On Saturdays, after Soul Train, the Children’s Afternoon Film Festival and Girl Scouts consumed most my morning hour, my father would come home and watch Big Time Wrestling on Channel 2 (KTVU). Hosted by Hank Renner, the guy with a nice Jerry Lee Lewis hairdo and some variation of a plaid sports coat, Big Time Wrestling was an hour-long show that featured three to four separate wrestling matches.
The newer wrestlers or perennial ones struggling to make for themselves would always come first, followed by the up-and-coming, culminating in the big marquee names to close the show. Somewhere halfway through the show, Renner would advertise an upcoming bouts assisted by Miss Wrestling – always a larged chested woman wearing sequined Vegas show type clothes – who would flip pages of wrestler glossies, making sure that her breasts covered at least 1/4 of each photo. Renner would work each show up, especially if it were a Battle Royal or a cage match. I recall one particular grand send up for an upcoming match featuring guest wrestler Andre the Giant in his pre-Princess Bride days, when the tall Frenchman was still a bad boy of the ring. Renner enjoyed 3-months worth of promos ,salivating during each description of the mighty Andre’s exploits, until the fight was ultimately cancelled at the last minute.
The home town acts were my father’s main focus, and he would sit at the edge of our orange couch and punch the air as he watched each wrestling bout. He would yell at the television and cheer for the good guys, never once disputing decisions despite all the shenanigans that took place while the ref’s back was turned. I never warmed up to wrestling, even though my father persuaded me to watch the show with the promise that we would later switch over to the Outer Limits or a Godzilla movie. He also tried to ingratiate me to both Kenji Shibuya and Mr. Fuji, two bad guy Japanese American wrestlers. My father even told me that Kenji Shibuya was my uncle, a possibility that only frightened me as his wrestling style was confined to lots of screaming and broken English.
Eventually, wrestling won me over with Renner’s “candid” interviews. While the good guys would speak strategy and of their contempt for enemy opponents, it was the bad guy antics that endeared me to wrestling. I loved Moon Dog Mayne of Crabtree, AK, a mildly plump wrestler with a wild mane of blonde hair, who began each match by braying at the moon. His interviews were a lively showcase that included slamming himself on the head with a steel chair and swallowing a goldfish on live television. I also liked the 400+ pound Haystack Calhoun, who wore gigantic sized overalls and liked to fall like a ton of blubber bricks on top of a dazed opponents. Surely, there must have been death involved, I believed. I saw the bloody scalps and could almost feel the bone jarring impact of bone to steel pole slam as another wrestler succumbed to the most evil of wrestling moves. I could accept most of this, but I drew the line at any opponent that would remind me of WWII Germany, such as the Von Brauner twins and their manager, Gerhardt Kaiser.
My father, however, hated the bad guys and would always question my tastes, as if no offspring of his could possibly have such bad taste. His favorites were Pat Patterson, Peter Maivia, Pepper Martin, Ray Stevens and Rocky Johnson. I personally liked High Chief Peter Maivia, who would always stop each interview to speak to the Samoan audience in his native language. There was a reverence about Maivia, who never stooped to dirty tricks and was so proud of his heritage that he paraded around the ring in Samoan wear. He seemed to be the everyday wrestler, one who could easily be seen walking around Serramonte or Tanforan Shopping Center in flip flops and a pair of shorts. After growing up, I would later learn just how much Maivia and his interviews influenced a whole generation of native San Franciscans to speak in Samoan accents. I even had one guitar player from a local band break into a Peter Maivia imitation during a live radio interview I had with him on KUSF-FM.
Wrestling would later become a world wide sensation, when larger-than-life personalities in spandexed pants, PEDs and big hair would dominate the sport. . I spent far too many disillusioned discussions with male classmates who swore that the bloodied Pat Patterson, carted off on a stretcher and holding onto dear life in full view of a TV audience, was eating breakfast the next morning at a local café. Someone else said that Kenji Shibuya was really some third generation Japanese American kid from the South Bay. The authenticity of wrestling had its death blow in high school when I saw real Greco-Roman wrestling, and found that there was true art and athleticism to a sport that must have felt itself cruelly lumped in with something akin to a Riverdance on steroids.
My father, however, was a true believer. As he unwillingly wandered into his twilight years, an unfortunate victim of Mesothelioma, my father and I would go to the Cow Palace to watch live wrestling. We would sit close to the ring, and a smile would spread across his face as he cheered each bout. He was in his element, a man who lived to spend his Saturdays watching wrestling in front of the old television set, now determined to enjoy the real sweat, screaming and raw drama of wrestling. That is, until he witnessed first hand the outrageous decision by a ref who, while in a verbal sparring match with one wrestler from team, failed to see how the old tag-team-duo-beating-up-the-other-wrestler’s-partner via taking turns administering the atomic elbows.
My father was livid and inconsolable. He stood up, motioned that I should leave and we walked out of the Cow Palace before the final bout began. My father muttered a few curses and was determined to never watch the sport again, especially if cheating were involved. It had never dawned on me that my father believed wrestling to be an entirely true and honest sport, for he was always quick to weed out and complain incessantly over suspicious calls. Incidents such as the bungled time clock at the1972 Munich Olympics basketball game between the USA and USSR grated on him. He was also hyper critical over the subjective decisions in boxing, especially during the Olympics, and was quick to blame the USSR for every unwarranted victory over an American.
Somehow, it seemed to odd that my father could believe that wrestling was real. Not, at least, when the television had made it clear for so long that there was plenty of purposeful cheating designed to enrage a viewer. Instead, my father chose to get angry over other things, like wild antics in the ring and naughty interviews. In all things fatherly and masculine, there existed a bit of innocence in my father, and I did not want it to die.
I knew then as I know now that perhaps wrestling should have been real. For once, I wished that all the colorful yellow pants, head bands, threats, screams and souplexes were real. It would have been nice for my father, who never watched wrestling after that night. For a man who discussed little of anything to me outside of sports, it just added to more long bouts of silence.
(c)2014 Slow Suburban Death. All rights reserved
A couple things.
Rooting for the ‘bad’ guys in the WWW made as much sense as rooting for the ‘good’ guys, because, of course, the whole thing was staged purely for ‘entertainment’ value. I always wondered how could anyone find it entertaining to do everything imaginable to another human being that had virtually nothing to do with the genuine sport of Wrestling. I mean, the body slams initiated from atop one of the rope’s posts made no ‘sense’ to me. The punches to the head, stomach, back, etc., also would not even qualify for boxing, let alone was entirely counter-intuitive to the notion of “wrestling” … but the list is too long to say more other than on the one hand, bless your father’s heart for at least believing in the sport’s legitimacy before he saw it up close for himself. That was a blessing in disguise, because to go through one’s entire life believing in the WWW’s legitimacy is part astonishing and part kinda sad.
The second point regards what so many of us know about the men of “The Greatest Generation” (the title, I think, of Tom Brokaw’s book on the GI’s of World War II) – that being, there were an awful lot of “Gary Cooper” type personalities going about their daily lives, actually saying and talking very little. The “strong and silent” type as my Mother would remind me. In fact, Mother confided that the man who speaks little was probably more unsure of himself than “strong” and they proved so often “silent,” because as Mother spoke from some considerable experience, it was because “they didn’t have anything to say!” ha!
Anyway, your Dad and my Dad too up until his last 10 years or so didn’t talk much and for some, it could have been in part because of something they may have seen or experienced during the War(s) (WWII or even the Korean and Vietnam War). But just because many men never learned, or learned over time to say very little outwardly, I would like to think they still meditated and cogitated on the inside. And even more importantly, I think, Anna, just because our Dad’s may have said or expressed little outward emotion, just the fact he took you to something he seemed to really enjoy – Wrestling – was meant to be his way of *showing* (as opposed to just uttering the words) that he loved you, his daughter; and despite his own known shortcomings, he loved you unconditionally! That’s how and what I prefer to read into your intimate journey into the uber-refined and genteel sport of World Wide Wrestling. 🙂
Yeah…my father was such a huge boxing fan, so his not understanding that wrestling was fake — especially with the downward punches and simultaneous foot jump — was a bit incredible.
As to the greatest generation, my father was an immigrant from the Philippines. He did not serve in any wars, but he was burned at Pearl Harbor. He was working on the ship at the time, along with my uncle. I don’t believe either received any payment for medical treatments, although they did receive a certificate indicating that they were at Pearl Harbor during the attack. I believe that my father’s silence was more attributable to my mother, who pretty much tortured him everyday. She never made it a point of hiding that the only reason why she married him was to get American citizenship. I cannot imagine how such an admission over a 20+ span of time affected his psyche. He was otherwise quite talkative to other people…just not to his wife and children.
I guess that better explains it. But, your piece ends on a reflective, somewhat melancholy note of a father’s ‘silence’, which I may have read too much into. In any case, if he was talkative with others (as my Dad proved to be, too – much to my Mother’s dismay and continuing consternation), then his nature to remain silent – through “long bouts” – with his own daughter, may have been a guarded (calculated) decision, to keep any issues between he and his wife separate from you. Another reason to cherish the time spent with Dad, the silence notwithstanding. Good job, Ann. I trust there’s personal catharsis in such reflections too.
Yeah…I loved my father but he was a man of many secrets. He had a very Tourrettes type of way in expressing certain things, such as blurting out — unprovoked — that we have some mystery half sister living out in Okinawa. With no other information forthcoming on either point, it was all very bizarre. In other instances, however, I realize that his silence was either out of embarrassment or to protect my sister and I from knowing the truth of things.
To be honest, I think he tried to get me to watch wrestling because I would continually try to change the channel. That was rotten of me, but enjoying wrestling was a bit of a bonding point.
I am intrigued to hear of your father, who seems like the sort that gets featured in movies. As you say, very Gary Cooper-ish, and the sort of man that most women seem to like. Would be nice to hear more of him, such as things you pursued together.
Good stuff, Anna. I grew up a little earlier, but yeah, I’ll never forget going to the Cow Palace as a kid to see roller derby (loved my namesake, number 40, Charlie O’Connell), and wrestling. Haystack Calhoun was in full swing, and I saw one memorablke match against Dick the Bruiser. It was always a neighbor’s dad who would take me and my brother as dear old (nonexisent) didn’t have time for us kids. The same dad who took me to Kezar to see John Brodie face the Unitas-led Colts. Saw the Bears in 1970 as well.
I remember 747 from Roller Derby. I think that was her name…large woman. She was on “Truth or Consequences” as a “contestant”. The goal was to skate cleanly through a mini obstacle course of items that could be won if it were knocked over. The first contestant was perfect, but 747 knocked everything over, showing off some horrible skating skills. It was all a joke meant to make the first contestant nearly cry, but it worked well.