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Weather Steamy, Wrestling, Just...uh...Fair

Posted: Aug 9th 2007 By: CMBurnham

It was a lugubrious and humid night of professional wrestling at the Kalamazoo County Fair grandstand Wednesday.

``I thought this was wrestling, not a dance contest!'' a man seated ringside yelled as wrestlers went through choreographed moves.

This was World Pro Wrestling, a small independent league out of Orlando, Fla. That's compared with, say, World Wrestling Entertainment. The WWE is what you see on cable pay-per-view and at stadiums; the WPW is what you see at county fairs, and is not likely to be on TV soon.

One might hope that would mean the action would be more raw, real and rough. But the first four matches of the World Pro Wrestling slammers were slow and quite fake.

There, we said it. Fake. But wrestling fans know it's not all real, just as ballet fans know it's not a real swan or nutcracker twirling on stage. But the audience needs to be able to get into that willing suspension of disbelief, to be able to feel that they are seeing a graceful swan, or a battle between a body builder and a psychopathic clown.

Things picked up in action and pure freak drama as The Wrestler Formerly Known as Doink The Clown (in a full-head latex clown mask) and his partner Demolition (in leather and studs like an extra in ``The Road Warrior'') teamed up against Buff Bagwell (buff and in denim overalls, like a bodybuilding hillbilly) and Golden Boy Jerry Grey (blond and, of course, in golden tights).

The clown mask made a nice slapping sound when smacked, and soon Doink was down. He got Demolition in the ring to help out, and the giant had Bagwell on the mat, which proved that being buff just isn't enough.

But of course the good guys Grey and Bagwell won the match -- it was in the script. And it looked like Doink wasn't at his best, suffering in the heat with that mask, which never came off.

More drama came from the final bout, a fight over the ``coveted'' World Pro Wrestling belt, between Rick Steiner and Kip The Man Formerly Known as Billy Gunn James.

Both have been big names in WWE (formerly WWF), and Steiner was also in the NWA and WCW. What they're doing in the WPW is anybody's guess.

But they wanted that belt, enough to knock out the referee in the battle. The ref, who had the build and looks of a 16-year-old, got thrown around like a rag doll. James won by slamming Steiner's head on a folding chair. Steiner disputed the decision by beating on the ref some more.

The audience -- fairly small, filling about one-fourth of the grandstand and with about 100 people ringside on the track -- didn't go wild, but it hooted and hollered as much as the humidity allowed.

Wrestling fans were lukewarm about the event afterward.

Was it everything they expected? ``Not quite everything, but it was enough toward the end,'' said Ron Hines, of Kalamazoo. He said the low-energy matches at the start were the fault of ``a lot of amateurs still learning how to do it in the ring.''

Eric Duzal, ``a huge professional wrestling fan'' from Kalamazoo who was with his friend Bruce Akers, were both happy with the event, and ``knew a couple of the names,'' Duzal said.

Said Michelle Letterman, of Kalamazoo: ``It was cheesy, but good.''