Big Dreamers Entering the Ring

Heart-Throb is puffing up his T-shirted chest, fixing his mad-dog stare and taunting the ringside fans to shut up or get whacked.

Inside the suburban gymnasium, the crowd of several hundred, mostly young and inordinately male, goes berserko.

They hate Heart-Throb. And they cheer madly when he gets slammed violently to the canvas by Enfierno in a thunderous crash that appears to break his back.

The financial payoff for Heart-Throb, Enfierno and other wrestler wannabes toiling on tonight’s California Championship Wrestling card will average $30--with no insurance included. If a wrestler gets his head cracked by a pile driver or his Adam’s apple crushed by a clothesline, that’s his problem.

Yes, but for Heart-Throb and the others, the fans’ passionate derision and maniacal encouragement are an elixir more rewarding than any positive job review and measly pay raise the corporate world can offer.

Such are the risks and the rewards for aspiring wrestlers who dream of escaping the bush leagues and making it to the big time. Their ranks are swelling as quickly as a welt on the rib cage after a poorly executed cross-body block.

During the week, these dreamers study their trade at crowded, sweaty, joyous places--including the Palace of Pain in Vista, the School of Hard Knocks in San Bernardino, Killer Kowalski’s outside Boston, Skullcrushers in Florida and the Monster Factory in New Jersey.

On weekends they strut their stuff and smash their rivals at matches arranged by small-time promoters in high school gymnasiums, National Guard armories, bingo halls--anywhere, it would seem, that can accommodate a ring for wrestling and folding chairs for throwing.

‘At This Level, You Have to Love It’

These are brawny but starry-eyed fellows who hold 9-to-5 jobs in what wrestlers call “the real-real world” but are gripped by hopes of becoming a star the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan or Undertaker.

The odds are daunting. But since when are dreams of fame and fortune deterred by odds?

“To wrestle at this level, you have to love it,” said Heart-Throb, who in his nonwrestling life is John Love, 37, a surgical technician in Yuma, Ariz. “I have aspirations to go higher though. We all do.”

“To hear the crowd yelling at you and get a chance to use everything you’ve learned, that’s what it’s all about,” said Steven Dorado, 24, who manages a Blockbuster Video store in Chula Vista and tag-teams with his brother, Ernie, as the Brothers Dynamic, Ric and Vic.

In the suburbs and small towns of America, as well as in Canada and Japan, the phenomenal growth of big-time wrestling on television has revived the nearly moribund world of independent (“indy”) wrestling.

At schools like the Palace of Pain, located in a tin-roofed building in a rundown part of this San Diego suburb, students are taught the holds, the falls, the leaps and the histrionics that are essential. The educational process can take months, with the novice learning how to make a punch look real, how to fall without getting hurt and how to sell the action to the fans.

“You have to eat, sleep, talk and bleed wrestling,” said Wild Thing, a.k.a. Eric Dominguez, 32, who teaches at the Palace of Pain and recently got his face bloodied by a trash can in a match with Savage Wolf Tony Lopez. “Wrestling takes heart.”

By many accounts, the most difficult but most important skill is the ability to give those faux furious interviews about the pain you plan to inflict on any and all.

Among these local wrestlers, one of the best interviewees is the villainous TNT, who doubles as an instructor at the Palace of Pain, attempting to transmit to younger wrestlers the fine art of being verbally abusive.

“If you can’t do an interview, you’re not going to the next level,” said TNT. “The guys who are talkers are the ones who will make it.”

One of those wrestlers still in the learning phase is Al Katrazz, reigning champion (until the script changes) of California Championship Wrestling. “The first time I had to do an interview, I forgot all the words,” he said.

A wrestling card is like a repertory company, with heroes, villains and spear-carriers (literally and figuratively). Think of it as opera for the testosterone set: overly grand gestures accompanied by loud declarations of revenge.

Although it has yet to be taken up as an employment training issue worthy of discussion within the Beltway, there is concern among indy wrestling promoters that the voracious public demand has outstripped the ability of the nation’s wrestling schools to provide qualified performers.

“The saddest part is that a lot of kids have the dream to join big-time wrestling but won’t get a chance to get properly trained,” said Les Thatcher, an indy wrestling promoter, wrestling school owner and wrestling talk show host in Cincinnati.

Shunned by the media and largely unable to afford advertising, indy wrestling is flourishing by word of mouth among the multimillions of wrestling fans and through hundreds of Internet Web sites.

In theatricality and athleticism, the quality of indy wrestling varies widely. Extreme Championship Wrestling, based in Philadelphia, looks ready to join the two nationally televised big leagues. But in other areas, matches are in the mode of “Hey, we can use my dad’s barn and put on a show!”

When the crowd is sparse or the promoter is pernicious, the payoff can be bubkes. Still, there is no shortage of seekers for the money and fame to be had by a lucky few.

“Nobody makes any money in independent wrestling,” said Art Marshall, who wrestled as Johnny Diamond and now bosses the Detroit-based Northern States Wrestling Alliance. “We give young guys something more important than money: a chance to prove themselves”

And just who are these guys?

“Football players, tough guys, power lifters, bodybuilders, dreamers, guys in good shape, guys in bad shape, black, white, Asian, Indian, it’s like the United Nations of wrestling up there sometimes,” said Bruce Hart. His family--one of the premiere families of pro wrestling--recently revived Calgary Stampede Wrestling after a decade-long hiatus and now stages matches in one-moose towns throughout western Canada.

WWF Sets Tone for Indy Wrestling

The wrestlers are not the only dreamers. Independent promoters have dreams, too: of being the next Vince McMahon, the evil genius behind World Wrestling Federation, the ratings giant that dominates televised wrestling and sets the tone for indy wrestling.

“Think of the big two (WWF and Ted Turner’s rival World Championship Wrestling) as Broadway and everybody else as off-Broadway,” said Howard Brodie, a banking consultant and president of the National Wrestling Alliance in Tampa, Fla.

As a breed, wrestling promoters owe their lineage to carnival barkers. Even the slang term used by wrestlers and promoters to describe the code of silence about the tricks of the trade--”kayfabe”--is derived from an old carny term for not letting a mark get wise about the con.

The brains behind the Palace of Pain and California Championship Wrestling is the effervescent Charles Gibbs, a martial arts expert who also holds down a full-time job at an auto parts store.

Although a newcomer to the performance art that is wrestling, Gibbs delights in the scripting, feuding, announcing and merchandising (shirts, tapes, masks). He favors matches that spill out of the ring, giving the customers an intimacy with the wrestlers not available on television. His Web site: http//www.neckbreaker.com.

“I like to put together guys who hate each other,” Gibbs says with a laugh. “When you get real feuds, that’s when you get real entertainment.”

Gibbs, who started CCW and his school two years ago, requires his wrestlers to sign waivers for injuries. Gibbs (ring name: Charles Steel) has written into the script his alleged treachery toward some of his wrestlers, including a rough-and-tumbler named Cruiser Eddie Williams, who feels cheated.

Injury Risks Are Real

The action may be scripted and stylized--owing as much to Kabuki as to Greco-Roman--but the aches and pains and the risk of crippling injury are quite real.

In his title match with Cruiser, CCW champ Al Katrazz suffered a concussion when he was thrown out of the ring and onto a table at ringside. When you see blood in CCW, it is real.

Al Katrazz is Brian Fleming, 27, a former high school baseball player, married with four kids, and an assembly line worker at a golf manufacturing plant in nearby Carlsbad. He’s got his sights set firmly on the big time.

“That’s the dream,” said Fleming. “It’s one step at a time.”

His archrival, Cruiser, is known to his mother as Isaac Crain, 23, a movie theater manager from San Bernardino. So eager is Crain to learn his craft, he often wrestles for more than one promoter on the same night, with a two-hour drive in between.

“I’m trying to get my stuff together to advance,” he said.

What sustains Fleming, Crain and the others is the knowledge that even the biggest of the big, including the immortal Ric Flair, still dying his hair blond and pounding the canvas at age 50, had their start in the indy circuit. One guy who used to carry a boa into the ring even became governor of a large Midwestern state, but that’s another story.

“Their chances are about the same as the guy who plays his guitar at a honky-tonk in Texas and dreams of becoming a country western star, or an actor who wants to break into Hollywood and is doing regional theater,” said World Championship Wrestling spokesman Alan Sharp.

Aspiring stars are encouraged to submit videotapes, and occasional tryouts are conducted. As is so often the case in show business, success is a matter of luck, timing and contacts.

Chased by a Fan With a Knife

TNT, who goes by the name Cory Van Kleeck at his day job, has been wrestling on the independent circuit for eight years, maybe 500 matches. He’s got the memories, injuries and trophies (mostly broken furniture) to prove it.

The memories include the night a fan with a knife chased him upstairs at the National Guard Armory in Oklahoma City, unwilling (or unable) to realize that Van Kleeck’s role as the villain was just that: a role. Or recently when he was wrestling in Vista and had to out-wait six menacing guys who were outside the Palace of Pain after he had spent the evening pounding the bejabbers out of a more popular wrestler.

In wrestlingese, TNT is a “heel” (bad guy) and the scripts usually pit him against a “face” (good guy). Wrestling is melodrama and the role of villain is the more prized and the more demanding.

“I get the chance to be a total monster--just the opposite of the real me,” said Van Kleeck. “I’m able to work the crowd and get them to hate me. Their boos are my cheers.”

As TNT, he wears maroon tights and favors entry music from the heavy-metal group AC/DC, especially the lines, “TNT watch me explode/I’m dirty, mean and mighty unclean.”

TNT is mean, vicious and thoroughly unscrupulous, and he usually beats his opponent half to death before virtue triumphs and TNT’s villainy is foiled again (with a rematch announced for next week, good seats available).

Van Kleeck, 26, makes a living as a franchise services coordinator at Postal Annex, a home office firm headquartered in San Diego, where he moved in 1996. But wrestling remains his true love.

After graduating from high school in Oklahoma City, Van Kleeck trained with Tom Jones, a veteran wrestler and wrestling instructor who toured for years under the name Mr. Ebony. After a suitable period of tutelage, Van Kleeck hit the Midwestern circuit, wrestling several times a week.

“I’ve worked for $10, I’ve worked for free, I’ve worked for gas money,” said Van Kleeck. “I tell guys who come to the school, ‘If you’re in it for the money, there’s the door. Get out now and save a lot of time and pain.’ ”

Injuries? Nose broken five times, 22 stitches in his forehead (after being hit in the face by a garbage can lid), seven stitches in his nose (that garbage can again), a chipped tooth, a torn rotator cuff and a permanently aching neck.

“If you don’t come out of a match with bumps and bruises, you didn’t have a good match,” he said. “After the 22 stitches, I got to thinking: What am I doing this for? But once the stitches were out, I was right back at it.”

TNT doesn’t walk, he stomps. He glares at his opponent and taunts the crowd to kiss his posterior. At 6-foot-4, 290-pounds, when TNT stomps and falls and crashes, it is heard throughout the arena.

“I grew up in the old-style wrestling, the so-called stiff style,” Van Kleeck said. “If I hit you with a forearm, you’re going to feel it. I never want to hear the crowd yell ‘You missed him!’ That would be a total insult.”

On one wall of his condo, Van Kleeck has mounted some of the broken furniture from his career, in the same manner a bowler displays his trophies.

Working for Postal Annex is fine, but Van Kleeck would like a shot at the big time, either as a wrestler or a booker (scriptwriter). He knows there are few spots and lots of hopefuls.

“They’re always looking for a good bad-ass who can slap the taste out of somebody’s mouth,” he said. “That’s TNT.”