Source: South Bend Tribune
Wrestling hopefuls learn the ropes
Veterans, newbies keep pro dream alive.
By: JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO
Tribune Staff Writer
ELKHART — Jay Peterson stood inside the ring in a back corner of Steve’s Gym as about a dozen perspiring men watched his every move.
As he bounced his stout, muscular physique into the steel cable, the others gawked like toddlers waiting to play with their favorite toy.
“If you’ve never done this, don’t go too fast,” Peterson said. “That’s how guys fall through the ropes.”
It was the first night of instruction at the MidWest Wrestling Academy, and Peterson — better known by his ring persona Sgt. Jay Peterson — was, quite literally, showing them the ropes.
“You want to kind of lean in with your back,” he said. “If you land on your side you’ll be black and blue.”
For the next 40 minutes, with varying success, the men, mostly in their 20s, tried to emulate Peterson’s approach.
It’s a first step to becoming a professional wrestler. For most, this is as far as they’ll get. Some will toil in the independent leagues before calling it quits. Few, if any, will make it as far as Peterson, who, after six years, is still waiting to be noticed by the big boys.
“No one here is going to be a superstar in two or three months,” Peterson told them. “It takes a lot of work and there are no guarantees.”
Journey began with a class
This weekend, Peterson, an Elkhart police officer, has back-to-back professional wrestling events. Tonight, he faces Meliki in a MidWest Wrestling Connection match in Elkhart. Saturday, he and partner Justin Dean will face Damage Inc. as part of the undercard for the International Association of Wrestling’s Clash at the Cove VIII, an event headlined by notable veterans Tito Santana and Paul Roma.
Like the students he’s now teaching, Peterson’s journey began with a flier for a professional wrestling class. Since grasping the basics in 2000, he’s been able to wrestle about 70 to 75 matches a year, honing his skills in the many upstart independent leagues throughout Indiana and Michigan.
“There is just something about the whole atmosphere of professional wrestling,” Peterson said. “I love the energy of a pumped-up crowd. There is truly nothing like it.”
Success hard to reach
Today’s professional wrestling is far from the phenomenon of the 1980s. Promoter Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment), aided by Hulk Hogan, brought the antics to the masses like never before.
“I happened to be at the right place at the right time when it just took off,” the 53-year-old Santana said by telephone from his home near Roxbury, N.J. “We went from wrestling in front of 1,500 people to 20,000 with another 20,000 outside. It was amazing to be part of that.”
Aside from Hogan, few wrestlers had the success and longevity of Santana, who has spent the past 10 years of his retirement teaching Spanish to middle schoolers.
From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, he was one of the most popular Intercontinental and tag team champions in WWF history. Santana and Hogan are the only wrestlers to take part in the first nine WrestleManias, and in 2004, Santana was inducted into WWE’s Hall of Fame.
Although he retired in 1993, Santana still wrestles three or four times a month on the independent circuits. For him, it’s a chance to give something back to fans and meet the young wrestlers trying to duplicate his success.
“The chances of anybody making it in wrestling today is very, very small,” Santana said. “You really have to sacrifice.”
Part of the difficulty, veterans say, is the absence of quality regional outfits, companies swallowed up or put out of business by McMahon.
“They used to make us wrestle in smaller circuits until we were polished,” Santana said. “Now, the younger guys are thrown into the mix and they’re not able to learn. It works for Vince. He’s still making money.”
South Bend native Brian Costello, the promotions manager for the South Bend Silver Hawks and a WWF alum, said it was much easier to get into wrestling in the ’80s and ’90s.
“There were opportunities to get good enough to work your way up,” Costello said.
More story, less wrestling
Peterson showed the latest batch of hopefuls how to do a basic headlock.
“Don’t pull on his neck,” he said. “Talk to him. Let him know what you’re doing. It will look like you’re talking trash but you’re actually telling the guy what you want to do. This is just like dancing.”
Such choreography is an essential part of professional wrestling. For those who don’t know by now, it is, in fact, staged. Like a fight sequence in film, each blow is predetermined. Some wrestlers map out movements before they step into the ring. Others work it out during the show, like an improvisation group.
“There was a question about whether wrestling was a sport back then,” Santana said. “Now, there’s no doubt that it’s completely entertainment.”
Veterans such as Santana, Costello and Roma say that has less to do with the documentaries that revealed this once-guarded secret than it does with the current product.
“In my heyday, there was more wrestling,” Paul Roma said by telephone from his home near New Haven, Conn. “Today, there’s less wrestling and more story lines. You couldn’t get by with just your character. You had to be able to wrestle.”
‘Work as hard as you can’
Roma has one of the few professional wrestling schools left in the country. His is in Connecticut. The closest school is in Louisville.
“What I teach is old school,” he said. “I have to express to the guys that gesturing to the crowd and tearing up signs doesn’t make you a better wrestler. You don’t get out that way.”
But Peterson has bigger plans. In the next year, he hopes to be strong enough to be picked up by the National Wrestling Alliance based out of Florida, a step up from where he is now. In the meantime, he’s passing on what he knows, making highlight tapes and booking shows.