Wrestling Related Article from the front page of the Atlantic City Pre

[ChrisMWaters 0]

Hey all.

 

While I was at work today, I saw a mention of pro-wrestling on the front page of the local newspaper where I work, the Press of Atlantic City.

 

So, I took a copy home and transcribed the article. Here we go.

 

IT'S BEEN A HARD FALL FOR PRO WRESTLERS

Fallout from Chris Benoit murder-suicide is body slam to local school and its students

 

By KEVIN POST

For The Press, (609) 272-7250

 

EGG HARBOR CITY – Tommy Cairo's head and his family told him to focus on his union electrician's job, but his heart said get back into pro wrestling.

So when he got the opportunity to start the Force One Pro Wrestling school here, he jumped. This was it, he figured, a way to stay in wrestling when his nearly 50-year-old body couldn't take the beating anymore. Better stilly, it was a chance to return pro wrestling to its cleaner, naturally athletic roots, before it became the gimmicky crashing of steroid-inflated bodies.

After six months of classes, training and preparations, Force One held a successful first show May 19 in Egg Harbor City, thrilling 330 fans with a full card of bouts. Cairo was especially proud that two of his students nearly stole the show.

Then, about a month later, a pro wrestler who had twice played in Atlantic City killed his wife, son and self, giving the business an unscripted punch in the gut and making Cairo wonder if he had made the right choice.

"When the Chris Benoit killings happened, I could have gone down and put a padlock on the school," Cairo said this week. He said he had "lost a lot of friends in the business," but this was different.

Cairo asked a couple of his students if they all should consider quitting. "They looked at me like I was nuts," he said.

Then the following Saturday, a young man and his mother came for a session, and Cairo said she told him how good it was for her son that wrestling had engaged him and gotten him interested in physical conditioning. That was enough to keep Cairo on his mission to reclaim the entertainment value in carefully predetermined fights without the drugs, sex and excesses that he feels have nearly ruined pro wrestling.

 

Theater of bodily violence

Trainer "Bad Boy" Danny Pagan bounces off the corner at the Force One ring. Student Ryu Lee catches him, hoists him over his head and slams him to the floor. The thinly padded wood-over-steel ring booms and bounces like the head of a giant drum.

Then it's lee's turn to be the human drumstick. Several times they floor each other, practicing to get the timing and effect just right.

It's difficult to understand the appeal of pro wrestling until you're standing ringside. From 6 feet away, it's an impressive amount of choreographed and hopefully controlled physical violence.

You know it's staged, but the big sweating bodies are real, the aggressive movements are real and some collisions are real. You can't help feeling that maybe you should get out of there before you're slammed to the floor, and maybe you should call the police before someone is hurt seriously.

And that's the beauty of pro wrestling. Unlike boxing, where the uneasy feeling you're watching someone suffer permanent brain damage is inescapable, pro wrestling, when it's good, makes you glad to know no one is getting hurt.

Not badly, anyway.

Lee, a 20-year-old from Tuckerton, says he keeps his job at the Acme supermarket for the health benefits "because everybody has injuries – sprains, bruises, blood."

Behind him, fellow student "Razor" Carlos Rivera, of Hammonton, is getting the stuffing beat out of him by trainer James Tilman, who wrestles as Diego DeMarco. Then diego tags Bad Boy, who enters the ring and beats on Razor some more.

Razor gets lots of practice at painful suffering as he's kicked in the eye, slapped on the ears and choked on the ropes. For this, he's paying $200 per month.

Tilman later says his one serious injury was torn ligaments in his ankle.

The real cost of pro wrestling, though, is seldom a specific injury, but the ongoing toll on the body.

"After every show, for the next two or three days I can barely move," Tillman says.

 

Wrestling with drugs

"Iron Man" Tommy Cairo's seat for watching drugs ruin pro wrestling has been better than ringside. A headline wrestler since 1988, he operated and starred in the Outlas of Wrestling that played the Tropicana Casino & Resort in Atlantic City in the late 1990s.

The 1980s saw more wrestlers seeking steady work, which was still scarce but starting to pay a lot more, he said. That created the conditions for drug abuse.

"You must compete, so you take a painkiller and steroids, because otherwise someone else takes your job," Cairo said.

He said there's a bit of hypocrisy in fans who now say they're shocked and offended to find that wrestlers were taking steroids, with sometimes tragic results. "People didn't have a hard time watching all these years as wrestlers were doing incredible things with their bodies," he said.

Cairo said he thinks drugs are a significant factor in the severe personal problems some wrestlers experience later in life.

"Years and years of steroids, painkillers and muscle relaxers, who knows what that does to someone? It affects the mind after a while," he said.

Still, none of the Force One wrestlers has anything like sympathy for Chris Benoit. As far as they're concerned, Benoit's actions violated all three of the values expressed in the Force One motto: "Courage. Honor. Respect."

There won't be any drug use at Force one, Cairo said, because his years of wrestling and experience as a prison drug counselor have made it "very easy to spot someone abusing painkillers or steroids. I guarantee I have a 99 percent success rate at spotting such people."

 

The acting troupe

Pro wrestling is a personal obsession, much like running, fishing, gardening or any other popular activity. It just happens to involve the realistic simulation of serious personal violence.

To make a show out of it, you need a troupe of obsessed people, who invariably have been wrestling fans for years and now want to be part of it.

The Force One troupe includes the Equalizer, a heavily muscled, tattooed, shaved-head, 15-year veteran named Paulie B from Barnegat Township. He wrestles featured bouts at the shows and helps with the training.

Jennifer Wardencki, a young blond woman from Mays Landing, turned up a month ago to see the local version of her favorite entertainment. She stayed to become a manager and valet (who escorts wrestlers to the ring) --- which are action roles, too. She said she has learned to give and get a clothesline takedown but wouldn't reveal more and ruin the surprise.

John Sollog, of Mays Landing, will never get into the ring with his vulnerable body, so he's happy to handle promotions and merchandising: posters, ads and sales of T-shirts with the logo and motto.

If you saw this wild mix of people sitting around a rural bar, you would think a bad fight was a strong possibility and get out. But at Force one there is the happy camaraderie of an acting troupe convinced it can stage a terrific show.

That next show will be Aug. 11 at the Charles Spragg School in Egg Harbor City, a location chosen for its air conditioning, cairo said. More details are online at www.forceoneprowrestling.com

Cairo said he's in talks to put on shows at Pleasantville, Southern Regional and Pinelands Regional high schools.

He said his school gives young guys a safe and stable place to learn a craft, a place to go without drugs or alcohol.

"Most people who pursue this...usually don't have a lot of confidence, quite the opposite from what most people think," he said. "They can come out of their shells when they wrestle."

And like the head of any theater company, Cairo knows the fabulous feeling when the show is a success. To get there, he needs to train his students and re-educate the audience about what's exciting in wrestling.

"If they know what they're doing, they can hold the people in the palm of their hand," he said.

"It's like a vortex that sucks you in. The next thing you know, you're back in the locker room, patting each other on the back saying, "That was great!"

 

Few notes from me:

1)Cairo seems like a pretty stand up guy...if he's telling the truth.

2)If I decide to get into wrestling, I may have to try out this school.

3)The article's author was very professional and didn't try to bash wrestling at all, and even tried to explain the appeal to non-fans. I like when that happens.

4)My manager knows "Razor" Carlos Rivera.