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Ten Years Later: Mom's Pasta Salad, Being Banned From OKC and Wheelchair Indians

Posted: Feb 9th 2012 By: CMBurnham

In 2003, I was two years into my Oklahoma wrestling and life outside of the ring was fine. To make my parents happy I was taking a couple of classes at the community college and was actually getting A?s. I was working 40 hours a week as a quality assurance supervisor at a call center in Tulsa. Plus, Rocco had hooked me up with a weekend wedding DJ gig that was padding my pockets nicely. Myself, Rocco, Sonny, and Russ were the tight group known as ?The Compound.? Rocco was all the time having barbeques and things like that at his house. Our group, along with the likes of Brian Lakewood, Butch Dalton, AWOL, Karl Davis, and Rick Styles would bring our wives or girlfriends over and we would drink and make each other laugh until Rocco was ready to pass out. My mom?s pasta salad became gained legendary status during these events. Anyone who brought a tent could crash in the backyard if they so desired. Other nights we would go to local clubs (usually with Ron Mac or Deuce Rodriguez) to get drunk and hit on women.

Life inside the ring was getting frustrating. In May of 2003, Rocco announced his retirement from wrestling. Backstage, we found out he was also retiring from promoting Tornado Pro Wrestling (the company for which we were working). Everyone looked to Sonny C to take over at least as the promoter of TPW. He was the most financially stable and he already owned the ring and all the title belts.

The TPW promotion itself had struggled. The location of our shows was at a Latino mall in East Tulsa. Some families were a little intimated by that area of town. The Latino crowds weren?t coming either. To make matters worse, SRPW (our local rival fed) had just stolen the Tulsa Indoor Fun Fair shows that Rocco always booked every year. Although SRPW didn?t have a weekly show (yet), it was a huge disappointment to not have that exposure that comes with being in front of that large crowd. I went to the fun fair that year and actually watched their show from a distance. Top to bottom, it was crap. Instead of just focusing on matches with their top talent, they would put crappy matches out there to open the shows. People would walk up, watch about 2 minutes, then leave. The fun fair only gives you a small window to fit in your entire show. The early matches constantly were going too long, forcing their main eventers to cut their matches way short. Although they had Brent Albright, Brandon Groom, Bull Schmitt, and other good workers on their shows, the booking wasn?t very good. Even worse, they brought Rocco?s former business partner Pete Maguire (who was still suing Rocco at this time) to announce the shows. He kept rambling on about OPW and not putting over the fact this was a new company and new talent.

At this point in my life, I had dreams of indy wrestling superstardom but felt stuck in Tulsa. I had wrestled mostly for wrestling cards promoted and booked by Rocco Valentino during those two years. Occasionally I had gotten booked in Texas and Kansas. But my bookings were mostly in or around the Tulsa area. I had been working a little in Oklahoma City thanks to my connection with Michael Faith and Halo. Unfortunately, one night Kenny and I were driving up to OKC for a Friday night show and we got lost (this was before GPS or internet phones). We got so lost that I called Faith and told him there was no way at this point we could even make it their before the end of the show, so we were just going to go home. When we got home Kenny and I were bored so we went to the Tulsa Indoor Fair. While we were there, we watched the late night SRPW show. The SRPW crew saw us and told Faith (who was working off and on for them) that I had skipped out on my OKC booking to go to the fair. Faith and Halo took it personal and refused to get me booked in OKC again.

Rocco?s final show as promoter of TPW was to be the Creek Indian Festival that summer. He promoted a shoot toughman boxing event the first night and a wrestling show the second. X-Cal actually entered the boxing tournament in the light heavyweight category. Although he was skinny, he was one of the most in shape guys in the whole thing. It didn?t hurt his chances that Rocco booked me, Sonny, and Russ as judges. X-Cal won the event by judge?s decision. I was really proud of him. I had known X-Cal since he was a kid wrestling in my backyard. He was always quick witted and more often than not he didn?t know how to filter himself, which led to controversy. But since becoming a regular in TPW, he had been doing great in and out of the ring. I felt like it was my little brother up there winning that boxing tournament.

The next day was the wrestling part of the Indian Festival. Around that time there was a fan in a wheelchair that used to come to all the shows with his family. His name was ?Chance? and he was a Native American. He begged Rocco to make him part of the Indian Festival show. After the guy booked me and Rocco to DJ his kid?s birthday party, Rocco reluctantly agreed to let him ring announce one match. Rocco figured since we didn?t have any Indian wrestlers, an Indian ring announcer was the next best thing. The Indian Festival was on tribal land and therefore did not have to be sanctioned by the boxing commission. In other words, no one needed a license to work this event. Nevertheless, this Chance guy shows up with a wrestling license. Yes, if you ever wondered how closely the boxing commission looks at those physical and applications, just remember that they gave a wrestling license to a guy in a wheelchair! Rocco told Chance he could announce the opening match and he screwed up the ring announcing just about as bad as you can. He announced my opponent and without even pausing he announced me. They hadn?t even started playing my opponents music yet. In spite of the bad announcing, the match and the whole show went great. It was exhilarating to wrestle in front of 1000+ screaming Indians.

When we went to bring the wrestling ring back to our Mexican mall for our regular weekly shows, the Mexican mall director informed us we were no longer welcome there. To this day I still don?t know why he decided to not let wrestling back. He had been a little nervous ever since John Crow (the former OCW promoter) began telling him that our ring was stolen property. TPW had lost its promoter and its home venue in a matter of weeks. Things did not look good for us.