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Playing to the crowd
Kevin Phoenix clotheslines T.J. Boss and the momentum carries him over the top rope during a Midlands Championship Wrestling match held at Polliwogs in northeast Columbia.
Photo by Andrew Haworth
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Audience participation
Like any sporting event, independent wrestling is chance for the crowd to get rowdy in support of their favorite stars. Mikey Stevens, in foreground, and his mom Shannon Stevens, cheer on Kevin Phoenix during a Midlands Championship Wrestling match.
Photo by Andrew Haworth
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Friends and family
Heath Mullikin, a Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative member, works the crowd as an emcee at many Upstate matches. He also co-hosts a wrestling-focused podcast, The Double Dropkick Show, with his childhood friend, Mark Whitman. “I got into wrestling first for the fun of it; I’ve stayed in it for the friendships,” Mullikin says. “Unlike the guys in the ring, I don’t want the fans to remember me. I just want them to remember having the time of their life and that is a feeling that will keep you in and around wrestling for a long time.”
Photo by Andrew Haworth
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Is wrestling ‘fake?’
The conflict between wrestlers may be dramatized, but the physical action in the ring is very real. Jamie Lee, a “babyface” with a nervous, Barney Fife-like ring persona, jumps off the top rope onto “heel” Myric Moore during Battle Zone Wrestling’s “War in Williamston.”
Photo by Andrew Haworth
It’s an unusual spot for a wrestling ring, backed into the far corner of the Polliwogs Bar and Grill parking lot on Two Notch Road in Columbia. But with a 6 p.m. first bell on this balmy August Sunday, the location could have been much worse. A clump of pine trees provided just enough evening shade for about 50 spectators to sit—in the chairs they brought themselves—and watch grown men in tights dance, dive, flip, flop and throw each other around for a few hours.
More than half of those in attendance were under the age of 12. Children cheering the good guys and booing the bad, a distinction that could be easily made—even by minors—as the wrestlers approached the ring from behind a makeshift curtain.
Sir Wesley Williams, who brought a stuffed toy corgi named Sir Benjamin with him to the ring, and Keith “The Party Starter” Mac, whose singlet prominently featured Homer Simpson, are what insiders and knowledgeable fans call babyfaces. They each smiled and high-fived those cheering in the front rows. Their rivals, the heels, were characters like Zuka King and Chris Valo, adorned in black to accompany their scowling faces. They exchanged barbs and feigned physical confrontations with the jeering fans.
Each match played out its own unique melodrama. The babyfaces never lost unless the heels were aided by an inept referee, an intervening cohort, or both. It’s a unique brand of live entertainment that combines athleticism, danger and simple storylines.
“Wrestling is so amazing because it’s not a movie,” explains Boomer Payne, one of the wrestlers at the Polliwogs show. “You don’t get to do a retake. You are live in front of a crowd. And if you are a quarter of an inch off, you paralyze somebody.
“I don’t know where you can go and plop down ten dollars and get this kind of live entertainment,” he says. “For two hours you can yell your head off and be able to relate to characters in life. It’s a truly amazing art.”
Filling the card
Independent wrestling shows are weekly occurrences somewhere in South Carolina. Throughout the state, there are 15 professional wrestling promotions licensed by the South Carolina Athletic Commission, and approximately 500 licensed wrestlers. Most of the wrestlers filling the card at Polliwogs will be climbing another set of ropes in some high school gymnasium or church recreation center within weeks. If they are in demand—within days.
Bob Keller, co-owner of Midlands Championship Wrestling and a member of Aiken Electric Cooperative, has been involved in professional wrestling for 25 years. Most of those years were in the ring under the moniker “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Kid.” At 46, Keller may no longer be a kid, but he’s still rock ‘n’ roll, spending many of his non-wrestling weekends as a karaoke deejay.
And despite a full-time job building storage shelving for local schools, Keller devotes plenty of hours to his longtime passion. Not only does he promote and run about 10 shows per year, but he also trains wrestlers.
“At this point, I do it for the love of the business,” says Keller. “I still wrestle on a few occasions, but I like to showcase the younger guys. For them, it’s about the opportunity.”
One of the night’s wrestlers whom Keller trained was Charleston native Kevin Phoenix. Twelve years ago, Phoenix went to Detroit for WrestleMania 23, the preeminent professional wrestling event in the world. He got a taste of the spotlight and wanted more.
“They were recording promotions for Steve Austin’s new movie [The Condemned],” Phoenix recalls. “They put the camera on me and I started yelling about how awesome it was, even though I’d never even seen it. The next thing, I was on the big screen between the matches. I was hooked after that.”
At first, Phoenix delivered Chinese food to supplement his income. But for the last three years, he has been an anomaly on the independent wrestling circuit, a full-time wrestler. Now Phoenix wrestles about three shows per week all over the southeastern United States, has been on six tours of England, and most recently toured Australia. He has put to rest the dream of making it back to WrestleMania, at least as a featured performer.
“I wanted that at first,” says Phoenix. “But I realize what I’m able to do now is pretty great.”
Phoenix was set to challenge Saluda’s Brady Pierce for Midland Championship Wrestling’s heavyweight title. But Pierce broke his hand in a match the night before. Since the event had been billed as Phoenix’s shot at the title, Keller had to deliver.
“These things happen,” says Keller. “You just have to adjust and make the best of it.”
So, Pierce chose surrogate T.J. Boss, a 300-pound behemoth from Clinton, to defend his title. The change in the bill didn’t seem to bother the younger fans, many of whom came to see Phoenix.
“He kicks butt,” says Evan Stevens, a 10-year-old from Lexington, whose family is served by Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative.
Phoenix didn’t claim a heavyweight title that night. Boss, taking advantage of a referee who had just been knocked temporarily unconscious, also dizzied Phoenix during an outside-the-ring beat down. Wrestlers have until the count of 10 to return to the ring before they are disqualified. Once the referee awoke to resume those duties, Phoenix didn’t make it back in time.
Despite the disqualification, Phoenix left the ring to the cheers for a hero, certain to return for another shot at the title.
The War in Williamston
Boomer Payne is usually one half of a tag-team duo known as the Sons of Steel. But his partner, Brice Anthony, was recovering from shoulder surgery, so he was on his own at Polliwogs. A week later, however, Payne was joined by a team of dozens to put on a show in Williamston.
The “War in Williamston” took place in the town hall, a much cozier and cooler venue. It, too, featured a motley crew of characters. “Mr. ADD” Jamie Lee had a Barney Fife-like nervousness and physicality (5 feet 10 inches tall, 154 pounds) that belied his airborne acrobatics. On the other end of the wrestling persona spectrum was “Bulk Nasty,” who used his chiseled 300-pound frame to intimidate opponents, fans, and the referee.
The event was a production of Battle Zone Wrestling, a Simpsonville-based company owned and operated by Payne and Anthony. The two also run a T-shirt production business, an online video streaming service, and a training school. Surprisingly, all those wrestling ventures don’t amount to a full-time job for Payne.
“There is no full time in wrestling,” says Payne. “You’ve got to have your shoot job, which is your legit job. Shoot means real. If someone actually started throwing fists in the ring. That’s a shoot.”
Payne, whose shoot job is in sales for PepsiCo, grew up in Pittsburgh and remembers seeing Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson (father of wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne Johnson) lose the World Wrestling Federation tag team title.
“I got so mad,” admitted Payne. “The bad guys cheated. I was hooked.”
Payne started wrestling when he was 19, and in 1999, had a very brief appearance on the nation’s most watched weekly wrestling program.
“I had my five seconds of fame on Monday Night Raw," he says. “They dressed us up as police officers. We got beat up by The Undertaker and then we arrested him. It was great.”
Friends and family
During the intermission of War in Williamston, wrestlers took selfies with fans and some sold T-shirts made by SOS (Sons of Steel) Custom Tees. Stationary and mobile cameras recorded all the action for SOS Custom Network, the online subscription video service where fans can watch many of the independent wrestling shows around the state.
On the Williamston Town Hall stage, enveloped by video and audio controls, was a 5-foot-6 Wesleyan pastor and Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative member named Heath Mullikin. It’s unlikely that Mullikin would be mistaken for a wrestler, but his devotion to the sport is big. He manages the sound and video production for many of the shows in the Upstate and co-hosts a wrestling-focused podcast, The Double Dropkick Show, with his childhood friend, Mark Whitman.
Mullikin arrived three hours before the show began to set up the video and audio equipment. Before the show, he walked around the ring with a microphone warming up the crowd. He was also responsible for queuing each wrestler’s entrance music, ringing the bell to start the match, and providing the commentary for every contest.
Despite having already watched hundreds of wrestling matches, and with no camera on him, Mullikin responded to the action as if it was a virgin experience, wincing and shifting in his chair with every slam and leap from the ropes.
“I got into wrestling first for the fun of it; I’ve stayed in it for the friendships,” he says. “Unlike the guys in the ring, I don’t want the fans to remember me. I just want them to remember having the time of their life and that is a feeling that will keep you in and around wrestling for a long time.”
Over the last few years, Mullikin says the fun and friends have been a welcome escape as his wife, Karen, succumbed to Huntington’s disease, a fatal genetic disorder that deteriorated her physical and mental abilities. When she died last January, those friends helped to raise money to send Mullikin and his three children to Disney World. They had just returned the day before the Williamston show.
“It’s a very closed community and I still don’t consider myself in the wrestling business,” he confides. “However, everyone has always treated me like family and that’s a special thing. Their support for me and my family has been humbling.”
The War in Williamston ended with Greenville’s Austin Jordan claiming the Battle Zone United States Championship belt. With the fans gone and while Mullikin loaded his equipment into the family van, Cruizer Lewis—a veteran heel who endured such insults from fans as “Cruizer is a loser”—gently directed the breakdown of the ring he owns and rents to local promotions.
Wrestlers, who less than an hour earlier were locked in epic battles of good and evil, together carried the parts of the ring down a flight of steps and packed them in a trailer. It will all go back up at the next show, and for wrestlers like Boomer Payne, the show will go on. “We set up, wrestle, clean up and get it again."
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Wrestling terms
Babyface, face—good guy or hero
Card—a night's match lineup
Gimmick—a wrestler's persona
Heel—bad guy or villain
Indies—independent, small-scale promotions
Shoot—an instance of reality, legit
Spot—a move or series of moves
Turn—the act of switching from hero to villain