RVANews

Lords of the Ring: final bout

Nathan Cushing — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:00:28 +0000

Wait! This is the second part in an ongoing series. If you missed it, you should start at the beginning. Here's part two and part three for those that missed it.

All is fair in love and war

In love and war, there are bound to be spectators. At 6pm, there are about thirty people sitting in fold-out chairs arrayed on each side of the ring, barricaded by metal railings set out several feet from the ring’s perimeter. Little boys sit in the laps of their fathers, and mothers smile at the euphoric smiles of their children, all of whom are excited by the expectations of tonight’s performance. “Hair” metal from the 1980’s plays over the stereo. The lights dim and the announcer emerges.

His name is Brent Fleenor and he is GXW’s “voice.” A Hopewell native, he is a big man with a physique not unlike that of a retired wrestler himself: he shaves his head and keeps a close-cropped beard so that both his facial and head hair are nearly the same length. While I watch Fleenor energize the crowd, I see Kyle and Tyler walking slowly around the ring’s perimeter on the ground floor of the Aurora. They are each wearing black pants and a predominately black GXW wrestling t-shirt, indicating their roles tonight as security to keep any unruly audience member from circumventing the barriers that separate performer from watcher.

Fleenor turns his attention to inspiring a more passionate response from the audience, and lightly excoriates the crowd. An older man in a blue t-shirt and a matching blue and backwards-turned hat sitting in the front row of the north side of the ring playfully yells at Fleenor, exactly the response for which Fleenor hopes.

The next entrant into the ring is not a wrestler, but Brandon (Abe Lincoln beard)—rather, I should say, Money Green, an apt name considering that he continues to wear the $100 bills necktie. Money Green is nothing like Brandon. Mr. Green is pompous and arrogant, and someone that I (and virtually everyone else) wants to give a good smacking-to across the face. It is astounding how different the man that I see now in the ring is to the man I met earlier this afternoon. To think that the audience, ignorant of Branden’s true personality, might think that he is Money Green, pains me a bit. However, I remember that this is the mark of good acting and a good performance.

There are those who think that the stereotypical wrestling fan is so dull-witted and speaks with a similarly dull-witted Southern drawl. Not one person sitting in the Aurora, looking on as Money Green gradually builds to an introduction of his client, “Ace of Spades” Peter Spade, think that this is real. If I were to ask the blue-clothing clad older man, who is now playfully yelling at Money Green and his vocal exploits, as to whether this was all real--I mean really real--I have the utmost confidence that he would look at me as if I were an idiot. “Of course, it’s not real,” he would likely say. “But so what?”

Wrestling fans engage in a meta-enjoyment. Not only do they know what they are seeing is unreal, but they accept this reality and transcend it by pretending that this live theater is real. It is not unlike the sophisticated who attend a Broadway play. The play is neither real and nor are its characters. But these unreal characters and events and stories don’t try to shirk reality, but explain and talk about it in ways that only fiction can. So what if there’s a little excitement and violence? Shakespeare was ok with this, and so is Dave Cullen.

This point really hits me over the head during tonight’s second performance, a card that features the Syrian Sheik Shorty and Reverend J. Boogie. To my discomfort, these apparent religious lines are drawn with national boundaries. Reverend J. Boogies is all-American: strong, black, and Baptist. Sheik Shorty is all-villain: wears a Yasser Arafat-esque Keffiyeh headdress, waves a large Syrian flag as he enters the ring, and is Muslim—most certainly not American by any contemporary cultural standards.

At one point during the match, J. Boogie lifts the Sheik, all 200 lbs. of him, off the ground and performs a backflip against the gravitational inertia of his opponent’s weight. When the Sheik rebounds, and gets the good Reverend in a submissive position, the crowd rallies behind their man. “U-S-A!” they chant. “U-S-A!”

It seems as though, in this particular battle of these Abrahamic religions, God favors the Muslim-bent of Sheik Shorty, an ending that surprises me, being that wrestling and America often seem so inextricably linked to one another. I can’t help but chuckle at the defeated Reverend J. Boogie who makes a sign of the cross against his torso (a uniquely Catholic characteristic, and not one shared by Protestants, lest of all Baptists).

The next card is Jefferson Hurley and Señor Sabado Noche. Just like with the Brandon/Money Green persona schism, the laid-back, business casual Jeff has been replaced by a wiry and sprightly masked figure that becomes the protagonist of the match, not so much because of his altruistic demeanor, but because Hurley is a gaudy and cowardly twerp. Of all the matches tonight, this one loses the crowd’s interest. What’s missing is not so much action, but drama. With the first match there was an iconic and visceral representation of contemporary and historical war. This match, however, features two unlikeable characters, one of which refuses to get into the ring for fear that his opponent will use illegal means to win. When the two finally do tussle, there is an abundance of near counts, that is to say, when the referee bangs his open hand against the ring floor, counting to three. Many times, one or the other has their opponent pinned through a count to three, but narrowly breaks free from his opponent's oppressive grip.

As the fracas in the ring continues, I decide to head backstage. In the stairwell I see the Drago Dynasty. The jet black and STOP sign red of their costumes take on an almost supernatural glow under the florescent lights. It’s a rather startling sight, seeing these wonderfully masked and rare figures mulling about. Despite how hard I try, I can’t tell which one of them is Aaron, which I suppose is better, because I’m not supposed to see Aaron, only the brothers Kyo and Drago.

In the stairwell with them are two tall men in matching black dress, white button-down dress shirts, and black ties. They each have shaved heads. They are Standards and Practices, “former” GXW security who decided to take matters into their “own hands.”

To maintain the highest level of “believability,” as Brandon put it to me earlier, wrestlers go to the great lengths to affirm that the rivalries seen in the ring extend beyond that unique performance. It would undercut the experience to see opponents wise-cracking with one another, going over moves and routines in the several minutes leading up to their match. The same goes for actors playing the various family members of the Montagues and the Capulets.

So, do I say that I saw the The Drago Dynasty and Standard and Practices joking around and rehearsing the moves that are supposed to look impromptu in the ring? Possibly. But, for those who feel a vindication of superiority that wrestling is indeed fake, let me say this about that point.

So what?

When I watch The Drago Dynasty fight the uniformed protagonists Standards and Practices in the ring, I forget that some of the moves and choreography was refined in the stairwell mere minutes before they are executed in the ring to a boisterous audience. The drama contained in the match was so engaging and enthralling and so very much real.

At one pivotal point in the match, both members of The Drago Dynasty attack just one member of the Standards and Practices, whose partner remains sidelined because he has yet to be properly tagged. The nearly breathless and injured member of Standards and Practices reaches slowly and dramatically for the hand of his partner who is behind the ropes. The crowd shouts both their wish and inspiration for him to do so, for the badly beaten member to get the help he most certainly needs against the empirical duo that so heinously inflicts pain upon the man.

Later, one member of The Drago Dynasty throws a member of Standards and Practices through the ropes and onto the Aurora floor. The action looks appropriate enough, but the wince and limp of the wrestler who lands on the floor seems off. Not only do I take notice, but the announcer, Brent Fleener, speaks into the ear of a floor security guard. That security guard dashes to the injured wrestler, who was sill outside of the ring, and asks him something. The wrestler shakes his head, and the security guard walks back to Fleener and, I presume, reassures the voice of GXW that the wrestler is OK.

When the match ends, I walk down the stairwell to meet both teams of wrestlers. With the gaze of the audience no longer on him, the injured wrestler stays very much in his injured character, because he is injured. During the match, he landed funny on his foot, and decided, as all great improvisational actors do, to use the injury and “milk it,” as he puts it.

While I’m down there, I see a mask-less Señor Sabado Noche. Scrawled across the bottom of his neck is a long welt that looks just as thick one of the ring ropes. Towards the end of the match, Señor Sabado Noche’s opponent lifted and threw him against the ropes. Ideally, the airborne wrestler’s chest should have slammed against them. But in this instance, the body sweat of Señor Sabado Noche caused the rope to instantaneously glide over his chest and upwards above his collar bone, causing the welt that wrestlers and myself come over and get a closer look at outside the dressing room.

If these injuries are not real, then one’s definition of reality is indeed greatly skewed to the fictitious.

You have to expect the best

The dreadlocked Thor stands before his opponent: Mitch-A-Palooza. The name doesn’t strike fear in the hearts of men, but Mitch-A-Palooza (an allusion to the moedern comedy classic Old School?) towers over the audience like Babel. I can clearly see why the last card features these two men, because they don’t look like men but extras that fought alongside Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Each one of their sinuous muscles protrudes under the gentle lights of the Aurora.

The man who looks like a dreadlocked Thor, I find out, is Christian York. Real name: Jason Spencer. He is a Virginia native, and has been professionally wrestling since 1996 when he was 19 years-old. He briefly had a three-year contract with the then called World Wrestling Federation before returning to the independent wrestling circuit. In 2006, York wrestled in the opening match for WWF (before the organization’s name change) at a Monday Night RAW performance in Washington, D.C. Since then, he’s been a sort-of wrestling freelancer for various independent wrestling outfits across the country.

His opponent, Mitch-A-Palooza, is one of the most popular wrestlers in GXW. Monikered the “24/7 Party Animal” his fans, known as Party Animals, faithfully await Mitch-A-Palooza’s signature finishing move: The Party Crasher.

When either man lifts their opponents and slams them on the ring floor it sounds like a shotgun blast going off in an empty Vatican. The sight of these two battling feels more like war than it does a wrestling match. The extravagance and drama of bodies flung so mercilessly is fascinating, and seeing it happen in front of you as opposed to on television or in a film is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s utterly, incredibly, unabashedly entertaining.

Although several moments transpired that would suggest York would usurp Mitch-A-Palooza’s title, the crowd favorite does not lose. The glazed sweat across the victor’s near naked body gleams. He raises his title belt above his head and displays it for the cheering crowd as his opponent writhes in both pain and defeat on the ring floor.

Brent Fleener thanks the crowd the for attending and tells them of the next GXW event that will take place in future weeks.

When the house lights brighten, and the crowd begins to file out of the Aurora, I see Dave Cullen sitting on the same couch that Tyler and Kyle sat on during the pre-match meeting. He seems very contemplative, very intense. It takes me a moment to muster the courage to ask him how he thought the performances went.

“Wasn’t as tense at the end,” he says. A collective performance that seems positively remarkable to me seems too uninspiring to him. I tell him that I enjoyed the performance. “My expectations are higher,” he says, smiling.

With people beginning to dismantle equipment and pack up for the return home, I ask Cullen what he would say to someone who maintains that wrestling is fake. “I’ll let him come up on stage,” he says before curling a devilish smile.

“I guarantee they won’t last one minute.”

photo by Mel Kobran

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Lords of the Ring: third bout

Nathan Cushing — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:58:47 +0000

Wait! This is the second part in an ongoing series. If you missed it, you should start at the beginning. Here's part two for those that missed it.

Dedication

It sounds like a gunshot, which is immediately followed by a chorus of laughter and audible gasps. The noise that reverberates throughout the Aurora is not a firearm discharge, but the sound of flesh upon flesh.

Kyle has just hit another wrestler, Jonathan. This was not an assault of animus, but one that Jonathan, who’s about the same age as Kyle, asked for deliberately. It seems that Kyle had casually mentioned the improvements that he’s made with various moves under Cullen’s tutelage, namely the “chop.” Jonathan, both curious to see Kyle’s skill as well as to demonstrate his own ability to take the pain, asked Kyle to use Jonathan’s bare chest.

A chop involves a wrestler pulling back his or her arm, then violently thrusting it upon the chest of another like a horizontal karate chop. If placed correctly, the noise that of the forearm makes against the victim’s skin can make others cringe.

Jonathan continues to lift up the bottom of his t-shirt to his collarbone so to show off the ever-reddening hand print.

“Please tell me you have a camera,” says Jonathan to me when I approach to look for myself. I do, and snap a picture. “Title that ‘Wrestling is not fake,’’ he says.

Wrestling is not fake

Cullen looks on with a prideful grin at the demonstrable progress his pupil has made. “We do this all day at work,” he says, smiling. This is just a dollop of the amount of physical duress that these people endure “at work.” But, their bodies are not only hurt by other bodies--they are hurt by the very arena in which they grapple, tussle, and brawl: the wrestling ring.

Once the structural support of the ring has been put up, the men begin to solidify the floor. They first place long boards of wood across the ring floor. Not only do these wooden planks support the weight of the wrestlers, but they also create a very loud, very dramatic sound when one of them violently crashes to the floor. Placed on top of these wooden planks is a one-and-a-half inch piece of stiff foam that is so stiff I’m reluctant to call it foam at all. This “padding” is all that the wrestlers have when their spines and joints meet the ring floor at free-falling speed. Tightened across the stone-colored foam is a thin black tarp to hide the whole affair. Once the tarp is taught across the ring floor, next come the ropes.

“Ropes” may be a bit of a misnomer. Cullen tells me that they are made of 5/16 aircraft cable with industrial-strength hose wrapped in tape. I can’t help but think of the scene at the end of Die Hard with a Vengeance when a cable supporting Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson snaps and cuts a machine gun-carrying bad guy clean in half. Thankfully, on top of the metal cable is neon green padding, designed to prevent the wrestlers from severing a part of themselves.

Four people have to simultaneously tighten the ropes at each corner of the ring. Aaron’s in charge of the back right pole. A sixteen-year-old by the name of Tyler is in charge of the side closest to me.

Tyler began hanging out at the GXW facility and at events when he was fourteen. Until he can start training, he serves the role of roadie, learning the ins-and-outs of the wrestling profession, which includes how to tighten the ropes of the ring in which he hopes to work in one day work.

One of the wrestlers coordinates the other three tighteners by saying “turn,” at which point each of the men (and Tyler) use a wrench to tighten the rope. They repeat the process for each of the three ropes--neon green for the top and bottom, black for the middle--on the perimeter of the ring.

While tightening the last rope, Cullen’s ears perk. A smaller, supporting wire that keeps the larger rope fastened to one of the supporting poles has broken. This will require a trip to Lowe’s to replace a necessary part.

“Something always breaks,” says Cullen.

It’s 2pm and Cullen seems a big agitated; he’s hungry, and unashamedly lets everyone know so. The last remaining job is to affix the GXW banner to the side of the ring. Not only does this serve as advertising, but it also keeps audience members from seeing the various engineering components of the ring’s bowels. They attach the banner by wrapping a black bungee-like cord over-and-over-and-over again across the perimeter of the ring. As a few of the men see to the task, I see nothing irregular about how the banner is slowly taking shape around the ring. But I, however, am not Cullen.

“That’s not done right. Take it off,” he says. “It needs to be like a guitar string.” Fully famished, Cullen reassigns the banner’s installation to himself, making quick work of the process while others look on with their tails between their respective legs.

When Cullen finishes he says it’s now time to eat. In a few hours, the theater of wrestling will commence.

The Theater

The ring has been set up, and more wrestlers and Aurora personnel are arriving by the minute. Many of the wrestlers are those that I saw about an hour ago before we broke for lunch. There are those coming in, however, who I am seeing (and shaking hands with) for the first time. It’s easy to distinguish wrestlers from Aurora staff or other GXW administrative persons, as the wrestlers shoulder duffel bags or pull a wheeled suitcase behind them, carrying the necessary outfits and paraphernalia that their performance requires. While walking by the ring ropes, I reach and out grab at the bottom, neon green rope and give it a playful jostle, imagining myself in the ring, flung against them by a 200-pound man. Several of the wrestlers, still in their casual weekend attire, congregate in the ring, practicing moves by themselves and with each other—running drills, taking falls, putting someone in a headlock. I glance up to the Aurora’s second floor and see Cullen talking with other people in a somewhat secretive manner.

Standing next to the Aurora’s large, flat mixing board—mission control for manipulating the club’s audio and visual components—are Cullen and Brandon (Abe Lincoln beard), now dressed in lime green pants, a white dress shirt, and suit vest. Hanging from his neck is a tie designed to look as though it’s made out of $100 bills.

“No clotheslines except for Shorty,” says Brandon, who simultaneously notes it on a sheet of paper. The reason that only Shorty, who I have not met yet, is allowed to perform clotheslines is that it will make Shorty’s use of the move that much more dramatic. It will also force the other wrestlers to think of different moves. I ask Brandon if Cullen or himself predetermine, not only the moves that each match will include, but sequentially dictate their order.

“It’s up to them [the wrestlers] to fill that time,” he says. “It’s up to them to create the best match.”

He tells me that The Wrestler gave away much of what takes place behind-the-scenes of a wrestling match. But Brandon acknowledges that professional wrestling has never been about completely tricking the audience to think what takes place before their eyes is nothing less than honest and genuine. Actors in a play are not flummoxed by their audience knowing that they are not really Romeo or really in love with a member of the Capulet family. “The idea,” says Brandon, “is to give the best suspension of belief.” This is the maxim by which both actor and wrestler abide. Cullen tells others around him that he wants to meet with everyone shortly, very much in line with the chain-of-command that a general yields.

Using the stairwell, I descend to the Aurora’s basement to the makeshift dressing room. About a dozen wrestlers are present, and it looks more like a gym looker room. It feels, however, like a family reunion. They talk about all that’s been going on in each other’s lives.

“What are you now?” asks one wrestler.

“150.”

“How heavy were you six months ago?”

“165.”

It’s less than an hour before the first match. Everyone—now about twenty or so people—is inside the single dressing room. I take a knee on the floor. Cullen comes up to me and says that he can’t allow me to be apart of the pre-match meeting. Not because they don’t trust me, he says, but because it’s the old-school way of doing things—no outsiders can be present. The meeting is their time, not the audiences. Certainly not mine.

I leave the room and the door closes behind me. For the next twenty minutes or so, I abide my time by first pacing in the Aurora’s kitchen. At one point I hear clapping coming from behind the closed door. Eventually, a few of the wrestlers walk into the second floor area from the stairwell. Meeting adjourned.

It’s time.

Time to Wrestle

I’m surrounded by a dozen young men, all in various states of dress (or undress). They’re talking with one another about things that I talk about with my friends: movies, girlfriends, _etc_. I overhear a conversation about graduating college with the rare benefit of earning a degree without the accumulation of any debt. Hardly the typification of testosterone-fueled banter some may expect in the minutes preceding a wrestling performance.

It is this point that amazed me earlier this morning at the GXW facility and continues to amaze me now: not one of these people are rude or arrogant or cold or are in any way unpleasant to be around. I talk with one wrestler as he changes from his suave, business-casual attire into Señor Sabado Noche (Mr. Saturday Night). As we chat, he slowly puts on an an outfit that looks much like a shirtless bee with a yellow mask covering his entire head and a black star stretching across his face. While listening to him, I overhear someone inform Cullen that someone forgot to bring the fog machine.

Before Senor Sabado Noche puts on his mask, and keeps it on until the conclusion of his match, I do get his name. It’s Jeff. He’s been wrestling since 2002. I ask him how he’s been doing lately, _i.e._, has he been winning his matches. His look is one of mild surprise at my question. “Right now I’m on a good streak,” he answers, but “wins and losses don’t matter” in wrestling. It’s not like asking a boxer his record, a golfer his handicap, or a baseball player his batting average. What matters in the ring is not whether the referee lifts your hand as the victor once the final bell chimes, but, as Jeff says, “It’s what you do with your time.” Wrestling, although just as every bit grueling and violent as, say, boxing, football, or rugby, operates within a different set of criteria than sports. It’s more like theater.

An actor playing Romeo Montague in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is not concerned, upon hearing that he has been awarded the famed role, whether his character will prove victorious and defy the century-long condemnation to death, but rather how convincing, how moving, how believable his version of Romeo is to his audience. The perceived fate of one’s character is rather inconsequential to the wrestler, just as it is for anyone who performs as Romeo. They are not concerned with earning, and ultimately winning, a “title match.” They want to, instead, dazzle their audience so that their audience forgets, momentarily, that what they are watching is a fictitious battle, rather literal life and death.

While talking with Jeff, I pick up another piece of wrestling parlance: a card. A card is, essentially, a match between two or more wrestlers. The “average card is five to seven minutes,” says Jeff.

After chatting with the young man who is now Señor Sabado Noche, I recline in one of the sofas in this rather small parlor-like room. People are still busying about and most wrestlers are either in, or nearly in, their costumes for the evening performance. One of the brawniest men that I have yet seen walks in; he looks to be in his thirties. He has blonde and dreaded hair and looks like a professional body builder. There’s something very intimidating about him, although he seems like a teddy bear. A very big Thor-like teddy bear that looks as though he could take my life in a mere second.

I can tell he’s a veteran by the amount of respect that others in the room giving him. There’s a sense I gather from him that is similar to the sense that I gather from Cullen—one of knowledge and experience and devotion. Perhaps it is his bulging and sculpted muscles that makes an object so relatively small and insignificant so very much the opposite of these things: a thin, gold wedding band on his ring finger. This symbol of love and devotion and loyalty that one pledges to a cause greater than that of themselves, and by which becomes a vessel of that cause, is indicative of what wrestling means to these men and women. Wrestling does not truly become someone’s wife or husband, as Cullen told me earlier. Cullen of all people knows this. But I am beginning to understand why he used the simile of marriage. Wrestling and marriage for these individuals who, in just a little bit of time, will enter the ring are synonymous words to describe what we experience in a lifelong matrimony: love and loyalty.

And the occasional laceration.

photo by Mel Kobran

Lords of the Ring: second bout

Nathan Cushing — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Wait! This is the second part in an ongoing series. If you missed it, you should start at the beginning.

The Story

If you were to show up at the GXW facilities tomorrow, knock on the door, and request Cullen's time so that you may ask--plead--that he take you in, you must be prepared to kiss instant gratification goodbye. Even the most sincere, passionate, and athletic individual will not enter the ring in a professional performance until they have completed at least one full year of training. If this sounds all a bit like an overbearing Yoda being fastidiously patient with a promising Jedi trainee, then perhaps there is a kernel of truth in the analogy. Cullen is a sort of Yoda, albeit a Yoda that doesn't need the supernatural powers of the Force to break doors and limbs.

However, he is no brute. He is bright, humble, sincere, and very much cares about his wrestlers--like all excellent teachers should care about their pupils. "I teach a lot of safety," he says. He really does; it takes about a year before a new wrestler under his wing gets into the ring. Unlike MMA fighters, who train to abuse the body of another, "We train to abuse our bodies."

Wrestlers get the most hurt when things go the most wrong, like being hit at the wrong angle, or in the wrong spot. That is perhaps the principal concern that professional wrestlers have with amateur or "back yard" wrestlers, the zealous fans who mimic the moves they've seen on TV. Cullens's wrestlers train hard and long so that they may deftly take and inflict pain, whereas neophytes remain utterly daft--wanting only to see flesh and bone do incredible and unnatural things. "Our guys are smart," says Aaron, interjecting into the conversation to drive the point home.

While we talk, a young man who is quite tall and has close-cropped hair walks in. His name is Kevin, and his first professional match was in December of 2007 against the Reverend J Boogie. "My dream is to make it," he says, meaning wrestling, "into my profession." I ask him his thoughts about being at Ground Xero Wrestling. "I love being here."

"Being here" means more than just wrestling. GXW works with a local fire department in conjunction with their "Fill the Boot" fundraiser which supports the Muscular Dystrophy Association. GXW also partners with Building the Fire Within, a non-profit charity that offers housing and programs to non-violent, recently-released female prisoners. The organization formed in the same month and year that Kevin faced off against (and beat) the Reverend J. Boogie.

Kevin also picks up on something that Cullen talked about earlier: the mentoring that GXW offers to alienated people, typically teenagers. There's one person named Kyle who, according to Kevin, has made a "night and day" transformation. Kevin's key to life is you "have to learn to respect yourself," it's something that they've done their best to impart to Kyle. Cullen's philosophy is also simple:

"I'll take you in and I'll make something out of you."

How to Make Something

About an hour has past in Cullen's office, and now it's time to pack up and ship out. We head to the rear of the facility where I see over a dozen men in shorts, sweat pants, t-shirts of past wrestling events, and baseball hats. Each man, some working in tandem with another, lifts something that is either heavy or cumbersome and puts it into the back of a truck. I can't see it now, but most of what they are lifting are the materials needed to construct the wrestling stage for tonight's show--one of the few that's actually held within Richmond's city limits.

When grouped together, each piece of the ring totals $6,000. GXW owns two rings, the one currently in a state of disaggregation--the one that they take with them to performances--and the other is their practice ring. Later, I will ask Cullen where one can buy a wrestling ring, being that the Targets and Home Depots of the world typically don't carry them. He tells me the a few of the more popular sources for rings and other wrestling paraphernalia are Monster and High Spots. All very purchasable in the Internet Age.

As the equipment is now loaded, Cullen asks me if I know how to get to the club. I tell him I do, despite that I do not. I get into my car and makes sure to follow close behind his vehicle. This is for two reasons: 1) I have no idea where the hell I'm going and 2) I want to follow Cullen because he is the general--the foreman. Cullen commands resepect, and I know why his wrestlers choose to follow him in both literal and figurative ways.

Even if we don't know precisely where we are going.

Once We Get There

I don't know what I imagined a venue that hosts an independent wrestling event would look like, but this is not it.

There are a handful of very large men loitering throughout the club, they each have 'bouncer' written all over them. There's a large open space up front, immediately through the club's doors, undoubtedly where the ring will be. The floor of the club is an acid-wash tile, and at the far end of the club is a large bar that's virtually solid white in an Art-Deco style. At night, and with the interior lights dim, it probably looks modern, if not a bit space-agey. But now it looks as though the bar itself is hungover, droopy, and colorless.

The wrestlers start bringing in pieces of the ring. They first erect four supporting beams, its points making a square. Cullen counts the space between each beam by taking fifteen back-to-back steps between them (if someone where to emerge with a tape measure to question Cullen's unscientific method of measuring, I imagine Cullen would be vindicated).

"Alright, it's time for me to sit down and you guys to set up," says Cullen to the nine wrestlers that scurry around the Aurora. He comes and sits next to me on a bench. This is my favorite part," he says with an infectious smile: him getting to sit while the younger guys get to work. What I watch for the next hour or so, he tells me, is "paying your dues." What he means, precisely, is having the wrestlers learn the ropes by setting up the device that supports their weight and movement and represents the career that several of them are trying to make for themselves. The current crop of wrestlers in Cullen's fold have set up the ring from start to finish four times without his help. But that might not be entirely accurate, as several times Cullen notices something happening not to his liking and promptly corrects one wrestler or another for doing something that they shouldn't be doing, or not doing something that they should be doing.

"Promoters like my guys," he says, "because they're dedicated."

Cullen teaches his wrestlers that when they are in the presence of someone that they do not know, they are to approach that person, shake their hand, and introduce themselves. True to form, while Cullen and I chat on the bench, wrestlers show up that were not at the training facility and shake my hand. The devotion to manners that these wrestlers have is definitely unexpected. To them, and to Cullen, their teacher, it is the norm in a world that would find this behavior most decidedly unnormal.

Cullen once again sees something not to his liking and so gets up to confer with the parties involved. Sitting down at the other end of the bench is a young woman, wearing a short skirt and a white tank top, exposing tan skin. She has platinum blonde hair. Feeling a bit inspired by the manners I've encountered, I shift down a little bit closer to her and introduce myself; her name is Tori. She's not a girlfriend of one of the wrestlers, as I had assumed, but a wrestler herself--one of the five women wrestlers of GXW. She tells me that she's "been off for a while now," but was referred to Cullen and GXW by TNA performer Mickie James. "It's more tasteful and family oriented," she says of GXW performances.

One of the most common conceptions that people have about wrestling is that performances are gratuitously filled with well endowed, attractive women. But at GXW it's different. "We don't exploit women as sex objects," Cullen told me earlier while sitting in his office. "We want them to be known for what they can do, not what they look like".

Tori's skin is flawless, lacking the scrapes or marks that are typically inflicted while in the ring. I ask her about this, and her response is to turn an arm and show me a "mat burn" on the underside of her forearm. It's a faint mark, but a mark nonetheless. "Injuries happen usually when someone does something they're not supposed to," she tells me, echoing Cullen's point from earlier in the day.

While we chat, a tall, thin man with an Abraham Lincoln beard politely interrupts us to say hello to Tori and to introduce himself to me. His name is Patrick. That's it. That's all he wanted to do--say hello and introduce himself.

I'm curious if Tori she has a spouse or partner and, more specifically, what they think of her involvement in the wrestling world. She doesn't have a boyfriend currently, but she does have a man in her life that is supportive of her career: her four-year-old son, Christopher. It seems that the apple did not fall far from the tree.

Tori tells me that he once employed a wrestling move (a clothesline) on an unsuspecting child during a birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. It was a bit of a teaching moment, wherein his mom could impart when and where clotheslines are appropriate, and that a party at Chuck-E-Cheese is neither the proper time nor the appropriate venue for such a thing.

As with every other wrestler I've either met or have had a chance to observe, Tori seems so genteel compared to the stereotypical vixens that I see when I happen to catch a match put on by WWE. And, like most of the people with whom I've talked today, she watched wrestling when she was young. "I'd like to turn it into a career," she says.

Just then, a young man, rather I should say a kid, approaches Cullen. He seems awkward and nervous as Cullen reminds him to introduce himself to me. He shakes my hand and tells me his name is Kyle--the same Kyle that I heard about earlier that morning.

Kyle

Cullen gets up and Kyle takes his place on the bench. He tells me about how, at fifteen-years-old, he was "about to get kicked-out of my foster home." He says that there's something about "being in the ring and being able to wrestle" that motivates him to stay away from drugs. Kyle is twenty-years-old now. He no longer does drugs, and he's working to get that shot in the ring, which he hopes will be a month from when we chat. Early on Cullen told him: train hard and stay clean and you'll get into the ring.

I'm curious to know what exactly goes into "training hard." Regiments are typically three hours, says Kyle. Beginning first with 10 laps around the building complex that houses the GXW facility, about the distance of a high-school track. After that Kyle does 200 squats, 50 push ups, 50 crunches, and 100 jumping jacks. "I've thrown up," as a result of the regiment, he says.

Next come drills in the ring. This includes practicing the correct way to fall, to clothesline, and to run the ropes. He's typically in the ring between 7:30pm - 10pm. I state the obvious by saying that the schedule seems grueling.

"Everybody will get blown-up in any sport," he says, acknowledging my observation. Before I can ask Kyle why anyone would subject themselves to such consistently laborious training, he tells me, "It can make you a better person."

I can't help but think that that statement alone summarizes why Kyle, and perhaps everyone else who wrestles at GXW, does what they do. Their work and dedication is not meant to justify a compulsion to violence, but a compulsion to be the person that they want to be. Yes, that sounds like a US Army slogan, but this incredibly strenuous and utterly difficult work, appeals to a higher self within each of them.

I get that sense from Beth, who drives from Emporia to volunteer as the GXW ticket cashier. "Their heart and soul is in it," she says. "They enjoy it. You can tell they enjoy it."

Although not a wrestler herself, Beth, middle-aged, started watching wrestling matches on television when she was five-years-old. She tells me that tickets to a recent WWE match at the Richmond Coliseum cost $65; for front-row seats the cost was $300. We talk about the sometimes crude language and women's outfits that are nothing less than skin exposes, methods that GXW do not employ. "I can bring my nieces and nephews to this, and I know we'll all have a blast." I ask her, a life-long wrestling fan, which she prefers: the grandiose performance of WWE, or the group that continues to set up the ring behind us. "I like this better," she says.

"There's a lot of dedication in this group."

Lords of the ring: first bout

Nathan Cushing — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:00:23 +0000

I'm at 5114 Glen Alden Drive, headquarters to Ground Xero Wrestling, an independent wrestling federation based in the Richmond area. A yellow '96 Honda Shadow VT1100 motorcycle pulls up into an empty parking space to the left of my car, and the rider, wearing a black leather jacket and blue jeans, pulls off his helmet. He has on a white bandana. Behind his head is long, recently washed hair that is tied into a bun. He pulls out the white earbuds of his iPod and smiles.

"You Nathan?" he asks. "I'm Aaron," telling me that he and the other wrestlers will be loading up in the back.

After I follow him to the back of the building, he unnecessarily apologizes for being late--it is, after all, 9:00am on a Saturday and Aaron is married with a one-year-old son. He unlatches a Master Lock and opens the bay doors, lighting up a wrestling ring in the back right corner of the large space. There are folded chairs lining the left wall, and posters of various WWE promotional events, most featuring wrestlers I don't recognize--I haven't watched a professional wrestling match on television since I was eight-years-old, back when I called myself a Hulkamaniac.

Apparently, there's been a scheduling mixup, and the rest of the wrestlers won't be arriving until 10:30am. I sit down in an unfolded metal chair, while an antsy Aaron alternates between various restless positions: both hands holding onto the ring's ropes, or kicking his legs back and forth when he squats on the edge of the ring, or simply folding his arms as he stands up straight. His broad chest reminds me an old farm tractor's grille. He has muscles, but they are neither as defined nor over-the-top like those of comic book heroes or professional body builders. But, quickly I am convinced that he is one of the nicest, most sincere people that currently inhabits the planet.

Aaron's 29 years-old, a graphic designer who's worked in Richmond since he graduated from James Madison University in 2003. He did freelance work for a time before starting 903 Creative. When speaking of his artistic skills and business to me, he says, "I can't imagine doing anything else."

Oh, but he does do something else.

Aaron is one half of the Drago Dynasty, a masked wrestling duo that made their first appearance in September, 2010. He and Garett Freeman, an EMT in his early 20s, play the twin brothers Kyo and Renshi Drago, the "true Weapons of Mass Destruction of China." It's an apt title, it seems, as they share the honor of holding the GXW Tag Team Title. When punching and kicking in the ring, the two wear full-body black spandex outfits with tank tops and kitschy horned dragon masks.

"We talk on the phone a lot," says Aaron of his partner. "He's my closest friend here."

Most of the wrestlers at GXW are friends. Most of them are also similar to Aaron and Garett in another regard: they have full-time jobs--training and wrestling at events in the evenings and on weekends. Some have the hope that wrestling will one day turn into their full-time job.

During our chat, a truck pulls up outside the the facility, and a big man wearing shorts and a t-shirt strolls up to the back door. It's locked. "Open up," he says, and he's not asking. Aaron jumps down from the ring and opens the door, and the big man walks in like he owns the place. Turns out he does.

"I'm Dave," he says, reaching out his hand to shake mine. He is the owner and founder of Ground Xero Wrestling.

He is the foreman.

The Foreman

"Virginia is a no-bleed state."

This is Dave Cullen speaking. Sitting in his office, in front of him are papers, promos, and pens strewn across his desk--a large desk, the type of large desk that says "I'm the boss." Dave Cullen is the boss of Ground Xero Wrestling (GXW). By "no-bleed" Cullen means that wrestlers in the state of Virginia are not legally allowed to fight if any wrestler sheds even the smallest drop of plasma. This Virginia statute prevents scenes similar to one in the Mickey Rourke film, The Wrestler, where the main character surreptitiously removes a razor blade from his taped-up wrist and slices his forehead open. It's a regulation imposed by the state legislature that Cullen doesn't seem to mind. The ring, he says as we chat in his office, "is not a sanitary place" and "there should be standards." This, after all, is a dangerous profession.

He's a big man, Cullen, strong, intimidating, but never, never rude. Although fans won't see him in the ring, he is the true face of Ground Xero Wrestling. As we talk he looks me right in the eye, and I instantly think of a foreman: a hard worker, dues paid in full, one who is far too smart to let his knowledge go to waste. So he becomes the boss, not to boss others around but to teach the younger guys. If you asked me to describe Cullen in one word, I would have to cheat and use two: old school.

He started wrestling sixteen years ago when he was twenty-six. "Grandfather, step-father were all wrestling fans," he says. When I ask him why he started wrestling well into his twenties and not earlier, he said that information wasn't available like it is now. He means, more or less, the Internet. When I search Google for "local richmond virginia wrestling" I get 1,870,000 results. These leads and jumping-off-points were unavailable when Cullen was a younger man, so it took him time to find his way into the business. Since entering professional wrestling, he has run three schools and helped others run theirs. In 2006 he started Ground Xero "from the ground up with zero dollars," choosing the name as a reminder for humility's sake.

Fluorescent lights shine down on us, and around us are walls made of concrete blocks, scattered on which are framed photographs of Cullen's wrestlers. There are no windows in his office, no windows in the weight training room, and if the garage door at the rear of the facility remains closed, no windows to allow natural light to shine into the space where they keep their practice ring. What may seem like rather melancholic digs to many is actually a rare treasure.

There are over 2,000 wrestling federations across the country. The most popular are World Wrestling Entertainment (formally known as the World Wrestling Federation until the World Wide Fund for Nature forced a name change) and Total Non-Stop Action (TNA). There are six Virginia-based federations, most of them, Cullen tells me, are run out of individuals' homes. "We're the only one in the Richmond area." I ask Dave when he started GXW, and he gives me the exact day: August 15, 2006--his birthday.

Unlike baseball's minor league affiliates scattered across the country, these independent federations have no connection with WWE or TNA. In order to break into the bigs, as it were, wrestlers must build a name for themselves in these independent federations. If a wrestler is tough enough, talented enough, and lucky enough they may attract the attention of the right person that will get them access to the most popular (and profitable) rings in the country. The likelihood of this is rare.

As with anyone who pursues a passion, wrestlers must make some sacrifices. "You have to miss birthday parties," says Cullen. "Is that right?" he asks rhetorically. I ask him if his wife is supportive of his business. "She doesn't like it." But she's beginning to understand it more..."she's coming around."

Aaron's been married for eight years, and when he came to Cullen to ask if he could begin training at GXW, Cullen told Aaron that there was a prerequisite. "Dave wanted to talk to me and my wife," says Aaron. Together. "Spouses," says Cullen, "have to support you 100 percent." Wrestling has to be more than a hobby, more than a way to pass the time on the weekends.

"Wrestling has to become your wife."

The Misses

While I chat with Cullen in his office, an irregular stream of men much taller and stronger than me stick their head in to say hello to the boss. They ask if there's anything in particular that Cullen wants them to pack up for their show later tonight at the Aurora in downtown Richmond.

"Grab the suitcase with the chains," he says to one of the wrestlers.

While wrestling dates much further back than the modern era, there is a more modern mode of fighting that is all the rage these days--MMA.

Mixed Martial Arts is essentially kick-boxing without the padding. As a result, many consider it the ultimate form of fighting--mano e mano--and why the most popular (and financially lucrative) MMA league is named the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It is not uncommon for blood to splatter in the ring, or to see grown men throttle one another.

"MMA is like wrestling now," says Cullen, acknowledging that independent wrestling federations like GXW have an additional obstacle to overcome aside from the general public often not knowing that such federations even exist. Although wrestling is not as savage as MMA, the "art" of wrestling, as Cullen calls it, is nonetheless injurious. "When we hit a concrete floor," says Cullen, "we hit a concrete floor." But there is one thing, above all, that differentiates professional wrestling with that of MMA: theater.

Although Cullen will be the first to admit that it's not Shakespeare, there is more to wrestling than merely slaps and kicks and body slams--there is something that wrestling must add in the absence of the blood that an MMA fight so generously provides.

"We have to put a story in the ring," says Cullen.

He and Garett Freeman, an EMT in his early 20s, play the twin brothers Kyo and Renshi Drago
He and Garett Freeman, an EMT in his early 20s, play the twin brothers Kyo and Renshi Drago