Johnson Steven - The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: heroes & icons

A bloody Dusty Rhodes battles J.J. Dillon in a bullrope match in Florida in 1972. (COURTESY OF SCOTT TEAL/CROWBAR PRESS)

Wrestling hero worship takes many forms, in many places. Jules Strongbow, the long-time California-based booker and promoter, was touring Africa when he came across two native children locked in a free-for-all. Local residents pulled them apart, and a guide explained the source of their discontent to Strongbow and the members of his traveling party: They were getting ready to wrestle and they were fighting over who would be Jimmy Londos.

In the great valley of East Tennessee, a boyish Les Thatcher joined with a lean, soft-spoken, glass factory worker named Whitey Caldwell to form a heroic duo that took the region by storm in 1969 and 1970. One day, they received mail at Channel 26 in Knoxville, the local TV wrestling outlet, and opened a Christmas card signed by all the members of a University of Tennessee sorority. It amazes me to think, My God, you made that kind of impact and left that kind of impression, Thatcher said, because at the time it doesnt even cross your mind that youre doing something that will move people to do something like that.

And a hero moved schoolchildren in an elementary school in Mobile, Alabama, in March 1972. Popular Cowboy Bob Kelly had earned a suspension for mistakenly slugging a National Wrestling Alliance representative actually a rep from another Southern promotion who climbed into the ring to halt an out-of-control battle with Don Fargo. With no master guidance, thousands of petitions suddenly started appearing at the Gulf Coast wrestling office in support of Kelly. Future pro Michael Norris was in sixth grade and he remembers Kellys impact on his fans. All the kids at my school signed one. Kelly told me later that they got something like 2,000 signatures, plus letters from fans that they kept for years in the office, Norris said.

Heroes are an important part of every sport, but nowhere more so than in professional wrestling, which is based primarily on a good guy/bad guy dynamic, or was until recent years. Dr. David M. Reiss, a California-based psychiatrist who studies wrestling, calls it the most psychologically intriguing, complex, and exciting brand of athletic competition around, and believes the hero is an essential part of that mix. In football or baseball, fans usually root more for teams than for individuals, since the allegiances of todays players can change on a dime because of free agency or other factors. Even competitors in individual sports like boxing or mixed martial arts, the genres closest to wrestling, dont involve the audience, tell a story, or cultivate a deep emotional attachment like Londos or Kelly or hundreds of other wrestlers, Reiss said. What youre offering to fans is an alliance with invulnerable heroes, according to Reiss, a contributor at Cauliflower Alley Club seminars, who relates the way fans think: I may not be able to overcome everything. But he or she is, and if I can connect with them, I share some of that... Its a sense of connecting with an invulnerable hero.

Masters at work: Jack Brisco sells Dory Funk Jr.s abdominal stretch. (COURTESY OF SCOTT TEAL/CROWBAR PRESS)

This book is about the heroes and icons of pro wrestling, though youll often encounter the insider term babyface, which generally means the chap who is wrestling as the fan favorite. We prefer broader terms like heroes and icons because somehow the word babyface doesnt fit quite right under an 8x10 of a nail-spitting Dick The Bruiser or a middle-finger-flipping Stone Cold Steve Austin, both of whom nonetheless wrestled on the side of right for sizable chunks of their careers. Of course, it takes two to tango, and any discussion of crowd pleasers, however they are defined, owes a hat tip to the heels that make their success possible. Leaping Lanny Poffo explained exactly how he learned how every hero needs a great protagonist. Poffos second match ever in Madison Square Garden was against Terry Funk in July 1985. I walked down the aisle to what I would call polite applause. I wasnt exactly The Beatles of 1964. I mean, they werent unhappy to see me but they werent going crazy. So Terry Funk comes down the aisle and he takes two steps and he gets in an argument with a fan. And then he takes two more steps and he wants to kill somebody. And then they want to kill him. I think it took him five minutes to get to the ring, and hes torn the house down, and Im thinking to myself, Ive got to be the luckiest guy in the world. All I have to do is stand here. Losing to Terry Funk made me more important in the eyes of the fans and to the office than if I had beaten three guys. As Dr. Tom Prichard, a long-time star and later a trainer in Florida Championship Wrestling, put it, Superman had to have Lex Luthor. Batman had the Joker, the Penguin. I believe Hulk Hogan and The Iron Sheik were made for each other. Hulk Hogan and Macho Man were made for each other. Hulk Hogan was Superman, but without that foe to conquer, what do you have?