Painful Dreams

Alex Neth

In an unassuming warehouse in one of Denver's forgotten industrial neighborhoods, you can hear the sound of dreams being fulfilled.

Thwump.

The students at Slam City Wrestling School are practicing their bumps. A bump is wrestle-speak for a fall, and wrestlers do a lot of falling, so learning proper bump technique is pretty important. There are nine seasoned veterans working out here tonight-- C Block, Derek Corpse, Phobia, Jose Cuevo, Don Perignon, Doc, Nate the Psycho Referee, Bud Doobie and Badger-- and one new guy who has yet no nom de plume, so we have to call him by his real name, Howard Champoux. The vets all take turns leaping into the air and landing, back first, onto a soft pad set in the middle of the wrestling ring, while Howard watches.

Thwump. It doesn't look easy. In fact, it looks painful. But no one is complaining-- every single one of them has dreamed of doing this.

"Time!"

Dan Magnus, owner and founder of Slam City, has been keeping a close watch on the proceedings, timing each exercise with a hand-held Radio Shack stopwatch. He is the reason these people are here. Dan Magnus trains professional wrestlers. Dan Magnus is also the owner and founder of the CWO, or Central Wrestling Organization, the shows of which routinely pull in bigger crowds than almost any other independent wrestling company in the country. These wrestling students are also professional wrestlers, grappling at CWO events with each other and various visiting national personalities, guys like Jake the Snake and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Magnus drifts along the side of the ring, unobtrusive until he sees something he doesn't like.

"Pick it up, guys, pick it up!" he yells, never losing his permanent half-smile. "I want to see things moving faster."

The guys-- and Phobia, a woman who Dan describes as "our psycho feminist"-- pick it up. They are practicing something called punch-kick-sell, which is exactly what you'd think it is. The wrestlers gather in groups of two or three and whack each other with their fists and feet, all the while selling the action-- Phobia gives C Block a smack, and stomps the ring hard, creating a thunderous noise. C Block reacts like he just dived face first into an onrushing bus.

The act is played out across the ring Ð except that they look like they are actually hitting each other.

"They're not pulling punches like people think," Magnus said. "They're just not hitting each other in any vital organs. They're hitting each other a certain way, but they are actually hitting each other."

Punch-kick-sell has other applications as well.

"What this does is it teaches them two things," Magnus said. "It teaches them to sell, for one. We are entertainers, first and foremost. Wrestling isn't a sport that you can bet on, like football or boxing. We are sports entertainers. We take the sport of wrestling, and make it all entertainment value. But they have to be athletes, because how can you do all of these things without being in shape? So the other thing it does is to build their endurance."

It's all part of the technique that Magnus, who was a four-time World Light and Middleweight Kickboxing Champion in the late '70s and early '80s, teaches his students. It's a method of wrestling, and in particular, of learning to wrestle, that emphasizes safety while still being true to the blood-and-guts roots of the sport. It involves a lot of repetition, and a lot of practice-- Magnus holds practices seven days a week, twice a day. It involves none of the chicanery that we've seen recently on "Sixty Minutes" and the like, with 16-year-old boys breaking lightbulbs and chairs over each other's heads in the backyard. It is very much like a real school-- except no books or tests-- and it lives in a concrete warehouse dominated by a professional-size wrestling ring.

Magnus believes in his technique, and that confidence rubs off on his wrestlers. When he started in the business, he saw the old methods of teaching-- no pads, little regard for life and limb-- and decided that he could apply his background in the martial arts to come up with a more effective method of training.

"I was in Hawaii, and this guy's wrestling school, his gym, was right next to my karate school," Magnus said. "And what happened was, I just happened to come in there one day, and I saw that the guy, he was killing everybody. And that's the old way they teach. So I was like, 'My God, I hope you have liability insurance. ' Then one day the wrestler had to leave for three weeks, so he asked me if I could just keep 'em in shape. So I brought 'em over to my karate school, and I used my pads and everything, so the guys weren't killing themselves.

"In three weeks time when Brian-- the wrestler guy-- came back, these guys were doing things that he said took six months to learn I taught 'em in three weeks. So I thought, this stuff is a lot easier to teach than karate," he added.

Students at Slam City learn how to wrestle, which means they learn how not to hurt each other. The drills they run through are all made to teach them the safest way to perform grappling's most popular and familiar moves-- bump drills teach them to fall, punch-kick-sell teaches them to strike believably. Magnus, unlike many of his contemporaries, believes that teaching on an individual level leads to fewer injuries; his rationale is that if someone can do something by themselves, then they are going to be more comfortable and effective when they finally start doing it with another wrestler. Pads cover the ring, so repetitive falls don't break any bones. For such a physical enterprise, the injury rate at Slam City is surprisingly low.

"All I care about is no injuries," Magnus said. "We get a dislocated elbow here, a broken thumb there, lots of bumps, bruises and sprains, but nothing too bad. The way I'm teaching isn't wrong, it's just not traditional. Well, tradition started out of necessity. And the necessity here is that people don't get hurt."

Despite the negative press wrestling has recently received, with its high-priced stars and theatrical violence standing accused of inculcating the seeds of destruction in our country's youth, Magnus believes his business is merely a symptom of a larger societal issue.

"Unfortunately, and this is the bad part about our society, we love violence," he said. "We don't want to admit it. But the only way wrestling will ever die, like boxing, is if people ignore it."

An expert at not being ignored, Magnus easily made the trip from athletics to promotion. In the relatively staid world of competitive martial arts, Magnus was a character-- he was known as "The Magnum Man," and became the first professional kickboxer to wear something besides the traditional white uniform when he dressed for a match in tiger stripes.

After arriving in Denver to take a job as a security consultant, Magnus finally decided the idea of starting his own wrestling organization was just too tempting. With the help of his contacts in the WCW, a little luck and his innate gift for public relations, Magnus and original partner Bobby Black-- our own Tattooed Food Critic-- started Slam City and its more public outgrowth, the CWO.

"I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it actually was," Magnus said, "but we got so much media play, because it was brand new, and because we had people from all walks of life wanting to go for their dream. We offer two things here: we'll teach you how to be a professional wrestler, and we'll get you local exposure. We're not gonna get you any contracts, or anything else. It's amazing how many people say, 'You know what? I've always wanted to try professional wrestling. ' And basically, that's what we give them.

"As you see, most of these guys will never make the WWF. They're not big enough É [WWF] wants a certain thing. That doesn't mean they can't be professional wrestlers. That doesn't mean they can't put on great shows."

CWO's shows are unusual for a few reasons.

One, they actually attract crowds. Outside of the rarefied air of the World Wrestling Federation/ World Championship Wrestling axis, wrestling isn't exactly big business. Independent wrestling federations tend not to promote themselves very well and rely on available local talent, an equation that usually solves in bankruptcy. The CWO brings in various big names-- Medusa, Jake the Snake, Roddy Piper-- well aware that notoriety puts bodies in chairs.

Two, the wrestlers themselves can earn a piece of the gate by selling tickets. Magnus offers his wrestlers the chance to take home $3 for every ringside seat they sell, and $2 for every regular seat. In the tightfisted world of local wrestling promotion, this practice is uncommon, to say the least.

Perhaps that should change. CWO's shows are some of the most successful independent wrestling enterprises in the nation.

"The shows have gotten bigger than anything we've ever done," Magnus said. "At our last show, we had 1,500 people. For an independent show, that's almost unheard of. The average crowd is 150. We've never had under 300. We're expecting over 2,000 at the next show."

The shows are what it's all about for the men and women of Slam City Wrestling School. To the last, they've all dreamed about being professional wrestlers, and getting the opportunity to strut a character of their own creation onstage is, quite literally, a dream come true.

"I was turning 30," said Badger, a wrestler whose persona is his name, and vice versa, "and I wasn't getting any younger. I had been a fan of wrestling since the early '70s. I'm not the biggest guy, but after my first practice in this school, I was hooked. This had all been an unattainable dream for me. I'm very thankful to Mr. Magness for giving me the opportunity."

Phobia, née Leanne Rife, believes wrestling has provided her with a level of happiness she had never known before.

"It's something that I had always wanted to do," she said. "My brother was a big fan, my great-grandparents were big fans. One day, I decided that I was unhappy with my life, and decided to follow my dream, see if I could do it. I'm probably happier now than I have been up to this point."

Happiness is truly a driving force here. Because, as Magnus says, it really isn't about money with these folks. Sure, they might make a chunk of extra change from hawking tickets to the events, but every one of them had to pay $1,700 down for a lifetime membership to the school, in addition to $150 per month in gym fees. These wrestlers aren't looking to get rich. They are merely obeying the call, like artists, like soldiers, like overstuffed uncles at a chili cook-off. They are wrestling because, at some point, they said to themselves, I can do that.

Of course, monetary considerations can never be completely ignored. Derek Corpse realized that this business could be a lucrative one long ago.

"Wrestling was something I never really thought of doing," he said, "but then I was looking at these guys, and I'm thinking, I'm as athletic as some of these guys. Some of the WCW guys, their athletic ability was just horrible. I mean, I grew up playing sports. I thought, this should be my money! My paycheck!"

He laughs when he says it, but the reality is that Corpse is one of the CWO's best bets to move on to another league. He's big, first of all, which most of the CWO's wrestlers aren't, and he has a palpable ring presence. He's been with Magnus for two years, and learned enough of the business to become Slam City's chief trainer. He has a definite desire to move forward in the world of sports entertainment-- it is a far, far better one than what he just left.

"I was doing trim carpentry when I started this," he said. "That was really, really tough to do that, and then go work out afterwards and come here and wrestle.

Really tough."

Having left the world of construction behind, at least temporarily-- anyone familiar with the construction industry in this state knows that a good trim carpenter makes a lot more money than the average professional wrestler-- Corpse is excited about his career prospects.

"I move a little closer to the goal every single day," he said. "But you gotta' be a little bit wrong in the head to do this."

Practice is over. The wrestlers mill around, joking and talking with each other. Howard, the new guy, gets ready for his first lessons. He looks like a kid on the first day of spring football practice: nervous but excited, not sure what the hell is going on but ready just the same.

"Everyone has that dream they're never gonna do, like play in the NFL," he said. "I've been a fan all my life--"

"He totally lost a bet with me," breaks in Nate the Psycho Referee, grinning.

"Yeah," Champoux agrees. "I work with him. I talked to him and he said to come on down and try an official audition. I know it's probably gonna hurt, but it'll be a lot of fun, too."

However much pain Magnus inflicts in this first lesson, it cannot possibly compare to the anguish of one of Champoux's previous challenges: "I've got a Master's Degree in Material Science from Cornell University."

That isn't going to help him here. With a half-smile, Dan Magnus leads him through the process involved in a basic bump.

Thwump.

This is it. Sweat and toil and evenings after work spent falling down, over and over. Spent punching and kicking and selling. They may leave bruised and sore, but they always come back.

After all, no one ever wants to wake up from a really good dream.

For more information about Slam City or the Central Wrestling Organization, call 303-699-2200.

photos by Sean Hartgrove