Karch’s broadcast partner, Resnick, immediately chimes in with a rhetorical question: “Oh, 34 years of being a pro wrestling fan and do you think he could pay for a ticket?” He answers it before Karch can butt in. “Steve has been a wrestling fan since he was 7 years old,” he says, “and it’s an honor to have him with us for his first live match tonight.” In the middle of calling the next match, then, he describes what an honor it is having the illustrious journalist Steve Marsh as a very special guest in the booth tonight.
“Hey, I’ll put you over,” he says, using the old carny barker term for provoking the crowd to take a side. Way back before we elected one of these ginormous carny-era relics-I’m speaking about Jesse “The Body” Ventura, of course-for our governor.ĭuring a break in the action, Karch winks at me. Back before a sharpie from New York named Vince McMahon swept in and stole the show. Back when the best wrestling talent in the world was developed here in Minnesota. It feels like we’ve fallen 50 years into pro wrestling’s past, back to a time just before Verne Gagne and his AWA reinvented the national wrestling landscape. The lights look dimmer than they do on TV, and the performers appear both younger and older than the brutes who star in today’s nearly billion-dollar major-league wrestling promotion, the WWE.
AWA WRESTLERS PROFESSIONAL
Tonight marks my first time attending a live professional wrestling match. The other starred a masked luchador-style wrestler named Airwolf, who used his acrobatic moves to upset a much larger rival. We’re a quarter of the way through the eight-match card, and so far he has breathlessly called a couple of humdingers: one where a good guy switched into a baddie-a classic “heel turn”-in the middle of a match. Since 1998, Karch has been working for a Lakeville-based promotion called Steel Domain Wrestling. Even Hulk Hogan became Hulk Hogan in the AWA. That’s where we all used to watch Nick Bockwinkel and Jesse The Body, Mad Dog Vachon and Baron von Raschke. Karch was the last play-by-play announcer for the old American Wrestling Association: the locally based league owned by Verne Gagne that gave us All-Star Wrestling, which aired Saturday mornings on Channel 11. I’m sitting at the announcer’s table, a special guest of tonight’s broadcast team: play-by-play man “Slick” Mick Karch and color man Ken Resnick. They seem to be in constant danger of launching themselves right through the drop ceiling. In the ring at the center of the room, men in neon tights fling each other against the ropes. Half these guys have kids in tow they’re also wearing T-shirts emblazoned with ’80s-era wrestlers. The room is half full, mostly middle-aged dudes in jeans and T-shirts emblazoned with ’80s-era wrestlers like Ric Flair and “Macho Man” Randy Savage. Inside this old banquet hall in Bloomington, the air conditioning roars. Illustration collage of Minnesota wrestlers
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