Invasion of the Body Slammers

How South Philadelphia became the center of the alt-wrestling universe.

by Shaun Brady

Neal Santos

For most viewers, the WWE is the pinnacle of American professional wrestling. An arena full of fans will feel chills when the lights go down, a single gong sounds, and The Undertaker emerges to funereal music under an eerie blue light. The crowd will gasp when Batista's pyro ignites and he poses like a machine gunner as sparks explode behind him. And a good percentage of them will stream outside for beer and soft pretzels when a pair of wrestlers settle down onto the mat for a long, dull chinlock.

A small portion of that crowd, and a great many more sitting at home who have forsaken mainstream pro wrestling, actually enjoy in-ring action. They appreciate two conditioned athletes putting on a competitive-seeming, acrobatic spectacle that also communicates a dramatic story. The WWE has become an entertainment conglomerate, almost embarrassed that at its center dwells men in tights. And the only real national competition at the moment, TNA (Total Nonstop Action), has seen its roster clogged by aging WWE cast-offs — the latest being yet another resurgence by Hulk Hogan.

"Most guys who get big in this business are shitty wrestlers," concedes Maven Bentley, a wrestler and vice president of Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW), one of four South Philly-based indie promotions. "But they know how to sell to an audience. Hulk Hogan knows four moves and does three of them poorly. The only move he does well is ripping his shirt off. And Hulk Hogan will make more money in his sleep tonight than I'll make all year."

There is no shortage of talent on the big guys' rosters — but smaller, more agile wrestlers are constantly eclipsed by lumbering behemoths with impressive physiques. "There's a huge number of disenfranchised fans, people who used to be fans," says Cary Silkin, owner of Ring of Honor (ROH), another South Philly indie league. "They can see some very good wrestling from the other companies, but what you have to watch to get to that is sometimes very difficult to sit through. So we try to be the opposite, a pro wrestling company focusing on the action in the ring."

Or, as Jay Briscoe, one-half of the heavily tattooed five-time ROH tag team champion Briscoe Brothers, says, "If you want to watch a soap opera, you can watch Guiding Light. But if you want to watch real pro wrestling, watch Ring of Honor."

At first glance, Ring of Honor, which began airing weekly TV episodes on HDNet in April, resembles the major promotions. It has at times featured names from the past — Mick Foley (aka Mankind and Cactus Jack), Ric Flair and Terry Funk, among others, have appeared, and at last month's television tapings at The Arena in South Philly, legendary tennis racket-wielding manager Jim Cornette appeared under the guise of ROH's new "executive producer." It features a similar mix of heroes and villains playing out dramatic narratives via pinfalls and submissions.

ROH and other independent promotions aren't trying to reinvent the wheel — they're simply striving to pare down all the spinning rims and flashing lights that have gotten in the way of its rolling along. These companies flip the focus back from operatics to athleticism, catering to those for whom the Monday Night Raws and SmackDowns and even the TNAs of the world have gotten too far removed from what they love about the sport, or the art, or however you care to refer to it. (Just don't call it "sports entertainment.") And the epicenter of this alt-wrestling scene is South Philadelphia.

On a sweltering late-July Saturday night, a congregation of wrestling fans gathers at Swanson and Ritner streets to enter The Arena — formerly known as the New Alhambra Arena, formerly known as the XPW Arena, formerly known as Viking Hall and pretty much called by everyone the ECW Arena in honor of the late, lamented promotion that put the venue on the map. (And don't point to that show that runs Tuesday nights on Syfy as proof that ECW is still around. Especially not in this crowd.)

More than 800 of the faithful have swarmed the building to witness the debut of Dragon Gate USA, which takes its place as the fourth wrestling promotion regularly running shows in The Arena. While there are overlaps in both approaches and talent rosters, each occupies a unique stylistic niche. ROH would perhaps be the most recognizable to casual wrestling fans, but with more athleticism than storytelling. CZW made its name on weapons-heavy, "ultraviolent" matches. And Chikara offers a more family-friendly take on the Mexican lucha libre style.

Neal Santos LITTLE WHITE BAG: Joey Ryan (behind cloud) hits Necro Butcher in the face with a bag of "cocaine" in a November Ring of Honor bout.

DGUSA, which will crown its first champion during its second Philly show next weekend, is the new American offshoot of the Japanese promotion Dragon Gate. Gabe Sapolsky, vice president and main creative force behind DGUSA, was approached after being fired from ROH in October 2008. The Japanese company was originally interested in a single event, but the idea soon expanded into a full-fledged U.S. branch. Sapolsky plans on six shows a year, to be aired on pay-per-view and sold on DVD, split between Philly, Chicago and an occasional third city (they'll follow the WWE to Phoenix on WrestleMania weekend next March, as will ROH).

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The crowd for its debut would represent only a small percentage of those who will be at this week's SmackDown tapings, but they are an elite group who pride themselves on their rarefied tastes. The audience is, naturally, mostly white, young and male, a blend of tape-trading fanatics and hipsters on the scent of another underground scene. There are a few WWE T-shirts in the crowd, especially among the younger set, who can be forgiven for not yet graduating from The Undertaker and Triple H to CIMA and Naruki Doi.

The entire card is meant to showcase the jaw-dropping athleticism and gravity-defying aerials of these Japanese wrestlers and their up-and-coming American counterparts. The matches run at a breakneck pace, not the lumbering "kick-punch-bodyslam-pose" of American wrestling. And the wrestlers fly from the top rope with corkscrew maneuvers that would give Olympic divers the bends, landing not in 20 feet of water but atop another human being on a canvas mat or a concrete floor.

We know we're in Philly when a technical glitch — the video screen over the entranceway reverts to a DVD player home screen just as the lights dim — is instantly met with a wise-ass chant of "Polaroid! Polaroid!" The audience takes advantage of every opportunity to flex their "inside" knowledge — the appearance of Ken Doane, a 23-year-old American wrestler formerly known as Kenny Dykstra in the WWE, is met with a flood of chants mocking him for his time on the big stage as part of a group of wrestling cheerleaders known as the Spirit Squad ("Where's your pom-poms?").

But once the action gets under way, most of the exultations revert to "Dragon Gate" or simply "Holy shit!" based on the in-ring gymnastics. The spike-haired, dancing BxB Hulk literally runs up the front of his opponent, the wild-eyed and -haired Yamato, into a back flip. Masato Yoshino and Dragon Kid move at a pace that makes your brain feel stuck on fast-forward, ending when the Kid hits a huracanrana — a backward roll while perched on an opponent's shoulders — on Yoshino from a standing position atop the ropes. And American up-and-comers the Young Bucks make a strong showing with a win over Japanese legends CIMA and Susumu Yokosuka, ending with a 450-degree splash from the top rope.

"These Dragon Gate guys have unbelievable athleticism and will do moves that you've never seen before," says Sapolsky. "They'll make you believe again. This is the X Games of wrestling."

"Alternative" is a word that comes up so frequently in the scene that at times The Arena feels like a late-'80s campus radio station. The analogy is apt, however, and helps to overcome the impression that the show at the former bingo hall around the corner is the minor leagues compared to the Hollywood-style production values of the WWE.

"There's a difference between minor league and alternative," says Bentley. "If I was Kurt Cobain in the '90s and somebody told me I was minor league I'd say, 'No, I'm not. I'm an alternative to hair bands.' That's how we define ourselves. We're a smaller promotion — by choice."

"Most people's perception of wrestling is Hulk Hogan dropping the leg," offers Sapolsky. "It's like a music fan saying that Britney Spears is all there is. The WWE is Britney Spears and we're The Melvins. What does one have to do with the other?"

James Saul SUSPENDED ANIMATION: Chikara wrestlers Brodie "Big Rig" Lee (left) and Amasis "The Funky Pharaoh" get vertical during the Roughnecks vs. The Osirian Portal tag-team match on Oct. 18, 2009. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Most casual fans have a low opinion of independent wrestling with, for the most part, good reason. Many local indies across the country have more in common with backyard wrestling than with a professional product. And then there's the impression given by Darren Aronofsky's 2008 film The Wrestler.

The last shot of The Wrestler leaves ambiguous the fate of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, but when he leaps from the top turnbuckle, he's almost certainly leaping to his death. Given the film's previous hundred minutes, it's hard to blame him — here's a washed-up 1980s superstar reduced to selling Polaroids in American Legion Halls, working a supermarket deli counter during the week to support his low-paying weekend activities in the ring.

So yeah, killing yourself for your fans does seem like a viable option.

"We were very excited when we were approached by the production, because we thought it could be huge publicity for us," says Sapolsky, who at the time was head booker for ROH, whose ring was used in the film. "The movie became a bigger hit than we even imagined, but there was really no impact. When I actually saw the movie, it explained why. ... Here's the old dude who's a complete scumbag and is about to die wrestling another old-timer who's a used-car salesman now. It really put out there what the really low-level indie stuff is."

There are undoubtedly countless career-suicide stories along the lines of The Ram's in the world of professional wrestling (does anyone know where Jake "The Snake" Roberts is sleeping tonight?). But alongside the poorly attended county fair showcases where forgotten has-beens headlock tights-wearing never-weres-nor-will-bes in front of apathetic corn dog-munching crowds, there are innumerable young, hungry athletes possessed of a love of the game.

"Ring of Honor is what wrestling should be," says owner Cary Silkin. "Of course, that's an opinion, but it's what many wrestling fans long for."

ROH was born from the ashes of the original ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling), which, between 1993 and its bankruptcy in 2001, offered an alternative to the increasingly cartoonish antics of the WWF and WCW at the time, the Bastion Boogers and Mantaurs, with more intense action and a hardcore bent. Its influence was immediately felt in the big two, which lifted ECW's attitude and many of its wrestlers in their bid to win the ongoing Monday night wars.

ROH is now in much the same position. While it mostly eschews the hardcore style for a Mixed Martial Arts-influenced athleticism, the buzz around the company has caught the attention not only of diehard wrestling fans but of the WWE and TNA, which have taken to cherry-picking ROH's roster. WWE's CM Punk and TNA's Samoa Joe are both ROH alumni who have won world titles in their respective companies. More recently, Ring of Honor's top two stars were poached, Nigel McGuinness to be reborn as Desmond Wolfe in TNA, and "American Dragon" Bryan Danielson, soon expected to make his WWE debut.

Colt Cabana made a round-trip journey to Vince's world. Cabana was with ROH during its infancy at South Philly's Murphy Rec Center, and made the trip from Chicago with CM Punk. He then spent about a year, from 2008 to early 2009, in WWE under the name Scotty Goldman before returning to ROH.

"What I love about [ROH] is that it's a mom-and-pop organization," Cabana says. "WWE is a machine — an unbelievable corporate machine. When I was in the WWE, I'd go out to the ring in these giant arenas and couldn't personally connect with anybody but the camera. In ROH I feel like everybody in the crowd can go home knowing that they were a part of my match."

James Saul CATCHING AN EARFUL: Spectators Kaleem Jordan and Sharif Stephens taunt Chikara's Chuck Taylor on Oct. 18.

ROH may be the most high-profile of the four promotions, but CZW has seniority. It was founded in 1999 by wrestler John Zandig, usually pictured covered head to toe in blood (his own or his opponent's; often both). Furthering the hardcore style made famous by ECW, Combat Zone Wrestling incorporated the now-standard tables, ladders and chairs, but supplemented that arsenal with broken glass, barbed wire, fluorescent light tubes and even Weedwhackers. It's a CZW ring where Mickey Rourke gets into a staple-gun fight with Necro Butcher in The Wrestler. Zandig is notorious for once being hung on meat hooks suspended from the roof of the arena — and that was just the lead-in to the company's major annual show, Cage of Death, the 11th installment of which takes place in December.

Zandig reluctantly sold CZW to fellow wrestler DJ Hyde in August, citing economic troubles. According to VP Bentley, CZW is looking beyond its violent roots. "Yeah, you're going to see ultraviolence when you come," he says, "but that's usually one match. You can see a good comedy match, a good high-flying match, a good technical match, some lucha libre and hardcore all in one night. We're the Old Country Buffet of wrestling."

On a recent Monday night, Bentley was training a handful of students in a ring shared by CZW and Chikara in The Arena's backstage area. Some of them may be destined for barbed wire-wrapped baseball bats to the head, but on this night they were busily doing squats and push-ups. Bentley ordered them into an ab circuit, a chain of abdominal exercises, explaining, "You're not allowed to be fat." He then turned to one of the greener students, a rotund young man named A.J. with two lip piercings and a "CZW Academy" T-shirt. "Well, you're allowed to be fat. You either have to be real fat or not fat."

The most important thing the school teaches, Bentley says, is respect. "Respect for the business, respect for your opponent. You'll notice, hopefully, when most of them get into the ring in street shoes, they wipe their feet on the outside. If I have to have my face pushed in there for a match, I don't want the dog crap you stepped in on my mat. I really have to trust these guys. If I don't think they respect me or this business, I'm not going to let them pick me up and drop me on my head."

Wrestler Mike Quackenbush learned about respect the hard way, entering the business at age 15 in, he says, "the worst way possible.

"I snuck in. I was the annoying kid who would always show up and help put the ring up, just hoping that would serve as my internship. Of course, eventually one day somebody didn't show up, and I had my ready-made costume and was absolutely thrilled, but I had no real training and it was a disaster. I only came to appreciate the value of good training after floundering for years, going nowhere, getting hurt and hurting other people."

After several years with a variety of independent promotions, Quackenbush became bored with the routine and created Chikara with a fellow wrestler known as "Reckless Youth" Tom Carter, who later left the company. "We wanted to create something that was more akin to our sensibilities," Quackenbush says. "We grew up as comic book fans. We wanted something that had a more obvious superhero feel to it, so it was natural to borrow from the Mexican style. There, you have a real classic hero-and-villain dynamic, which in current American pro wrestling is not as evident as it once was."

Neal Santos BARBER CHOP: Grizzly Redwood (with scissors), Necro Butcher and Ernie Osiris (on the mat) in a September Ring of Honor showdown. Redwood is tossing a handful of Osiris' hair.

Chikara is full of black-and-white dynamics, though its roster couldn't be more colorful. It includes an antennaed team called The Colony, made up of Fire Ant, Soldier Ant, Green Ant and Carpenter Ant (who enter, naturally, to Dave Matthews' "Ants Marching"); the Jack-o-Lantern-ish Hallowicked; and a pair of wrestling ice cream cones. Even Quakenbush's teaching reflects his pop culture childhood. He instructs one student to "swivel like an '80s Masters of the Universe figure," although almost no one in the class looks old enough to understand the reference.

In line with its inspirations, Chikara is very much meant to be kid-friendly, and at a recent show youngsters were thrilled to be greeted by a saluting Soldier Ant during intermission. And while its athleticism is comparable to the other companies', it's paired with a Saturday-morning zaniness. Dasher Hatfield, trussed up like an old-time baseball player, gets into an argument with the ref, kicking imaginary dirt at his feet. A match with three teams of three men apiece included convoluted spots like a chorus-line suplex involving all nine men. One after another each hurls himself over the top rope onto a growing group resembling a masked car wreck on the concrete outside.

"Wrestling was something I was introduced to as a kid," Quackenbush says. "If my parents had felt that it was inappropriate for me to watch, then maybe I wouldn't be as passionate about this particular art form as I am."

The attitude has side benefits, according to Sapolsky, whose DGUSA has partnered with Chikara and features some of its wrestlers on their cards. "Chikara is doing a very valuable thing right now. ... They're actually cultivating the next generation of fans."

In a truck parked behind The Arena, an HDNet director, eyes darting between 30 or so different screens, barks out: "It's almost over," running down the series of moves that will end the current match. "Powerbomb, pin, reversal, armbar." 

"How do you know?" asks one of the technicians, feigning shock.

The director turns, using a tone of voice used to break the truth about Santa to younger brothers. "It's not real," he says.

A tongue-in-cheek exchange, of course, but one that a couple of decades ago would never have been allowed to take place, especially in front of a journalist. 20/20 reporter John Stossel was mauled by wrestler David Schultz in 1984 after suggesting that wrestling was fake. Granted, "fake" is entirely the wrong word — predetermined, yes, scripted, sorta, but "fake" misses the point.

"Wrestling provides sport and drama at the same time," explains Maven Bentley, on the night of game five. "Where the Phillies are playing tonight for the World Series and may or may not win, you can root for a team but you can only become so emotionally invested. What do you really know about Chase Utley? Our guys have stories."

The Internet, and the more savvy fans it brings with it, has gone a long way toward drawing back the curtain on pro wrestling. "You're not going to go out there and tell the fans that what they're watching is a legitimate sporting contest," Sapolsky says. "You're not going to convince people that what they're watching is a real fight between two combatants. You have to treat your fans with a lot of intelligence and respect."

"There was a generation of professional wrestlers who felt that the fans were your enemy," Quackenbush says. "They were out to find out your secrets, and you had to protect them at all costs or you were ruined. That just isn't relevant today. ... People who enjoy a fantastic magic show can also tune in and watch Magic's Greatest Secrets Revealed. But there will always be that segment of the audience that prefers to be mystified. And even if in the back of your mind there's that nagging curiosity about how it's done, ultimately it's more satisfying to be fooled. Once the cat's out of the bag, there's no recapturing the magic of Santa Claus. And I very much want to protect that for our audience."

(shaun.brady@citypaper.net)