Hulk Hogan Heaven

I am sitting here on a rainy evening trying to find words that will adequately describe an activity whose prime function is to set two hulking male humans against one another in a grunting display of sweat and saliva.

It isn’t sport or even quasi-sport, else it would be listed in our daily roundup of obscure physical pastimes, along with lacrosse, fencing and mackerel fishing off Marina del Rey.

It isn’t exactly show biz either, because otherwise it would be included in our carpet coverage of those activities that occur within the same week as the Academy Awards.

I suppose one could place it somewhere between sex and police brutality, in that it involves a good deal of slapping at each other in primitive foreplay followed by groaning, grappling, smashing and, ultimately, the sweaty climax of mock triumph.

I am speaking, as you may have already guessed, of something called Wrestlemania, the seventh annual convocation of which occurred Sunday afternoon in the L.A. Sports Arena.

Therein were massed 16,000 members of a subculture whose growing numbers may spawn a new species of Homo erectus with a brain equally divided between an insatiable desire for beer and a primeval need for body slams.

They yell for no reason, are often given to actually barking their satisfaction, and worship the ground trod upon by men of great bulk and low foreheads whose biceps measurements are often higher than their IQs.

But, still, they are a class to be studied, and into this living laboratory of barking and Budweiser Sunday afternoon strolled a quiet and a cultured man with a willingness to go where others fear to tread.

Why is it always up to me?

There were 14 matches, as I counted them, involving costumed contenders known as Animal, Smash, Crush, Barbarian, Hitman, Anvil, Hammer and other appellations intended to denote strength and random violence.

I was there when the first bout began at exactly 4 o’clock or, as a fan might put it, when the big hand was on the 12 and the little hand on the 4.

(You’ve got to bear in mind this is a wrestling show, not commencement day at the USC School of Biophysics.)

The matches themselves were of only passing interest, other than to serve as catalysts for maniacal crowd, I mean herd, reaction.

All involved bearhugs and power slams, interspersed with a certain amount of eye-gouging and crotch-kicking, and all had their heroes and their villains.

Because the bouts are choreographed, one of the brutes could probably perform alone as a kind of solo wrestling act, throwing himself to the canvas in feigned agony and thereby eliminating the need for even a hint of harm to anyone else.

Many are, in their way, alone in the ring anyhow.

But then, I hear you cry, what fun would it be without the tantalizing possibility of someone actually being crushed by Crush or smashed by Smash?

Well, perhaps you’re right. It’s unlikely that a man alone in a ring could, say, break his own arm or dislocate his own shoulder, so the matches ought to remain a duet. Tradition counts for something.

But the fans are far more interesting than the performers.

Homo wrestlemanic, as the species might be known, is raucous but otherwise harmless. Between encounters, one or two might be found grazing peacefully somewhere on a hillside.

There is even a degree of almost human sensitivity among the females.

I’m not speaking here of the woman who shouted “I want to have your baby!” at the British Bulldog, but of the lady crying softly to herself in an upper row seat.

She was perhaps eight months pregnant, and I was concerned she was, as a friend used to say, about to drop her foal. She indicated by shaking her head, however, that wasn’t the case.

Through sobs she managed to communicate that her pain, her deep anguish, lay not in prenatal trauma but in the fact that the Undertaker had just bested her hero, Superfly Jimmy Snuka.

Crying over a vanquished wrestler may be the ultimate form of empathy.

It struck me as I wandered through the crowd of noisy primates that everyone seemed bigger, and possibly happier, than me.

I guess that goes along with a primitive diet of roots, bark and freshly killed water buffalo, without chemicals or preservatives of any kind.

Also, as security guard Ray Heimstadt pointed out, “They have a hell of a good time here.”

Ray is 6 foot 5 and weighs 230 pounds and I wasn’t about to argue with him in Hulk Hogan Heaven. Anyhow, who’s to say that having a hell of a good time isn’t the name of every game?

Even I feel better knowing Haku and the Barbarian got exactly what was coming to them.