In a parking lot in Winfield, West Virginia, a motley crew of wrestlers puts on a damn good drive-in show — with humor and body slams — where everyone can forget about 2020, at least momentarily.
Story by MESHA MAREN | Photographs by JOE SHAY
“This is definitely not the first time I’ve wrestled in a parking lot,” Rocky “Rage” Hardin says, watching the cars file in on a Saturday night in September. “Actually, the first public match I ever had, we ended up out in the lot. It was Christmas Eve and I was really excited. I was like, ‘Yeah, this is it! I’m making town, here we go!’ And when I got there, they didn’t have padding for the ring. They’d used that stuff that you put down under carpets and even that they only had chunks and patches of. I was in there with this other guy and we started out, started taking bumps, and the boards started pinching our backs and I was like, ‘OK, this isn’t working.’ I told the guy … ‘We’re taking this match outside.’ So, we did it out in the parking lot, no ring or anything, and it felt better. But I woke up that Christmas and I could not move at all.”
A decade later, Hardin not only has a ring to wrestle in but also his own newly founded wrestling school. As Rocky Rage, he is one of the main attractions at the monthly All Star Wrestling drive-in shows that promoter Gary Damron started putting together after the novel coronavirus canceled all his regular bookings.
Rocky Rage pulls his thick black hair into a ponytail and squints up at the September sun. He may have a nice, well-constructed ring, but these drive-in shows are not without their discomforts. Last weekend, Hardin’s tag-team partner got badly sunburned and, at times, the temperature has reached 97 degrees. “You’re just trying not to pass out at that point,” Hardin says. “And everybody’s so sweaty you can’t grip each other.” Damron has pushed back the start time as a result, so now everyone’s just waiting for the sun to dip down behind Bluelick Ridge. Out at the edge of the gravel lot, a pasture rises up with a single gnarled pear tree and clumps of purple joe-pye and iron weed. Beyond that lies Winfield, West Virginia — a bedroom community to Charleston, the nearby state capitol — a town where hay barns meld quickly into spick-and-span subdivisions, Winfield Acres, Winfield Estates, Winfield Way.
Young fans stand for the national anthem.
As the parking lot fills up, Tom Petty’s voice spreads out over kids doing homework in the backs of pickup trucks, couples eating takeout, and grandmas and uncles gathering paraphernalia (everything from dolls, shirts, and posters to crushed trash cans used in past matches) to be signed by their favorite stars in the meet-and-greet line. In the ring, in the center of the lot, Antwoin Harris, known to the crowd as Tier Ali, limbers up, his dreadlocks tied back and face focused as he tests the ropes and finds his balance. Other wrestlers mill about, setting up their wares. “Pure Trash” Ron Mathis is spoiling for a sunburn, his chest completely bare save for a Misfits tattoo. “The Mobile Homewrecker” Bruce Grey takes his shirt off, too, and preens to the front of the ring to set up his posters, his tiny cutoff blue jeans hugging his ass with every step. Kasey Huffman, known here as Huffmanly, plays air drums to “Smooth Criminal,” long, feathered hair blowing in the dry breeze.
Left: The Iron Bull Noah Ray prepares to enter the ring. Right: A fan takes a selfie at an outdoor wrestling match.
When all the wrestlers have arrived, they huddle up at the edge of the lot by the DJ tent, arms circling around shoulders, heads tipped in. They stand close, sweating in their singlets in the late day sun. They are a motley group — rattails and beards, big bellies and tight asses, just about every body type and range of presentation you could imagine — pulled together for the night to help their fellow West Virginians forget, momentarily, about 2020.
They break their circle and head inside to put the final touches on their outfits before the meet-and-greet begins. Tonight, they are hosted by Lee’s Studio of Dance, a professional dance company that gives jazz, tap, ballroom, and break dancing classes inside a converted warehouse. Lee’s Studio also hosts Rocky Rage’s professional wrestling school, The House of Rage, every Sunday afternoon. The relationship works out in more than one way; not only does Hardin make use of a space that was formerly empty on Sundays, he’s also able to take on students who feel like they’ve aged out of dance.
“That guy,” Hardin says, smiling and pointing to a redheaded young man in a jazz dance competition photo on the wall, “he’s working with me now and you wouldn’t believe the shit he can do, back handsprings, front handsprings. His balance and coordination are incredible from all that dance he did.”
Hardin beams with a wild pride for his students. The House of Rage Wrestling School opened in late February, just a few weeks before the novel coronavirus hit the U.S. Back then, Hardin was feeling great about 2020. His own wrestling career was going so well that he could quit his day job as a certified nursing assistant and focus on his matches and his longtime dream of opening a wrestling school. He talked about it all the time when he was a kid, and adults always told him it would never happen. He kept at it, though, dreaming constantly with his friend Zaiden Kayne, because that’s all he ever really wanted — to make a name for himself in independent pro wrestling and then turn around and give a hand to other kids with the same dream. 2020 looked like the year that dream was finally coming true. Hardin and his wife have a beautiful daughter, he had just opened a brand-new wrestling school, and his own wrestling career could finally financially support him. Then the cancellations started.
“I went to teach at my training school on a Sunday,” Rocky remembers, “and we were talking about it because it had just started getting bad, like people were really starting to worry about COVID-19. And I was like, ‘You know, I don’t know, but I think it’s gonna be OK.’ And that was on a Sunday. Well, I had a show that following Friday, and by that Thursday they had called and said, ‘Man, I have to cancel.’ So, I said, ‘OK, OK’ and I went ahead and found another booking within like 20 or 30 minutes. I was so happy, I was like, OK, I’m covered.”
Raw Talent tests the ropes.
Though Hardin was doing well enough to quit his day job, he still had to book all his own shows and stitch them together into a network of tours that made geographic sense so that the money from one show could cover gas to get him to next and the next. He describes it as an endless repetition of “roads, tolls, gas stations; the smell of Axe body spray, Sheetz/any drive-thru that’s still open after the shows; playing loud music to stay awake; thinking about how every locker room has that one guy that tells the younger talent, ‘That’s not real wrestling, back when I started, we slapped a hold on for 10 minutes;’ people complaining about pay, the egos, the politics; promoters telling people the pay is cut because the house is down even though the house was up; the fans that want you to autograph the most random thing like a Reese’s [Peanut Butter] Cup wrapper or their own child; pain setting in as you drive home and you know the next morning you’re going to feel like you were ran over by a truck.”
As the shows cancelled, he scrambled to fill in the tour gaps. “I was supposed to go to Tennessee, Ohio, a few other states. And then they started calling, ‘Hey, sorry, we gotta shut down.’ It was all like in the matter of a day. And then the shows I’d picked up to cover the ones I’d lost all started getting shut down. And I completely understand, I mean I totally get why they have to do it. But I was just like, ‘What is happening?’ And wrestling, you know, that’s my job now. And it’s scary when your job just comes to a halt.”
The House of Rage Wrestling School had also only been open for one month and was just beginning to gain traction and get enough students enrolled. For Hardin, everything was on the line. Luckily, he notes, professional wrestling is all about adversity. The ability to pick yourself back up after you’ve been knocked down is built into the very lineage of the sport. There is always a good guy (babyface) and a bad guy (heel) and the storylines constantly dip and swell. You might have a good streak for a while but it is actually crucial that you get kicked down so that you can rise once again.
The early origins of pro wrestling in the U.S. can be traced back to Union soldiers during the Civil War. A group of recruits from Vermont adapted traditional Irish collar-and-elbow wrestling as a diversion for their fellow troops. The performances were so popular that after the war, wrestling groups joined carnival tours and traveled across the U.S. to perform at bars and fairs. But it first began as a way for men to distract their fellow soldiers from the horrific conditions of war, a diversion to allow levity and narrative to carry their minds away, if only momentarily.
One of the elements that has always been most crucial, from the 1860s on, is direct audience interaction. Without the cheers and the boos, it doesn’t feel the same. Like a live music performance, a successful night of professional wrestling depends on the ever changing but always palpable mood of the spectators.
A couple watches from the parking lot of Lee’s Studio of Dance in Winfield, West Virginia.
When it became clear to All Star Wrestling promoter Damron that the COVID-19-related bans on indoor gatherings were going to be in place for a while, he decided to try taping some empty-arena shows to broadcast as pay-per-view events. Some of the wrestlers were more into it than others. Tier Ali thought the shows went pretty well. He says that all the guys he had trained with at the Bent Barbell Club were accustomed to taped events because their teacher, Violent Vance Desmond, used empty-arena matches as a part of their training. Desmond had inadvertently prepared his wrestlers for just this kind of no-audience situation. But Rocky Rage thought it felt strange. “As wrestlers, you really do get your adrenaline from that audience interaction and it gives you a rush and kind of like carries you through,” he says. “And when you’re doing it with no fans it does suck. If I’m the bad guy and I’m beating up on the good guy, once I hear that crowd get to that high level of cheering for him, well, I know that that babyface is going to be getting ready to cut me off and kick my ass soon. So it’s like you listen to the crowd and you give them what they want. The crowd will tell you what to do in your match. And when you don’t have that crowd, it’s like, well, OK, we can do it but everything’s gonna hurt worse and you get blown up [cardiovascularly exhausted] way easier for some reason.”
An audience’s reaction can make or break a wrestler’s career, particularly at a crucial narrative point such as a turn from babyface to heel. The thing Hardin remembers most vividly about his own turn, six years ago, is the audience’s response. The narrative of Rocky Rage’s heel turn was built out of the fabric of his real life departure from and return to West Virginia. It was sort of a prodigal son story. Though Hardin was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, he fully claims West Virginia as his home. When he was 17, his mother married a man from Logan County and Hardin found himself back up in a holler with a mountain on each side and no one else around. His life had changed radically but he embraced it. He says he fell in love with the state and the people. Eventually, he started training with Damron, and after he debuted, he started wrestling a lot with a guy named Matt Wolfe aka Shane Storm, who had come into wrestling around the same time as Rocky. They grew very close both inside and outside the ring. The night that Hardin’s daughter was born, Wolfe was at the hospital to celebrate. When Hardin decided to leave West Virginia and move to Texas, Wolfe took it hard. He incorporated his frustration into his performance and the audience loved it. Hardin had been the beloved hometown hero and the audience vented their feelings of abandonment alongside Shane Storm. When Rocky Rage returned, he did it with stealth.
“People didn’t even know I was in the state,” he remembers. “I kept it off Facebook and everything. So when I come out that night, it got a fantastic response from the crowd. I think it was one of my favorite entrances I’ve ever done.”
There was a catch though. The audience soon learned that Rocky Rage had turned. He was no longer their hometown hero babyface. He was a heel and he had a big bone to pick with Shane Storm.
“Kids ran out of the building to the lobby and they were crying and parents were trying to take care of their kids and calm them down. We had someone from the audience try to jump in the ring. It was insane. The audience didn’t really know how to take me being a bad guy. I was a [baby]face for a long, long time. And when I turned, even though I was returning, it was like I was leaving again, like I was a completely different Rocky — that Rocky was gone. And, after I turned, I had death threats. People wished death on my family. But I told Gary, ‘If I’m pissing ‘em off that bad, then I’m doing my job, brother.’”
A heel can draw just as much of a crowd as a face. After all, people love to hate. And sure enough, Rocky says, after a while the audience started cheering him again. The crazier the stuff he did, the more they cheered.
Young fans watch as Rocky Rage and Huffmanly enter the ring for a tag team match.
In January 2020, Rocky Rage turned face again. But he’s carried some of his dark heel past along with him. “I’m a different performer now,” he says. “You can be this squeaky clean babyface that’s like ‘Hey, eat your vitamins, man, that’s the good way.’ But that kinda gets drowned out, you know. So, I play it to where I’m still kind of a smartass.”
A babyface to heel turn can be one of the most exciting moments for the audience and the All Star wrestlers have just such a turn in store for Winfield tonight. As darkness settles over the parking lot and the spotlights hit the ring, heavyweight champion “Pure Trash” Ron Mathis fights to defend his title and succeeds — only to be ambushed by Tier Ali! Hailing from the tiny McDowell County town of Northfork, West Virginia, Tier Ali’s character is based on a combination of Sho’nuff from “The Last Dragon” and Killmonger from “Black Panther.” And tonight, he debuts as a heel, sneaking into the ring as Pure Trash celebrates his victory, knocking him to the ground. The audience boos even as Pure Trash snatches his heavyweight belt back. Tier Ali does not manage to wrest the belt from him again but he has made his statement. He is now a heel and the audience is angry about it.
Shane Douglas signs a trash can for a fan.
From the DJ tent, Damron scans the crowd and then the sky above as it erupts with fireworks. He feels satisfied. The crowds are always a little more reserved at these drive-in shows — everyone carefully distanced and masked — but even so, they are having a good time, he thinks. It’s a mixed audience, politically speaking. One man wears a T-shirt that says “Make Racism Wrong Again 2020” and another wears a Trump hat, but they all seem to be happy to be out of their houses and distracted. Happy to have a chance to rise to their feet and yell their anger, shout their frustration, rather than quietly scrolling past terror and unease, alone with their social media screens.
As the fireworks finish off the night, the wrestlers file out of the dance studio and turn to watch, heads thrown back and arms resting on each other’s shoulders, Rocky and Huffmanly; Tier Ali, The Mobile Homewrecker, Pure Trash, and all the rest. They smile, sweaty and tired and grateful for this moment in the midst of 2020.
Mesha Maren is the author of the novel Sugar Run (Algonquin Books). Her short stories and essays can be read in Tin House, The Oxford American, The Guardian, Crazyhorse, Triquarterly, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Sou’wester, Hobart, Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of the 2015 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, a 2014 Elizabeth George Foundation grant, an Appalachian Writing Fellowship from Lincoln Memorial University, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation. She was the 2018-2019 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Duke University and also serves as a National Endowment of the Arts Writing Fellow at the federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia.
Joe Shay graduated from Middle Tennessee State University where he studied mass communication and anthropology. He currently resides in Richmond, Virginia, while working on several new projects.
