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DIARY OF A DREAM UNFULFILLED, PART TWO

So it was that I began my remarkable ascendance unto what would no doubt be my rightful place in professional wrestling immortality.  By day I was a mild mannered, low to moderate wage earning, customer service manager for a greater metropolitan furniture store.  But by night, oh yes…. BY NIGHT, I would shed the hum-drum confines of my 9-5 existence and become…….and become……..well actually it took some time before I was ready to become anybody at all. 

It wasn’t necessarily by night either, come to think of it.  Several afternoons a week after work, and then every Saturday morning (into the afternoon) I would traipse over to the opposite side of Tampa from my home.  Sometimes with a bundle of four year old giggly blonde girl in tow, more often just by myself, but always I went.  I have undertaken many (many, many) interesting and wide ranging challenges in my life.  Endeavors ranging from single parenthood to musical theater to ministry to culinary arts have all wound their varied paths through my life.  While I don’t necessarily subscribe as I once may have to all of these things, after all personal evolution is a hallmark of personal happiness, one thing was consistent in my journey through all of them.  While I was doing them, I was thoroughly and completely dedicated to, and absorbed in, them.  Throughout my life there was no greater example of this than when I determined that I was going to be a “wrestling superstar”. 

If you work out at a regular gym with any regularity you will notice all different types of behavioral patterns regarding people’s work ethics.  People have different levels of dedication to whatever their goals may be there, and it shows in their level of achievement towards that end.  A wrestling gym, training school, whatever you want to call it, works exactly the same way.  There were guys who would show up once a week.  Some would show up less, maybe once or twice a month.  For some, if those creaky old garage style doors belonging to the storage space we called a gym were rolled up, well they were there.  When I first started out, and for a long time after, I was definitely one of those.  I never thought it made me better than the guys who showed up less frequently, I was simply focused on my own training.  Another constant in my life has always been a reservoir of patience roughly the size of a neutrino. Generally this means that whatever it is I want I want it now, or at least as quickly as is humanly possible to achieve it.  Of course, I’ve also never believed that achieving anything should come without hard work.  So when you combine those two normally antagonistic traits together you get something of an obsessed, under-conditioned neophyte learning the hard way what it takes to even begin to attack a life long dream, but constantly getting up and coming back for more.

If a wrestler has achieved enough of a station in his career where he has caused anyone to be interested in his background, in telling his story there seems to be one common ground shared with all others.  Every one of them seems to have started their training in some god-forsaken, bare boned, smelly, amenity deprived, den of Hades.  Seriously, when was the last time you popped in a WWE DVD compilation on some legend of the business, or for that matter anyone at all, and watched as the camera rolls to footage of a state-of-the-art, climate controlled, Bally’s Fitness clone with top of the line rings and equipment.  Here, no doubt, the future warrior was nurtured into one of the true greats of the business.  Please.  For me and my far more humble career, it was no different.  But it may be no coincidence that one must rise out of such material depths to make a go of the business.  Adversity builds character in all activities, and so too does it in wrestling.

Another common testimony we often hear is of the quasi-curmudgeonly veteran trainer.  You know the type, an aged veteran of the mat wars who, even though it doesn’t seem at times like he can successfully climb into the ring, you still somehow know that he could tie you into a knot and make you scream at his discretion……..with ease.  The best example of this is famously provided in the Bret Hart documentary “Wrestling with Shadows”, when lovingly depicting the Hart family patriarch, Stu, and his activities in “the dungeon”.  But if you’re smart you’ll realize that having access to one of these gentlemen is one of the greatest blessings you can hope to fall into.  In anything in this world the greatest teacher is experience.  You can’t buy it, you can’t rush into it, you’ve just got to build it over time.  But you can damn well shut up and listen to everything that someone who has it wants to tell you, and be humble and grateful that they’re willing to do so.

Boris Malenko never tied me, or anyone else that I ever saw, up in knots, nor did he show any inclination to do so.  He didn’t have to.  From the first day you stepped into his ring, from the first time he opened his mouth to instruct you, you knew that you were being shown how to wrestle by one of the best.  In all candor, those who didn’t recognize it were sadly depriving themselves, clearly ignorant, and generally gone very, very quickly.  I can tell you I watched far more than a few juiced up gym rats or high school football heroes show up with an expectation that being successful in this industry, which they were gracing with their divine presence, would be a given, only to disappear anonymously after a session or two.  I kind of believe that Malenko had to be well aware that this was the likely eventuality for most of these guys, but he took their money and let them in the ring anyway.   Frankly, their arrogance left no room for any sympathy anyway. 

Don’t misread me, like anyone else Malenko was in business to make a living.  If someone wanted to hand him money to do a job, regardless of what his personal opinion might have been of their prospects, there was nothing wrong with him taking it.  Because one thing was unequivocally true, he was going to do everything he could to provide the service he was being paid for.  But I do know for a fact that on at least one occasion he took a starry eyed hopeful’s cash while thinking there really wasn’t any potential there.  I also know for a fact that he later came to believe he was wrong in his assessment of that kid.  I know this because that kid was me and I know both statements to be true because he told me so.  But well before that conversation could take place I was just some slightly overweight guy from up north, palming over $25 a week in exchange for seemingly having his fantasy indulged.

I think most wrestling fans, whether consciously or not, engage in an exercise of naiveté as regards what it takes to actually learn the craft.  You wouldn’t imagine being able to walk into an operating room, fresh off of a lunch of whoppers and fries, and open up some poor soul’s chest cavity.  At least you wouldn’t dream of being able to do so with any degree of success.  Yet we all grow up thinking we can hop into the old squared circle and dole out lariats and dropkicks with ease, and then slap on a figure-four or a sharpshooter to wrap everything up nicely.  The reality, of course, is that as with any skill you’ve got to walk before you can run.  More so in fact, you’ve got to crawl before walking.  So, again with all the patience of a three year old, I began my tutelage under Professor Boris Malenko. What, you may ask, did I spend my entire first session learning?  Why, the most exciting possible maneuver that every little kid who grew up watching the daring acrobatics of Superfly Snuka could dream of, of course.  I spent at least an hour repeatedly attempting to hook up in a collar and elbow properly.  Laugh if you must, but with all of my years as a wrestling fan, it still took me that long to get it right (but hey, I was the overachiever - my young classmate was still trying to get it a week later).  Just in the execution of that most basic of elements, existed levels of consideration in both physicality and psychology.  Malenko knew what I didn’t.  You can’t walk before you can crawl, and you can’t even throw an arm drag if you can’t tie up first. 

To be continued.

You can write Paul at my4kidsdad2003@yahoo.com