On a boiling August night, the amped-up, sweating, stinking, laughing, taunting crowd stuffed into Suite 1 of this Pinellas Park warehouse is impatient for the next fight to begin.
Two guys in the corner work diligently between wrestling bouts, like roadies at a concert or a pit crew in auto racing. Only they're not stacking amps or drilling lug nuts.
The object of their attention: a rubbery phallus, an engorged male organ in effigy, an — oh, fuck it — it's a dildo. It's a dildo, erected at full-mast on a yellow broom handle above the ropes. And it figures into the next match.
From the outside, this warehouse near U.S. 19 is as nondescript and plain as a warehouse can be. Inside, though, is the WrestlePlex, a wrestling school where, for $2,500, an aspiring grappler can go from walking through the front door completely green to his or her first show. The WrestlePlex is also a training facility, the home base of two indie organizations, the 4-year-old Independent Pro Wrestling and the inchoate Christian Wrestling Federation. On Thursday nights after practice, the WrestlePlex holds Bible study for the wrestlers.
And a couple of times a month, the WrestlePlex hosts a night of wrestling for its members, its graduates, its pupils and its trainers, right at the WrestlePlex.
This match, one of 10 on the night's card, is touted as a gimmick-on-a-pole match. It's a sideshow event in a sport that is, as sports go, something of a sideshow itself. Whether or not to call it a sport is a matter of debate — elsewhere. It's undeniably physical, even brutal. If figure skating and synchronized swimming get to be sports — after all, they're Olympic sports — then why not pro wrestling?
The crowd is swarming with white guys wearing the tired yet indefatigable mullet haircut. The referee in the ring even sports the bad-boy style, which all but shouts "Business in the front, party in the back!" And where there are bad boys, there are teenage girls, several of them tan and pretty in spaghetti-strap Ts. Rounding out the crowd are unabashed rednecks, elephantine ears projecting from shaved heads.
Announcer Shannon Rose, a Tampa wrestling media mogul with a radio show and Web site devoted to wrestling, takes the microphone. His voice effortlessly clicks into dramatic tone as he asks the crowd: "What do you want?"
"Dildo!" an enthused handful — er, group — answers. Again Rose poses his question, looking for the answer that they enthusiastically give him, each time getting louder. This is the kind of bunch who could turn a small fight into an all-out riot in an otherwise calm crowd. This business goes on for three or four refrains.
"Whoever gets to the dildo first gets to use it," Rose explains to the blood-lusting crowd.
Presumably, that person would be Snow, a.k.a. "The Snowman." He's 400 pounds of rippling flesh from Alaska. He shudders his way into the ring.
"Hey Shannon," the woman sitting next to me says, "he needs that dildo 'cause he can't see his own!"
The WrestlePlex, where this Saturday night fight card is being played, is a wrestling school, folks. It's not Sunday school, despite all the young kids in the audience.
A moment after Snow burdens the ring, the strains of "YMCA" begin to blare over the speakers. Yes, that would be the Village People song.
A guy in tight rainbow-color tie-dye Daisy Duke cutoffs comes bounding into the ring, prancing and working it for the crowd. His T-shirt's tied in a big knot in front.
Meet Snow's opponent: Phil Latio. Say it like it's one word, the "T" pronounced "sh."
Size-wise, Snow looks like a lock. Then again, a guy like Phil could presumably scrap pretty tenaciously to get his hands on the coveted dildo.
Phil Latio works the crowd, skirting the ring, sitting on guys' laps, waving, dancing. The crowd, composed mainly of bug-eyed rednecks, is surprisingly tolerant. In fact, the worst verbal abuse seems to be aimed at the fat guy. I may be reading too much into it, but it seems one wants to avoid Latio's affections. Taunting him would probably just lure him to your lap.
"Hi, everyone!" he says as his hand flops in the air, waving. He's still prancing and saying hello in the ring when the fight starts. Snow comes bounding across the ring and flattens Latio like a steam train hitting a scarecrow. Latio is slow to get up. His buttocks rise up, comically, into the air.
Snow just toys with him. But in pro-wrestling tradition, the outcome is anything but predictable.
It's a classic American story. A boy from a small, Midwestern town leaves home, seeking fame and fortune.
In this case, so does his brother. But instead of hitching a ride to the star-speckled sidewalks of Hollywood, the brothers, like so many wrestlers, wind up in Central Florida, where the state income tax isn't.
When that ovum split, and the lookalike babies were born, there was no way the doctor or the proud parents could predict that one day the twin boys would journey from their small hometown of Galesburg, Ill., to become tag-team wrestlers in faraway Pinellas Park, wrestling under the banner of the IPW, Independent Pro Wrestling, hoping for a shot at the big time.
In what could be pegged as familial pride, the brothers battle between the ropes, using, of all things, their given names — Mike and Todd Shane — a rarity in a hype-mad sport whose hopefuls, contenders and sideshow freaks use assumed names like Destiny, Rod Steel, Special Ed, Kubiak, Havoc, the Cuban Assassin and, ahem, Phil Latio.
"We use our name because we don't really have to get recognized as wrestlers," says Mike.
"They'll probably change it anyway if we go to a big company," adds Todd, sounding exactly like Mike, a slightly rural intonation affixed to their deep voices.
The biggest company is the World Wrestling Federation, the WWF — purveyors of the TV show Smackdown, that loud, brash, flashy and entertaining display of violence on UPN Thursday nights. It's safe to say the WWF is the ultimate aspiration of every wrestler hurling his body — and his colleagues — around in the state today.
In addition to wrestling in the IPW, the Shane boys also compete in Georgia, New Jersey and other parts of Florida in the NWA, CZW, ISPW, FCW, SWA, SPWF, CCW, WPWF and FOW. (Like wrestlers, words, too, get clotheslined and knocked short in wrestling.)
The Shanes are 33 years old. Their faces are round, as are their close-shorn scalps. Both are 6 feet 3 inches. Their combined weight is 600 pounds. And at the moment, a lull in the training action at WrestlePlex, each is swaddled in sweat, wearing tight shorts and big, black stomping boots. It is, of course, next to impossible to tell hulking Mike apart from hulking Todd. Todd is nervously chewing on a yellow towel around his neck and has a broken hand sealed in a plaster cast, making the task of recognizing him a little easier. He broke it working as a bouncer at Rain, a swank nightclub in Tampa, where a lounge lizard was getting a little rambunctious. "Yeah, we threw him out," Shane explains. "He came back in. Started dropping bombs on him."
Bouncing, Todd says, is the more dangerous of his chosen professions.
Not that wrestling isn't dangerous. "After a while you learn to take falls," he says. "You have to learn how to take the bumps and the falls and all that, and you pretty much get conditioned for it."
When they started wrestling about five years ago, they quickly learned the most brutal, perilous thing about wrestling is the politics.
"It's more who you know than how good you are," Mike Shane says. They go back and forth, agreeing, backing each other up, tag-teaming it.
"It's who you know, but also you gotta really pay your dues. No one hands you nothing, really."
"That's more it. It's not really — you gotta know people, but it's more like paying your dues, is what it is."
"It's not gonna happen overnight."
"It takes years. If a guy's pretty good, probably at least seven to 10 years."
The Shanes figure they have another five years in them to hang in there — after all, they say, "Malenko didn't get his break until he was 38." The two attended Dean Malenko's Tampa wrestling school before it closed.
The Shanes have a fan in Molly Holly, a high-profile World Wrestling Federation pro who came to Florida on vacation from her native Minnesota and never went back. Pro wrestlers are drawn here, says WrestlePlex co-owner Dave Tristani, for the mild weather, the relative convenience of Tampa International Airport and the income-tax-free living. Like the Shanes, Holly attended Malenko's wrestling school.
When not traveling for WWF appearances, the 23-year-old Holly stops by the WrestlePlex "now and then," she says. Her small stature is the antithesis of the other wrestlers, females included. But the troops hanging outside the ring greet this big-time pro like a wrestling MacArthur and Monroe rolled into one. Holly says she'd put in a word for any wrestlers she truly believes would make good company backstage and on television. And if anyone in the IPW fits the profile, she says, it's the Shanes.
The tag-team known as QuickieMart comprises Yaz and Agent Steele. Like the Shanes, they train at the WrestlePlex, but they also attended wrestling school at the facility. Each took about a year to complete the program, and they've been competing as a duo for six months. Steele is 22, Yaz 23.
"The average guy in the WWF is 31, 32 years old," says Steele. "That gives us 10 years."
Like the other wrestlers, the two can practically fly around the ring, whipping and bounding off ropes. Their trademark move is the 24-7, which Shannon Rose describes as "devastating to their opponents."
Steele grabs the neck of the guy in a "wheelbarrow," holding the opponent vertically. Instead of just one of them collapsing on top of the opponent, both members of QuickieMart will come down on him at the same time as the guy's head is dropped on the mat.
Meanwhile, the fight between Snow and Phil Latio has strayed from the corral of the ring. That can happen in pro wrestling. People are standing up, either to get out of the way, get a better view or get some of both.
Phil climbs up onto a platform over a backdoor in the rear of the warehouse-cum-auditorium and jumps off, slams onto Snow, who collapses, Phil atop him, in a thunderous pile.
The already spastic crowd goes into conniptions.
A voice from the crowd rises up: "Cheesy Poofs! Cheesy Poofs!"
"The winner gets a hotdog!" someone else yells. It's like Mystery Science Theater 3000 set in Hazzard County, Ga. Rednecks heckle best.
At one point in the match, a winded Snow sits propped in a corner like a rag doll, directly under the dildo-on-a-stick. To the cries of "Dildo! Dildo! Dildo!" Phil Latio responds to the negative. Not yet.
"Uh-uh," he says, and wags a finger. He unzips his fly and backs his pasty, G-stringed ass up into Snow's puffy face. And wiggles.
How do you save face in a situation like that? Use the ladder that has become part of the fight, as Snow does, and use it to whup your opponent.
The fortunes of a wrestler can change many times in a bout. In fact, it could safely be said that a pro wrestling match serves as an entertaining and violent metaphor for the clashing, back-and-forth, changing advantages of good and evil — a classic storytelling device in comic books and wrestling, where a cartoonish antihero often faces and usually defeats a clean-cut American hero.
Still outside the ring, Phil Latio leans back on the ladder, standing up against a corner brace. When Snow makes to run straight into him, Latio slips to the side at the last second.
Back in the ring a stunned Snow uses the ladder as a block when Phil charges him.
One brightly glowing teen in a puka shell necklace sits on the edge of the catwalk stage, chanting: "You're a fat ass, you're a fat ass," clapping along to the syllables like phonics for juvenile delinquents.
Snow once again gets the upper hand. Latio lies prostrate at his feet, wedged under a ladder, lying atop him in the missionary position.
Snow asks the crowd: "Want more?"
Oh, Jesus Lord, yes.
He hoists a folded metal chair in his oversize mitts, and whacks the ladder with it, repeatedly, producing a clatter far louder than if he were to beat Latio directly with it.
"Get the dildo" the woman to my right yells, "stick it in his mouth!"
Her name is Debbie Keenan. Her 4-year-old son, Tavan Holder, is sitting in the front row. He's embroiled in a battle of his own, trying to get a photographer to quit blocking his view.
The kid is awfully big for 4 years old. The photographer might be wise to take heed.
"He's off the charts," she boasts of her boy. "He has no problem telling him (the photographer) to get out of his way." She giggles at this.
"Got it for you," Keenan says. She's been trying to think of a title for this article. ""Battle of the sexes.' You got one that's queer; the other one doesn't even see his own (penis). "Battle of the sexes,' and there's no woman involved!"
Turning her attention ringward, she yells, "Get the dildo! Make him taste it!"
Snow grabs the dildo and wallops Latio across the face.
But Snow doesn't keep the advantage long. Next thing you know he's down and Phil Latio manages to pin Snow for the three count. The dildo flops around in his hand like a dying fish as he goes giddy, celebrating as though he'd just been crowned Miss America. "YMCA" fires back up.
But wait! Snow is up, and so is the ladder, which he manages to open wide enough to fit Phil Latio's head. This could be serious. Guy like that coming down on a ladder around a guy's neck.
That's when "Hot N' Sexy" Sean Hill steps in and saves Latio, taking out Snow with a few decisive blows.
Latio is very, very grateful. He's prepared to pay Hill back for the blows with some of his own.
He scoots deftly about the ring on his knees like something from the cult film Freaks, his face in Hill's nether regions, moving exactly as fast as Hill can back away from him. Phil Latio hops up into his arms and scissors his legs around Hill's hips. Yep, very grateful. Or maybe horny.
Keenan's been coming to the fights since last winter, Tavan in tow. She's not sure if Tavan will end up wrestling or not, but says he has been hanging around it enough and watching it on TV.
One thing is for sure: The boy can yell. He sounds like a Chihuahua, snapping and yipping at the wrestlers.
Keenan isn't worried about him getting hurt by an errant body missiling out of the ring. Neither is she worried about the language his little ears might pick up.
"He knows it's bad," she says, and leaves it at that.
What Keenan likes about wrestling is "the bodies," she says with an embarrassed laugh. "And the excitement. I like yelling at them."
During the next bout, her favorite wrestler, Devin Nash, is part of a three-way fight. She offers Nash encouragement.
"Kick his butt!"
"Devin, go show him who his daddy is!"
Call it love at first sight. She met Nash at the first match she went to, at Daewoo of Tampa.
"He was rassling this other guy. And I said, "Show him who his daddy is.' And when he got out of the ring, 'cause I wanted his shirt, he said it cost too much; "why don't I just give you a hug?' So when I hugged him I said, "Who's your daddy?'"
Devin Nash's real name is Dave Tristani. He moved to St. Petersburg from Pittsburgh 10 years ago to escape the cold, which wreaked havoc on his arthritis.
He is 45, with long, gray hair. He is in his sixth year of wrestling. In the last two years he has broken six teeth, "snapped right off the gumline."
In addition to wrestling, he helped start the WrestlePlex, which he co-owns with Ron Niemi. The IPW is Niemi's project, whereas the Christian Wrestling Federation is Nash's — as are the Thursday night Bible studies classes. One need not be Christian to wrestle in the CWF, he says.
While Tristani says he could live without the swearing of the crowd, he sees no hypocrisy in mixing Christianity with such a violent sport.
"Not at all," he says. "We as professional wrestlers are like any other professional athlete. If you think of football players, hockey players, basketball players even. Before the show, after the show, we can be friends. Just like a football player. Before the big game, they can be friends with guys on the other team.
Besides, he says, "We balance the violence with the word of God."
Tristani says that Florida is riddled with independent wrestling leagues such as IPW, but many of them are run by wrestlers who can't do the marketing.
Says Tristani: "Most of our students — and I'm not exaggerating here — most of our students can wrestle with virtually anybody in the state. No matter what level the other people are at, no matter how many years they have in the business."
31-year-old Jonathan Davis wrestles under the moniker AXIS. He came to professional wrestling a few years behind the rest of the flock and thinks it may be to his advantage. "I'm very lucky because, starting at a later date, my body isn't nearly as beaten up as some people that have been doing it for 10 or 12 years that are the same age."
Right now, he is working hard to develop the right personality. He's always been drawn to the antihero, and so he's working hard to develop a persona that does not belie his intelligence. He holds two bachelor's degrees, in classical civilizations and the humanities from Florida State University, where he wrestled in an intramural league.
Now he is a villain named AXIS. "I try to follow along in that tradition of being the most vicious, powerful, maniacal bad guy that I can," he says, "yet still maintain some semblance of intelligence.
"I mean, nobody wants to see a wild beast. But they don't mind a madman as long as he's a shadow of himself."
He sought to become a pro wrestler at 28, after a long abstinence from wrestling. Davis has set a timeline of five more years to make it to the WWF. If he hasn't arrived by 35, he knows he probably won't ever.
"Most guys in this business labor away for years and never have a break. So you sort of have to reconcile yourself to the possibility you won't make it. The people who do it and stick with it do it because they love it, not because they make it or they don't."
His first match on completing the wrestling program was "absolutely horrible," he says. "I was nervous, I really thought I was gonna throw up, my very first match. I had to go down to one knee before I went out." After breaking his out-of-shape opponent's rib, Davis won.
However, the 10 or 15 minutes in the ring as AXIS is, Davis says, a transcendent experience. He compares the high to what a rock star must feel on stage or the way a politician feels, knowing he or she holds power over the people.
"It's something pure. People throughout their lives look for something that transcends their normal, daily, boring, routine lives. Wrestling allows you to do that. …
"Moments that are lacking in most people's lives."
Upcoming events take place Nov. 3 and 23 at The Florida WrestlePlex, 4055 35th Street N., Pinellas Park. Call 727-526-6778. If you're up late, or early, IPW Hardcore Recap airs at 2 a.m. each Saturday morning on UPN 44.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2001.