The Fringe: Small-time wrestling is all about the love

The biggest fans aren't always sitting in the bleachers. Many times, they're in the game.

Welcome to Coastal Championship Wrestling. They're not World Wrestling Entertainment. They're not on television and they don't tour nationally. But they love pro wrestling. So they started a promotion based in South Florida, and in 2½ years, they have steadily grown the audience size at their shows to the 250-300 range.

CCW's ring in Coral Springs, Fla. (Photo/Denny Burkholder)

Some of CCW's wrestlers have tasted the national spotlight. Bruno Sassi -- one half of fraternity-inspired tag team Phi Delta Slam, and one of the owners of CCW -- has wrestled on television for Total Nonstop Action (TNA). CCW's booker (the guy who plans storylines and character development at shows), Dave Johnson, wrestled for Vince McMahon years ago as the masked "Blackheart."

Sept. 16 was a show for the regular customers, with no TV coverage and no big-name wrestling legends making appearances. A large curtain sectioned off a small part of a gymnasium in Coral Springs, Fla. The small side is where fans will take the night's action. Behind that giant curtain, CCW's wrestlers and crew get ready to rumble.

While suiting up and getting into character, the wrestlers catch up with friends and joke around. Some get a prematch back massage to work out the kinks. One of the top heels, Kahagas, concentrates on getting his face paint just right in front of a mirror. The vibe is more like a night out with the guys than a night at work, with plenty of laughing and giving each other tips on how to wear their costumes (is it a cape, or would it make a better turban?).

Kahagas applying paint before his match. (Photo/Denny Burkholder)

There are no huge mega-stars in CCW's backstage area. There is no sign of Stone Cold Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan. Fans will have to settle for Richard Hogan, a disturbingly spot-on Hulkster impersonator, making a special appearance at the show to pose for photos and sign autographs. Richard Hogan is such a remarkable likeness of his namesake that even the CCW wrestlers and referees were lining up to have photos taken with him.

There are some great wrestlers on the CCW roster. Some might be good enough to grace the grand stage of WWE someday, although most of them understand WWE is a distant -- perhaps even unrealistic -- goal.

Where does one even go to learn this bizarre craft? That's part of the natural progression from active wrestler to retiree. As the old saying goes, those who cannot play, coach. Across the nation, current and former pro wrestlers run small schools, where for a fee, they will show you the ropes in the most literal sense.

Richard Hogan or Hulk Hogan? You decide. (Photo/Denny Burkholder)

Bodyslam University in Fort Lauderdale is where Sassi and company show wrestling rookies how to fall, how to take (and deliver) a believable beating without actually killing your opponent, and -- most important -- how to perform for an audience. Sassi makes sure nobody gets any grand ideas when they begin training.

"When they join the school, I tell them you have a better chance of winning the lottery than making it to the top in this industry," Sassi said.

The payoffs are small, and WWE far off. Yet they continue to work shows.

"It's just a passion," CCW wrestler Joe Cabibbo ("Joey Machete") said. "I grew up watching wrestling as a kid, and I've always been into it."

To a young sports fan, there is little difference between Superman, Batman, Michael Jordan or Mickey Mantle. All seem to be superhuman, and they each leave you in awe. For Cabibbo, wrestling allows him to not only play the superhero himself as one of CCW's top good guys, but it lets him mingle with many of the heroes of his own youth. That, more than the hope of getting to WWE, is what drives Cabibbo to lace up his boots every weekend.

Getting the kinks massaged out. (Photo/Denny Burkholder)

"Every once in a while I'll get to be in a locker room with Dusty (Rhodes) or Jake "The Snake" (Roberts), and I'll be sitting next to a guy who was an idol of mine, like Mickey Mantle to a kid who likes baseball," Cabibbo said. "And he's one of my peers. It's pretty cool."

Being an independent wrestler does not pay well, which is all the more reason these guys have to love pro wrestling in order to keep performing. Most indy wrestlers need a day job to make ends meet. Cabibbo owns a construction business.

"Construction is my bread and butter," Cabibbo said. "Professional wrestling, there was only ... when I worked in Puerto Rico, I can do it as a living. This (CCW), I can't do it as a living."

If an indy wrestler is popular enough, he or she can make money by selling merchandise. Cabibbo has been wrestling in Florida for eight years in a tag team with Shawn Murphy, playing a pair of necktie-wearing, Wall Street ruffians called the Market Crashers (NASDAQ and Dow Jones). Over time, their team gimmick has evolved into the more menacing "Black Market." As two of Florida's most talented regulars, Murphy and Cabibbo, as Joey Machete, do pretty well selling T-shirts.

"Over in Crystal River and Inverness, my merchandise sales are ridiculous," Cabibbo said. "I go to these shows, and I'm coming home with like triple the money that I was normally going (home) with. I sold like 25 shirts one night. The next night I sold like 10 shirts in Crystal River. (At) $20 a pop, I'm making a good amount of money doing that."

As part owner of CCW, Sassi devotes more of his professional attention to wrestling than the majority of indy wrestlers. But even Sassi has a side job, working part-time as a process server for Broward County.

Relax, everyone. It's just the American Taliban. (Photo/Denny Burkholder)

Another one of Florida's indy regulars, Sassi -- an 18-year veteran -- was respected enough that his fellow wrestlers talked him and his partners into opening a school and running indy shows themselves. From the looks of the backstage area at the Coral Springs show, CCW is keeping its performers very happy.

"All the guys are just tremendous," Sassi said. "We treat everybody fairly. We're very open with the guys, especially on pay. That's why as you come back or you see some of the DVDs, you'll see some of the same guys."

Sassi explained that they all seem friendly in CCW because, for the most part, they are.

"We try to get guys that are quality people, inside of the ring and outside of the ring, to be a part of the shows," Sassi said. "You're never going to hear an argument back here. You're never going to see a fight back here. Everyone's going to get along."

Of course, when the bell rings, they will do their professional best to play their roles. Some will step through the curtain as villains, some as heroes, all of them playing a character. Think of it as live theater for people who enjoy contact sports.

The crowd in Coral Springs was impressive for a show light on star power. The audience looked to top off at between 200-250 spectators, for a main event of Joey Machete defending the SEC Title against the sinister Kahagas.

Dantastic. (Photo/Denny Burkholder)

Kahagas won the belt from Machete with help from fellow heels "American Taliban" Sean Allen, the Syrian Slasher and Abudadein. The show ended with Machete being attacked by the foreign fanatics until the rest of the babyfaces on the card -- Wade Koverly, Chasyn Rance, and even Richard Hogan -- helped him clear the ring of the bad guys. Machete ended the festivities by throwing down the gauntlet for the next Coral Springs show, challenging American Taliban and the Syrian Slasher (CCW tag team champions) to defend their belts against Black Market.

Leading up to the show's locker room-clearing finish, fans cheered and jeered through most of the undercard, including Bruno Sassi in a three-way match against Scott Commodity and a masked dude calling himself "Dantastic," who immediately heard a loud "Nacho Libre!" chant from the audience.

The venue was small and the paychecks probably were as well, but there were still some big performances. To CCW's wrestlers, an excellent wrestling match is an artistic achievement.

It's all about suspension of disbelief. As Sassi explained, a truly great wrestler makes it easy for fans to believe their matches, while still protecting their opponent from serious harm.

"I want to look at it and say, 'Oh my God, he hit him!'" Sassi said. "But I want to see the art of it. I don't see any art in hitting somebody with a brick as hard as you can. Anyone can do that."

Phi Delta Slam's Bruno Sassi with manager Seth Gregg. (Photo/Denny Burkholder)

Wrestling has always endured its share of ridicule, some deserved. While it isn't intended to be for everyone, very few things are. All Sassi and his peers ask for is people to respect their talents and work ethic.

"I just don't look down on any profession, because I know that in any profession, you're going to have to work hard, you're going to have to train, you're going to have to go to school," Sassi said.

"These guys train, and they train hard. I mean, we take them into school and we rough them up. It's amazing what they go through for the smaller payoffs of the local shows like this."

Joe Cabibbo thinks wrestling gets a bad reputation from those people who simply don't realize how difficult it is to be a pro wrestler.

"The thing about professional wrestling that a lot of people don't understand is you're trying to tell a story," Cabibbo said. "So as you're getting bumped and thrown and everything, you're trying to remember, and make it all make sense, and keep the audience involved. Sure it's entertainment, but it's very, very physical."

To be fair, though: Aren't all the legit sports about entertainment, too? Can a fan of the NFL or the NBA really look down on pro wrestling because it is "sports entertainment," with all of the flashy players and obnoxious pregame shows other sports have? Who's fooling who with the entertainment argument?

"Every sport today, dealing with television and radio, everything's entertainment," Sassi said. "If it's not entertaining, it's not going to make the air. That's why Terrell Owens is all over television."

Abudadein's girl. (Photo/Denny Burkholder)

But pro wrestling is still known as "sports entertainment." And even at the smallest shows with the smallest paychecks and the most obscure rosters, wrestling fans still dig the spectacle.

"If we could take two hours on a show and make people forget about their problems, then you know what? We did our job," Sassi said.

What the people in the crowd don't get to see is how enthusiastic the wrestlers are about their craft. If they weren't in the ring, they'd be sitting in the audience cheering. They'd be working at the souvenir stands and the ticket table. They'd be ringing the bell, or cueing up the theme music.

Anything to be around wrestling. The privilege of being wrestlers themselves is just the icing on the cake. It's no wonder they often perform well into their 50s and 60s, only leaving it behind when their bodies will no longer permit them to get thrown to the ground for a living.

It would take a serious set of circumstances to drag the boys in CCW away from the ring. They simply enjoy it too much to walk away.

"When I stop having fun, I'll stop doing it," Cabibbo said. "When I can't do it -- when I cheat the fans -- then I'll get out of it."

Bruno Sassi offered a different perspective on why wrestlers eventually must leave the business they love.

"You know what?" Sassi said. "In wrestling, guys don't retire. Just the phone stops ringing."