A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [4]
Eventually, my dad took me to the matches at the Winnipeg Arena. The old barn was big and dark and I was so excited when we got to our seats. All of my eight-year-old dreams and thoughts of what seeing wrestling would be like in person were about to be realized! Only the lights above the ring were illuminated, creating a mystical atmosphere, accentuated by the thick clouds of cigarette smoke that hung in the air underneath the lights. The place was packed. I had never before experienced such a range of emotions from a group of people watching the same event. There was cheering, booing, taunting, happiness, anger, elation, and disappointment.
All of the wrestlers seemed larger than life and I had a list of favorites. The High Flyers: a good-guy tag team made up of Jumpin’ Jimmy Brunzell and Greg Gagne, who was AWA promoter Verne Gagne’s son. I watched their match with intense concentration, cheering them on, begging for Greg to make the tag to Jimmy after being beaten on for what seemed like an hour and absolutely exploding off my seat when he finally did. King Tonga, a 300-pound Islander, who had a huge scar on his arm that was apparently caused by a shark attack on his native island...a shark that the King was forced to kill with his bare hands! Jerry Blackwell was a short, disgustingly obese guy the crowd tortured by chanting “Fatwell” during his match. After he threatened to “slap the shit out” of me when I yelled at him timidly as he passed by me on his way to the ring, I joined in the chant with extra vim and vigor (what the hell does vim mean anyway?). Then there was Baron Von Raschke, a bald, strange-looking dude who resembled one of the mutants from The Hills Have Eyes and spoke in a thick, hard-to-place Eastern European accent. But he was a Winnipeg favorite and I went nuts for him as he paraded around in his black tights and red cape, threatening to administer his devastating finishing move, the Claw, to his hapless opponent.
There was also Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin, who was accompanied to the ring by his valet, Precious, an attractive blonde in a tight spandex shirt and hot pants. I was shocked when the crowd began to chant “Show Your Tits!” I was double-shocked when the crowd began to chant “Asshole!” at Garvin when he covered Precious with his jacket. I sat there thinking, “You can’t say tits and you sure as heck can’t say asshole! When my dad hears that, he is not going to be happy.” But he just laughed it off. That’s when I figured out that the normal rules of conduct for a hockey or football game didn’t apply at the wrestling matches. I liked this rowdy crowd.
At the intermission, the company would sell tickets for the next month’s card and my dad and I always bought them. The ring announcer, Mean Gene Okerlund, would say “Get your tickets now...doncha dare miss it!” and we didn’t. Wrestling became me and my dad’s thing. No matter what was going on, we always knew that once a month, we’d be able to spend time together at the matches.
Since my dad had retired from the NHL years before, he had taken a side job as a radio commentator for the Winnipeg Jets. That job helped him make some major connections for his day job as a financial planner. Because of that he was able to get me autographs from some of the top wrestlers like Black Jack Lanza and Nick Bockwinkel. The fringe benefits continued as my dad scored us front-row tickets to one of the biggest cards in Winnipeg history, featuring the main event of new champion Rick Martel against the evil Russian Boris Zukoff in a steel cage match. John Ferguson, the GM of the Jets, was the special referee. Sitting so close to the action opened a whole