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Ten Years Later: The Men Behind The Masks (And The Problems They Had)

Posted: Jan 4th 2012 By: CMBurnham

I have never said that I am the easiest person to get along with. Back in the day, and even now from time to time, I could be kind of narrow-minded, narcissistic, and unbearable. In 2003, I was wrestling as a masked luchador named ?El Furioso? for Tornado Lucha Libre in Tulsa. After the Oklahoma Championship Wrestling debacle, everyone was ready to see Rocco Valentino (the original promoter of OPW) come back and fix wrestling in Tulsa. When a few of the OCW guys left for SRPW (our rival fed) we all thought good riddance. Now we will have a cancer free locker room.

Despite our best efforts to promote a Latino friendly show, TLL crowds were almost all American fans. We ran our shows out of a club inside the Mexican mall. We hired a Spanish speaking announcer (Ray Martinez). We put posters up all over the mall and local Spanish speaking businesses. We even went to each merchant inside the mall and offered discount tickets. After about 5 shows it became clear that the Mexicans were not going to come. Rocco was quickly getting burned out.

To be fair, Rocco had been burned out on the business for perhaps 2 or 3 years at this point, ever since he and his former business partner Pete Maguire had started going to court over the OPW Company and all its assets. As a wrestler, Rocco had been let down by so many of his so called friends that he was just done being involved with the business all together. He only promoted TLL because he felt he owed the guys that had been loyal to him for these past few years.

At the age of 20 I felt this company was going to be my ticket to a developmental deal and I was going to make this company succeed even if it killed me. I was pretty much doing all the training at the school and being responsible for making sure students paid. Since the ticket sales were low, we needed the money from the school to keep from going in the red. I even let a mentally handicapped guy sign up. His sister explained that they knew he could never actually be a wrestler on the show, but she was paying us to basically babysit him and let him do some arm holds and roll around in the ring. Plus, he was smart enough to work as a security guy keeping people from crossing the barrier between the chairs and the ring. Other students at that time included Mitch Carter and Shane Morbid. Back in OCW, Kenny Campbell and I were doing most of the training together. But, I kind of took over the classes. I thought Kenny just wasn?t that interested in running them anymore. I usually did most of the talking at the class anyways. Kenny did demonstrations and would pull different guys aside to show them stuff. I found out later in a very painful way that Kenny was upset at me for trying to take over the classes.

Kenny was wrestling as a red costumed luchador named El Anarquia. El Anarquia was very much in the style of Christopher Daniel?s Curry Man. He did silly things and would shake his booty during matches. One night, Shane Morbid was taking on El Furioso (myself) and El Anarquia (Kenny) in a three way match. I was the (technico) baby and they were both rudos (heels). The very first shot Kenny landed rang my bell. I thought to myself that Kenny was working tight and let that one slip on him. It can be kind of hard to work in a mask and sometimes you may misjudge your punches. A few moves later saw Kenny putting the boots to me in the corner. Only, he was really kicking the crap out of me. To this point I still did not think it was intentional. It wasn?t until Kenny tried to drop me on my neck that I realized I was getting shot on. Luckily I had the instinct to tuck my head just in time. I was not sure what to do. The finish was supposed to be me hitting diving splash to the outside on both guys, but I didn?t want to take the chance that Kenny wouldn?t catch me. I didn?t give him much choice. When I jumped, I jumped straight for his head and held on to him as tight as I could.

When the match was all said and done, I came back to the locker room hot. I ripped my mask off and yelled every bad word I could think of. I was screaming that I was going to beat Kenny up. A couple of the guys kept me from getting to where Kenny was at until I could cool down. Rocco took Kenny outside to get his side of the story. Rocco stood between us and said that he isn?t sure what happened to our friendship, but that we were two of the most important guys in this company and for the sake of the company we needed to squash this and get back to business. Kenny said ?sorry? shook my hand and went back inside. Things were still not okay between us at that time. I didn?t let it bother me much after that night. Although Kenny was practically my best friend for the past year or so prior, we had been going our separate ways since splitting as a tag team. His attempt to cripple me by dropping me on my neck indicated to me that he was no longer interested in being my friend.

I was incredibly dedicated to my wrestling career. To the point I was annoying those around me. So much so that I skipped out on college scholarships because I didn?t want to waste time going to school that could be spent learning how to wrestle. That decision made my parents a little sad. I even turned down better job offers to make sure I could just work somewhere only part time and have my weekends off for wrestling. I wanted to make it at any cost. I had gotten a few opportunities to wrestle in other places like Dallas and OKC, but I really was not on anyone?s radar. So it was a real blow to my ego when Rocco told me he wanted me to wrestle as a masked character. We had to have luchador looking characters to try to bring in the Mexican crowd. But I wanted to get my name out there. How could I do that with a mask on? Rocco once again assured me I would be a much bigger star if I wore the mask for a while. I went along with it, but I was upset.

To add to my frustration, Rocco had decided he was ready to retire. He was the heavyweight champion at the time and needed to drop the belt. His idea was to combine the TV title and the Heavyweight title left over from OCW into one belt by doing a best of 3 series with TV champion Sonny C. It made sense, since there was no TV and Tornadovision had not come to existence. Rocco was going to have Sonny C. beat him 2 out of 3 and be the new champion. I had just spent the last few months in OCW building up this story with Rocco, taking beatings every night, letting him blast me with the spike he kept in his boot, letting him juice me and now it was all for nothing. I had trained Sonny C and brought him into the show. Now he was going to take the spot on the card that I felt I deserved. I was devastated.

A kind of an amusing moment occurred during the final Rocco versus Sonny C match. Rocco wanted it to be a marathon blockbuster match. He was even going to blade for Sonny C. Well, about 4 minutes into the match, Rocco is getting ready to gig himself and a very green Sonny C runs over and work punches Rocco, who is holding a razor blade up to his forehead in the corner of the ring. This punch knocked the blade deep into Rocco?s forehead and blood started gushing everywhere. Rocco told him to take the match home quickly before he lost too much more blood. The epic blood fest lasted about 5 minutes.