Wrestling’s Tarnished Image Matters Not to Die-Hard Fans

The newspapers of late are full of lies about the World Wrestling Federation and bodybuilding steroids and antisocial behavior.

Reporters are using their old tricks: court documents, police reports, balance, context, fairness, testimony by medical experts, on-the-record comments by accusers, adequate time and space for response. How can you trust reporters like that?

Which brings me to the question of whether the revelations will matter to the wrestling public.

My hunch is that they will not. I suspect that, when the WWF road show rolls into the Sports Arena tonight, the crowd will be as large and passionate as ever.

The suspension of disbelief among WWF followers is so complete that a few newspaper stories, even ones full of shock value, will probably have little impact.

I once heard two women in the concession line at the Sports Arena earnestly discussing whether Elizabeth really loves Macho Man Randy Savage or is just teasing.

Tonight, when Hulk Hogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper do tag-team battle with Sid Justice and Rick Flair, there will be people who believe Hulk is boiling mad at Sid for previous treachery when the two were partners.

Are these people dimwitted? I think not.

They have simply grasped a point that more educated and cynical people overlook: Wrestling is more about drama and entertainment than sport or competition.

State law classifies big-time wrestling as a contest in which “the outcome is not determined by best effort.”

Further, real WWF fans never confuse the art with the artist or the offstage person with the onstage feathers and fire-snorting and strutting. The play is real but the players are not.

Hulk Hogan and Rowdy and the Bushwhackers and Virgil and Repo Man (all on tonight’s card), are artists--low-brow, high-fiber artists, providing moral dramas of good and evil, sin and redemption, light and darkness.

With that comes some eccentricity and flouting of public standards. Call it the price of art.

I’ve even heard rumors that Picasso was a sexist, Dylan Thomas abused his liver with alcohol and Elvis Presley ingested lots of controlled substances.

I ask you: If Elvis can get his own U.S. postage stamp, is a little forgiveness for the Hulkster too much to ask?

Slam-Dunk for Aztecs Ticket Sales?

Here and here.

* San Diego State President Tom Day may decide this week whether to hire Jerry Tarkanian.

Sid Craig, chairman of the Solana Beach-based Jenny Craig Inc. fat-no-more chain, says he has already talked to eight or 10 businessmen who will contribute big-time to Aztec sports if Tarkanian is hired.

Craig says he’s never been to an Aztecs basketball game but would take 12 season tickets if Tark is hired, “and so would a lot of other people.”

Craig and Tarkanian were roommates at Fresno State.

* C. Arnholt Smith, once the most powerful business and political force in San Diego, breaks his two-decade silence this week about his rise, fall and disgrace in the first of two bylined articles for The San Diego Reader (for which he was paid an unspecified amount).

Advance word promises that Smith, 93, will provide “inside” stories about Gov. Pete Wilson, Dick Silberman, Ernie Hahn and other mover-shakers. Plus a few unkind words for Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller, who prosecuted him for financial flimflammery.

Smith still insists his bank was driven needlessly into bankruptcy by politically inspired regulators.

* In a political switch, John Duffy’s name no longer graces the deputy sheriff training center at Miramar Naval Air Station. So where is the Duffytown sign?

In the Duffygarage at the Duffyhouse in Scripps Ranch.

American Know-How Takes a Bow

The recent Walk-On-Water event at the University of San Diego--where students fashioned their own aquatic locomotion--was meant to show that, despite what certain Japanese politicians may think, American ingenuity is alive and well.

The message was not lost on the Japanese, either.

Engineering professor Mike Morse, the contest organizer, was interviewed by phone for an English-language radio station in Tokyo.

And now he’s been contacted by the producer of a Japanese game show that is interested to see if the event can be refashioned for television.