by Jack Tunney
There was a tiny bit of blood under Thumper’s nose. When he turned toward me I touched my nose to my upper lip. He got the point, touched his own, looked at his finger, and bellowed. I won’t repeat what he called me, but it was pretty bad.
Just for the hell of it, I turned to the referee and complained about a hair pull.
The refs, they don’t have a lot of imagination. So when I did that, he marched right up to Thumper and told him to stop it. Because that’s the way it’s supposed to work.
Then we were circling again. To the right. Yeah, something was wrong with his left foot.
We tangled again, and I came out of it with Thumper holding my left arm in an arm wringer. It was the first time in the match anything hurt. He really was strong, and my arm really was twisted, and maybe I let it show in my face, because Thumper smiled and twisted some more.
Here’s the thing about arm wringers – about a lot of other wrestling setups too, but I’ve always noticed it the most with arm wringers. Think about it. One guy’s standing there, holding the other by the wrist or forearm. The other’s like three feet away from him, with his other hand totally free. Not to mention his feet. But instead of doing anything with the other hand or anything else, the guy in the arm wringer will just stand there, yowl in pain when he’s supposed to, and make believe the grip on his arm is keeping him from doing anything about the situation he’s in. I mean, I get it, it is part of wrestling, just like the crisscross. And the fans love it.
But it would never work in the real world. That time behind the bar, if one of the three guys who ganged up on me had grabbed my wrist and twisted my arm like that, I would have punched him in the face or kicked him in the nuts.
Whether Thumper knew it or not – he probably didn’t yet, but he would soon – the ring we were in was more in the real world than in the kayfabe one.
A kick in the nuts would’ve probably put him out of commission, and I’d get disqualified or something, and the Thumper situation would still be hanging over my head.
So I punched him in the face.
It wasn’t exactly like it would have been behind the bar. There, I would have put all my force behind it and swung for the fences and smashed the guy, no matter how it looked.
Here in the ring, it had to look at least sort of like a wrestling punch. Big swing of the arm, slow and measured, with a foot stomp at the end. There was no way a punch like that would do the damage it would in back of that bar.
But it could still hurt. And it did.
The crowd went quiet. Whether it was because I’d actually punched Thumper in the face, or whether it was because no one in the history of pro wrestling had ever done anything to get out of an arm wringer, except maybe a somersault, they shut up for a second or two.
Then they came back to life. There was a lot of yelling for my head. It was the biggest reaction I’d ever gotten in the ring.
So I did it again.
This time, because I’d already broken kayfabe, I didn’t have to worry about it so much. So the second punch was less wrestling ring and more back alley.
Something cracked when my fist hit. His nose, maybe, or maybe a cheekbone. There was more blood. Thumper let go my arm and put his hands to his face.
The ref woke up. He knew something wasn’t going according to plan. He got in front of me and stood up on his tiptoes and pushed his chest against mine. As I let him back me up, he said, “What the hell’s going on?”
“Nothing much. I think he pulled my hair again.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Just sit back and enjoy the show.”
I threw him out of the way. Not hard, not enough to cause a disqualification. Then I went back to Thumper, aimed a kick to his midsection, and let loose.
I didn’t pull the kick. It hit Thumper hard, just below the solar plexus, and it hurt.
The ref was scanning the crowd. For Lou, I guessed. To see what the hell he was supposed to do when a match became a shoot, which is what we call it when things turn real. Lou must have been out there somewhere, because the ref turned to the timekeeper and called for the bell.
Which didn’t sound. Because over at the timekeeper’s table, there was Stephan, and he was guarding that bell like a bulldog, waving the hammer around like a crazy man. Meanwhile, Uncle Charlie had the timekeeper in a hell of a full nelson.
The ref saw it all, and looked for the announcer to come in and announce my disqualification or whatever. But over where the announcer sat, I saw Sue, playing keep-it-away with the microphone. A guard came over and she climbed up on the table. Then she smashed the mic as hard as she could into the floor.
Back to work.
By this time Thumper has gotten past the punches and the kick. Not altogether, because what I’d done to him wouldn’t wear off that quick, but enough to come running at me again.
I sidestepped him and smashed my foot down on his left one.
And Thumper went down. He howled and grabbed his foot and howled some more. He looked at the referee. No help there.
So he got up, stood there all wobbly, and I went for him, and that was when I got sloppy.
I went to give him a chop to the soft part on the shoulder, and he saw it coming. It still hit, but nowhere near as hard or as accurate as I wanted. He grabbed me by the arm. This was no arm wringer. He used my arm to throw me through the air – yeah, that sucker was strong – and as I came down my foot clipped one of the ropes, and it changed my direction just enough that my knee slammed into a ring post.
Yeah, I can tolerate a lot of pain, but that hurt like hell. And when I got to my feet, it hurt worse. It was like someone had opened up my knee joint and poured some sand in and closed it up again.
Down on the floor, a couple of security guards were talking. Yelling, really, because that was the only way they could be heard. One of them turned to me and hollered something. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t care.
He and one of his buddies started to climb into the ring. Way in the back, a voice – a woman’s voice – yelled, “Let them go!”
Sue had tried to explain to me once what she called crowd psychology. It was, she said, like a big bunch of people turn into a single animal. A tiny thing will set them off and they all start acting the same.
In a couple of seconds, all of them were going. “Let them go! Let them go!”
The guards up on the apron looked at the crowd, looked at each other, and climbed down.
Back to work.
Thumper thought he was sneaking up on me, but even with all the noise I heard that monster coming. I went to escape, but he had a kick of his own to deliver. It went into my stomach and sent big old spikes of pain down both legs and up into my neck. It was a good one, I had to give him that.
He went to grab me and I almost made it away. But he caught hold of the back of my tights and used them to pull me to him. A handful of trunks is what they always call it when someone uses the other guy’s tights for leverage during a pin. It’s a heel tradition, though more than one babyface has won a championship that way.
But it was one fake wrestling thing that actually worked.
He slapped on a bear hug.
A bear hug’s one of the few holds that can actually feel like we try to make it look like it feels, and when it’s a guy as big and strong as Thumper giving it, that means it hurts like hell. It was like my back was caving in and being ripped apart at the same time, and the pain went up through my neck and woke up the pain from when he kicked me in the stomach.
He lifted me off the ground. My feet dangled somewhere they couldn’t do any damage. My arms were free, but had decided not to listen to what my brain was telling them.
Thumper squeezed harder, and I felt all my guts rubbing together. Now, I have no doubt that when they torture somebody with knives and other sharp things, the pain can keep getting worse and worse, until you’d give up your grandmother to make it stop. But a bear hug reaches a point and after that – for me, at least, and m
aybe it’s part of my stupid ability to suck up pain – it doesn’t get any worse.
We had a conversation.
I started it out. “That all you got?”
For a reply, he pulled the hug tighter, but, truth be told, I think it hurt him more than it did me.
“So,” I said. “I guess that’s all you got.”
“Why you doing this?” Thumper said.
“Doing what?”
“Not letting it go the way it’s supposed to go.”
I sold the bear hug a bit. Made a face, flapped my hands around. “Maybe because I don’t like how it’s supposed to go.” Out loud, I added, “You son of a sea cook!” That was another of Uncle Charlie’s sayings.
“How do you think it’s supposed to go?”
“Oh, hell!” That part was loud. The part that came after wasn’t. “I think at the end, you’re supposed to thump me.” All the while, I made it look like I was pleading to be let go.
“Well, yeah,” Thumper said. “That’s how it goes.”
“Like you thumped Bart Valerian and Lenny Lemaire. “You know. The two guys you killed.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“Whose, then. Lou’s?”
It felt like there was a circle of light around us, just going a couple of feet past our sweaty bodies. Past that was darkness, and in the darkness the ref and Lou and Charlie and Stephan and Sue and everyone else were looking in at the show, not sure what was going on but not wanting to move their eyes from it for a second.
In the center of that circle were Thumper’s alien piggy eyes.
And they weren’t so creepy anymore. Just the eyes of a bully. And a thug. And a murderer. Scary, yeah. But nothing I couldn’t handle.
He actually laughed. “That Harley kid. With his flying dropkick. Had to teach him a lesson.”
“Why?”
“No one tries to get me with a flying dropkick.”
“I did, just a little while ago.”
“Gonna teach you a lesson.”
“We’ll see.”
“Felt good.”
“What felt good? Me nailing you with the dropkick?”
“Teaching him a lesson. Felt so good, I did it to the next one, too.”
“Hell of a lesson, if you’re not alive long enough to learn from it.”
“Felt good.”
Suddenly the circle of light was gone, and we were back in the arena with the crowd and the TV crew and everything else.
“Lou know you were going to do it?” I knew Lou had gone over the line. I didn’t know how far.
“Not that one.”
“But he helped cover it up.”
“Hell, yes.”
“And the next one? Lenny Lemaire?” And, for the crowd, “Holy Maloney! Let me go!”
“He let me have one more,” Thumper said.
“He what?”
“Let me have one more. Your ears goin’ bad from this bear hug I’m puttin’ on you?”
“I can get out of this whenever I want to.”
“How come you’re still in it?”
“Don’t want to get out yet. Want to finish our conversation. What did you mean, Lou let you have one more?”
“He said I couldn’t do it anymore. Thump them to death. He said when I started going for the championship a lot more people would be watching us, and if we pulled any funny business we wouldn’t get away with it.”
“Great.”
“But I wanted to do it again. So we...what’s the word? We compromised. One more.”
Lenny Lemaire’s death had been the result of a devil’s deal. One more for the road.
“Know what, Henry?”
“Don’t call me Henry.”
“Don’t call me little buddy.”
“What?”
“Nothing, Henry. Except this.”
I head-butted him.
Head butts are big in wrestling. No one gets hurt, because the contact looks about a million times worse than it is. The foot stomp really helps sell the move.
But those are wrestling head-butts. Mine was a behind-the-bar one. I smashed my forehead into his poor nose and made it suffer some more. He let go the bear hug and stepped back, and that was when I let go with the standing dropkick.
The crowd all drew in its breath at once. Lots of guys can do flying. Standing, only a few. And it was a damn good one. Best one I’d done since I’d started practicing. He was too tall to connect in the face, so I went for the solar plexus, and I gave it all I had.
He fell back, and tripped over his own feet, and ended up draped over the bottom rope. I went over and started kicking him. It was a mix of real and kayfabe. I wanted to hurt him, but I still wanted the fans to get what they wanted. And deserved.
He rolled out of the ring. That was when I became the face and he became the heel. Yeah, he was supposed to be a hero. But everyone roots for David against Goliath. And when Goliath rolls out of the ring to avoid punishment...that’s a heel move. Hardly ever will you find a babyface running away to avoid getting hurt.
I went to the corner, climbed up on the first ring ropes, leaning my weight into the second to keep me steady. Then onto the second, with the top ones keeping me steady. That was it. Some guys can stand on the top ropes, but I’m not one of them.
I bellowed my name. My real one. I yelled it and added stuff like, “I’m the champ!” and, “Who’s thumpin’ now?”
Then I jumped down and slipped out of the ring and went after Thumper.
Again, I got sloppy again.
He was right in front of the announcers’ table. I went to haul him up by his hair and suddenly there was a folding chair in his hand. A steel chair is what they like to call it, just so you don’t think its cheap plastic, I guess. Guys are always taking hits with steel chairs. Most of the time, it gets sold real good and the crowd loves it. But steel chairs have caused a lot of injuries, too. Because they are, well, steel, and being smashed with one can do damage to flesh and bone.
It was up in the air, and it was coming down right at my head. I got my left hand up. The chair came down and broke my wrist and went through and smashed into my head and shoulder. Without the hand, it goes straight into my head, and that’s all she wrote. With the hand, the damage is spread. All in all, I’ll take the broken wrist.
But let me tell you something. Even for a galoot like me who can suck up pain, a broken wrist is killer.
I reached inside. Looked for my ga-ni. It was in there somewhere, I just knew it.
It wasn’t showing up. I kept looking. Thumper got up and picked me up and threw me over the top rope, just like he had with Bart Valerian. I landed on my broken wrist.
My ga-ni had had enough.
It was tired of standing around while I went around smashing things. Tired of the pain, tired of the show, tired of Thumper and Lou and everything about the Central States Wrestling Federation there was to be tired of.
I stood up. Right there in the center of the ring.
I waited.
Thumper came back in. Up the metal stairs, over the top rope. Even with the ga-ni in charge, some little voice in the back of my head was kicking itself for not using those stairs to make the show better. Me smashing him, him smashing me. The fans would have loved it.
That was the next-to-the-last time I ever worried about the fans getting what they wanted.
Thumper limped over. I think he was past knowing that we were in anything, but a fake situation in a fake match in a fake sport. To him, it was only one thing. It was Thumpin’ Time.
He marched over and I launched a wild punch. A right, since my left arm, ga-ni or no, still was only doing about half of what I wanted it to.
Thumper ducked it. He threw a right of his own. Then a left, and another left, and a right. I sold them all and ended up in a corner, with my butt in the air, a lot like I was with Olaf back when the whole thing started.
Thumper hauled me up by my hair. I didn’t pay any attention to whether it hurt or not.
Then he threw me over his shoulder. “This is it, little buddy,” he whispered. “Thumpin’ Time.” He ran forward and started to twist me around so my face would smash into the mat.
If I’d still had even a tiny question about what had to be done, it would’ve been gone now. That little buddy stuff would’ve done it.
I broke his neck.
It’s easy when you know how. When you’ve had the right kind of martial arts, and Stephan had taught me the right kind. While Thumper was tossing me around his head I just threw out my right hand, and then the left, which pulled its act together for one last sell.
I grabbed and twisted. Thumper’s shoulders wanted to go one way and his head wanted to go the other. He had a neck like an oak, but it was still the weakest link. So it gave.
Nobody in the crowd saw anything except me trying to grab onto something. And they were yelling so loud none of them heard the crack.
Then came the last time I ever worried about the fans getting what they wanted.
I sold the rest of the move and hit the mat just in time to have Thumper come crashing down on top of me. I managed to get both my shoulders down before he hit me like a big sack of cement. Right then, he really did feel like 380 or 390 or whatever they were saying that week.
The ref didn't know what to do. “Count,” I whispered. He finally did, one, two, three, and there it was, Thumper had won. Just like he was supposed to.
And that’s what really counts, isn't it?
EPILOGUE
Lou disappeared that night. I never knew if Stephan had anything to do with it, and I never asked. All I knew was they put out a story his mother was sick and he’d gone to see to her, and if that isn’t justice I don’t know what is.
Joe the Greek – who after a while I figured out didn’t know what was going on with Thumper – took over running things, and they went on pretty much the same for a couple of years, until the WWF got so big it pulled all the hot wrestlers, and things wound down until one day everything more or less blew away.
Stephan stuck around. He and Uncle Charlie opened a model train shop right next door to Charlie’s Ford dealership. It didn’t make any money, but it didn’t have to.
