Sweaty Men In Tights
Pizza, Apple Juice and Portland Rasslin’
By Dave Paull
Sometimes a Friday night is more than just a Friday night. Much more.
It all started with pizza and Portland wrestling — those sweaty men in their tights. I was a mere lad, all of 14 years old, dazzled by the raucous world of local wrestling matches on TV every Friday night.
Earlier in the evening, I would begin preparing the ideal snack to eat while watching the epic battles: Chef Boyardee Pizza. It came in a box, complete with a packet of pizza flour, a packet of yeast, and a can of tomato paste with separate cheese topping.
Pizza was still a novelty in Portland then. Chef Boyardee was bringing it to the suburbs, one box at a time.
I would mix the pizza crust flour with water and yeast, knead it and put the covered bowl on a heat register to rise. Once suitably puffy, I’d roll out the dough, bake it and sprinkle on the toppings. Ah, the yeasty smell of freshly-baked pizza. Served with chilled apple juice, it was a meal fit for wrestle mania.
Then came the technical part—setting up a reel-to-reel tape recorder next to our black-and-white Motorola TV, ready to record the wrestling broadcast on local CBS affiliate KOIN.
Capturing sound felt almost miraculous—instant playback, no waiting, unlike developing film. And the box the tape came in showed how to cut and splice tape.
Mmmm. Maybe someday I’d learn how to do that.
At last, I was ready for my private viewing party.
Roll the opening music. Cue the announcer:
“Good evening sports fans and welcome to another evening of Portland wrestling brought to you direct from the Portland National Guard Armory. And now right to ringside with Bob McAnulty and Barney Keep.”
Bob was a local DJ and Barney was quite popular as the morning man at KEX radio, where he ‘ruled the roost’. He labeled himself SLOB—‘sweet lovable old Barney.’ Their friendly banter gave the brutish antics of the wrestlers a family-friendly vibe. The broadcast booth was called ‘the crows’ nest,’ overlooking the wrestling ring below.
The armory had stone walls and looked like a fortress—or a castle, with a vast open arena inside for sporting events. Before each match, promoter Don Owen stood in the center of the ring with a microphone dangling from an overhead wire, introducing the hairy wrestlers about to pound each other senseless.
DING DING. The oven timer rang and I hustled into the kitchen to get my hot slices of pizza and pour a tall cool one—a sparkling glass of apple juice.
Bob was doing the play-by-play as two hairy men wrestled. One of them was slammed to the mat. “We’re watching our semifinal with approximately five minutes to go” Bob said. “We’re watching Kurt Von Poppenheim with a reverse chin lock.”
Some of the wrestlers had sounding odd names, including Shag Thomas, Dutch Savage and Tito Copa. One guy stood out as a villain: Tough Tony Borne. That’s who Bob McAnulty interviewed during the TV show:
“Tony, before you go, I know that last Friday night, Shag Thomas really put some scars on you. You’ll be ready for him at the main event tonight, huh?”
Tony grimaced and said he would definitely be ready - to make creamed corn out of his opponent.
Then Barney did a live product endorsement - a commercial for Heidelberg beer:
“This is the beer that they make right up there in Tacoma, Washington, the Carling Brewing Company. And believe you me, when Carling sets out to make a good beer, they make one. And Heidelberg is it. What a wonderful beer.”
I took another sip of cold apple juice - plenty good enough for this wrestling fan. Just then my dad arrived home from work. He sometimes worked late and wanted a snack from the kitchen. As he walked past the glowing TV set he smiled and said “you know that’s all fake, don’t you?”
It was exaggerated and theatrical—so yes, I knew that. The wrestlers had their roles to play: good guys and bad guys—all bigger than life. They were so different from my polite family in the suburbs.
My pal Pat was also a wrestling fan. In fact, his step dad would sometimes give us a ride downtown to the National Guard Armory building (10th and NW Davis) so we could watch the matches in person. We sat in folding metal chairs a few rows back from the ring, watching the rough-tough rasslers up close.
The crowd was loud and sometimes crude. One middle-aged lady compared a wrestler’s anatomy, outlined through his tights, to a chicken with its head cut off. I had never heard such talk before, to put it mildly.
Pat and I had a trick we pulled during the match, walking along the ring’s apron so we’d be in range for the TV camera up in the crows’ nest. After getting back home we would watch the tape-delayed broadcast and—wow—there the two of us were, young sports fans sauntering by on TV.
After the matches were over, we edged through the crowd and stepped outside the massive armory into the chilly night air. Walking a few blocks towards 10th and Burnside, we came to a brightly lit plate glass window with a DJ inside.
It was the studio for KISN radio, broadcasting teenagers’ favorite rock ’n roll tunes. “Look at all that equipment” Pat said with a freckled smile. It looked like command controls for a space module, all dials and lighted panels.
The young guy spinning the hits nodded at us and took off his headphones.
I noticed he was listening to a transistor radio, so I scribbled a note on a scrap of paper and held it up to the window: WHAT STATION ARE YOU LISTENING TO? He grabbed a pen and held his reply up to the glass: KGW—a Top 40 competitor.
I wasn’t much of a radio listener back then. I knew who The Beatles were, of course, and I liked novelty songs—especially Purple People Eater and Monster Mash. Other than that, I only tuned in once in a while.
Looking at that DJ in the window, I could see my reflection in the glass, looking a bit wide-eyed. It was like seeing show biz in a fish tank. Made me want to go swimming.
That slip of paper—it said KGW. Years later, I’d spend a decade working there.
Dave Paull publishes Beautiful Disasters, misadventures of micro-budget filmmaking from scene to screen.