I was in New Orleans for . . . Wrestlemania XXX.
I hope you do not think less of me for this. Or for the fact that this is my fourth Wrestlemania.
It's hard to explain why I like this stuff. I've never been a mark, which is the term wrestlers use for the people who actually believe the storylines. (I love the carny talk in the wrestling business, by the way. My favorite: if you're a wrestler who "shoots" (tells the truth) about the business instead of "working" (conning) the marks, then you have broken kayfabe (the Omertà of wrestling).)
My first memory about wrestling, in fact, is based on my youthful skepticism about the reality of wrestling. I was working as a garbageman for the City of Lewisville's Parks and Recreation Department during the summer after my freshman year in college.
It was a great job - we rode around in a flatbed truck emptying out oil drum trashcans in the city parks, which were filled with beer cans, rotting fish guts at the lake parks, and all kinds of weird stuff thrown away during summer weekends in the pavilions. Work days started at 7:00 a.m., and we took a lunch hour at 11:00 a.m. and spent it playing three-on-three basketball in the parking lot of the truck yard on a nine-foot extremely dunkable rim nailed to an upright railroad tie, and then, in the hot summer afternoons, after most of the trash had been emptied, we drove around Lewisville on park maintenance jobs, but mostly goofing off until quitting time. Sitting around in the picnic areas, we talked about the things you talk about when you're young and have all the time in the world.
One day, the conversation turned to wrestling. One of the full-time guys (the guys who worked year-round instead of the summer guys like me) announced that he had been to the Sportatorium in Dallas to see the rasslin' show and he went on about the moves he had seen. This guy - Eddie - looked like a smaller version of Moses Malone: he had huge hands and thick arms from the manual labor he did while working for the city.
"That stuff's bull****," I said. (I swore a lot more back then than I do now.)
He turned to look at me. I was about 6-2 and 180 pounds in those days, still wiry from my time as a varsity swimmer in high school and in really good shape from the hours of basketball I played at college and during the summer lunch breaks.
"I call bull**** on that stuff, Eddie," I repeated.
He grinned. "You think it's fake?"
"Yep. Iron claw, my ***." (That was the Von Erich family's submission move, a big hand clutching the top of his opponent's head and jamming a digit into his temple.)
He moved closer. "You think this is fake?" He quickly reached over, put his big hand on my head, and squeezed, his approximation of the Von Erich iron claw. It turns out that the iron claw really hurts when applied by someone who's mad enough and strong enough. Eddie was both.
The guys separated us, laughing at me. Eddie grinned again and walked away, point proven.
My lesson for that day: live and let live. If Eddie wanted to believe that wrestling was real, who was I to ruin his fun, especially if it was going to result in a thumb to my temple?
(These days, I try to remember that when I talk politics and other fraught topics with my relatives. Life is too short to antagonize the ones you love, and while they might not be able to apply a painful wrestling hold to you, the guilt they can inflict after you've hurt their feelings burns just as deeply.)
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After Eddie taught me the power of belief, I watched wrestling a little more closely. I began to appreciate the psychology being applied, the manipulation of feeling, the cultivation of trust and the suspension of disbelief. There was something primal about how conflicts arose and were resolved - always with words and action, the strong often losing to the clever even in physical confrontations. There was something for everyone to relate to.
Plus, it was just fun to watch.
As the years passed, I learned that there were others like me out there. Smart marks, they call us. People who recall the Boesch shows in Houston fondly, who remember the touring stars like Ric Flair, Bruno Sammartino, Harley Race. We don't usually advertise our affection for this rogue sport, but we're also not apologetic about it. Live and let live, we say - let us enjoy what we enjoy.
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| Juan |
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| Xavier |
By a weird coincidence, my wife and her partners were in town for a convention taking place the same weekend. They were staying at the Ritz Carlton . . . so, I bid Juan and Xavier a good night at the hotel I had booked for the three of us, and I decamped to my wife's hotel and we had dinner at one of Emeril's restaurants in the French Quarter.
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| Juan with Mr. Wonderful and the Dragon |
After a quick dinner at the Ritz club room (the only way to live), we went to the Hall of Fame induction at the Smoothie King Arena. WWE inducted the female wrestler Lita (now an aspiring punk rock singer), Mr. T (who headlined the first two Wrestlemanias), Jake "The Snake" Roberts (whose heartfelt story of addiction and redemption was marred by a boob in the audience who asked him where his snake was), Scott "Razor Ramon" Hall (another recovering addict whose gimmick - a Tony Montana-type tough guy - had uncomfortably racist overtones that most of his fans try to ignore), Carlos Colon (a Puerto Rican wrestler and promoter with several sons in the business), and the Ultimate Warrior.
Warrior bears special mention because he passed away yesterday, two days after his special weekend. He traded the back end of his life for the fame and fortune he acquired in his youth, a trade too many wrestlers make. If there is a real reason to be contemptuous of wrestling, this is it - it's too hard on the men and women who perform 300 nights a year on the road, taking hits in fake fights that would put professional football players on the DL for months. I am sorry for him and I am sorry for his family, and, as I do with professional football, I hope things get better for the performers who sacrifice so much for our entertainment, but I have no reason to believe that they will in either sport.
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On Sunday, we went to the big show at the Superdome. I won't go blow-by-blow through the show - suffice to say, it was great fun, with lots of surprise endings to the matches, and a communal sense of enjoyment being amidst 75,000 other unapologetic wrestling fans.
The highlight of the show was when the Undertaker lost, for the first time in 21 years, to former MMA star Brock Lesnar. When the final bell rung, there was an incredible hush in the stadium as we all digested the significance of this entirely predetermined outcome. Some people cried, some people left the building in disgust, some people just shook their heads - none of them believed it to be a real fight, but their feelings were still real and heartfelt.
You may think this whole thing is silly. Sometimes, I do too. But who am I to judge how these wrestling fans truly feel? If they're happy, if they're sad, if they're outraged: the common factor is that they feel. That's what fascinates me about wrestling to this day and it's why I really had a great time this weekend in New Orleans.
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Before I go over this week's entry from the Fifty Beers, I want to make a note about the beer that kept popping up this weekend wherever we went in NOLA: Abita, a craft brewery 30 miles north of New Orleans. I had two Abitas with my meals: an Amber and a Strawberry Harvest.
The Amber was good - smooth, not super-hoppy, pulled from a tap into a plastic glass. I'd drink it again with my jambalaya.The Strawberry Harvest on the other hand . . . it was like they had dissolved a strawberry fruit chew into an otherwise decent Amber. Awful.
A piece of advice to the Abita Brewery: pass on the fruit in the beer concept. If I want to put some strawberry juice into my beer, I'll do it myself (but I won't, and you shouldn't either).
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| (c) JDurfee99 |
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| (c) JDurfee99 |
I liked it as much as the various IPAs I've sampled so far. I drank it with a plate of fajitas tonight, and it held up to the strong Tex-Mex flavors. The only downside: by the end of the drink, my tongue felt like I had been licking a pine tree. Resinous indeed.
Better than Bittersweet Lenny's, our current champ? Not by a long shot. But I wouldn't mind drinking it again if I was at Chuy's in Austin.
Till next week, keep your iron claw to yourself. (And Bert: congratulations on your new grandchild. He is starting life out way ahead of the game to have you in his life.)
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