Fans and Fighters Say Professional Wrestling Is the ‘Real Thing’

Randy Neverman lumbered into the world of heels and heroes recently at the Aviation Center in Redondo Beach.

A certified public accountant in the San Fernando Valley by day, the aspiring “Beast” of the fledgling Pacific Wrestling Alliance at night, Neverman, 35, approached the dark blue wrestling ring with the sultry “Valet Beauty” in tow. He wore a loin cloth and black boots, with silver chains around his neck. The Valet Beauty, a buxom, bleached blonde, wore a black miniskirt with matching top.

It really did not matter to the crowd of about 300 whether Neverman won his professional wrestling match against “The Power Bomb Riki Ataki” (He didn’t.) All eyes in this match, one of seven on the card, seemed to be on the Valet Beauty, who jiggled and wiggled and teased her way around the ring while the men fought.

It’s no wonder that people ask whether professional wrestling is to believed.

It is, say the aspiring professionals, such as Stephan DeLeon, 19, and Neverman, who plunked down $1,800 each to attend the Pacific Wrestling Alliance’s wrestling school in Carson. More than a dozen wrestlers have joined since the school opened five weeks ago. Once they master the fundamentals, they are ready for bouts with the alliance and other organizations.

Another believer is alliance founder and promoter, David Ziarnowski, a Cal State Long Beach public relations dropout. He quit a job in the international courier business and staked the family fortune (“The wife and two kids”) on his dream of building a new pro wrestling empire. The new alliance scheduled five events in July. Ziarnowski hopes to book 12 events in August.

“Promotion gets (fans) in,” he said. “What you put in the ring will bring them back.”

Still, the question that has always dogged professional wrestling is: Are the matches real?

“This is a business,” Ziarnowski said. “If done right, you can make money. (We) are doing it right.”

Later, he added: “These are not fake bumps and bruises” on the wrestlers. He said that the sport is regulated by the same state Athletic Commission that oversees boxing.

$10 Admission Fee

It is not a hokey business, say many of the 250 followers who shelled out $10 each to sit on folding chairs near the ring in what once was a high school gymnasium.

It was a mixed crowd. There were young men, mostly teen-agers, with heavy-metal T-shirts. Older men and women jeered the contestants.

The biggest applause of the evening went to guest announcer Wally George, an Anaheim television personality.

When the event was over, a young boy left his spectator’s seat, climbed through the ropes and bounced into the 19-foot-square ring.

Is it fake? “I don’t know,” the boy said with a shy shrug. An older sister standing at ringside answered for him: “Some of it is.”

They smiled nonetheless.

It is the thrill of the crowd that drives them, say the wrestlers.

“I love being in front of the crowd,” DeLeon said. “It gets the adrenaline going.”

$600 Purse

DeLeon dropped out of Birmingham High School in Van Nuys two years ago. He has wrestled for the best-known organization, the World Wrestling Federation, once. His biggest purse has been $600 (most make about a third of that per match). To supplement his income, he works as a security guard, hoping one day to advance to a bigger wrestling organization.

“Wrestling can be financially rewarding if you are picked up by one of the major groups (such as the federation),” he said.

But some things cast questions on the validity of the sport. In Redondo Beach, Neverman was introduced as being from the “Island of Borneo.” He told a reporter he was a fullback for Ohio State University in the early 1970s. The sports information office at the university could not find a record that he played. And was it sporting for the 6-foot-11, 425-pound “Harlem Warlord” to spit repeatedly on a semi-conscious “Marco the Persian Terror” as he lay on his back in the middle of the ring?

Said “Flying Billy” Anderson, who runs the Carson training facility for the Pacific Wrestling Alliance: “The reality is, this is a business. It’s all too clear when you look (at yourself) in the mirror.”

Even if promoters fudge the truth a bit and if results are sometimes staged, the physical punishment that the participants receive is not.

Besides knee problems, DeLeon claims to have broken both wrists and his nose in the ring.

“I tore my knee up real bad,” DeLeon said. “I wrestled two days after surgery. I tore my stitches out.”

Neverman claims he was bitten recently during a match with George (The Animal) Steele on a World Wrestling Federation television bout. He displayed what looked like a bite mark on his right leg.

Said Neverman: “There are times at night when I can’t sleep. I’m busted up. It hurts. The pain is intense. I wonder why I’m doing this. But then I come back. You learn to live with it. There’s more to life than sitting behind a desk and working out at a gym.”

Anderson, who grew up in the tiny town of Goodyear, Ariz., has been wrestling for 14 of his 31 years. Once, in a federation match, he faced the late Adrian Adonis. He lost. He points to a scar on his upper lip, one that splits the left side of his face from his right, just under his nose. It took 27 stitches to close the wound. In addition, he said he has broken both collarbones--twice.

Then there is the case of 22-year-old Tim Patterson, who

occasionally helps Anderson train newcomers at the Pacific Wrestling Alliance facility at the rear of a martial arts studio at the intersection of the Harbor and San Diego freeways.

Patterson is typical of many professional wrestlers. He got hooked by watching televised bouts when he was in his early teens. His professional career began at age 17 as “The Hollywood Blond.” Most of his bouts were in a Mexican wrestling circuit.

Today, the Hollywood Blond has semi-retired. He has dislocated both shoulders and his left clavicle has a permanent lump that protrudes through his shirts.

“I’ve just got the body of a 40-year-old (at) . . . 22,” he said.

What looks fake on televised matches, said ultra-body builder Bill Breunle, a Long Beach resident known as the “Golden Gladiator,” are wrestlers setting up to withstand holds and throws that they have been taught to recognize.

“This is not fake,” he said, pointing to a dislocated finger. “You take bumps and get your butt kicked and people say it is fake. What people see in the ring is a wrestler learning how to fall right.”

For every move, wrestlers say, there is a countermove that usually protects them from injury. Because they know what is about to happen, they say, the public draws the conclusion that all wrestling matches are staged.

Breunle, 24, took up body building early in his adult life. In high school he weighed only 130 pounds. “I was the typical little guy,” he said.

Today, with the use of steroids, the 5-foot-10 Breunle weighs 265. Wrestling seemed like the logical step up from weightlifting, he said. In a tag-team match with Marvin (Inferno) Oliver in Redondo Beach, Breunle’s body rippled in his bikini trunks. Many of his fellow wrestlers on the alliance ticket, however, exhibit more midsection mass. Both men avoided serious injury in this match.

But for aspiring performers the results can be worse. Take the case of the hooded “Superstar Destroyer.” He failed to land properly when thrown by “Iron Man” Miller in their Redondo bout and the result was a broken ankle. He will be out of action for six months.

As the Destroyer lay on the canvas clutching his ankle, Miller pinned him. The Destroyer writhed in pain for minutes. Finally a pair of wrestlers appeared from a corner dressing room and hoisted the Destroyer to his feet. There would be no stretcher, no flashing red lights, for this fallen hero.

“It’s a tough sport,” Ziarnowski said after the bout. “You never know.”

The masked Destroyer was DeLeon.