Being involved in the pro wrestling business for the past 17 years, I’ve seen many things that fall into the “truth is stranger than fiction category. Given the nature of the industry that originated from the carnival circuit, especially on the independent level, it just goes with the territory. Professional wrestling, as with many other genres, especially within live entertainment, is comprised of con artists, yo-yos, talented people, wonderful people, and eccentric people. I’m nobody, but I think I have enough authority to say that the sports entertainment field is, true to its origin, very similar to the circus.
The comradery is one of the most ironic aspects of a business built on perceived violence and thrilling drama. You will find performers from every background, race, gender, and orientation on any given card. Heroes, villains, neanderthals, cowpokes, fashion plates, and rock stars all work together toward common goals, sell some tickets and entertain the paying audience.
The bond they all share is the squared circle.
As I said, being an announcer in the Pittsburgh area since 2009, and a photographer for a year prior to that, I’ve seen some absolutely ridiculous things that you’d probably have to see to believe, simply because it would seem too outlandish for anything other than sports entertainment. I’ve seen fans fight wrestlers, I’ve seen fans fight fans, I’ve seen fans jump in the ring on multiple occasions, and I saw an intoxicated fan crawl under the ring. I’ve seen untrained “wrestlers” try to call themselves pros and nearly break their leg when attempting to take the most basic of bumps. I saw the late Balls Mahoney once leave a vulgar voicemail (allegedly) threatening a shady promoter’s well being and the possible destruction of his home after Joe Rogers skipped town with the money box without paying anyone in 2009.
So, when something over-the-top, off-the-walls, or flabbergasting happens, it might be surprising, but it’s rare that anything is truly shocking in this field of sports entertainment.
Thankfully, the organizations that I’ve worked with for the past several years are upstanding groups with professional events and dedicated fan bases. One such example is Ryse Wrestling, the league based out of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. As I wrote about last week, Ryse had their annual showcase at the Fayette County Fair, a more rural part of the western Pennsylvania region. Tad Jarvis and Jace Mara, two grapplers that grew up in the same place that hosted the fair, were given the main event spot to settle their longstanding feud in a wild bunkhouse brawl match, a fitting stipulation for the fair grounds.
The upside for the organization is that more fans get exposure to the product, and the customers of the fair get to watch the wrestling show included in their price of admission to the festivities so it’s a win-win for everyone involved. The downside is that it was 85 degrees and the humidity was close to the surface of the sun. The EQT Pavilion was located directly across from the cattle stables (more on that later) and somehow, it smelled worse than the typical independent wrestling crowd.
The John Deer crowd or the finer points of farming aren’t my area of expertise so I’m not quite sure of the reason why several different types of cattle are brought to the fair, but champion live stock, dairy cows, and calves at the petting zoo are all included at various pens that zigzag between the stands of funnel cake, lemonade, and fried oreos.
Wes Fetty, the caveman professionally known as The Beastman, was slated for a surprise appearance on the card, and the monstrous grappler that is clad in his trademark furry boots, an homage to his hero, Bruiser Brody, was nice enough to let me tag along with him to the show. There are times that I want to strangle the death match fighter, but you want to hug him just as often, as the guy truly cares about his friends. Proof of that is that since I have to avoid walking long distances the way that Lsrry Zbyszko avoided taking bumps in his glorious career (read that in the Zbyszko voice), Wes made sure to drop me off at the back of the fair grounds where there was a fence with a gate mere steps away from the previously mentioned EQT Pavilion where the ring was being assembled, before he went to park at the designated lot at the fair.
The floor of the pavilion is covered with saw dust, as it’s usually used for livestock when it’s not housing professional wrestling. With that in mind, I carefully focused on each step I took to avoid any surprises on the floor. It was great to see The Runway, Calvin Couture and Tyler Klein, make their return to Ryse. They were scheduled to compete against DD Vince and Marcus Twist, the team of Saturday Night Special that made their debut with the organization. It was also great to get to call the return match of longtime pro Axl Lsw, who trained for several months to make a comeback to the ring. Axl is a wild man and within a minute of hitting the ring for his bout against Glenn Spectre, launched himself through the air to nail his opponent with a drop kick.
After calling a full card of action in the humid conditions, I was ready to exit the fair grounds as soon as the final bell sounded when Mara defeated Jarvis in the Bunkhouse Brawl. However, there were some of the tear down efforts that took place so I had a few minutes before Wes, Ryse organizer Dean Radford, and I left the area to go to a local restaurant to get some food since most of the fair booths were closing at the end of the night. Since I had a few minutes, I wondered through the maze of buildings and food stands to find some ridiculously expensive, but equally delicious $10 funnel cake and an $8 lemonade, which was also as refreshing as it was expensive.
As I was sipping on the lemonade, the cavemen told me that he was going to get his car so I told him that I’d meet him at the same gate that we started at in the afternoon. As a line of cars filed out through the gate of the exterior fence, I took my phone and sent a text to Dean to let him know the plan to grab dinner after everything was packed up from the event.
As I looked up from my phone, I saw a full-size cow running at a full stride toward me, and it was one of those moments where it’s obviously not something that you see everyday so it took me about half a second to truly process that there was a farm animal making a run for it in my general direction. I stepped to the right to make sure my tenure in professional wrestling wouldn’t come to an end via fleeing cattle, and you could hear the hoofs clacking on the dirt as the cow headed for the highway. I’m not sure if this was a dairy cow that was tied of being a milk supply or if the animal was running for its life to avoid being a hamburger patty. I didn’t get a chance to ask, but it was rather astounding that somehow, even with all the pens and gates to contain the animals, this cow had enough meticulous planning to find the fence that was open to be able to make a break for it on the highway.
The scene that followed looked like something from a movie and was almost as surreal as the rouge cattle that was galloping toward me just seconds earlier. A regiment of ranchers, complete with cowboy boots, cowboy hats, and lassos were in pursuit of the escaped animal. All jokes aside, it was definitely dangerous to have the large animal on the highway at night when cars wouldn’t be able to see it. Ironically, the cow was polite enough to go in the direction of traffic. When Wes brought his car around, I jumped into the passenger seat as quickly as I could since I didn’t know if the escaped cow had an accomplice that would try to join him in the middle of the commotion. The wrestler that has competed with light tubes and barbed wire for Game Changer Wrestling recently couldn’t believe that the people that he saw running were trying to find an animal. As he made his way onto the highway, we saw another movie scene as the ranchers mentioned before were standing on the running boards of a pick up truck as it went down the highway to locate the cattle, still with their cowboy hats and lassos. As of this writing, there’s no confirmation if the cow is still at large or was detained, but from where the group was stopped down the highway, it looked like the cattle might’ve been captured without incident.
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Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
Email [email protected] | You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, & Threads @jimlamotta89
