THE HELICOPTER-SPIN BODY SLAM

From the Chapter "A Piece of the Pie"

A promoter came to town and the company commander rented the National Guard armory to him for professional wrasslin’ matches twice per month.  Dad had to spend time making sure the armory was open at the right time for them to set up the ring and rented metal folding chairs, and so he rightfully laid claim to the hotdog concession as proper recompense for his extra work.  He may have had the concession, but my brother and I did all the work.  We cooked and sold some pretty good hotdogs, along with potato chips and cold drinks.

As an extra treat for the crowd we played music on our portable Arvin High Fidelity record player between matches.  Unfortunately, we only had one Elvis album, and one Bill Haley and the Comets album. Even now, when I hear a song from one of those albums, I think of hotdogs and fat women with huge hair wearing tight britches.

A professional wrasslin’ match is truly one of the ten great wonders of the world.  I would watch the crowd while we were cooking weenies in our hotdog emporium and think, “Surely these people are on some form of medication that is making them act this way.”   I couldn’t think of any logical reason for grown men and women to shout and scream at two sweaty, overweight, out-of-shape wrasslers who wore tights that were, in my opinion, just a tad too small.  Maybe it was the tights that got the women so excited. 

The wrasslers knew how to play the crowd.  For most of the match the good guy would be losing the match because the other wrassler, the bad guy, would cheat and do things that were unfair, but only when the referee couldn’t see him.  This cheating would drive the crowd into a wild frenzy.  They would scream and point hysterically, trying to get the attention of the referee, and would even scream out a description of exactly how the bad guy was cheating.  When the referee appeared to ignore their screams and didn’t stop the cheating, they would go absolutely ballistic, stopping just short of rending their robes and covering their heads with ashes and sack cloth.

At the last possible moment, when it appeared all hope was lost for the good guy, he would spring back to life as if he had received an injection of adrenaline directly into his tights, hit the bad guy in the face with his forearm two or three times, sling him into the corner post, and, as the bad guy staggered around dazed and almost unconscious, the good guy would grab the bad guy’s tights and his shoulder, lift him overhead, spin him around a couple of times, slam his body down on the canvas, and jump on his shoulders and hold him down for the three count.  This combination helicopter-spin body-slam maneuver never failed to end the match, much to the delight of the, by this time, corybantic crowd.

I overheard two of the wrasslers discussing strategy in the locker room one night.  They agreed that after the good guy won the match with a last minute helicopter-spin body-slam they would get into a shoving match outside the ring.  The bad guy would pretend to hit the good guy in the nose, whereupon the good guy would break the capsule of red dye he had secreted in his tights, hold it to his nose, and appear to be bleeding.  This charade was designed to prove, once and for all, that the wrassling was on the up-and-up. 

The match progressed pretty much as choreographed.  The good guy did the helicopter body-spin maneuver at the last minute and bested the bad guy.  As they got down from the ring, one of the larger and more vocal female fans, with hair bigger than a Volkswagen Bug, stood up and began screaming and swinging her purse at the bad guy.  I guess the bad guy had heard enough, because he pushed her, none too gently, back down onto her metal folding chair. 

The good guy apparently got into the spirit of things, shouted at the bad guy, “You can’t treat this beautiful fan of mine like that,” and hit the bad guy square on the nose, for real, completely screwing-up their plan.  The good guy actually broke the bad guy’s nose when he punched him.  The bad guy reacted by, none too gently, flinging the fanatical female fan out of her metal folding chair, picking up the chair, and hitting the good guy up side the head with the chair.

The good guy did not have to pretend to fall down.  He was out like a light.  The fat woman, who by this time was ready to kick some wrassler butt, got up off the floor and with a roundhouse right with her purse, knocked the bad guy clean out.  Both wrasslers were now lying unconscious at ring side.  The good guy had, unfortunately, fallen onto the capsule hidden in his light colored tights, and what appeared to be a significant amount of blood began spreading on the right cheek of his tights.  The fat female fan, in a gesture of concern for her unconscious and now seemingly seriously injured hero, ran her hand up under his tights to, apparently, try to stop the bleeding.

She had what many of the fans would later describe to the police as an intense orgasmic-type spasm, and passed out on top of the good guy.  All three of the comatose combatants were revived with smelling salts.  The good guy was taken away in an ambulance because he had a bleeding gash on his head, caused by the metal chair, not the capsule.  The bad guy left in the back seat of a police car, broken nose and all.  The femme fatale was led away with a look of complete rapture on her face.  Rumor had it that she started an evangelical tent revival ministry that followed the professional wrassling circuit and ministered to the spiritual needs of many professional wrasslers and their wrassling fans.

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