If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be introspective for just a moment.
Actually, wait, forget that. I can feel you rolling your eyes from all the way across the internet.
Let me. . let me just start.
California is another country. Another planet. A planet where everyone has a tan and fake tits and has been to a party at Marty Scorcese’s house. Oh, you mean Northern California? Try not to trip over all the gay dudes with their sourdough bread. California is a giant shiny animatronic wonderland that’s going to swallow me whole.
That’s how I felt, anyway. I live in the biggest city in the middle of nowhere, and I tend to blow things out of proportion. My expectations may have been a little high. I thought the place would feel different the moment I stepped off the plane, that there would be this intangible otherness that let me know I was in a place far from home, but it wasn’t there.
I arrived a day earlier than everyone else, and as my reward Bill drove me down to (up to?) Monterey to fulfill a 15 year dream of seeing their aquarium, specifically the kelp forest. I was apparently very impressed by underwater plant growth as a child. At some point during the drive up (down?) Bill pointed to the right and said, “you can see the Pacific in just a minute.” And then. . .there it was. I had seen the Pacific ocean. It wasn’t necessarily the majestic revelatory gesture I’d imagined in my head, I was just sort of scooting past it doing 70 on the highway.
Monterey is a dream, something out of a movie. Block after block of quaint little shops and adorable restaurants with shivering bored teenagers offering samples of chowder out front. At the aquarium I stood on the deck watching the ocean, letting the breeze blow my hair around and trying to feel that otherness I was expecting, but it wasn’t there yet. While we ate dinner in a local Mexican restaurant I kept staring, watching the waves crash over the rocks and wondering when things would start to feel different. Or even smell different. You can smell the Atlantic long before you see it, but I didn’t smell anything but Bill’s fajitas.
The next day and a half in San Jose were filled with friends and fun and music and ridiculousness and nothing I would ever dream of complaining about, lest you think that’s what I’m trying to do. People kept asking me, “so does this seem really different to you?” and all I could think was, “well no, not really.” Past the occasional palm tree and the rather undignified novelty of homeless people, it seemed like a more expansive version of what I was used to. There is the Target, there is the 7-11, there’s the Asian supermarket, and the other Asian supermarket, and the third Asian supermarket, and . . .okay, maybe it was just a little different than what I was used to.
On Saturday we all piled into vehicles and headed towards San Francisco. It was suggested that I ride with Laura (otherwise known as forum superstar mreow~), as it hardly seemed fitting to let the poor girl commute alone. That bit of happenstance wound up being the best thing to happen to me all weekend. We puttered along, chatting and listening to music. At some point the view opened up and all I could see was hill after hill of boxy little houses with the water stretching out behind them. In my memory the houses are all stark white, but I know that can’t be what they really looked like. I started to feel a tingle in my stomach. Excitement, anticipation, I wasn’t sure. But I could hardly keep the grin off of my face.
At some point on the way we got lost, took a wrong turn. We drove past a little beach, the ocean looking stark and blue and wild in a way it hadn’t before. The road narrowed into a twisty turny two-lane highway and we found ourselves driving through a forest of sky high trees the likes of which I thought existed only in Subaru commercials. Suddenly the forest ended and our car was a tiny speck creeping along the side of a mountain a million miles above the earth with the ocean stretched out below us. I was overwhelmed. The tingle in my tummy morphed into full fledged ebullience. We were there. California. Not even the state, but the feeling of it. The not here, but there of it. The, “all right, Dorothy, the house stopped spinning now where the hell are we and where the FUCK is Toto?” otherness that I’d been craving since I had arrived. I was full of it. It flowed through my fingers and spouted out the top of my head.
Laura was preoccupied, looking for a way to get headed in the right direction again. All I could think was “don’t go back. Don’t turn around. Keep going. Keep going and going and going, down the Pacific Coast Highway until it ends, then turn back and do it again. Over and over until I turn to dust.
I should have made her stop. I should have run to the guardrail and stood, arms outstretched in one of those ridiculous filmic Jesus Christ poses, letting California swallow me whole. Like I’d expected it to. Like I’d wanted it to.
San Francisco came and went far too quickly, and on Sunday I boarded my plane home with a catch in my throat. Now I’m back in my little room, in my little house, in little little West Virginia waxing melodramatic about a ten minute accidental detour. But my Gunslinger boys (with the help of all the other amazing people I got to spend time with) gave me something so much better than just a four day vacation. It’s a something I can only begin to articulate by clogging up a comedy website with my sappy Hallmark prose.
They gave me California. And California took my heart.
Swallowed it whole.
- Emily
- Lindy
The first time I went to the Cow Palace, I was part of a sold-out crowd that watched Eddie Guerrero win his first and only World title from Brock Lesnar.
Things were somewhat different this time, because I was about to witness something even more historical: Wrestle Fan Fest 2007!
Wooo
B and I made our way to San Francisco to take in Day Two of Wrestle Fan Fest 2007, the largest wrestling convention the West Coast has ever seen! Wrestlers scheduled to appear on Day Two: Hall and Nash, Sid Vicious, Bill Goldberg, Roddy Piper, and the two wrestlers B and I were most excited about: Kurt Angle and the Great Muta! B had, in fact, purchased autograph tickets for these two legendary superstars well in advance of the event, as certain headliner autograph opportunities could be obtained on the official Wrestle Fan Fest website for the appropriate fee. Also available on the website: the official Wrestle Fan Fest TITLE BELT! Pre-orders for the official Wrestle Fan Fest DVD! Tickets to the Wrestle Fan Fest after-party! Wrestle Fan Fest the flamethrower!
Some aspects of the Wrestle Fan Fest seemed dubious, like when the Midnight Express pulled off the show a month beforehand, issuing a statement that the promoter had been shady and that “a bunch of other guys are pulling out too.” Other luminaries like Bobby Heenan and Kamala also withdrew from the event well beforehand, which sort of raised some eyebrows. B went so far as to post his concerns on the Wrestle Fan Fest message board, to which the promoter responded, basically saying, “Hey man, I am dropping more money on this than you could possibly imagine.” He then held up his thumb and forefinger and rubbed them together in an apprximation of a miniature violin and offered B two tickets to Saturday night’s mixed martial arts Pay-Per-View. This seemed to not really go a long way towards putting us at ease, however, as there was no formal schedule posted until a few days beforehand, and attempts to call the Official Wrestle Fan Fest 2007 Information Hotline were met with, “Hi, this is Jasmine. Leave a message and I’ll call you right back.” Sorry, JASMINE, you don’t sound like the type of person who can tell me what time Outlaw Ron Bass will be available for a meet and/or greet.
When we first rolled up to the Cow Palace we were emphatically instructed to park in THIS PARTICULAR part of the parking lot which was cordoned off for the event. Keep in mind that the Cow Palace is an enormous multi-thousand-person arena, at which they have held many historical events. The section in which we were to park was about that of a Target parking lot. Although that is a plenty respectable size, looking out at the vast expanse of pavement in which we were NOT to park was pretty amusing and kind of like “wait what the hell is going on here”
After purchasing our tickets from the box office and walking through one of those portable turnstiles for absolutely no reason, we stared about goggle-eyed in delight like Templeton at the fair.
Well actually there wasn’t a lot going on. There were about a dozen memoribilia booths, a bunch of tacky clothing company tents that said like “BRUTAL TRASH” in tribal letters, and a caricaturist, because everyone loves roller skates.
According to the Wrestle Fan Fest website, autographs were to work as such: You buy an autograph “ticket” from the autograph table, then buy an 8x10 if you don’t have an item to be signed, then take the photo and the ticket to the person you want to sign it. You could also purchase tickets for a “headliner” which would be stationed at a different table elsewhere, otherwise the wrestlers would be in “Autograph Alley” and any ticket could be used for any of those wrestlers. In addition to or instead of the autograph ticket, you could also purchase a photo op ticket, wherein you could either take a photo of yourself and the wrestler posing together using your own camera. You could also choose to have your picture taken using their “professional service”, which would then be printed out in somewhat high quality. This was another additional charge. According to the website, the wrestlers were scheduled to sign autographs at a certain time and scheduled to do photo ops at a different time. Pretty convoluted instructions, granted, but you figure anything that complex must be that way for a reason, probably because it can more easily be enforced that way.
We found the autograph table without much trouble. It was actually four tables, three of which were covered in 8x10 photos of various quality and relevance. B confirmed that this was where he could pick up his pre-purchased headliner tickets and any photo op tickets, so he made a quick run to the ATM and I stayed behind to survey the table. It was about 10:25 and Kurt Angle was scheduled to be signing from 10:30 to 11:30 or so. I inquired where he was sitting, as I didn’t see the aforementioned “Headliner’s Table” in the convention hall.
“Oh, Kurt Angle won’t be able to make it, he has the stomach flu.”
“what”
“Yeah, Kurt Angle can’t make it, he got sick.”
“Okay the Great Muta is signing right now though, right?”
The guy makes a pinched face and consults his enormous stack of Great Muta tickets.
“You know what? These tickets say Friday. I don’t want to give you a ticket for Friday and not have them honor it.”
“Wait, them? Them who? Isn’t ‘them’ just…you?”
“Eh, kinda.”
“Wait why would the tickets be for yesterday? Every piece of advertising says that the Great Muta is signing on Saturday.”
The guy turns to the shorter, goateed man next to him.
“Hey is Muta going to be here today?”
“Muta? Muta wrestled last night.”
“Yeah but this guy says that he’s supposed to be here today.”
“Oh I don’t know about that. He might be in.”
“Don’t you have a list of people or a schedule for today or something?”
“Oh no, we don’t have anything like that.”
“Because there’s schedule up on your website and it says Muta for today. My friend bought an autograph ticket for today for the Great Muta.”
He fixes me with a weary and condescending gaze.
“Look, man. He may be in later, I don’t know whether he will or not. Some people won’t be able to make it, others that we haven’t advertised may show up. You know how it is, man. We’re wrestling fans, so you know as a wrestling fan that things may not work out the way you expect them to or the way things are ‘advertised’ to be. It’s just the wrestling business!”
“Okay so some people may be making surprise appearances or something? Are you going to announce when they show up or anything?”
“Nope, you’ll just have to watch the Autograph Alley behind us and see who shows up.”
I take a look behind them and see a long row of completely empty tables against the wall.
“Okay so where is the Headliner’s autograph table?”
“The what.”
“There is supposed to be another autograph table for the ‘headliners’ somewhere.”
“Oh I don’t know about all that.”
“Don’t you, as the table where people PURCHASE AUTOGRAPHS, have information about which people are going to be here or where they’re sitting?”
“Nope!”
About this time B came back from the ATM, and I informed him that there was good news and bad news. The bad news being that Kurt Angle would not be here and that the Great Muta may not show up, but the GOOD news being that SOME wrestlers MAY be here at SOME point today. So I bought autograph tickets and B bought photo op tickets, and he got his Angle “ticket” swapped for two other tickets, and a dubious Muta ticket which we were assured could be swapped out for credit towards any other headliner or additional tickets in the event that Keiji Mutoh was definitely already on a plane back to Japan. I picked out an Ultimo Dragon 8x10 that had been stretched and skewed to fit on the photo paper, because it was the only Ultimo Dragon picture they had. It was either that or the photo of Maven soaking wet and prancing, wearing pink tights so skimpy and clinging that you could see the entirety of his dickprint. (Maven did not attend Wrestle Fan Fest 2007.)
We took another lap around the meager convention hall, as there were still no wrestlers anywhere around. Stationed near the entrance were a bevvy of quasi-celebrities, including Tony Burton (Apollo Creed’s trainer from the Rocky films) and Mia St. John (female boxer who was in Playboy). David Faustino was advertised as appearing, and we were excited as shit about meeting the Grand Master, but that little fucker never showed. We should know, we checked every fifteen minutes or so. Also stationed near these luminaries and other women who have had their nipples published in glossy form was the second-saddest celebrity I’ve ever seen: Tonya Harding. The poor woman sat there glumly behind a table the entire damn day and the only person I saw talk to her was the caricaturist. He probably wanted to draw a large-headed picture of her playing tennis. Probably not ice skating, anyway.
For the record, the saddest celebrity I’ve ever seen was Margot Kidder. Poor gal had waves of crazy coming off of her like a 1960s microwave.
We came around to Autograph Alley again to find that Harley Race, Jimmy Snuka and the Doctor of Style, Slick, had showed up, as well as the astoundingly rapidly-aging Sandman. I decided to buy 8x10s of Race and Snuka because dammit, these guys entertained the shit out of me when I was a kid and meeting them would be awesome. We then stood in line for Race, who had a bevy of FREE 8x10s in front of him which were all of a higher quality than the one I had just paid five bucks for. We walked right up and showed our tickets to him, which he looked at blankly before putting in his shirt pocket. Then I got both an autograph on one of his superior (gratis) photos and a photo despite only handing him one ticket. Then I went up to Jimmy Snuka, held a ticket out, he signed my picture and took a photo with me, and then I put the ticket back in my pocket.
We ended up getting a ton of free autographs and pictures, and the really savvy wrestlers set up their own booths and made their own money. There were also sort of mystery booths, like the giant APW tent that was only occupied by a dude and four T-shirts from like 3:00 to 5:00, and the even larger CRUNCH tent that encompassed about eight tables, never had a single person standing in it, and then was taken down at about 4:00.
We started out hating Wrestle Fan Fest 2007’s guts and ended up having a really amazing time, meeting people like Ultimo Dragon and Roddy Piper and Molly Holly, who were some of the most incredible people I have ever spoken to.
We found out a lot of shit after the fact, like how the promoter for the event fucked everyone over, stole money from the autograph box and skipped town. The wrestlers apparently had a sit-down strike on Saturday morning because no one was getting paid what they were promised. Bubba Dudley had to physically frisk the promoter to get money out of him. Nikolai Volkoff was stranded at the airport for eight hours before someone remembered to go pick him up. The boxing trainer for the son of Dog the Bounty Hunter tore through mixed martial arts fighters like a tornado filled with razor blades. The MMA PPV was cancelled after having only sold 23 tickets when someone realized there as a state fighting commission and they couldn’t fight in a makeshift cage fashioned from couch cushions and tinsel.
In the end, it didn’t matter, because we met a lot of awesome people and laughed our asses off the whole day.
But man, that Dave Faustino has some nerve.
- Bill
Ask any wrestling fan and they'll tell you that no task exists more daunting than that of convincing an outsider that beyond the blatant racism, mysogeny and homophobia wrestling is not without merit. To the non-fan, WWE is wrestling and the entire industry is judged accordingly. This often makes things difficult as WWE have a knack for making everything they do leagues more asinine than the thing they just finished doing. Trying to explain the length to which WWE's retardation extends becomes less a roadblock to a deeper understanding of the business and more a series of swift, yet precise blows to your penis and/or vagina from the business end of a steam turbine.
Even if you're somehow able to rationalize the correlation between simulated necrophilia and people willingly laying down legal American tender to see two men fake fight to your sibling/friend/spouse without them changing the locks/changing their number/filing for divorce, wait five minutes and something is sure to come along and gum up the works. Either a washed up derelict of the industry will get caught trying to inject steroids into their eyeballs or an industry icon will go crazy and kill a bunch of people.
There's really no way to get around that, either. I mean, when Mae Young is asked to birth a hand on live TV, Mae Young births a hand on live TV. If Mae Young refuses to birth a hand on live TV, Mae Young goes back to eating cat food for dinner. That's an angle, though. And as wrestling fans we're left with no option but to complain about it vehemently over the Internet only to years later ironically regail it for being the most incredible thing to happen in the history of our great sport. When a guy kills his wife, son and then himself... whelp! Anything can happen in the wrestling business! I guess I can find solice in the fact that by 2007 there really wasn't much room left on WWE's reputation to sully with yet another black mark. I mean, you could apply blackface to Stepin Fetchit, but is there really much of a point? Where's the breaking point? Do you lock him in a steamer trunk and sink it to the bottom of the ocean? Launch it into the unfolding fabric of space and time? These are the questions which haunt me in my sleep.
Ring of Honor is different, however. When you show people a Ring of Honor match, you do so with the intent of proving that while the matches are ultimately scripted, what happens between the bell is anything but fake. Chops resonate through crowded armories like gunshots. Wrestlers fly into one another, over ropes onto guardrails, through tables, and into the writing mass of cheering fans with no regard for their own well-being. Limbs are stretched to excruciating degrees. People bleed. It isn't performance art. It isn't sports-entertainment. It is wrestling. And it is awesome.
For Ring of Honor, going out west for a weekend must have seemed like a great idea. I mean, Wrestle Fan Fest was poised to be the biggest MMA and Pro Wrestling event the west coast has seen in the Cow Palace to date! The fine folk at www.wrestlefanfest.com had assured us as much, and if there's one group of people on this planet you can trust to the letter its wrestling promoters! I don't understand what happened, to be frank. Shows I'm accustomed to attending in Boston will usually draw between 500 and 600 people, and we're not even a particularly strong market. Yet here we were on the west coast, where an entire contingent of rabid fans were surely anxious to show support for a promotion who'd seen success not just regionally, but around the world. The event had been promoted for months in advance and was set to take place in a building steeped in industry tradition. It makes sense then, that the show drew about 350 at the gate. I guess either the stigma of the past two days had been enough to ward people away or the denizens of the bay area are just a bunch of unappreciative douchebags.
Regardless of whether an entire coast dropped the collective ball or not, we were there to see Ring of Honor. Eight of us and Liar Minor Daniel esteemed forum contributor Greg Stevens found seats, and within minutes the show had started. Now, I'd just like to note that under normal conditions, being a fan who tries getting himself over at the expense of the wrestlers is about the worst thing you can do at a wrestling event. Today was different, though. B, Bill and I are all incredibly loud jackasses who aren't content unless a joke gets stretched to its absolute limit. Social etiquette would have no place within those walls.
I'd also like to mention that I'm not much of a review guy. I don't sit in the front row recording match lengths with a stopwatch. I don't assign arbitrary snowflake ratings to matches before texting the results to a bunch of gangly nerds waiting impatiently to find out whether Jack Evans finished off Jigsaw with the 450 splash or a shooting star press. I go to wrestling events with the intent of having a good time. Consider this less of a formal review and more of a collection of thoughts.
Roderick Strong suffers from a rare memory affliction which causes him to forget that he is Roderick Strong and that generally speaking, people do not like him. I like to imagine his internal monologue as he saunters down to the ring being nothing more than "EVERYONE THINKS I'M GREAT!" hummed to the tune of Farmer in the Dell over and over again. Then, when the match starts and everyone instantly starts shitting on him he gets this perplexed "why they boo me i not understand!!!" look on his face as if the exact same thing hasn't been happeneing for well over a year. We spent the majority of his 15-minute match against Claudio Castignoli burning and hurling zingers at him while he'd pout and ocasionally yell for us to SHUT OUR YAPS like he were some loincloth-wearing Bavarian wrestling a bear on the carnival midway.
As I said, he was wrestling Claudio Castignoli. Claudio's gimmick is that he's a Swiss guy who has a lot of money for some reason and whenever he motions to the crowd, performs a move, breathes, blinks or thinks about that one episode of Drexel's Class where Drexel brings his 5th grade students to Las Vegas we're all supposed to throw our hands in the air and shout "AAAAYYYYYY!!!" It doesn't make much sense, but neither do his tights with the dollar signs on them. We get it, Claudio. You have more money than us. Why are we supposed to cheer for you again? Anyway, Claudio scratches his ass so we go wild and start shouting "AAAYYYYYYY!!!" at him. Roderick, despite being in a stable full of BAD MEN who do BAD THINGS, doesn't understand why we'd be cheering for anyone NOT named Roderick Strong, tries pandering toward the audience. While most play along and alternate between "AAAAYYYYY!!!" and "BOOOOOOOOO," Bill, B and I let loose with a barrage of incredibly personal insults instructing Roderick, amongst other things, to reconsider his career path and to contract various youth-oriented diseases.
When you're a guy like Karl Anderson and your namesake is "Machine Gun," do yourself a favor and don't EVER pantomime the process of firing a machine gun into the audience. And if you're going to do it anyway, do yourself an even BIGGER favor and research what that entails, exactly, before making a fool of yourself. There's got to be an instructional video on YouTube or something, What we saw was a man tearing a shot pouch open with his mouth, packing the powder and ball into a barrel with a ramrod and taking a knee before firing a round of shot into the British ranks. Especially embarrassing was the fact that despite being local talent, aside of two kids in the front row chanting ferverishly for hometown hero Karl "Mushing Gun" Anderson, nobody knew who he was - much less cared for his antics.
At the urging of Bill Hanstock, a five-year old kid let Austin Ares know that he'd known his sister. In the Biblical sense. With his penis. I think Bill is now technically wanted for corrupting a minor.
After the show, B and Bill tittered around the lobby like they were school girls visiting the tampon and bra store for the very first time. They collected pictures and autographs while the rest of us were herded toward the exit so the event staff could get the fuck home and drink away the pain of the past three days. All in all, while the show certainly wasn't the best I've ever seen from a wrestling standpoint, I can't think of a time I've been more entertained by wrestling, and that's due largely in part to the people I was with. So thanks, guys. I can't wait to do it all again at WrestleMania in '08! We'll make sure John Cena knows his Chain Gang is reprezentin' in full force!
- Justin
The original goal of attending Wrestle Fan Fest was to meet (and occasionally greet) the great stars of professional wrestling's past, present, and future. By the midway point of the vent, the goal had become AVOID WRESTLING SUPERSTAR VIRGIL.
The sign is clearly marked "The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase & Virgil WWE Superstar" and there are two chairs, but only one lonely guy in the booth, and he's not even using the chair. For those of you who don't follow professional wrestling, Virgil was DiBiase's glittery-tuxedoed black manservant, charged with the task of holding Ted's money while he did things like wrestle. That's all Virgil ever did. He'd hold DiBiase's money in a fanned formation and scowl as if to say "I bet you wish you had this money, but you cannot have this money!" Virgil has achieved fame after wrestling as a Pennsylvania public school math teacher and as the star of a variety of photos depicting him at wrestling or comic book conventions with a big sign reading WRESTLING SUPERSTAR VIRGIL above his head and a literal crater of disinterest around him.
We wanted to meet the Million Dollar Man (and when we wondered why a guy with a million dollars needed to wrestle or attend a wrestling convention the best we could come up with was that he only had ONE million dollars and no additional income, so he had to get a regular wrestling paycheck and sell himself to consistently keep his earnings above the one million dollar mark), so we thought, hey, who better to ask about the Million Dollar Man than Virgil?
everybody better to ask about the million dollar man than virgil
First of all, Virgil's voice sounds like what you'd get if you crossed a stereotypical southern lawyer (the type dressed up like Colonel Sanders) with Freddy Boom Boom Washington's normal speaking voice and he stutters, and he has some kind of fucking brain damage, because everything he says to you is asinine and takes 15 minutes. So we're all, "hey where is the million dollar man at virgil" and he launches into "uh uh uh now, now ted he doin his own thang, you know, uh uh uh" and vaguely pointing to Autograph Alley, barely able to lift his arm high enough due to the underarmor he's wearing, because I guess "WRESTLE FAN FEST" is the last leg of the decathalon.
Second of all, Virgil do to remembering professional wrestling, and stopped us mid-sentence several times to hold up a photo and go "hey guys remember this" in an attempt to sell us an autographed picture of the Million Dollar Man and Virgil only signed by Virgil. The first one was of people kissing DiBiase's feet for money, and we like DiBiase so we remember that, so we're just like "oh, yeah, I think I remember that," and Virgil just stares through us. "Hey yeah that was a great moment, DiBiase's bad guy antics really made for a memorable show. Hey Virgil what are you doing in that picture." "Holding the money while he does those things." "oh right."
Third of all, Virgil is a relic from the long long ago before the Internet came, and tried to dish us some "insider dirt" in the vein of the Original Ultimate Warrior Being Dead by alleviating our sadness from missing The Great Muta by telling us that the man who attended the convention the day before had not in fact been the Great Muta. No, the original Great Muta passed away. Of AIDS. And they replaced him with a newer more agile Great Muta, you know, with the mist. He actually said that. And he made spirit fingers in front of his mouth when he said "the mist."
So to recap:
- the only person at the MILLION DOLLAR MAN AND VIRGIL table is Virgil
- nobody knows where the Million Dollar Man is, but Virgil is a fountain of information about wrestling history and the death of living people he was in the same room with the day before
- Virgil likes to ride bikes
I think we're the only people who talked to Virgil for that long, too, because every time we'd circle back around and pass him he'd stop us to ask us a question or try to sell us a different 4 x 6 blurry picture of Andre the Giant or some shit. We were his convention buddies. HEY GUYTH UH UH YOU KNOW I THEEM TO REMEMBAH UH, DIS ONE TIME YOU KNOW, UH. Eventually we started hugging the far tables on the turn so we could remain far enough out of earshot to convincingly "not hear" Virgil without making him think we were ignoring him.
Was Virgil the craziest person at the Wrestle Fan Fest? What parts of "WRESTLE," "FAN," and "FEST" come together to form anything less than absolute carny bullshit retard mayhem? Wrestling Superstar Virgil was fucking Publius Vergilius Maro compared to the fest of fans, especially Kenny Stabler. No, not THAT Kenny Stabler.
"The Cruncher" Larry Zbyszko had set up a table to our right while we were in line to meet Harley Race. Larry and his Hawaiian shirt met us earlier in the day when he waltzed by us on the floor with a cheeseburger and I'm guessing like 35 gallons of gin, because the guy smelled like the inside of a magic marker cap. Larry is cool enough and we don't blame him, so hey. A couple of fans show up and get their picture taken, and this is when I notice the obviously mentally handicapped man in a Kenny Stabler Radiers jersey. He seems nervous while talking to Larry, and his hand (holding a Superbowl XI Raiders Championship pennant for some reason) is shaking. I think to myself, "aw, that's cool, I'm happy for the guy."
And THEN.
The guy starts SCREAMING at the top of his lungs about how LARRY ZBYSZKO IS THE GREATEST AWA CHAMPION EVER and demanding to know WHAT CHA GONNA DO when HULKAMANIA RUNS WILD ON YOU, BROTHER! What the fuck Hogan has to do with anything is beyond me, and we can't figure out if Kenny was asking wrestlers if he could cut promos on them or if he was just fucken going for it, but throughout the event he'd just start launching into these speeches about how great the wrestler is but how Hulkamania was going to run wild on them, and everyone would hear him, stop, laugh, then clap and cheer. This happened at LEAST 10 times during the day. He'd be in line to meet Scott Steiner, and all of a sudden in the distance we'd hear:
"THE GREATEST WCW, WWE, NWA TAG TEAM INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONNNN, SCOTT, STEINEERRRRRRR" (applause)
Then, moments later
"THE GREATEST WWE TNA WRESTLER JUNIOR FATUUUUU, BROTHERRR" (applause)
and then
"THE GREATEST ... NWA... THE BARBARIAN"
Eventually this became a running gag and the teen street team in charge of documenting the Wrestle Fan Fest for DVD interviewed him and encouraged him, and if we've learned nothing from Eli from Freaks and Geeks it's that encouraging the mentally disabled is WRONG. I wanted to tell the guy to shut up but I was afraid he was going to run away screaming and trip on the bleachers and break his arm. Later in the day when everybody wanted to go home the guy started into ROWDY RODDY PIPER, THE GREATEST- only to be shushed by a photographer and told "that's enough."
The wrestler who handled it the best was, of all people, The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase. Stabler is standing a few people up from me and I can see him glancing around, his head shaking ever so slightly, waiting for that moment when he can call Ted DiBiase the greatest person to hold the titles Ted DiBiase held in the organizations Ted DiBiase worked for and then threaten his life with breaking fault lines. I try to mouth to him, "PLEASE, NO," but he can't read lips and he's just two seconds away from showing Ted where the power lies, and it's going to be awful and exploitative and everyone is going to cheer. So Ted, realizing what's going to happen, stops the guy before he can start with an index finger, and puts a cell phone to his ear. Now, I don't know if Ted was talking to anybody (Virgil, about the Great Muta's AIDS) or if it was indeed a pressing family matter (the time they made someone kiss his feet for money), but DiBiase stayed on the phone for about four and a half minutes until the guy stopped shaking, got nervous, and started fingering around on his Raiders pennant. Then, DiBiase hung up the phone, shook the man's hand, signed an autograph, and Kenny Stabler Superfan was on his way. That's how you make a million dollars.
Two observations about DiBiase:
1) He ended up sitting in the Autograph Alley, roughly where Virgil gestured, and not under the MILLION DOLLAR MAN TED DIBIASE AND VIRGIL WWE SUPERSTAR banner, even though he had a chair. Ernest "The Cat" Miller ended up sitting in that chair. Don't ask me.
2) He has got the MOST GIANT HEAD EVER.
I've got a really big head. Bill Hanstock's head is maybe even bigger than mine. But Ted DiBiase's head dwarfed ours, as you can see. Maybe that's where he stores his financial knowledge, maybe it's engorged from years of hard drinking, maybe Virgil was off somewhere holding his headache medicine in a fan, who knows? Ted was gracious and cool, and he made us feel a little better about being such a bunch of mongoloids.
If Virgil thought we were his convention buddies, Bill and I thought Gail Kim was ours. She smiled at everyone who walked by and said hello, even if you weren't getting her autograph. She had her new TNA Womens Championship belt over her shoulder and noticed us as we walked by, half-looking at the belt and three-quarters looking at holy shit the beautiful Asian woman. Gail invited us over to look at the belt and tell us how proud of it she was and it was all just incredibly charming.
We each got a picture belt-side and a picture with her arm around us, including a signed polaroid which her assistant guy put into a plastic bag and wrapped it up to keep it safe. I told him it was really nice of him to do that, to which he smiled and replied, "we TAKE CARE of our fans." Oooh, burn.
Gail's influx of stammering boy-dumbness was topped only by the woman who tops them all, Molly Holly.
Molly is different from every other woman in professional wrestling, and probably every other woman you know. She doesn't have huge fake tits. She isn't blonde (well, anymore), she doesn't have a signature move where she pulls down her thong and sticks her butthole in your face, she isn't a swimsuit model told to pretend to fight. Molly is that rare breed of woman who wants to wrestle because she loves it and knows how to do it. Molly doesn't slap fight, she wristlock suplexes you. She's a gymnast, a powerhouse, a practicing Christian (and a virgin, unless Chris Harvard had anything to say about it), and a sweetheart. We didn't think she was going to show up at all, and neither did she.
She told us about how the older wrestlers came back to the hotel complaining about not getting paid. She thought it'd be a bad idea to do the same, so she brought her own stuff and set up her own table. She didn't want to let us down. We told her about Kenny Stabler and warned her not to let him cut a promo on her, and we told her about how much she means to us and how much we appreciate her being there, and around. She listened to us (for real) and smiled sincerely when she smiled, and when I finally got a picture with her she prefaced it by asking if we were going to "pose like we're buddies." And you know? If the world catches fire, I'm saving Molly.
She signed my 8 x 10 "It was a pleasure to meet you!" and thanked us for being the first friendly faces she'd seen. Before we were done another friendly face, Super Agent Larry Sweeney (12 Large), was drawn in by her charms, reintroduced himself to her, and began a conversation about the first time they'd met and the various promoters of Minnesota. The entire time Chris Hero stood behind them making sarcastic "concerned" faces and nodding like an idiot, as if to say with little subtlety, "haha my friend is totally in love with Molly Holly, what a dork." He could've been making that face at all of us. Shit, he probably was.
Molly was sharing a table with The Blue Meanie. We walked by and said hello, suggesting that he was a lucky man to share a booth with Molly. He got this huge smile on his face, shrugged, and told us that he ran into her outside and she didn't know where to go or how to set up, so he told her to follow him. Good game, Meanie.
Fun fact: The Blue Meanie is the Earth-2 version of Bill Hanstock.
Random notes from wrestlers met:
- Dr. Death Steve Williams recently had a tracheotomy, so he had to put his thumb against a hole in his throat to talk. This was offputting at first, but REALLY cool when he stucks his thumb in his throat to brag about that picture of him back dropping Kenta Kobashi "right on his head."
- Koko B. Ware made sure to wear a hat with a bird on it and glasses reading "KOKO" to let people know who he was. He also brought photo-printed pictures of birds (just birds, not Koko WITH birds) to autograph, and after every picture taken with a woman he'd go CA-CAWWWWWWW like a bird.
- The Warlord showed up on time and painted his face. His tag team partner, The Barbarian, showed up an hour and a half late without his face painted, making Warlord look like both a square and a doofus. And I think they drank a billion energy drinks.
I mean fucking LOOK at that.
- Bill Hanstock is exactly the right height to make a photo opportunity with Tammy Sytch look like he's trying to stick his finger between her boobs.
- Ultimo Dragon is the most swank, cool motherfucker alive.
That might be the coolest suit jacket ever. When I was in line to get his autograph, I pulled out my green Dragon mask and put it on. I am not afraid to be the second nerdiest guy on the planet and wear a wrestler's mask while meeting him, but I'm nowhere near ready to be the FIRST nerdiest guy on the planet, the guy who wears that wrestler's mask all day. While he was signing, Dragon looked up and noticed me a few places back. He got this huge grin on his face, pointed at me, and gave me a laugh and a thumbs up. And he's Japanese, so that was a compliment and a thank you, not the same as if Chris Hero had laughed at me and given me a thumbs up.
The best part about Ultimo being there is that he brought his family, including his little boy, who has his own Ultimo Dragon mask.
- This picture of Bill with Hero and Sweeney is seriously the best thing ever:
And, finally, Rowdy Roddy Piper. I'm not sure what to write about it. I didn't intend to meet him. I wanted to meet the Great Muta. But the newer, more agile Muta with the mist died of the stomach flu, so I traded in my ticket for a ticket to meet Piper. I waited in line for over an hour, something I'd done for nobody else, between a family of farting children and a pretty young black woman named Stephanie who was excited to get a Colisseum Home Video copy of Wrestlemania V, a woman so rare she is the fucking Mew of wrestling fans. I almost gave up my spot in line about five times out of frustration and the desire to use my autograph tickets, but Hanstock made me stick it out.
I can't thank him enough for that.
Roddy Piper to me has always been what Roddy Piper is to everybody. The guy who hit Jimmy Snuka with a coconut, the guy from They Live, the bad guy from the Hulk Hogan cartoon. Guy in a kilt. As the line moved on I could see more and more of what Piper is really about. He didn't have to be there, and he probably didn't get paid. But that didn't stop him from being sweet and giving to every single person who waited in line to meet him. He hugged female fans close to pose for pictures with them in the tango. He kissed the handicapped kids on the head. He posed holding a dog collar for some fans and blowing kisses with others. It's weird to see such a dichotomy in a man, a guy who has made his living from pretend fighting and being a crazy violent asshole being so kind, so real, and so gentle.
When it was my turn I shook his hand and said, "Mr. Piper, I've got a question for you. What's the secret?" He lowered his head for a second and laughed under his breath, and he told me. He told me the secret of how he can be such an important part of a business built around money and hatred, how he can be such an important part of a show built around deception and lies, and how he can be those things and still be a real guy with a heart and a brain and love in both of them. He signed my picture and told me he saw a lot of good in me, and I posed for a picture before I left.
It's hard to even write about it, because I've never met a guy who looked that deeply into you and looked for something honest to know. I met him for a second and I felt like I could tell him anything. It makes me sound like a gay sociopath but the man knows the secret to this life, and maybe it took almost dying to get him there, but he got there. I'm still trying to figure it out.
Really, I think that's what the Wrestle Fan Fest was about. It was a bullshit operation run by liars that mislead everyone and made me fly out from Cleveland to talk to Virgil for 45 minutes, but in the end I got to meet a lot of people with love in their hearts, I got to bond with one of my best friends in the world, and I got to laugh at the absurdity of everything from Koko B. Ware's bird hat to Kenny Stabler's Nobody thanking God that Donald Trump is a Hulkamaniac. I think that's wrestling, right there. Nothing says it better.
And is it funny to anybody else that San Francisco's weekend news team looks exactly like the hosts of Wake Up San Fancisco?
- B