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Ten Years Later: Ninjas, Gary Busey And Rocco's Retirement

Posted: Jan 26th 2012 By: CMBurnham

In 2003, the indy wrestling company I worked for (called Tornado Lucha Libre) was going through some tumultuous times. Our booker/promoter, Rocco Valentino, was a veteran who knew how to promote. The problem was that his idea for a Latino themed promotion at the East Tulsa Mall (known as Plaza de Santa Celia) was just not drawing Latino crowds. So we took the show back in a more American direction. The last show we ran as ?Tornado Lucha Libre? was at the Cindo De Mayo festival held at the mall every year. To this day, I am pretty sure that was the largest crowd I ever entertained. There was a sea of rowdy Mexicans as far as the eye can see during this 2 day event and they loved every second of it.

At the time we had a real luchador named Victor working for the company under the mask of ?El Sufamilico.? While Victor was talented, he had an even more talented 16 year old son. In the state of Oklahoma, you have to be 18 to get a license to wrestle and back then all paid shows had to be sanctioned. But, there was a loophole that if you did not charge admission, you didn?t have to be sanctioned. Therefore you didn?t have to be licensed. Since the festival was free, Victor Jr finally got to wrestle under his father?s mask as El Sufamilico Jr. Also at that time Rocco was pulling double duty as his Rocco personality and as a masked ninja called Ichiban 1st. Ichiban had been around since the OPW days and had been portrayed by several people. Ichiban lost to El Sufamilico on the first night of the Cinco De Mayo show and in the process El Sufamilico became ?TPW/TLL Champion? to send the Mexican crowd home happy. On the last night of the festival El Sufamilico dropped the title back to Ichiban in front of a huge crowd. Despite the rough time we had been having as a promotion, Rocco pulled off an amazing event that easily put the company back in the green.

The next show back Ichiban unmasked to reveal himself as the Legend, Rocco Valentino. Shortly thereafter he made a shocking statement. He told the crowd he was going to retire. This was unthinkable for me. I was a little bit angry. In the 2 years I had known Rocco we had gotten very close as friends. Rocco is one of those people I wanted to associate myself with because success followed him everywhere he went. He had been a successful amateur wrestler, pilot, body builder, DJ, wrestler, and now wrestling promoter. He was always being featured on the local news for some reason or another. More recently he had some connections that got him to star as a bad guy in a boxing movie being filmed locally called ?The Prizefighter.? The movie featured Gary Busey, Leon Spinx, and Tonya Harding. It was directed by a local business man named Mark Mason. Mason had been a toughman boxing promoter and occasionally promoted WWF events back in the day. He was married briefly to former WWF ring announcer Mike McGuirk, and is the biological father of Max McGuirk (who many years later would become my Bad Bromance partner). Rocco managed to get me into his movie as an extra boxer. Somehow I turned that into a speaking line in the movie as well. I punched the lead character during a bar fight and tell him he doesn?t look like the champ to me. That was just the kind of perks that came with being Rocco?s friend. He always took me, Russ, and Sonny along with him when he got VIP tickets given to him for local fights and events.

Plus, he kept my wallet full by working for him every non-wrestling weekend as a DJ. Sometimes if he didn?t have a show to send me on, he would pay me $50 just go along and roadie for his show. We would stand behind the DJ booth and he would drop knowledge on me all night long. When Rocco taught me how to DJ, he taught me to do it just like putting a wrestling match together. You got to open solid, but don?t give away your big move (best song). Songs like Y.M.C.A. or Celebration were just like DDT?s. If you put them in the show at the right moment, you would get a bigger pop. It?s okay to have a rest hold (average song) when you are leading up to a big move (song that everyone will want to dance to).

Back in OCW, when I finally got to feud with Rocco, I was sure he was finally going to put me over and pass the torch to me. So when he announced he was retiring, I still hoped I would get to be his last match. Unfortunately (for me) he chose to put over All Action Anthony Jackson on his way out the door. While I still loved Rocco, I wasn?t really happy about him choosing All Action. Those two had wrestled each other a million times over the years. Anthony Jackson was a probably the best heel on our roster and didn?t need any help getting over. I on the other hand, spent most of 2002 chasing Rocco and getting beat up a lot in the process. The closest I came to beating him was the last night of OCW when I won, but the decision got immediately over turned because Rocco has snuck a foreign object into my back pocket. With all the times I had Rocco bust me open with his hidden spike, I had certainly put in my time at making Rocco look like an unstoppable bad ass. I am someone who could have really benefited from getting the rub off Rocco. Nonetheless, I kept those concerns to myself because it wasn?t anything I could control. Rocco had kind of already passed the torch when he lost the Oklahoma title to Sonny C a few months earlier. He wanted to wrestle Anthony Jackson because Jackson was the biggest heel and Rocco wanted to go out as a face. He had certainly earned the right to wrestle whoever he wanted. During Rocco?s last match, we all came out from the dressing room and sat in the crowd. It wasn?t the largest crowd ever, but they all got the vibe they were watching something special. After the match, we all got some beers and stayed out there in the ring drinking and sharing stories about Rocco. I?m not big on people referring to workers as their ?family? but that night it really did feel like these guys were family.