Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”
pulses through the sound system. As the Rocky theme song
pounds, zealous fans circle as Empire Wrestling Federation
members Spandexed to the max mingle in the incongruous
setting of a Pomona art gallery, Andi Campognone Projects.
The artistic element of the wrestlers that come through
the ranks of Jesse Hernandez’s School of Hard Knocks
is finally getting the mainstream appreciation they crave,
and it’s through the lens of award-winning photographer
Thomas McGovern. This past weekend, the gallery hosted
a book release party with McGovern’s poetic photographs
displayed.
What started as a leisurely bike ride through his new
hometown, the urban sprawl known as the City of San Bernardino,
turned into four years of documenting the Inland Empire
wrestling scene with his camera and pen. The result is
the recently published book Hard Boys + Bad Girls. McGovern’s
work has hung in collections in the Brooklyn Museum of
Art, and the Library of Congress. His photos graced the
pages of The Village Voice, and the book Pandemic: Facing
AIDS.
The Cal State San Bernardino art professor rolled up
on the funky, little storefront totally by chance. The
strange noises coming from behind the school’s windows
lured the storyteller in him through the doors.
So Many Times It Happens Too Fast
“I heard this ‘boom boom’ coming out
of the storefront,” McGovern recalls. He stepped
inside the aptly titled wrestling school. “I introduced
myself as a photographer and within seconds they dragged
me inside.”
For the next couple of years, McGovern captured the angst,
ambition, pride and joy of the School of Hard Knocks crew.
He became enthralled by the wrestlers’ fantasies
of greatness and their pull-themselves-up-by-their-boot-straps
mentality, their discipline, drive and sophisticated awareness
of their characters’ strength mixed with sexuality.
“They express the zeitgeist of our times—sex
and the obsession with fame,” McGovern says. “They
are not just enmeshed in those issues, they are engaged
in them . . . It might just look like kids flying at each
other, but it’s not . . . There is this mythic struggle
between good and evil. You get to see this beautiful story
that is more Marvel Comics than Aesop’s Fables.”
Rising Up to the Challenge of Their Rival
Jesse Hernandez teaches a hybrid form of wrestling, part
American and part Mexican wrestling, the latter known
famously as lucha libre—Chris Jericho even looked
to Hernandez for lucha libre training before heading south
of the border. One thing Hernandez tells everyone—Jericho
or a newbie—is to always posture for the camera,
whether flash bulbs are lighting up or not.
“From the moment they step forward through the
curtain, they need to be photo ready, or they could look
weak,” Hernandez says. “They are always posing.
It’s like bullfighting. It’s in the way they
stand.”
Every picture tells a story. Most of the wrestlers come
from humble backgrounds, a perfect setting for fantasies
to unfold. Their day jobs range from serving in the military
to a funeral home director to a nightshift convenience
store manager and plenty other vocations in between.
“They get to pretend to be someone else,”
Hernandez says. “And the fans get to scream and
yell and get out their aggression.”
Little old ladies with walkers have been known
to get vicious.
“We’re athletic actors,” says Eddie
Mattson, who also wrestles as the persona Icarus Eagle.
A lifelong wrestling fan, Mattson can rattle off every
one of the early matches that sucked him into the world
of wrestling as well as his first times in front of an
audience.
“It’s fun getting to be different characters,”
Mattson says. “It’s just like Al Pacino playing
a different character in different movies. We use different
gimmicks, different names . . . It’s just another
form of entertainment.”
You Must Fight Just To Keep Them Alive
Nearly all of the Hard Knocks wrestlers can think back
to the moment when, as children, wrestling took hold of
their imaginations.
“It’s such an improbable dream,” McGovern
says. “But they’ve always been driven by this
idea that they have to work hard to achieve what they
want and that everything they will earn in life they will
have to earn through focus and dedication.”
The Hard Knocks gang does not reach their goals alone.
Hernandez, who has worked as a professional wrestler,
referee and coach for three decades, serves as their coach,
mentor and protector. He’s like a father to the
wrestlers, Mattson says.
“Jesse constantly nurtures the idea of them all
taking each other’s well-being into account,”
McGovern says. “It’s interesting this nurturing
part of it, yet they’re doing their best to be brutal.”
Setting your sights on becoming a professional wrestler
seems as plausible to some as, say, becoming a professional
baseball player or a circus clown. The declaration doesn’t
always go over so well. Detractors may even be sure to
say that the pie-in-the-sky dream sounds sort of silly.
But what each wrestler who makes it through the School
of Hard Knocks has is a relentless reach for the stars.
“If you peel back the bravado, they’ll say,
‘Maybe I won’t make it,’” McGovern
says. “They take shit from their friends. But they
all believe that if you aim high, there is a chance you
might have something happen for you. If you don’t
aim for the top, you sure as hell are not going to get
there.”
You Trade Your Passion for Glory
Some do make it though. Hernandez’s graduates have
wrestled in the World Wrestling Federation, which became
World Wrestling Entertainment, and the now-defunct World
Championship Wrestling. Many of his students stayed with
the Empire Wrestling Federation.
“Anyone who gets in my ring and starts trying it,
it gets in their blood,” Hernandez says. The limelight
is addictive, he says, the adrenaline intoxicating. DK
Murphy, an Irish brute of a wrestler, spent time on the
outside of the ring while recovering from a nearly fatal
wrestling accident.
“That was the worst time of my life,” Murphy
says. Once he got past worrying about actually dying from
his neck injury, his obsession transitioned to getting
back in the ring. The thought of not wrestling again was
the most crippling part of his injury.
Watching the 2009 Mickey Rourke movie The Wrestler depicting
an over-the-hill, achy has-been was a little too real,
Murphy says. “I can’t watch that movie too
much,” he says. It’s too close to what he
knows is a possible reality since he can’t imagine
ever not wrestling.
Face to Face, Out in the Heat
While the stories are made up, the physicality of the
sport is real. Career-ending injuries as well as untimely
deaths are not uncommon in the sport. But wrestlers are
innately crowd pleasers, and they go to great lengths
to work the room.
The fans drive the performances.
“Unlike theater, where there isn’t all that
much direct interaction with the audience, wrestling is
deeply involved with the audience,” McGovern says.
“They are putting on a play with their body.”
One wrestler described it to McGovern as a ballet with
blood and guts.
The wrestling matches get determined by fans. If the
personae don’t enthrall the crowd, they change.
If spectators lose their zeal for a match, someone is
pinned quickly. The twisty narrative feeds off the fervor
of the fans.
“You have to have the crowd behind you, whether
they are booing or cheering you on,” says the green-Spandexed
Mighty Mike Mountain. He loves delving into the psychology
of the crowd interaction. “We get away with being
jerks, talking smack to the kids. At the end of the day,
it’s all about what the people think.”
Have the Guts, Got the Glory
Some people might think the female wrestlers are basically
eye candy, the requisite T&A in an overly masculine
field.
The women will tell you you’re wrong.
Hurricane Havana grew up with 14 older brothers beating
her black and blue. When the modeling agency she worked
for asked her if she was interested in trying out for
a wrestling casting call, she didn’t hesitate. “Once
I started, I couldn’t live without it,” she
says.
Hurricane Havana loves escaping into her tough persona
and lives vicariously through her character. “It’s
a relaxing time for me even though I’m getting beat
up,” she says. “And it’s empowering.
It teaches men there is no way to mess with tough women.”
Her rival Sexy Starrlitt’s snotty spoiled rich-girl
character is tough on the outside, but the performance
is a stretch from her real self. The stay-at-home mom
confesses to being quite shy, and she hasn’t yet
told her 4-year-old son about her moonlighting. “I
don’t want him to think it’s OK to hit women,”
she says. Hurricane Havana and Sexy Starrlitt both wrestle
men and women.
They’re Rising Up, Straight to the Top
Hernandez instills a sense of pride in his students,
men and women, which translates to other areas of their
lives. And for the younger wrestlers, he encourages their
parents not to let them come to practices if their grades
aren’t up to snuff.
The Friar, a lucha libre-style 14-year-old wrestler,
is at the mercy of his report card. To emulate his famous
Mexican wrestler uncle Adonis, the Friar must hit the
books. His father, Alfred Uribe, says the four years of
wrestling his son has experienced boosted his confidence.
The Friar doesn’t tell his school friends about
his other life in the ring, but his cousins know the deal.
They had no idea he ran with such a hip crowd. “I’m
impressed,” says 10-year-old Nicholas Samaniego,
who attended the exhibit with his mom and brother. “He
put in a lot of work.”
As admirers roam through the gallery, the wrestlers work
the crowd. While they indulge fans by putting them in
headlocks or threatening to smack their frappuccinos from
their grips, they break character occasionally to marvel
in the glamour of becoming art exhibit-worthy.
While they are used to the performance art aspect of
the gig, hanging in frames and having their faces immortalized
in books available through Amazon is an all-new type of
high.
“It’s good for the business and good for
what we do,” Mighty Mike Mountain says. “This
is awesome. I’m in total shock and awe,” he
says looking around at the scene, getting a little choked
up. “The Mountain is moved.”
Thomas McGovern’s “Hard Boys + Bad Girls”
solo exhibition at Andi Campognone Projects, 558B W. 2nd
St., Pomona, (909) 629-4500; www.andicampognone.com, www.thomasmcgovern.net.
Thru May 29. By appointment only. For more info about
Inland Empire wrestling, go to www.empirewrestlingfederation.com
or call (909) 886-5201. |
