra money together to buy a house. After that, I constantly needed to get some extra money to pay for the house. A lot more time became devoted to earning money, so I no longer had time to attend shows that often involved 6 hour round trips (not including the show itself).
Recently, however, my work hours have been cut to a much more modest 40 hours a week, so I have some time to spare for things such as pro wrestling shows. Honestly, I had forgotten how absolutely insane that life was. This is my experience stepping back into it for one day.
Actually, it started a few weeks ago. My friend Merle sent me a message letting me know that he would be in town for a show that was running at the fairgrounds. It had been eight years since I had attended a pro wrestling show in person, and I could hang out with one of my best friends, so I decided to go. While we were sitting together, I mentioned that I had a lot more spare time, and that I would be interested in doing a run to the airport to pick up a star if it was someone who was interesting enough.
Merle replied that he did have a big show coming up, and that he needed someone to pick up Rikishi, a 425 lb Samoan. I hesitantly agreed, then e-mailed a nearby Audi dealership to confirm whether my cars air suspension would be able to handle someone like Rikishi. They confirmed it would (it’s rated for 7,000 lbs). Rikishi ended up getting another booking nearby the night before, therefore I would not have to pick him up. Maybe that’s just as well, because he arrived with his adult nephew/ tag team partner.
Instead, I was given the opportunity to pick up three big name wrestlers from O’Hare in Chicago. The first was Teddy Long. He was a WWE referee for several years before being “promoted” to General Manager for the WWE Smackdown TV program. Eventually that ran its course and he was let go by the company. The second was Joey Ryan. He is a very well known independent wrestler who has worked in WWE and TNA, but is now working for the Lucha Underground promotion (among others). The third is a wrestler who became famous as Little Guido in ECW, then as Nunzio in WWE. He was a relatively small man in what at the time was a big man’s game in WWE.
The first man to arrive was Teddy Long. I texted him my description, along with my location so that he could easily find me. He called me back a few moments later and we coordinated everything. He sounded sleepy. After we found each other, I explained that we had two more people to collect, each in different areas of the airport that would require taking the shuttle multiple times. He was not particularly enthused about this, and became even less enthused when he didn’t recognize the next person we had to pick up (Joey Ryan). He wanted us to leave him and go directly to the hotel the promoter booked for him. He got a little less grumpy when I mentioned the third person, Nunzio. They’re friends.
At the beginning of all this, I figured that if Teddy Long called me “Playa” (what he called everyone during his segments on Smackdown) the trip would be worth it just for that. (He didn’t). He did loosen up a little bit when I mentioned Nunzio, and started telling me some stories about their time traveling together in WWE. Most of the stories are wildly inappropriate for this particular forum, however.
As a bit of a side note, the biggest worry I had about this whole thing is something I call the Superman effect. If you see someone in a certain way all the time, such as in wrestling gear, you may not recognize the person in street clothes. It happened to me once when I spent 20 minutes speaking to a woman who I later found out was actually one of the top female pro wrestlers not signed to WWE at the time. It didn’t end up being a problem for me at the airport.
Second on the list was Joey Ryan. I sent him a text with my description and location, and he found me quickly. On Facebook, I have shared videos of Joey Ryan wrestling, where he does some absolutely ridiculous and wildly inappropriate behavior. For instance, there is a youtube video of him overpowering an opponent who has grabbed him by the genitals using “those” muscles. He proposed to his girlfriend (also a pro wrestler) in a match they had against each other, then used the entire elaborate in-ring marriage proposal as a huge distraction to pin her and win the match. Joey Ryan was the practical, mature voice of reason on this trip, whose experience and connections got things going smoothly. Later that evening, I’d see someone shove a lollipop up his butt after someone else had pulled down his speedo, revealing his jock strap underneath.
Third on the list was Little Guido, aka Nunzio. I texted him, asking to meet us all at a luggage carousel in the same terminal he arrived at, but directly in front of where we needed to go to get back to my car. Getting confused and randomly parking in front of terminal one, where our final person was flying into Chicago was coming in, was absolutely amazing on my part. The smoothest part of the whole thing. I didn’t get a text back from Nunzio. Joey went off to find a bathroom, so it was back to just grumpy Teddy and me. After about 10 minutes, Joey still hadn’t returned and I hadn’t heard from Nunzio. I started walking back in the direction Joey left in. I found him looking at the flight board. We found Nunzio’s flight... it had arrived early.
Joey said he’d wait in the area where Nunzio’s luggage might arrive while I returned to the meeting point I designated. Five minutes later, Joey came back and told me he’d called Nunzio, asking him where he was. Right after that, Nunzio came into view, his carry-on in one hand, a beer in the other (10:30am). His first words to me were “hi” and “don’t worry, I’ll throw this away before we leave” which he did.
This is where the only story that Teddy Long told me that I can repeat comes in. Teddy told me that when they rode together, Nunzio would refuse to stay in an even reasonably nice hotel, and prefer to stay in the worst (and cheapest) hotel. At the same time, he would routinely run up $200 tabs in bars. Despite this, Nunzio would be at the gym every morning without any signs of his evenings drinking.
We went to my car, and loaded their bags into what I used to think was a large trunk. Then we made our way to South Bend. Teddy let Joey know that Joey would be sitting in front, since Teddy and Nunzio were friends. I managed to get slightly lost getting out of the parking lot, then did a reasonable job not getting lost leaving Chicago. Did I mention that Teddy was not particularly happy when he found out that there is an airport in South Bend, the city that the wrestling show was actually in? He settled down a little bit as he and Nunzio caught up on things, and eventually started telling some funny stories involving wildly inappropriate behavior while “working.” Joey would verify various facts by looking things up on the internet on his phone, or from personal knowledge. Teddy also had a very elaborate GPS app on his phone, which would randomly, and quite loudly call out every time there was a car stranded on the side of the road, along with directions I couldn’t hear.
At the last minute, (before we left Chicago) it was decided that we would be going to their hotel, not the venue. That was just as well, since my GPS has not been updated since they changed the name of the road that the Century Center is located on. They were all pretty cool about the one mistake I did make, but in a way, there was a lot of pressure there to get everything done. At random times during the drive from Chicago, I would hear a loud “snapping” sound of plastic from behind me (where Nunzio was sitting). It was wildly distracting, and more than a little disconcerting since I really like my car. Finally, two minutes away from the hotel, at a gas station with a Subway in it, while we were waiting for Teddy and Joey to get back to the car, Nunzio finally asked me what the big plastic flap was on his side window. I explained that it was for the non-functional side shade for the window.
A side note, during the trip to South Bend, Merle texted me for an update. I had meant to send him a text message with a photo of all three wrestlers, just before we left the airport, but forgot. Right after he texted me, he accidentally butt dialed my phone. I answered using the car’s hand’s free system, which allowed all four of us to know that Merle had butt dialed me on accident. It makes me wonder how many wrestling legends Merle has butt dialed.
The whole drive itself was great. My early morning start guaranteed light traffic, and the drive back was not particularly bad. It was also comfortable and very stable at the high speeds that surrounding traffic was pacing. The car was built for drives like this, and was absolutely perfect in that respect.
My plan for the day had been to drop the wrestlers off, go visit my dad to help him with his computer, and then return to South Bend to watch the show. Nunzio, meanwhile, had asked me to make a short side trip so that I could take him to a bar down the street from the hotel. While I was waiting for him to check in to his room and come back, my dad called to tell me that he wouldn’t be home. When Nunzio came back, I asked him if I could join him for lunch.
I did this for two reasons. First, I figured it would make a good story if he accepted (he did). Second, I had the time now, and if nothing else, would make sure that he got back to the hotel before they were picked up by someone else to go to the venue. We went to a Mexican restaurant/ bar. While he drank 5-6 bottles of beer, we spoke about the wrestling industry, and his experiences in it. He also told me about his regular day job, which involves managing a $15 million a year portion of a security business, and also working for the court.
We talked about dedication to the industry, and he told me about being on the incredibly scary flight that made wrestler Nathan Jones quit the business. He said that WWE had chartered a flight to Australia, with just one stop to refuel. The airport where they needed to land was having a huge blizzard, and the pilot was having problems even seeing the airport. He told me that with the plane shaking badly, the pilot started to land, then went back up because he couldn’t see the runway. They came back for a second try, and it also had to be aborted. He told me that finally, on the third try, they HAD to land because there was not enough fuel to make a forth attempt. On the third attempt, the pilot touched down on the runway, and everyone was safe. He said that there was just as good of a chance that they could have landed in the grass, or even crashed into someone’s home.
During the conversation, he got a few phone calls. Answering one, I could hear him say, “Yeah, I’m sitting here at a bar with a mark.” I think that he was trying to be discrete about it.
He wasn’t particularly interested in eating there, but I hadn’t had anything since about three in the morning. We got the bartender’s attention enough to get me a menu, but there was not a lot of follow up to it from there. At some point, Nunzio asked me if I was going to try and get someone’s attention so that I could order, but I replied that I was now more interested in seeing how many times the bartender could ignore me despite having a huge menu in front of me. Eventually, I did order, and Nunzio was right about not ordering food.
After a couple of hours talking, he decided that he wanted to go back to the hotel. I brought him back, then decided that I would go to the venue and have a bit of a rest. I’d been up since around 2 or 3 that morning, and still had several more hours that required me to be fully awake. I only managed to make two or three wrong turns on my way to the venue. That was pretty good, considering that I had only glanced at the location on google maps a day or two earlier. I had to cheat and look it up on my phone, though.
What shocked me the most was that short drive, and how much of a friggin’ dump South Bend is. I am embarrassed by how terrible that town looks. There are vast amounts of real estate that need to be bulldozed, with what few businesses and homes that are occupied consolidated to one section of town. How are the people in that city not ashamed, constantly?
I sat in the parking lot for quite a while, resting and reading Facebook and Gab. If you don’t know, Gab is kind of like Twitter, but not failing miserably. Merle called me again, and I purposely failed to mention that one of his marquee talents was 6+ beers in, but according to Teddy and Joey, totally fine to work. Eventually I went inside, where Merle let me go in early, but charged me double for the opportunity. For a second, I thought I had seen Jake Omen, another wrestler I knew back in the day and wanted to talk to, but he wasn’t there.
If you’ve never been inside a venue before the public is let in, let me explain the basics. It’s pure pandemonium. Rikishi was in a corner eating a whole turkey by himself. He had silverware but was ignoring it. Hornswoggle, or as he’s known now, Swoggle, was using one of the corner posts of the ring as a stripper pole. Jack Thriller was super kicking various wrestlers girlfriends. Adam Bueller was doing these crazy upside down double backflips starting from the top rope, balancing on with his hands. Robbie E, a top TNA talent, was chasing a live chicken up and down the aisles. Two wrestlers I didn’t recognize were having a knife fight to the death over a bucket of protein powder. All of this stopped abruptly when Merle gave everyone a three minute warning that they were going to open the doors.
Everyone who was on that show put in a fantastic effort to make it as good as it could be. There were a lot of guys I didn’t recognize, and all of them were good. Even the guys who I didn’t have any enthusiasm to see wrestle did well A lot of the local wrestlers clearly spent a lot of time and effort making sure that they were prepared to wrestle in front of a big crowd, and put a lot of thought into their characters. To be honest, it didn’t always used to be that way. I would like to mention them all by name, but the list is too long. If they were on the show, they are worth buying a ticket for.
There were some funny moments to the show. Jack Thriller brought his 1st place trophy for midget throwing with him to his match against midget wrestler Swoggle. They had a good match. I had already seen and been impressed by how much Adam Bueller had improved, but was surprised by how much the wrestler Ames had stepped up his game. Shane Mercer put on a good title defense against one of the best.
Of course, Joey Ryan put on a good show with lots of his craziness. It was made all the funnier knowing that he was the most mature wrestler I had dealt with that day. Someone needs to post that match online as a sort of “best of Joey Ryan.” I was surprised to see the Full Blooded Italians go on so early in the show, but I’m guessing they had some drinking they needed to start on before moving on to the next gig. Nunzio was half of that team, with Tracy Smothers. Tracy looks like he should be at home fishing with his grandchildren. To be fair, Nunzio is a great, and very responsible guy. In the main event, Rikishi shoved his butt into a female wrestlers face while she was half conscience and sitting in the corner of the ring. Everyone loved it.
After the show, I said goodbye to Merle and started home. Being unsure of where exactly I was, I set my address into my cars GPS and watched it utterly fail to do anything right. Fortunately I found the road I needed, but according to my Audi, I spent most of my drive off road. By the time I got home, settled down and ready for bed, it had been a 22 hour day of absolute insanity.
