Keep kayfabe in the ring

If you only recently concluded professional wrestling matches were “worked” in advance, you are over a century late arriving at that conclusion. According to historians of the sport, including Matt West of Cranston, the outcomes in professional wrestling have been “worked” since the dawn of the modern wrestling around the time of the Civil War.

“Several of our presidents were wrestlers,” said Matt West, who has just started writing and producing New England Championship Wrestling on Comcast cable in Massachusetts. “Abraham Lincoln was famous for wrestling before he became a politician.”

Although West does not claim that Lincoln’s bouts were fixed, he said people who made a living as barnstormers did just about anything they could to make money, and getting your life wrung out of you in a wrestling match severely limited the amount of money you could make. Troupes of wrestlers, by themselves or part of a traveling carnival, toured the country putting on shows, often challenging someone in the audience to get into the ring. The “stick” in the crowd was often another member of the troupe who arrived in the town earlier.

But none of that history dampens West’s enthusiasm for the sport. West has been a fan of wrestling since he became enamored of the craft in the 1980s, when the modern mania for wrestling was catching hold, so to speak.

“I was watching Hulk Hogan on TV when I was growing up in Scituate and Glocester,” said West. “I began wrestling in high school and I was encouraged by my father, who also wrestled. I wrestled for three years, but I became really hooked after my father took me to a charity show featuring professional wrestlers and I decided I really wanted to do that.”

West and a Ponaganset schoolmate, Kyle White, started working their way toward professional wrestling and West said he was a bit surprised when he found himself doing it on a regional scale.

“For me, I thought it was a pipe dream to think I could join those guys from the 1980s, but as it turned out I have shared a ring with almost all the guys I admired back then.”

But the reality was, West had little chance to become a superstar. Professional wrestling by West’s time was tightly controlled by a few big players and it was hard to get inside of the sport, a least for someone who did it part time. West had the presence of mind to go to school and prepare for a career. It’s a good thing he did. West said he never made enough money professionally wrestling to “quit his day job,” as they say. The psychology major has recently gone back to school to get his master’s in psychology and believes he has found work that is personally satisfying. West actually has a night and day job being a residential director of group homes for special needs adults, a job he does with his wife of seven years, Adrienne. West said his wife is very supportive of his involvement in wrestling from the sidelines, but you have to wonder how she would have felt when he was wrestling under the name of “Kid Liberty” or “Mad Matt Storm,” even if she knew the outcomes were preordained.

“For a business some people call ‘fake,’” West said, with a certain edge to his voice, “I have had a sham concussion, a sham broken nose, a broken finger and a cracked rib.”

West insists professional wrestlers are extraordinary athletes who worked hard in a tough profession. “If anyone says that is fake, they are wrong about what this sport really is.”

Even the most die-hard wrestling fan has given up the illusion that wrestling is real fighting. They are fans now, even the children, because they purposely make a temporary suspension of disbelief part of the game and admire the wrestlers as much for how they pull things off that look so vicious without hospitalizing every opponent they face.

According to the history of wrestling presented in his book Ringside: A History of Professional Wrestling in America, Scott Beekman said, “George Washington was an avid wrestler…and the first of a long line of grappling presidents.”

Beekman said that wrestling was part of a physical conditioning program for militias and regular soldiers from Washington’s time to Abraham Lincoln, who, along with fellow Kentuckian Zachary Taylor, made a reputation for themselves in the rough and tumble style of wrestling that went west with the earliest of pioneers.

But Beekman said that traveling troupes of wrestlers were an integral part of the traveling carnivals and as much a draw as the animals, freaks and acrobats they featured. But wrestlers still had legitimate matches that challenged local champions to get in the ring when the carnival came to town. Frequently, they sent professionals to town before the show, to put on a good fight if no local hero was available.

The two forms of rural entertainment went their separate ways when there was a large urban population fed by the immigration and industrialization and urban venues and urban fans flocked to halls and taverns. Beekman said there were some matches that got out of hand and produced some grievous injuries, but they were rare. The good guy-bad guy formula took hold and bad guys called “Strangler” and “Killer” were commonplace.

But it was not until recently that insiders conceded the matches were fixed. They kept the fiction up through the 20th century and began to reveal the showmanship involved in the 1950s, when “Gorgeous George,” a personality created by an unexceptional wrestler named George Wagner, was featured or mentioned in innumerable television and radio shows. Gorgeous George entered the ring looking like Liberace in tights. He had gold-plated bobby pins he called “Georgie pins” and sold to his fans. He used the pins in his bleached-blonde curls and very effectively played on the homophobia of the wrestling audience as one of the most effective “villains” whoever came out of wrestling. You can see that flamboyance reflected in the costumes of contemporary wrestlers.

West said we should not believe that there were no real bad guys in the wrestling game but we should believe they didn’t last long. Anyone who broke with the program and hurt an opponent came to regret it.

“These guys were genuine tough guys and were very skilled,” said West. “They were what they called ‘shooters’ and they really knew how to wrestle. If you crossed them up, they could really hurt you.”

So you don’t have to believe wrestling is real to enjoy it. Just sit back and admire how well they put on the show.

“It’s entertainment,” said West. “Very professional entertainment.”

The television venture is the culmination of West’s 17-year career in pro wrestling, including performing, training and now production. His reputation has made its way throughout show business.

“When they were making The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke, [which was filmed in Massachusetts] they called us to train him,” said West. “The producers asked someone who they should get for the film and someone told them about us.”

New England Championship Wrestling should be on the air by the time you read this, but the permanent schedule has not been set as of press time. If you have any questions call West at 401-474-2895. Comcast SportsNet can be seen on Cox Communications channel 55 or HD Channel 727.