• Look Back In History
• Pmessages
• Quiz
• Stump The Staff
• Top Fifty
• Close

Now Older, Less Athletic, Wrestlers Are Still Legends

Posted: Aug 9th 2010 By: CMBurnham

Adrian Rohr was 11 years old in 1986. He was in an aisle seat at Memorial Stadium for the Great American Bash. The wrestling card was so big Ric Flair arrived by helicopter. Jimmy "the Boogie-Woogie Man" Valiant, however, always was old school, and he walked to the ring.

Please walk up my aisle, Rohr implored. Sadly, the Boogie-Woogie Man did not. Rohr was close to the wrestling star. But not close enough.

As Rohr and I talk Saturday at the NWA Wrestling Legends Fanfest, the Boogie-Woogie Man enters the ballroom.

"That's why fans come to these reunions," says Rohr, 35, a district manager for Mutual Distributing Company. "We grew up watching the wrestlers and here they are. We can meet them."

The Hilton Charlotte University Place Hotel escalator is a way-back machine. Go down one floor from the lobby and step into a land of ponytails and peroxide. I'm talking about the former wrestlers. Hair is long, skin is tan and championship belts are shiny.

The National Wrestling Alliance once operated from a studio off South Boulevard. Before the NBA and NFL came to town, the sleeper hold, figure-four leglock and flying dropkick were entrenched. Wrestlers roamed the Carolinas, regularly fighting in Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Spartanburg and Columbia.

Former wrestlers and personalities such as Harley Race, Tully Blanchard, Jimmy Snuka, Jake "the Snake" Roberts, Fifi the Maid and Ivan and Nikita Koloff roam the Hilton this weekend.

There's Ivan, 68. You knew he and Nikita were Russians because they shaved their heads and said, "Comrade."

It was a simpler time.

There's Mr. Wrestling II, talking on a cell phone through his mask. He never removes his mask. A photographer went to Mr. Wrestling II's house for a publicity shot and even Mr. Wrestling II's dog wore a mask.

"He would shower in his mask," says George South. "He must be in his 80s now."

South is 47, and about to celebrate his 30th year in the business. He's lived in or near Charlotte for each of them. Fans stop him Saturday to talk or ask for an autograph or picture.

"Just to be remembered is pretty special," South says. "Remember when Charlotte was the wrestling capital of the world? You could tell the good guys from the bad guys then. Now it's tougher."

I like the three-word sentence so much I don't ask if he's talking about wrestling.

"This is our little Super Bowl," says South, who wears an Evil, Mean and Nasty T-shirt and a JESUS wristband. "For three or four days, we get to be kids again."

Fans can buy championship belts, tapes, pictures, magazines, masks and shiny robes. Two robe-clad mannequins face a wall as if they have been arrested and are about to be frisked.

Down the hall walks Ted DiBiase, the Million Dollar Man. As rich as he purportedly was, DiBiase rarely parted with his cash. He would offer money for a feat and find a way not to pay.

Fans tell him Saturday they remember when he offered a little kid $500 to bounce a basketball 15 times. This was on TV. As he began No.15, DiBiase stuck out his foot. The ball bounced away, and the kid ran off crying. The Million Dollar Man saved $500.

"I told him I taught him a valuable lesson," says DiBiase, who now is an evangelist. "Of course it was pre-rehearsed. But that's the one people remember most. They tell me I'm the one they loved to hate."

Remember Baby Doll, blonde and strong and almost 6 feet tall? She's 48, wears a leopard skin dress and lives in Fayetteville. She's here with her 17-year-old daughter.

Still blonde and still almost 6 feet, Baby Doll regularly appears at wrestling reunions. But the Charlotte show is her favorite. At one out-of-state show she was advertised as Babby Doll. In Charlotte, everybody knows her name.

The Boogie-Woogie Man was known by many names, among them Handsome Jimmy and King James. He wrestled dirty. Then he turned good. He still wrestled dirty. But fans loved him.

"How can anybody not like the Boogie-Woogie Man?" asks Baby Doll.

Boogie-Woogie, who runs a wrestling school in Shawsville, Va., is one of my favorites. I wrote about him more than 20 years ago and, at the end of the interview, I asked how old he was. Thirty-three, he said.

I was older than 33 and he was older than me. So I told him he couldn't be.

Boogie-Woogie was perplexed. He pondered his age for 10 seconds, for 30, for a minute. Finally he answered.

"I'm 34," he said.

I ask Saturday how old he is.

"I turned 68" Friday, Boogie-Woogie says. "You remember when you asked before?"

Of course. We laugh and hug. Saturday is like that.

I ask if he talked to Rohr, the beer and wine distributer. He did. He talked to everybody else, too.

"I love the fans," Boogie-Woogie says. "They're old and gray and broken down just like we are. And that's really neat."

Tags: Ric Flair, Jimmy Valiant, NWA, Harley Race, Jake Roberts, Nikita Koloff, Mr. Wrestling II, Ted DiBiase, Baby Doll