The Rookies

Thanks to The Wrestler, everyone in America now has a vague sense of what it means to be a washed-up pro in my favorite pseudo-sport: failing health, depressed has-been mentality, various overwhelming vices, etc. Seeing them is humanized rubbernecking.

In a few weeks, both Ric Flair and Terry Funk are going to be in Superior, Wisconsin, and I’ll be there – mostly to pay respect to the forebears of modern day pro wrestling, but partially because the ravages of the ring are so damn compelling. How poor must Flair be to be doing this? Can Funk even walk anymore?

The days of seeing those Randy the Ram-esque characters are going to start dying out (for lack of a better term) sooner than later, which will usher in the era of the new depressing ex-wrestlers, the Attitude-era WWF superstars, the WCW/nWo heavies.  It’ll feel worse for most of us young people, because the heyday of those sad men will mean something.

That’s our childhood that’s aging. Our innocence is dragging its ass to a signing in some nothing town just over the border, and we’d better do our best to get an autograph. This was more or less my mindset when I dragged my girlfriend down to First Avenue in Minneapolis last Friday for F1rst Wrestling – and the return of Sean “X-Pac” Waltman.

For those of you unfamiliar with X-Pac, what the fuck were you doing with your youth? (Seriously, riding bikes or some shit? That’s lame.) Anyway, X-Pac is the former bandana-wearing, Chyna-nailing short dude that was a major player in Degeneration-X (I am not explaining DX to you). He was an excellent, almost-perfect second banana – his constant jumping and “suck it”-gesturing made him one of the most popular wrestlers of the Attitude Era. He’s also from Minnesota, and he would be taking on fellow Minnesota native/Ring of Honor heavy Jerry Lynn. As a wrestling fan that thinks it’s cool to talk about how the dissolution of WCW and ECW into the WWE effectively ruined all the progress of the wrestling renaissance of the mid-to-late ‘90s, of course I was going to be there.

It is important to know what to expect when going to an independent wrestling show. You need to expect to feel better about yourself and, subsequently, worse about society. You need to expect to see at least one family present with children under the age of six. You need to expect many people swearing, many people bleeding, and many people who look like they left their two-day Trigun marathon just to see this event. However, above all else, there is one ultimate rule: for the next four hours, no one in that event will give a shit about how they look or how you look, so do whatever the hell you want. Start idiotic chants. Call someone a douchebag during moments when the crowd is silent. No one will get pissed; in fact, most people will like you better for it. It’s like the entire audience is the general admission seats at an NFL game – the $8 is as much for wrestling as it is for a carte blanche to be a total fucking lout.

Of course, because this event featured SEAN “X-PAC” WALTMAN FROM THE WWE REMEMBER THE ROCK GUYS, the audience makeup was definitely different. No one wanted to chant. Most people seemed more interested in whether X-Pac was at the signing table than what was happening ring-wise. Several conversations happened behind me about how silly looking the “fake” blood was (even though both of the bleeders throughout the night, you know, kept bleeding over time). The fan apathy (fapathy? That sounds like a word for masturbating when there’s nothing else to do) grew in response to a bunch of weak undercard matches; most featured a drawn-out building of heat in the beginning, as though every match was Hogan and Andre at the Silverdome. Other than one of F1rst’s main guys (“The Suntan Superman” Cody O’Neil) retirement six-man tag match the night was lackluster. In fact, the only consistent chant that was drawn from the crowd throughout was a groaning, petulant “BOR-ING!” (most of which, I admit, I participated in).

But of course, everyone was waiting for Sean. Jerry Lynn came out to a good ovation, but mostly because he was from Minnesota and people were ready for the main event (poor Jerry Lynn; I honor him with a sad face: :’( ). I sat, waiting patiently to be disappointed; due to his billing on that flyer, and because I like to imagine myself someone who is “tapped” “in” to the workings of the rasslin’ business, I figured he’d be coming out to a vaguely D-X sounding song in vaguely X-Pac-looking clothing doing vaguely “Suck it”-related crotch gestures. So we wait and here he comes and BY GAWD IT’S X-PAC!!!!!!!!!!

Popout

Seriously: the tights, the song, the instructing us lovingly to imbibe his penis – it was all there. Suddenly my cynicism was gone, the cynicism of the room was gone, and we became a room full of marks. People were screaming “SUCK IT”, people throwing up the “X” with their arms. The bastards behind me started recounting their younger days watching him with the rest of D-X, all the hours they parked in front of a TV on Mondays, and I begrudgingly hated them a little less. As a wrestler, this is the sort of crowd you work your entire life to perform in front of – hell, before the match even began, the whole crowd started chanting their universal call of approval: “THIS IS AWESOME (clap clap clapclapclap)”.

With both guys conceivably eyeing bigger things in the business, and in front of an audience that was happy just that they were there, an ending like that of The Wrestler (without the possible death) would have sufficed – give the audience a solid, if unspectacular match, do a wave or two to the fans, and everyone gets home happy. Luckily, even with X-Pac pushing 40 and Lynn a few years short of 50, even in front of (maybe) 300 people, both men went into the ring and proceeded to blow everyone’s mind. An initial shoving match was punctuated by a chop, followed by Lynn quite audibly shouting “You do NOT mess with The Dude!” There were Cruiserweight move sets and a Bronco Buster. The last three minutes were blistering and beautiful: top-rope huracanrana by Lynn, X-Factor by Pac, 2nd X-factor attempt reversed into Lynn’s Cradle Piledriver, a series of two counts and pinning reversals until, rightly, X-Pac got the three on a bridge pin that was disappointing only in its finality. If the match had ended an hour later, with Pac laying across Lynn out of exhaustion for the three, we wouldn’t have cared.

For a crowd that had been holding down a poor show to that point, they contributed maybe the most to the quality of that main event. Lynn elbow-dropped X-Pac through a table, prompting a huge “EC-DUB! EC-DUB” chant. The unquestioned best part of the match was completely fan-oriented, when X-Pac was spilled onto the outside and into the crowd early in the match. As he got up, a fan in an incredibly faded D-X shirt grabbed him and got him to do an impromptu “WE GOT TWO WORDS FOR YA!”, which caused the fan to essentially phase into a seizure.

When I snuck through the crowd to shake X-Pac’s hand at the end of the match, after the rest of the wrestlers had come down the ramp, it was the first time I’d ever come into contact with an actual wrestling ring. The ropes were rougher than I’d imagined, and the “padding” on the mat felt like the thinnest layer of carpet foam imaginable. Suddenly, everything every wrestler has said about the business became blindingly true. No wonder so many people end up wrecks as they keep going; no wonder pro wrestlers could keep the entire illegal painkiller market afloat on their own. When he finally made his way to me, the 6’1” X-Pac, roughly my height, towered over me as he reached through the second rope. I smiled with a bit of knowing awe, realizing how hilarious it was that this was happening, and what a special moment this was, and how freaking geeked my 12-year-old self would be if he could see me.

Pro wrestling makes you expect tragedy, expect that the guys you loved growing up would eventually die as broken-down, drug-addled derelicts.

For one night, I got to look backwards at my gawky Middle School self and say, “Not every time, buddy. Sometimes, it is awesome.”