PAWTUCKET -- MAYBE THEY haven't seen the script. That's why the
two actors are silent, storming around this rope-ringed stage, staring
at each other.
Then, suddenly, perhaps frustrated with the dearth of dialogue, one of
them, Chris Venom, lashes out, putting the other, K.L. Murphy, in a
headlock. Or is that a sleeper hold?
Whatever it is, Bob Evans, director of the rehearsal and owner of
Slamtech, Rhode Island's new school for professional wrestling,
approves. He makes no attempt to separate his actors. He wants them to
work with their feelings, get into their characters and, most of all,
emote.
"Sell!" Evans says, sounding like a commodities trader.
So Murphy winces. He grimaces, flails his arms and projects his pain
with a series of exaggerated facial expressions not seen since the days
of silent film.
Then he rights the wrong.
Murphy elbows Venom, grabs him by the hand and, somehow, with just a
swing of his arm, hurtles him into the ropes. But Venom bounces back,
and the men meet in a concussive collision.
They writhe on the floor. They stagger to their feet. Although Venom,
who's playing the bad guy, known as "the heel," falls to his knees and
pleads for mercy. Murphy, the good guy, known as "the baby face,"
approaches to finish him off.
Apparently two tempestuous actors is one too many for this script, which
like all the others in this art form features a hero, a villain, and an
ending of three thumps to the mat.
"Show me something," Evans says. "Tell the story. Baby come back."
Murphy, 20, of Uxbridge, Mass., looks around the room, which is only a
little larger than the ring itself.
"Sell!" Evans says again, pointing around the room as though it were an
enormous auditorium. Show everyone your emotion. Tell your story.
So Murphy improvises. "You killed my whole family," he tells Venom.
"No," Venom says, looking startled by the accusation. "It wasn't me."
The beating begins again anyway. Shoulders are pinned. And with that,
the curtain closes on this first act of athletic theater.
Real entertainment
"I'm not going to tell you it's real," Evans says. "It's sports
entertainment."
It's professional-style wrestling.
It's inspiration and perspiration. It's men in tights and lace-up boots,
mimes with muscles and a message: good guys win. Underdogs prevail.
That explains Dan DiLucchio, 29, of Providence, aka Shortsleeve Sampson.
He's a midget, but somehow manages to toss around Andy Vale, 31, of
North Providence, aka Edward G. Xstasy, a 6 feet 2 inches, 245-pound
mountain of muscle.
"I'm serious about what I do," Sampson says. "I'm carrying on the
tradition."
That would be a family tradition. Sampson's late grandfather was a
professional midget wrestler. Now Sampson seems on the brink of breaking
it big, or, as wrestlers say, going over.
Two years ago, Sampson got over. He appeared in a national professional
wrestling event, a World Wide Entertainment (formerly WWF) publicity
stunt in which he and another midget, Tiny the Terrible, were to tag
team against a wrestling icon, The Rock.
"We basically mocked him and mimicked his gestures," Sampson says. "We
never wrestled."
Obviously, the promoter knew The Rock was no match for Sampson.
But Sampson was ready, and wants to be again. So he practices.
"It's like any job," he says. "The more training you get, the better you
become."
So that's what we're seeing, the making of the next generation of
grapplers -- right here in Rhode Island.
"There's an art to what we do," Evans says. "It's not just a bunch of
guys rolling around in the ring."
It's ballet with brutes, killer choreography, with body slams and pile
drives, and little room for error.
"The only time people get hurt is when they mess up," Evans says. Only
then is full-contact wrestling real. Otherwise, it's fake, but fun.
That's why Murphy, a tech support specialist, gave up community theater.
"It wasn't physical enough," he says. "I didn't get enough athletics."
In this old brick mill building, three times a week, two hours a time,
ever since the two-year-old school moved here from Nashua, N.H., in
June, a half-dozen men meet to practice their moves -- their suplexes,
double clotheslines and Russian leg sweeps.
"Kids try this stuff out in their backyard and are maiming each other,"
Venom says. "They're not doing it correctly."
Venom, 23, of North Kingstown, and Evans, who run Slamtech together,
teach technique.
"Learning the moves is the easiest thing to do," Evans says. "The
hardest part is putting on a performance."
That means making the unbelievable believable, or maybe just conceivable.
"It's wacky what we do," Evans says. "If you throw someone at the ropes,
he wouldn't bounce back to you. It's not logical. We strive for some
believability."
That takes practice. The school charges $50 a month for wrestlers with
experience, $1,500 a year for beginners.
It's not tuition. It's investment.
"I'd like to be a professional wrestler," says Rich Racicot, 15, of
Worcester, aka Jammin J.J. Williams and Zachary Richards. "But I'm not
planning on it."
Charisma needed
Many aspire; few succeed.
There's no such thing as an accredited wrestling school. You don't win
matches or win over crowds with certificates, but moves, mostly.
"A wrestler has to have charisma," Vale says. "If a wrestler doesn't
have charisma, he has to do higher risk moves to get the crowd over."
Vale has been wrestling for three years. Like every one else here, he
has a job. He manages a nutrition store while building up ring time, and
his video resume.
"It's a childhood thing," Vale says. "As a kid when asked what I wanted
to be, I always said I wanted to be a wrestler."
But Vale didn't believe in his dream, until recently. Before this, he
studied for a career in law enforcement. He practiced power lifting for
nine years, until 1997, when he finished second in a national
competition, and decided it was time.
"I've got the moves and the physique," Vale says. "I've just got to fine
tune my skills."
For the most part, there are two worlds of professional wrestling:
poverty and wealth. You've got thousands of obscure, local wrestlers
paid $50 to $75 a match. And you've got a couple dozen nationally known
ones earning millions.
There's nothing in between.
"It's like major league baseball without a minor league," Evans says.
"But we are that minor league. You can't just go to the WWE. People
there can tell in seconds if someone knows what he's doing."
This night starts with six wrestlers in the ring, who split up in pairs,
and take turns going through a choreographed routine -- the one
involving the headlock, the arm throw, the double clothesline collision
and the failed plea for mercy.
Raeann Trocchi, 30, of Medford, Mass., aka Brittany Summer, watches.
She's Vale's girlfriend, although a wrestler in her own right, training
at a school in North Andover, Mass.
"My two loves have always been wrestling and soap operas," Summer says.
"I think they go hand in hand."
Summer's been training a little less than two years. Because most
wrestlers are male, she's preparing for a female part, a ringside
manager, who does get in on the action in many scripts.
"I like the bad girls, tough and dominant," says the gentle,
soft-spoken, well-mannered woman. "I kind of play the bitch."
There's a part for everyone. On training nights Evans, 29, of Brockton,
Mass., and originally from Swansea, often plays the part of director,
standing off stage, just on the other side of the ropes. But he believes
showing's better than telling. So he wrestles, as he's done the last 10
years professionally.
After everyone goes through the choreographed exercise a couple times,
it's time for some improvisational acting, er, wrestling. Evans, known
as Brutal Bob in the ring, which explains the BB on his boots, mixes it
up with Murphy.
It's teacher and student going at it. And the teacher is taking the time
to help his student, literally showing him the ropes, banging Murphy's
head into the turnbuckle again and again.
"It's an art onto itself," Evans says. "You've got to try to sell the
pain and make people buy whatever it is you're selling in the ring."
It's always a story, comic or tragic, and always character driven.
"It's very much like theater," Venom says. "You use your body and your
facial expressions."
Do not try this at home.
Okay, perhaps you might briefly attempt a theatric look of bewilderment
or pain. But that's it. Leave the moves to the pros, and the
performance, too.
"You have to create sympathy," Evans says. "A lot of guys can't do that."
