FEATURES – JULY/AUGUST 2009

Running The Ropes

A new school in Virginia Beach promises to turn you into the next professional wrestling superstar.

By Leona Baker

Bookmark and Share

 

"Remember, it's meat-tomeat," Mark Myers offers patiently from under the armpit of a prospective student.

Myers is unfazed as the student grinds his teacher's face further into his chest with a few hesitant pumps of his elbow. It's the young man's first attempt at a real headlock.

"It's meat-to-meat, not bone-to-meat," corrects Myers.

Welcome to the Southside School of Professional Wrestling. Yes, that's right. If you live in Hampton Roads and have always dreamed of delivering a wicked suplex or a flying elbow drop before an arena full of testosterone-charged fans, your window of opportunity has officially opened.

More than 100 supporters, fans and potential recruits showed up at the school's grand opening back in April in a warehouse-style office space off of Birdneck Road in Virginia Beach. Former Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) star Sonjay Dutt, AKA "The Guru" and "The Original Playa from the Himalaya," was on hand to sign autographs. Parents munched on hotdogs while kids got a chance to try out their moves in the ring.

Since the opening, owner Myers and his staff—including his wife Robin— have been busy spreading the word at open houses and community events like Mixed Martial Arts "CageFest7 Xtreme" at Norfolk's Ted Constant Center and the Chesapeake Jubilee.

Opening a school was a natural next step for Mark "The Dustman" Anthony (Myers uses his real middle name, Anthony, as part of his stage name). At 44, he's been a professional wrestler for more than 10 years on the independent circuit—kind of the minor league baseball of pro wrestling—snagging Virginia Championship Wrestling's tag team title along with Ray Storm, his partner and former trainer, in 1999.

"I grew up watching it on TV and I've always wanted to do it," says Myers. "When I was I guess about 16 or 18 I met Lou Thesz, a former world champion who had a school in downtown Norfolk. He wanted $3,000 upfront to go to it."

At that age, he didn't have the money. So he bided his time until a buddy in the business offered him on-the-job training at monthly matches held at Mitty's nightclub in Newport News. About a year later, a move to Texas found him enrolled at Tugboat Taylor's School of Pro Wrestling, where he trained for three years.

"[Taylor] taught me the ins and outs. So, I'm bringing my talents back here and hopefully setting the school off."

Currently it's the only facility of its type in our area.

"This is going to be an actual school," Myers says. "We're going to teach. We're going to learn something on the board, on the TV, and then we're going to get in the ring and maybe critique and maybe see what we can learn in there. So we take in not only in the ring, but academically as well."

Ready to Rumble?

A few days after the grand opening of the Southside School of Professional Wrestling, I came back for a tryout, an introductory lesson designed to give new students (and Myers) a chance to decide if professional wrestling is right for them.

It was no surprise that I was the only woman in the ring. It was just me, Myers and two guys—Mike Shafer of Virginia Beach and Kolby Ritchey of Norfolk, who came to the try-outs after finding a flyer at a local Wawa. Both of them were at least 15 years younger than me, so there was no way I was going to let them show me up.

Luckily this wasn't my first brush with pro wrestling. A friend who was big into the Virginia indie scene once talked me into playing an angry fan at a match. My assignment was to jump in the ring and leech onto the back of a wrestler who must have weighed— I'm not kidding—400 pounds. At the time, I was barely pushing 115.

I subsequently entertained a brief love affair with the WWF (now WWE) during the late 1990s boom that gave us Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H and my favorite, Mick Foley—AKA Mankind. I was fascinated by the histrionics and the rabid fans, but most of all by the brutal physicality. If boxing is the sweet science, professional wrestling is the peculiar alchemy— part choreographed gladiator battle and part postmodern morality play. The question of whether pro wrestling is "real" became utterly moot the more I was sucked into the deliciously low-brow, highflying drama of it.

"Wrestling is anything but fake," says Myers, who pays the bills with a day job as a certified electrician. "You can get hurt out there just as you can walking down the street. Things are scripted, of course. That's why they call it ‘wrestling entertainment.' It's a form of entertainment. When you go into the ring with your opponent, you know, hey, this is going to happen. He's got to work tomorrow if he has a day job. You gotta work the next day. So don't hurt each other. We're here to put on a show."

It's about the show, indeed, but a good show involves not just a sense of dramatic timing and flair, but a great deal of physical skill and endurance. When the editor of this fine publication suggested I learn a few real moves for the purposes of this story, I jumped off the ropes at the chance. OK, I didn't really jump off the ropes, unless you count goofing around with Myers at the end of our tryout. But he did teach us some beginner fundamentals.

First we learned the basic bump. A "bump" in wrestling is essentially a fall to the mat. As in Judo or other types of wrestling, slapping the mat forcefully with your arms as you fall helps absorb some of the shock. It also produces that deafening wooden smack that is the signature sound of a pro wrestling match in progress.

The sound effects are amplified by the ring itself. Myers' ring is refurbished, outfitted with metal pipes underneath and overlaid with two-by-sixes, plywood sheets, two-inch foam padding and finally canvas. The padding helps a little, but when you hit it incorrectly, which I did a few times, you feel it.

Mercifully, we were just sticking to the novice stuff. We tried the back bump, which involves squatting down and, against all selfpreservation instincts, throwing your feet out from under your body so that you land flat on the broad part of your back. In addition to smacking the mat, you have to keep your chin tucked so that your neck doesn't flounder around on impact. Let's just say my neck was pretty sore the next day.

We moved on to a couple of other bumps including one that entails falling flat on your face and catching yourself with your forearms and another that calls for a handstand with bent legs and a kind of walkover/backflop combo. I was pretty good at that one. Take that, boys.

For the rest of Running The Ropes, pickup our July/August 2009 issue wherever magazines are sold.

>>back