To Fans, Hulk’s Victory Was Icing on the Beefcake

Saturday night at the Sports Arena, with 8,000 screaming fans of the World Wrestling Federation.

This is the other San Diego County, the one not mentioned in tourist brochures or Chamber of Commerce ads or the intro-jingles to television news shows. Forget the beach, the zoo and nouvelle cuisine. This is shot-and-a-beer San Diego, hard muscle and hard luck, east of state college, and south of downtown.

The occasion is the in-flesh arrival of heroes and villains known well to WWF fans from constant exposure on television: among them, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Outlaw Ron Bass, Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, The Bushwhackers (Butch & Luke), Koko B. Ware, Honky Tonk Man (an Elvis impersonator), and the redoubtable Hulk Hogan and his nightly nemesis 357-pound Big Boss Man.

First the disclaimers.

Isn’t it all choreographed in advance? Yes, and so’s a Republican National Convention . Doesn’t it portray caricatures displaying outlandish emotions not known to exist in real life? Sure, just think of it as jockstrap Kabuki. Would an Olympic wrestler recognize this stuff? Like Olivier would recognize “Suds.”

That said, what then is WWF? WWF is a muscle-bound morality play, real-life cartoons for adults, melodrama stripped to the waist, with good and evil carefully delineated and specific rules of engagement for both wrestlers and audience. And it is also very popular: A.C. Nielsen says 11% of American homes watch WWF regularly on cable, 25% during a network special.

It is immensely physical but oddly nonviolent. There is probably more violence in a Saturday night at the average bar in Lakeside than in an entire season of the World Wrestling Federation.

For two hours, fans yelled insults at the villains and demanded that the good guys inflict plenty of pain. This was particularly true during the match between red-clad Boris Zhukov, allegedly of the Soviet Union, and Rugged Ronnie Garvin, an All-American hunk with a blond crew cut. It was not glasnost’s finest hour.

Still, there was not a cop in sight, and order was maintained quite adequately by unarmed security guards--not the beefy rock-concert type but the basic spindly legged type.

“Wrestling fans are the best people in America,” said Rene Parsons, 35, a convenience-store clerk in El Cajon. “The Hulk needs us to yell encouragement at him and warn him if Big Boss Man is trying to fight dirty. But we’d never ruin things by going really rowdy. Hulk wouldn’t like that.”

In the finale, Hulk pinned Big Boss Man flat, and the crowd went home happy and hoarse. All the heroes had won. The eastbound lanes of Interstate 8 were as jammed and joyous as Friday afternoon before a three-day holiday.

Some fans were already talking of an upcoming televised grudge match between Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage.

A Bloody Bore

Overheard in a video rental store in Encinitas.

First teen-ager: “Let’s get that one. It looks good.”

Second teen-ager: “Nah, I saw it already. It’s just the same old story: Some chick gets mad at a guy and hacks him up with a chain saw. So he comes back from the dead and kills her family, one by one. It’s OK but not very original.”

Grossmont’s Walkmen

Grossmont College in El Cajon has chosen its first two alumni for a Walk of Fame. The late Joe Roth, star quarterback on Grossmont’s championship football team of 1973, and actor David Leisure, class of 1970, will have their names on plaques outside the college library.

Leisure, co-star of the new NBC comedy series, “Empty Nest,” is active in the alumni association and as an auctioneer for its fund-raising events, where he is required to tell the truth, unlike his better-known persona Joe Isuzu, of television commercial fame. Trust me.