In 2005, I was getting back into professional wrestling after a lull of a few years being out of the “loop.” Coincidentally, I was also working at the Olive Garden, a job that tends to lead to a lot of fantasizing about lifting a person up by the throat and throwing them through a table.
One of my fellow O.G.ers (a little insider lingo for all of you) was a very muscular guy named Jim who looked exactly like Austin Aries. I don’t mean that he resembled Austin Aries, or that he was a self-important dickhole with a terrible tattoo, the guy was exactly Austin Aries but like four inches taller. He was God’s second attempt at Austin Aries but He got it right the second time. I don’t know if it was just because he so resembled the little fireplug who was at the time the ROH World Champion, but one day we were in the side station and I blurted out, “I came up with a new finishing move,” apropos of nothing.
Well it turns out that this guy not only looked like Austin Aries, he was a trained pro wrestler! And like most independent pro wrestlers, he was WAITING TABLES~ ! Jim informed me that he had wrestled a tour of the South under the name “Jimmy Blue” that was booked by the man who trained him, Manny Fernandez.
Manny Fernandez was one of the top couple hundred wrestlers of the late 1970s and early 1980s and probably one of the most accomplished American-born Hispanic wrestlers of all time, but thanks to the internet, he is largely remembered as the dude who MADE A GUY PUKE BLOOD.
Needless to say, I was impressed by Jimmy Blue’s credentials, and even more impressed by the tale of his tour of the Southern states, accompanied by The Raging Bull Manny Fernandez. Apparently Manny had booked the Jim on the tour, which consisted of a dozen shows over the course of two weeks, from which Jim stood to make a couple thousand bucks. Turns out that most of the promoters weren’t expecting him and he only wound up wrestling about five matches. As for the money, Manny paid him a few hundred dollars and spent every night staying up doing blow with strippers. Jim was a for-real pro wrestler.
Jim and I hung out a lot and one day he asked me if I wanted to go “bump around” with him at “Manny’s place.” Well, having been a lifelong wrestling fan, of course I said yes. Manny was living in a town called Gilroy, where he was working as a high school wrestling coach. I don’t know about you, but I would be somewhat intimidated having my children be taught the finer points of grappling by a fellow who once kneed a guy so hard in the chest that he MADE HIM PUKE BLOOD.
So we set off one fall afternoon to make the half-hour drive to Gilroy. The entire time, Jim is telling me what to do and what not to do when we start bumping, and he had earlier advised me that since I didn’t have proper wrestling shoes, I would bump in my socks and he would wrap my feet and ankles. He’s talking, and I’m excited-scared, because I really REALLY want to get in there and bump, but at the same time I’m terrified that I’ll screw something up or I’ll get frightened and not be able to take a real bump, or even worse, that something like this will happen:
I mean, I’m the type of guy who is wary about hopping down from the bed of a pickup truck or getting on a “down” escalator. How am I expected to take a back body drop? I can give one, sure, as I discovered in a trailer park pool with another