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Fund-raising effort gives rise to local pro wrestling organization

Posted: Nov 20th 2009 By: mikeiles

With bell time quickly approaching for the first pro wrestling show under the new West Kentucky Championship Wrestling banner, local promoter Joe Gray faced a dilemma.

?We had to change the card,? said Gray, who put together Saturday?s event at the CAB gym as a fund-raiser for the Princeton Kiwanis Club. ?One guy didn?t show and another failed his drug test.?

However, a little impromptu matchmaking led to a new opening match and set up an unscheduled six-man tag-team affair later in the show.

?Your first event sets the stage for the entire show,? said Gray. ?Wolfie D didn?t show and he and Chris Michaels were going to start the show.?

Instead, Tommy ?No Mercy? Mercer was inserted into the opening match. He won, but then was attacked after the match by ?Crippler? Jeff Daniels and Larry D.

?Chris Hayes was going to be my ring announcer. But when Daniels and Larry D. ganged up on Mercer, (Hayes) went to the back and got his brother (?Playboy? Scott Hayes) to come out. That set up the six-man tag match,? said Gray. ?That all (was put together) about 15 minutes before the show started.?

It also meant Gray had to become his own ring announcer.

?I brought in Chris Hayes to be the ring announcer. But he said he couldn?t be both an announcer and a wrestler. Believe me, I had no idea I?d be in the ring.?

Gray, a funeral director at Morgan?s Funeral Home, had only gotten involved in the pro wrestling business to begin with as a means of helping non-profit organizations raise funds.

?I actually got into it as a fund-raiser for the Kiwanis Club,? he noted. ?We were looking for additional ways to raise money and we?d always done the pancake breakfast and the Little Sturgis thing. We brought the circus back to town in 2006 and again in 2008. Some time in 2008 I asked somebody when the last time pro wrestling was held here and they said it had been 20-25 years.

?So I Googled pro wrestling and came up with a promoter in Tennessee, and that?s when we started thinking about bringing in pro wrestling.?

Gray?s only previous experience was watching professional wrestling on television.

?I can remember watching Tojo Yamamoto and Jackie Fargo in the late ?50s on Saturday night,? he said. ?When I moved to Memphis in 1972 I remember watching Lance Russell, Jerry Lawler and Jackie Fargo on Saturday mornings. But I had never been to a pro wrestling match until October 2008.

?A group of about six of us, including Johnny Oliver and myself, went to the Jerry Lawler 35th anniversary celebration at the Fairgrounds in Nashville. Johnny is a big wrestling fan and has followed it for a long time. We went to several events in Tennessee, just because we wanted to see how it?s done.?

The first show here was helped by the drawing power of legends Lawler and ?Superstar? Bill Dundee, who met in the main event.

Chris Gorman of the Mountain Wrestling Associa?tion in central Kentucky was the promoter of that first show. Mike Porter in Nashville assisted with locating talent for that first card, which drew around 1,300 fans to the Butler Gym in March ? a staggering number when considering that similar events in larger cities routinely draw only a couple hundred fans.

Gray, who is club secretary for Princeton Kiwanis and is a past president of the organization, saw the opportunity to bring back pro wrestling for future events.

?There?s a need for non-profit organizations to have fund-raisers,? said Gray. ?I realized maybe this is a way I can help them raise money. We?re more in the fund-raising business than the wrestling business.?

Gray said proceeds from that first show helped the Kiwanis Club fund numerous projects.

?We were able to increase the two scholarships we give away each year to high school seniors and we gave money to the Free Clinic and the Princeton Playground Project. We also gave money to Camp Courageous in Scottsville ? that?s a camp for children with medical conditions. We also gave to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the local band boosters and the Takedown Club, which is the local wretling boosters.

?This was all started by the need of the Kiwanis Club to raise money for worthy causes. The Kiwanis is an international group of volunteers committed to changing the world one child and one community at a time.?

Once Gray jumped into pro wrestling ? operating as West Kentucky Championship Wrestling LLC ? he quickly realized there were a number of state regulations that the average fan is probably unaware of.

?In Kentucky there?s a license process. The promoter has to have a license and anyone who works inside the six-foot barrier (around the ring) has to have a license,? said Gray.

?It?s the Kentucky Boxing and Wrestling Association ? what used to be the Kentucky Athletic Commission. Everyone has to have a license, every wrestler, every referee, the ring announcer, the timekeeper, managers, valets, anybody that?s going to be near the ring.?

That also includes security personnel ? another state mandate.

?Tennessee doesn?t have any of that, you can do whatever you want, but in Kentucky everybody has to have a license,? said Gray. ?Overall, I think the way Kentucky does it is a good thing. It gives a level of integrity to the event. And, from a safety standpoint, if you?ve got someone who doesn?t know how to take a fall, he can get hurt in the ring.?

The KBWA also gets 5 percent of the gross gate receipts from each show and does random drug checks, which resulted in the one wrestler being yanked from Saturday night?s show.

?Kentucky is also a no-blood state,? said Gray. ?If there?s any blood you have to stop the match and the ring has to be cleaned.?

One of the tag matches at the Butler Gym in March had to be wrapped up quickly after one participant was accidentally cut above the ear. However, to those in attendance, it probably just appeared to be part of the show.

Gray isn?t leaking any trade secrets when he admits that professional wrestling is more of an exhibition than actual competition.

?Obviously wrestling is entertainment,? said Gray. ?Vince McMahon (of World Wrestling Entertainment) cleared a lot of that up years ago when he said that what they do is entertainment.

?People say it?s fake, but I don?t like to use the word fake,? he added. ?It?s choreographed and the outcomes are scripted, but you can?t fake a fall or a backdrop. These guys are athletes, no doubt. They have to have skills or otherwise they wouldn?t survive.

?As long as everyone has a good time and goes home happy, that?s the main thing.?

Gray said the wrestlers who take part in the show are hired as independent contractors.

?They sign a waiver that they?re performing at their own risk,? he noted. ?Most of these guys don?t make a lot of money. They just do it because they love it. The main event guys get a pretty good payday, but the rest are happy if they just get gas money.?

Gray said he had already had wrestlers contact him about being used in future events.

?Once it became known that West Kentucky Championship Wrestling existed people started making contact,? said Gray. ?I?m beginning to build a database of wrestlers. It?s a pretty small group when you talk about wrestlers and they all know each other.

?I want to try to use Kentucky people as much as I can,? he added. ?You want to have some names that people recognize in the main event, but the undercard is very important as well, because you?ve got a three-hour show.

?We?d like to keep a good mix of older wrestlers that people remember and younger guys that younger people today identify with.?

It?s unlikely any major WWE stars will show up at a WKCW show. Those wrestlers usually have exclusive contracts with that company or would command such a hefty fee that booking them for a fund-raiser would be out of the question.

However, Jeff Jarrett, who headlined Saturday?s show along with Dutch Mantell, is a former WWE title holder who most recently has been featured on TNA Wrestling on Spike TV.

Gray said some of his contacts have noted that another TNA talent, ?The Monster? Abyss, could be available for local shows in the future.

?Any non-profit organization that needs to raise funds is who we want to talk with,? said Gray. ?Usually there?s no money needed up front unless someone wants to bring in a big name or draw. Sometimes you have to put up some money for that. But you can have a good fund-raiser without having a Jerry Lawler or a Jeff Jarrett.

?So far, we?ve gotten really positive feedback on what we?ve done.?

Gray said Saturday?s event drew over 500 fans to the CAB gym ? a drastic decrease over the first show here, but still more than respectable when compared to other shows.

?You really need at least 500 people for it to be a good fund-raiser,? said Gray. ?And when you have that many you have good concessions, and that?s a significant portion of the fund-raising for the group sponsoring the show.?

Gray said several factors contributed to a lower turnout locally this time around.

?We?re still learning, and I think we had more competition from other activities in the fall than we had in the spring. And Lawler was a big draw for that first show. He?s still on TV every Monday night and people still identify with him.

?I think a couple of times a year is going to be the saturation point here,? said Gray on hosting shows in Princeton. ?The Kiwanis held it twice this year and we?re looking at probably holding another one next year.?

While Gray is enthusiastic about his pro wrestling options, he said he plans to stick to an occasional show with the game plan of helping groups raise money.

?This isn?t something I?m going to do full-time. My first commitment is to the funeral home and Rick (Morgan),? he added. ?When I thought about starting this I talked to two people ? Rick and my wife.?

Non-profit organizations interested in putting on a pro wrestling fund-raiser may contact Gray at wkcw2009@yahoo.com. He notes that groups are under no obligation if they decide pro wrestling is not the event for them.

Gray said ideally he would like to run a show about every two months in different towns around western Kentucky.

?Some groups have already called and we are discussing it,? he noted. ?I?ve got three groups that are looking at doing something next year. That?s why I got into it ? to help non-profit organizations raise money.?

Tags: Tojo Yamamoto, Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee, WWE, Jeff Jarrett, Dutch Mantell, TNA