My first recollection of professional wrestling goes way back to probably 1982, when I was about 11 years old. We’d just moved across the country to South Carolina and two regional sporting events were televised during the weekends – roller derby and NWA (National Wrestling Alliance)/Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. My recollection is matches were generally held in small venues with lots of folding chairs (convenient for bashing your opponents) and the wrestlers ranged from young upstarts like Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat to long-time veterans such as Chief Wahoo McDaniel. Within a few years the WWF (World Wrestling Federation, later re-named the WWE after being sued by the World Wildlife Federation, the original WWF) took over the spotlight on a national level with the network-televised Saturday Night’s Main Event. Like so many youngsters at the time, despite my parents and other adults telling me wrestling was fake I still wondered if it wasn’t in fact real. He hit a guy with a chair! That guy was bleeding! There were no websites or magazines to tell you otherwise, and who can forget reporter John Stossel getting his ears boxed by David Shultz during a 20/20 TV expose on wrestling’s scripted storylines. Who would actually injure someone for suggesting wrestling outcomes were pre-determined if they were in fact pre-determined? At least that was the thinking in my young brain at the time.
Anyway, turns out wrestling matches do have pre-determined outcomes, but I certainly won’t go so far as to call it “fake” considering the physicality and the risks wrestlers take when performing their craft. If you’ve ever seen the footage of Sid Vicious’ leg snapping in two or Mick Foley being tossed from the top of a cage (and later in the same match, through the cage, one of his dislodged teeth ending up stuck in his facial hair, and this was all leading up to him being slammed into a whole bunch of tumbtacks…) you know these men and women risk injury ever time the climb through those ropes. I even had a few old VHS tapes of some of the insane Terry Funk and Mick Foley matches from Japan involving barbed wire and exploding boards. Over the years I attended maybe a half dozen WWF/WWE shows live and we even went to Wrestlemania XIX when it was held in Seattle, and I’ve always had a great time. I may not watch wrestling any more, but there’s certainly have a place in my heart for it.
So when I saw The Wrestling Album (1985) in the New Arrivals bins at Beat Street Records on our recent trip to Vancouver BC I knew I had to take it home with me. Just look at the cover! Jesse the Body. Mean Gene. Vince. Macho Man with Miss Elizabeth. Steamboat. Captain Lou. The Mouth of the South. It’s like my entire childhood from 1982-85 in one picture. Now, let’s be clear. I was under no illusion that the contents of this record would be good. But I figured it would probably be enjoyable.
And oh god, this is amazing. The album opens with a cover of “Land of 1,000 Dances” by, well, a whole bunch of WWF superstars with lyrics adjust accordingly to fit their personalities and finishing moves. It’s the “We Are the World” of mid-1980s wrestling, and I’m here for it. You can almost feel the cocaine dusted on this thing. That’s followed by “Grab Them Cakes” sung by Junkyard Dog, as song that is so blatantly a musical blend of “Ghostbusters” and a Sugarhill Gang rap that, well… look, this shouldn’t be even the slightest bit of a surprise – it’s not like I expected much if any originality. Between tracks Vince McMahon, Jesse Ventura, and Mean Gene offer commentary about the recently completed song and the one coming next, all hyped up and bantering just as they would on TV. And after Junkyard it’s… oh god… Rick Derringer performing Hulk Hogan’s theme “Real American” (Derringer also co-produced The Wrestling Album), and it’s the most 1980s song ever. There’s a wrestling movie-style montage playing in my mind as Derringer sings, I am a real American / Fight for the rights of every man / I am a real American / And fight for what’s right / Fight for your life… which hits even harder as I sit here one day before America’s 250th anniversary. America!
The absurdity continues all the way to the end of The Wrestling Album. Jimmy Hart singing “Eat Your Heart Out Rick Springfield”, Hillbilly Jim’s “Don’t Go Messin’ with a Country Boy,” and most surreal, Mean Gene doing “Tutti Frutti”. Is it dated? Totally. Is it ridiculous? Absolutely. Cringe? Yup. Awesome? One hundred percent. Am I glad I bought it? Hell to the yes.