by Jack Tunney
FIGHT CARD:
PUSH
ANOTHER TWO-FISTED
FIGHT CARD TALE
JACK TUNNEY
FIGHT CARD: PUSH
e-Book Edition – First Published August 2014
Copyright © 2014 Nathan Walpow
Cover by David Foster © 2014
This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions and organizations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher.
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FIGHT CARD: PUSH
ROUND ONE
BAKER CITY, OREGON, 1993
I was lying on the canvas in a run-down ring in a run-down auditorium in Baker City. Though maybe lying isn’t the best word for it. I was plastered face first, right in front of one of the ring posts, with my butt up in the air. The crowd of a couple of hundred was yelling at Olaf Olafsen, the Swedish Strongman, to pick me up and hurt me.
He came over and grabbed me by the hair and hauled me up. When a guy grabs you by the hair, you have to match how fast you get up with how fast he’s pulling on you, so it doesn’t hurt as much as you’re trying to make it look like it does. I didn’t do a real good job, so it felt as if Olaf was yanking my scalp off.
He got me to my feet and delivered a forearm smash. That one we pulled off just fine. Olaf stomped his foot when he hit me. You’d think the fans would understand the foot stomp that always goes with a forearm smash doesn’t do anything, it’s just to make noise so the smash sounds like it has some force behind it. Maybe they did understand, but if they did, they didn’t mind.
I sold it really well, falling backward into the ring post, and sliding down onto my butt. Olaf hauled me up again, again by my hair, and this time I got it right. He pulled me to him and whispered, “Time for some shots,” and I twisted around and made a V with my fingers and poked him in the eyes.
Of all the dirty tricks a heel can do to a babyface, that’s one of the worst. It just makes you seem, well, evil. It’s as much against the rules as anything can be, but no ref in wrestling history has ever disqualified anyone for an eye poke. I hated to do the poke, because there’s always the chance one of the fingers is actually going to do some damage.
But I did it anyway, because it’s what the fans expect from the heel. One finger hit just below his eye and the other never touched anything. But Olaf sold it really well. He stumbled around, holding his arm in the air, palm forward, just like the fans expect. Of course, all the damage he’d done to me immediately stopped hurting. I rushed over to him and kicked him in the leg, once, twice, three times, until he went down to one knee.
I went around back and clamped on something that was supposed to look like a choke hold. I’d never figured out exactly how that was supposed to go, but I knew it had something to do with putting one forearm under the other guy’s chin and grabbing it with the other hand, so I put it on and shook and howled and yelled, “Who’s tough now?”
At which point Olaf stood straight up, and I ended up riding on his back. Any normal person in that situation would just let go. But wrestlers never do, especially dumb heel jobbers like I was in this match. So I hung on, feet hanging in mid-air, and then Olaf reached back and tossed me over his head. I flew through the air and made that ring post’s acquaintance again.
Everyone was stamping their feet, and yelling “Moose!” The name for Olaf’s finishing move. He picked me up again and held me upside down and climbed to the bottom rope, facing into the ring, and as he jumped off he tossed me forward, so I took another swan dive toward the canvas and head-first. I went limp, like I’d had all the fight taken out of me. Olaf came over and turned me over and hooked the leg and one, two, three, it was over.
The ref came and held Olaf’s hand up and the announcer told the crowd what they’d just seen, and I magically recovered enough to roll out of the ring and make my way back to the dressing room.
There were thirteen matches that day, enough to supply the local TV stations for a couple of weeks. I was in three of them. In the first, I was up against Man Mountain Beazel, which made me the good guy. Which meant the white trunks. Then there was Olaf, who was a babyface, so I got moosed in the black trunks, with matching tights. Now, Olaf wasn’t any more Swedish than I was. His name was really Ted Perkins, and he was from Ohio. But he was a superstar, and it was 1993, the time when they were starting to give all of the superstars’ gimmicks, so Ted became Olaf and talked on camera with about the worst Swedish accent you’ll ever hear.
I had one more match to go, against Tino Terranova, who the company had flipped from being a face to being a heel at the last pay-per-view by having him attack his tag team partner, Rick The Trick Finnegan, during an interview. So, back to the white. But there were a couple of matches in between, so I grabbed a Coke and sat down to watch on a monitor.
I was about the only jobber they’d let be a good guy sometimes and a bad guy sometimes. There were guys like Tyrone Banks, who always played the heel, and ones like Sam Masterson, who was always the babyface. But there was something about me that, even though they always announced me by my real name, the fans were fine with me being the always-play-fair innocent victim of Man Mountain and an hour later be evil enough to poke Olaf in the eye.
Ted – outside the ring, I was able to ditch the kayfabe names and think of them with their real ones – came into the dressing room with Harvey Higgins, one of the refs. Harvey was really good at always seeing when a face did something a teeny bit illegal and always missing bad guys hitting people over the head with chairs. The two of them were laughing about some girl in the first row. I’d seen her too, with her boobs hanging out all over the place. There was one in every town, hot to hook up with one of the superstars, though only Silky Morgan ever owned up to having gotten together with one of them. However, if he was to be believed, he’d gotten together with all of them.
I was standing there with my Coke, when Ted came over and said, “Good job out there.”
“Thanks. Means a lot when you say that.”
“I mean it. You sold that moose really good.”
“Thanks again.”
“Really, I think…” He looked around. Dropped his voice. “Some of these other jobbers, that’s all they’ll ever be. But you, you got something. I think they ought to give you a push.”
“I wish Lou thought so.” I said. Lou Boone was the promoter and just about everything else that counted in the Central States Wrestling Federation.
“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll put a bug in his ear. Not that he ever listens to me. Or anyone else.”
“Appreciate it.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and headed for the showers. I drained my Coke and tossed it and sat down to watch the next match on the monitor. Then Thumper came into the dressing room.
I’d heard about him, of course. He was the next big thing. His gimmick was about the stupidest I’d ever seen, but the fans loved it, and they loved him.
He dressed up like a giant rabbit. He had furry tights and furry boots and furry trunks. He had a pair of rabbit ears he attached to his head before matches. He had this finishing move called The Thump. It started out like a power slam, but then he would twirl the other guy around so he’d go face-first into the mat. Then the poor guy would just lie there and they'd get a s
tretcher and carry him off. Thumper would act real sorry and walk halfway back to the dressing room beside the stretcher, and then suddenly run back to the ring, put his rabbit ears on, and get a big pop from the crowd.
I’d seen him on TV, from a taping I’d missed because Sue’s cousin was getting married and we had to go to Akron. But in person, holy maloney. He must've been six foot six. Real buff, not bodybuilder buff, but enough to know he hit the gym regular and lifted a lot. He was nowhere near the 380 pounds they announced him at, but a solid 300 at least. His face didn’t look like it belonged with the rest of him. It was real pink, one of those faces that looked like he never had to shave.
I’m a pretty friendly guy. I used to be shy until I joined the Toastmasters Junior in high school, and now I can talk to anyone. And there’s a certain amount of, I don’t know, call it team spirit, going on in the dressing room. There are guys who hate each other, sure, but in general we’re just workers on a job together. The guy you were up against wasn’t your enemy. He was just someone you were supposed to entertain the fans with.
So, after Thumper stopped in front of a locker and opened it and dropped his Army green duffel bag, I walked up to him and told him my name and held out my hand.
Thumper looked at it. But he didn’t shake it. It wasn’t like he thought he was too good for me. It was more like he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.
Then he looked in my general direction and said, “I’m Thumper.”
“I get it,” I said. “But what do your friends call you?”
“Name’s Thumper.”
“Right, but…”
“Got no friends.”
“Okay, but...”
He turned my way. I looked at his face. Then I thought better about the whole thing, and backed away to where I’d been sitting by the monitor.
The look on Thumper’s face...it wasn’t like he was mean. Not a tough guy. Not a jerk. It was like he was like some kind of space alien or something. Like his eyes weren’t attached to the rest of his face, but just sat there in the sockets and sent what they saw to his brain by radio waves. It was the weirdest vibe I’d ever gotten off anybody, and I’d been in Desert Storm and had seen my share of crazy vibes.
My stomach was twitching. My breakfast, which had been nice and peaceful for three or four hours already, was threatening to come back for a visit. I closed my eyes and focused and opened them again. I looked over at Thumper.
He was taking his furry outfit out of his duffel bag and tossing it into his locker. His back was to me. Without those eyes he seemed like just another guy. Maybe the eye thing had been some sort of psych-out. Getting in my head so he could get me distracted and...
Except why would he want to psych me out? I wasn’t going to wrestle him, and even if I was, he would for sure beat me. I was a jobber, he was on his way to superstardom. There was no psych needed. If I ever wrestled him, it’d go pretty much as it always did when I was the bad guy. Thumper would fight clean for a couple of minutes, until I did something like poke him in the eye like I did Olaf. Then he’d beat the crap out of me for a couple of minutes, then thump me. And that would be all she wrote.
Some of the guys were weird, sure. Some had their superstitions and crazy routines and, yeah, mind games they liked to play. But my interaction with Thumper was the creepiest minute I’d ever had since I started in pro wrestling.
“How you doing?”
I looked up, and there was Lou Boone. He had on one of those crazy checked jackets he always wore, and a tie with the biggest knot I’d ever seen.
I stood up. I always stood up around Lou. I gave him a bad smile and tried to look him in the eye. Best I could do was the top of his bald head, where three drops of sweat sat. “Hey, Lou.”
“You meet Thumper?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“What’d you think?”
“Big guy.”
“Anything else?”
What was I going to say? That the guy’s eyes made me want to run and hide?
“No. Not really. I haven’t seen him wrestle, except on TV.”
“He’s the best thing that’s come by in a long time.”
“Glad to hear it, Lou.”
“You got one more match, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Throw in a little more stuff. I told Tino to let you. I want to see some more of your moves.”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
He turned away and went over to Thumper. I didn’t hear a word of what they said, but Thumper nodded a lot.
The next match came and went, and then it was Thumper’s turn. He was against Farley Reilly, a nice kid from Arkansas. Farley had a build on him, but he was real stiff in the ring, and I had a feeling he wouldn’t be around long. The whole time I’d been back in the dressing room, he’d been over in a corner reading a Bible.
He put down his Bible and checked his boots. He ran a finger inside the waist of his trunks, making sure they weren’t bunched up anywhere. Wrestlers don’t like to have to un-bunch their trunks during a match.
He pounded his fists on his chest a few times and headed for the ring. I found myself following him. I took a spot away from any of the camera angles and let myself soak in some of the stuff that always got by me when I was actually in a match – the hum of the crowd, the yells from the vendors hawking peanuts and pop, the squeaks from the PA system.
I watched Farley walk up to the ring, acting real confident. This place didn’t have the metal stairs they sometimes used to climb into the ring, so he reached up and grabbed the ropes and hauled himself in. He looked around to wave at the fans, but he couldn’t find a single one looking at him. So he did a couple of deep knee bends and waited.
Not for long. The curtain opened again and out came Thumper. He had on his furry trunks and tights and boots and his rabbit ears. The second the crowd spotted him, they came to life. They yelled and howled and clapped. Thumper jumped straight up in the air, and then he ran to the ring. Then he jumped right up onto the ring apron, and stepped over the top rope, and there they were.
“In this corner,” said the announcer, some skinny guy in a tuxedo. “Weighing in at two hundred and forty pounds, from Reed River, Arkansas, Farley Reilly!”
Farley may have been built, but he was short, and I didn’t think he’d ever come close to 240 in his life. Maybe 220, soaking wet. But they always blew up the weights. Farley tried to act like he had 240 to throw around, but it just looked stupid. Maybe five people clapped for him, maybe three times each. He went back to his corner.
“And from Green Meadow, Nebraska, weighing in at three hundred and eighty pounds...Thumper!”
The crowd got into it again, twice as loud as when Thumper came out in the first place, making Farley’s lousy welcome look even worse. Most guys had paid their dues like Farley, but I wasn’t sure Thumper had. I just couldn’t see him ever coming to the ring without the fans going crazy.
The ref called them into the center of the ring. Thumper was looking at Farley with those space alien eyes. Farley tried to stare back, but his eyes ended up somewhere around Thumper’s collarbone.
The ref went into his routine. It was always something like, “I want a clean match, no teeth, no eye gouging, nothing like that. When I tell you to break, break. You got it?”
“Sure,” Farley said.
Thumper just nodded, then turned and handed his ears to…Lou? Was that really Lou? Lou never appeared at ringside.
The ref pointed at the timekeeper and the guy hit the bell.
Collar-and-elbow tie-up. Farley tried to hip-toss Thumper. That got nowhere. Thumper hip-tossed Farley. Cheers from the crowd.
Thumper put Farley into a headlock. Farley pushed him off, and they went into a crisscross, bouncing off ropes at right angles to each other and somehow never colliding, until finally they met in the middle and again.
Thumper hip-tossed Farley again. There are hip-tosses and there are hip-tosses, and this one put Farl
ey all the way across the ring. He kneeled down in the corner, waiting for Thumper to come for him, and when Thumper reached for him, Farley punched him in the stomach. Then, just like I’d done to Ted earlier on, he poked him in the eyes.
Only Thumper didn’t sell it like Ted did. Thumper acted as if he hadn’t even felt it. But now Farley had done something illegal, which mad him fair game for a babyface like Thumper.
First Thumper smashed into him. Just ran at him from across the ring and squashed him into the ropes. Then, before Farley had a chance to react, Thumper picked him up over his head and threw him out of the ring. Sort of clean-and-jerked him and held him over his head and tossed him over the ring ropes like he was a sack of potatoes.
Over the top rope. Flying through the air. Smashing into the floor.
This made the crowd very happy. A lot of them were on their feet, and some of them were smashing the seats of their chairs up and down, and people were yelling, “Thump him! Thump him!”
Farley may have been musclebound, but he still knew how to fall. When he was lying there on the concrete floor, he was selling the throw. I could see he wasn’t really hurt.
There was a kid in front of him, yelling, “Get up, you loser! Get up!” No more than eight, with a really scary look on his face.
Then Thumper was on the apron outside the ring, and then he was jumping to the floor, and then he was striding over to Farley. He grabbed him by the hair and pulled him up. He threw him onto his shoulder. He marched back to the ring and hoisted him straight up over his head and tossed him over the top rope.
Inside me, a voice said, holy maloney! It was my Uncle Charlie’s voice, and that was what he said whenever somebody did something amazing in one of the matches.
Up, then down. Usually, you lift a guy and throw him, he’s pretty much going straight out, then down. Farley went up first. Jesus, Thumper was strong.
Farley hadn’t handled this new fall all that well. Maybe he was busy being amazed by the flight he’d just had. He stumbled to his feet, looking like he was ready to call it a day.
