Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Jun 28, 2014 21:35:09 GMT -6
articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-07-08/sports/9807080026_1_wrestling-stone-cold-steve-austin-training-school
Windy City Wrestlers Laugh And Learn
Mike Anthony is doing very little wrestling on this particular Saturday morning.
The Windy City Pro Wrestling heavyweight champion of the last two years is standing outside the ring watching Jason DeCanio and Rodd Jenkins work on such traditional wrestling staples as side headlocks and elbow drops off the second turnbuckle.
Traditional television wrestling staples, anyway.
Anthony points out another wrestler-in-training. Still too raw to enter the ring during the two-hour session, he spends the bulk of his time trying to bulk up in the weight room in the back of the building.
"It's my job to get guys like him ready to wrestle," Anthony said, speaking of his role as a WCPW trainer, a function he shares with fellow veteran wrestler Steve Bos. "Steve handles a lot of the stuff once they get in the ring, but you don't automatically come here and start wrestling. It takes a while."
It sounds funny to hear such fervent talk of training and dedication in a fabricated sport that has given the world such characters as Doink the Clown and The Berzerker.
Professional wrestling is one part bar fight, one part Jerry Springer and one part improvisational theater. But for Anthony, Bos and the wrestlers they develop in a building at 103rd and Commercial Avenue, this is a dream come true.
There are no multimillionaires in WCPW.
Nobody like World Championship Wrestling icon "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan or the World Wrestling Federation's ultrapopular anti-hero, Stone Cold Steve Austin. No six-figure paydays on pay-per-view cards, no matches in front of 20,000 people.
What they do have is the training school, 12 championship belts to wrestle for, monthly television tapings in front of 100 to 150 raucous supporters and occasional live events, including a recent "Battle of the Belts" promotion that drew 4,000 fans to Morton College.
Most important, there is Sam DeCero, the founder, owner and promoter of WCPW, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. DeCero is the man who can turn an aspiring wrestler's dreams into reality.
"(Pro wrestling) is what I really believe I was put here for," he said. "Every single person who sits in here before me says the same thing--it's all they have ever wanted to do since they were 5. Some stick it out, while others go through the first month and quit. It's very tough."
DeCero can relate to his pupils--he wrestled professionally as Super Maxx, one half of the Maxx Brothers of the long-forgotten American Wrestling Association. He trained with Golden Boy Paul Christy and Macho Man Randy Savage. He knows what it's like to work for relative peanuts, and he knows the feeling of financial success, earning as much as $3,000 a week during some stints in Japan.
He realizes steroids can make a man very big very fast and accelerate his ascent to stardom. But after requiring surgery to remove growths caused by steroid usage, DeCero also knows steroids can kill.
Most of all, DeCero understands the byplay with fans, whether they are cheering his every move or spitting at him, hitting him with a chair or throwing pop cans at his head from the balcony, as happened to him once in Indianapolis.
These factors combine to make him an ideal wrestling promoter.
"It was an amazing feeling booking a show in the International Amphitheater for the first time--the same place where I watched wrestling with my father and then later competed," DeCero said wistfully. "When I was younger, I would have given anything just to swipe Dick the Bruiser's sweaty arm. Then to not only work for him in Indianapolis, but to actually wrestle him . . . just an unbelievable feeling for me."
DeCero's training school also doubles as the television studio for Channel 62 and Showcase Chicago tapings of his wrestling show. It doesn't look like much from the outside; in fact, it's easy to mistake it for an abandoned warehouse in a neighborhood full of factories.
But it's a huge step up from DeCero's humble beginnings 13 years ago in a building without heat at Harlem and Irving Park. He later set up shop in an old milk factory on 95th Street.
Having wrestled at a time when pro wrestling stressed athleticism over showmanship and freaky gimmicks, DeCero expects a lot from his wrestlers. They do their best not to let him down.
"The wrestling Sam has developed here is as good as the stuff in the WWF or WCW," said Mike Carey, who has been with Windy City for nine years and currently wrestles as Cobra Cobretti. "We just don't have the $50,000 lighting structures for our TV tapings or the national exposure."
But the participants are serious about it--more so, perhaps, than their more highly publicized counterparts.
"It's not just getting in the ring and doing it in front of the cameras," DeCero said. "We teach them safety, self-defense, weightlifting, proper training and proper diet. Then when they get in the ring, they are taught how to fall and how to wrestle, and the rest they pick up on their own.
"The actual wrestling is the privilege of the hard work, the payoff."
Windy City Wrestlers Laugh And Learn
Mike Anthony is doing very little wrestling on this particular Saturday morning.
The Windy City Pro Wrestling heavyweight champion of the last two years is standing outside the ring watching Jason DeCanio and Rodd Jenkins work on such traditional wrestling staples as side headlocks and elbow drops off the second turnbuckle.
Traditional television wrestling staples, anyway.
Anthony points out another wrestler-in-training. Still too raw to enter the ring during the two-hour session, he spends the bulk of his time trying to bulk up in the weight room in the back of the building.
"It's my job to get guys like him ready to wrestle," Anthony said, speaking of his role as a WCPW trainer, a function he shares with fellow veteran wrestler Steve Bos. "Steve handles a lot of the stuff once they get in the ring, but you don't automatically come here and start wrestling. It takes a while."
It sounds funny to hear such fervent talk of training and dedication in a fabricated sport that has given the world such characters as Doink the Clown and The Berzerker.
Professional wrestling is one part bar fight, one part Jerry Springer and one part improvisational theater. But for Anthony, Bos and the wrestlers they develop in a building at 103rd and Commercial Avenue, this is a dream come true.
There are no multimillionaires in WCPW.
Nobody like World Championship Wrestling icon "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan or the World Wrestling Federation's ultrapopular anti-hero, Stone Cold Steve Austin. No six-figure paydays on pay-per-view cards, no matches in front of 20,000 people.
What they do have is the training school, 12 championship belts to wrestle for, monthly television tapings in front of 100 to 150 raucous supporters and occasional live events, including a recent "Battle of the Belts" promotion that drew 4,000 fans to Morton College.
Most important, there is Sam DeCero, the founder, owner and promoter of WCPW, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. DeCero is the man who can turn an aspiring wrestler's dreams into reality.
"(Pro wrestling) is what I really believe I was put here for," he said. "Every single person who sits in here before me says the same thing--it's all they have ever wanted to do since they were 5. Some stick it out, while others go through the first month and quit. It's very tough."
DeCero can relate to his pupils--he wrestled professionally as Super Maxx, one half of the Maxx Brothers of the long-forgotten American Wrestling Association. He trained with Golden Boy Paul Christy and Macho Man Randy Savage. He knows what it's like to work for relative peanuts, and he knows the feeling of financial success, earning as much as $3,000 a week during some stints in Japan.
He realizes steroids can make a man very big very fast and accelerate his ascent to stardom. But after requiring surgery to remove growths caused by steroid usage, DeCero also knows steroids can kill.
Most of all, DeCero understands the byplay with fans, whether they are cheering his every move or spitting at him, hitting him with a chair or throwing pop cans at his head from the balcony, as happened to him once in Indianapolis.
These factors combine to make him an ideal wrestling promoter.
"It was an amazing feeling booking a show in the International Amphitheater for the first time--the same place where I watched wrestling with my father and then later competed," DeCero said wistfully. "When I was younger, I would have given anything just to swipe Dick the Bruiser's sweaty arm. Then to not only work for him in Indianapolis, but to actually wrestle him . . . just an unbelievable feeling for me."
DeCero's training school also doubles as the television studio for Channel 62 and Showcase Chicago tapings of his wrestling show. It doesn't look like much from the outside; in fact, it's easy to mistake it for an abandoned warehouse in a neighborhood full of factories.
But it's a huge step up from DeCero's humble beginnings 13 years ago in a building without heat at Harlem and Irving Park. He later set up shop in an old milk factory on 95th Street.
Having wrestled at a time when pro wrestling stressed athleticism over showmanship and freaky gimmicks, DeCero expects a lot from his wrestlers. They do their best not to let him down.
"The wrestling Sam has developed here is as good as the stuff in the WWF or WCW," said Mike Carey, who has been with Windy City for nine years and currently wrestles as Cobra Cobretti. "We just don't have the $50,000 lighting structures for our TV tapings or the national exposure."
But the participants are serious about it--more so, perhaps, than their more highly publicized counterparts.
"It's not just getting in the ring and doing it in front of the cameras," DeCero said. "We teach them safety, self-defense, weightlifting, proper training and proper diet. Then when they get in the ring, they are taught how to fall and how to wrestle, and the rest they pick up on their own.
"The actual wrestling is the privilege of the hard work, the payoff."