There are hardcore wrestling fans, and then there are those that show up to monthly wrestling shows in Chillicothe, get dressed, and actually wrestle.
On July 1, more than an hour before the Red, White and Bruised event, a creation of Eastside resident Tom “Wild Bull” Miller, was set to begin, a small crowd had formed at the entrance to The Backstage, a dive bar that was preparing to house a 16-foot high steel cage.
This was professional wrestling on the independent circuit.
“I always tell everybody this is better than working at Buckeye Steel,” Miller said. “Everybody tells me how lucky you are, and I am. I’ve been a blessed individual. I’m not going to lie, but you do anything for 30 years and it becomes a job.”
As the final bolts were locked down, Miller ushered everyone backstage, which was behind a curtain that divided the bar. Already there were Jerry the Gator, Charlie Brown, The Man Beast J.T. Hogg and many others. No one paid much attention to the two nearly 300-pound men sitting in the shadows wearing red tights and masks. They had chains thrown over their shoulders and one was shirtless. They were called the Russians.
Back stage, Miller needed everyone to review the two pieces of notebook paper tacked to a dart board. On those papers were the lineup card, which held the schedule for the night — three matches, an intermission and three more matches. The main event was called “War Games.” Wrestlers entered the ring in one minute intervals until it was a five-on-five match.
Putting on and competing in events like these has been Miller’s life since graduating from Groveport High School in 1981. It’s been a lot of wrestling in bars, armories, high school gyms and even prisons. Like every sport, the top of the pro wrestling world leads to wealth and fame. Yet, like every sport, only the top 1 percent get there. The rest are left to fill a smattering of lower levels.
In the IWA, a wrestler might get $25 a night, barely enough to cover the cost of the roundtrip drive from Columbus.
“We beat our bodies up for nickels,” said Chris Hickok, who competes as “Big Country.” “It’s what we want to do. Ain’t nobody out here making any money. This is who we are. We carry 9-5 jobs. We have families, but we’re wrestlers. It’s in our blood.”
Hickok, a 1993 graduate of Gahanna, has been wrestling in the IWA for nearly 12 years. He and his tag-team partner Aaron Butler, who goes by the name of “C.O. Hustler,” are the promotion’s longest-running tag team. Butler, who graduated from Beechcroft in 1988, also has been at it 12 years.
They were not alone in describing wrestling as a love affair that started early.
“From 6:05 to 8:05 on Saturdays, it was Georgia Championship Wrestling,” Butler said.
Nationally syndicated wrestling wasn’t the norm when Miller was growing up. Still, he became the resident wrestling expert in high school, collecting the magazines of the many independent circuits from the 1970s. By the time he graduated, he knew wrestling was his calling.
A nationally known wrestler named Fred Curry lived in Columbus, and Miller pestered the local wrestling legend until he agreed to train Miller for $1,000 on a mat with no ropes. There, Miller learned techniques he would pass on for the next 30 years.
“When I discovered wrestling, they didn’t really have the national promotion like they do now,” Miller said.
“Back then all the promotion was local. You didn’t go to Walmart and see the Honky Tonk man dolls.”
After six months of training, Buddy Donovan gave Miller his first match in 1981. It didn’t take long for Miller to learn that wrestling could be a shady business.
His first event was advertised with a poster that boasted the name Eric Listar as the event’s main attraction. Despite his vast knowledge of the wrestling scene, Miller never had heard of Listar. It wasn’t until he arrived to compete that he found out he was to be Eric Listar.
Listar was one of the headliners included in a list of big names that never showed up.
The crowd wasn’t buying Miller as Listar and so his first professional match was in front of a crowd of 1,700 angry patrons.
“The sheriff wasn’t happy and the fans wanted to riot,” Miller said.
“I was thinking this was the world of professional wrestling. At least I got put in a tag-team match. They led me along by the nose. No one had taught me about the psychology of the match. It’s not about the headlocks and stuff, it’s about how you put all that stuff together to tell stories while you’re doing it.”
Knowing match psychology might perhaps be the greatest indicator of Miller’s knowledge of pro wrestling. For him and the many who compete for him, it’s an art form. The array of moves a wrestler can perform is secondary to the way they interact with the crowd. It’s good versus evil, home versus away. The key, Miller said, lies with the villain, who in industry terms is called the “heel.”
“Unless it’s a champion — because I let the champions go out last — the bad guys always goes out first,” Miller said. “It doesn’t matter how lame you are as a good guy, by the time I go around the ring and tell everybody to shut up, the crowd is so riled up, all you have to do is stumble out there and they’ll cheer.
“This business is easy if you know that, but that’s stuff you don’t learn just sitting there and watching TV.”
Miller can reel off a match template in a matter of seconds. The most basic one is for the good guy to spend the first two minutes of the match proving he’s the better wrestler. Then the bad guy has to resort to cheating for the next six or seven minutes. After that, they’re into the end-match sequence that keeps the story line going.
It may be scripted, but one thing Miller prides himself in is that the matches are largely improvised.
That’s a big difference between wrestling on national television and wrestling in a country bar. Usually the winner is pre-determined, but how they arrive at that outcome isn’t.
“A lot of (newcomers) don’t understand anything but that quick fast-paced wrestling on TV,” said Mike “M.E.” Howerton, a wrestler for the IWA and promoter in West Virginia. “It’s not their fault. It’s just they haven’t been properly trained and many of them think they’re going to the WWE. You got to be at least 6-foot tall to go to the WWE. You got to be tall; you got to be built.”
Charles Brown, known as “Charlie Brown,” is a 2005 graduate of Marion-Franklin and is considered a “backyarder.” That is not an endearing term in the wrestling business. It’s the backyarders who have drawn negative attention to wrestling recently as teenagers have been injured attempting the stunts seen on television.
As did many of the IWA recruits, Brown first saw Miller’s promotion on the public-access channel when he was young. The IWA had consistent exposure in those days with a regular television show. When the Columbus City Council decided to pull the plug on public access early in the decade, the IWA lost out. Since then it has bounced around to various spots around central Ohio.
“The WWE wrestlers will come to the Schottenstein Center and draw over 10,000 people and the women’s basketball team will draw 2,500 and it’s all over the front page,” Miller said. “There’s just this stigma about wrestling. I’d love to see my wrestlers all get $50 a night. That would cement my legacy in this town.”
The 10-man war match entertains the crowd at The Backstage July 1 in Chillicothe.
Caden Fry, 7, gets an autograph from Alley Cat (Aaron Young) during intermission.
Lorrie Cecil/ThisWeek