America needs a straight-faced funny guy who cut
his delicate teeth on Michael Moore’s "TV Nation" as much as it needs an
in-depth investigation into the world of pro wrestling. At 8 p.m. on Friday,
Oct. 1, it’ll get both. The cable channel Bravo airs the debut of the weekly BBC
mockumentary show "Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends," a look at "Nitro" (the
televised blowout wrestling event), the World Championship Wrestling training
center and a group of fans living dangerously close to their
dreams.
Theroux is the son of the travel writer and novelist, Paul
Theroux. In order to experience and profile the strange world of pro wrestling
and its fans, the young TV journalist subjects himself to horrifying spectacles
and even participates in the grueling tryouts at the WCW’s Power Plant in
Florida.
As he arranges his visit to the training center, he stands
nervously interviewing the head trainer, Sarge, asking him a series of pertinent
questions about wrestling (e.g. what it really takes to make it in the business
and how they decide who is going to win on a given night). At one point, Theroux
looks Sarge dead in the eye and asks whether or not he has the potential to be a
WCW wrestler. Theroux’s unabashed, daring approach seems to take Sarge
off-guard. It does the same for Pistol Pez, another burly trainer who welcomes
Theroux with a few painful arm-holds as soon as he arrives.
You don’t
know whether to laugh at Theroux’s ridiculous lines or admire his willingness to
participate in a day of what looks like basic training at Gold’s Gym. After all,
this is no place for a man who refers to himself as "very delicate,
indeed."
If anything can protect Theroux from his bouts with the bizarre,
it’s keeping a cool head and chalking things up to experience - two skills he
seems to have mastered. He’s genteel, but he’s no novice. Some of his other
"Weird Weekend" exploits include a visit to the guard tower of a neo-Nazi
compound in Idaho and cruising the set of a hard-core porn film in the San
Fernando Valley.
We can only hope these experiences have prepared him
well as he heads to North Carolina to meet a troupe of scary amateurs called the
American Independent Wrestling Federation (AIWF), who appear to be much better
at watching wrestling than they are at doing it. AIWF founders Rick Diesel and
Brian Danzig dedicate life and limb to touring high school gyms all over the
South with their bloodsport wrestling matches that amaze and horrify Theroux as
much as they entertain the family audiences who come out to cheer them on.
Danzig, who wears Goth makeup reminiscent of Sting, enjoys showing off the scars
and fresh cuts carved into his forehead by broken razor blades and barbed
wire.
Theroux’s reaction to the AIWF guys is a mix of profound fear and
intrigue. Why do grown men climb into a ring at a high school gym and slam each
other into coils of barbed wire until blood spills? Theroux describes it
matter-of-factly during a live promotional spot on the radio where Diesel is
talking about the evening’s show at the gym: "It’s so extreme that people will
have blood gushing down their faces and their hair will be on fire, is that
right?"
Even though he meets the AIWF on his way to tryouts at the Power
Plant - Theroux’s big chance to see how far his skinny body can go in the ring -
he seems more stumped by the brutal practices of the AIWF than the "real" TV
stuff. The AIWF wrestlers stumble, bloody and punctured, out of the ring toward
the local Waffle House for breakfast. Then they remind Theroux to come back for
an upcoming Extreme Violence match where the wrestlers’ objective is to see how
violent they can be. That means wrestling with arms and fists wrapped in barbed
wire and with no rules of conduct in the ring. Didn’t anyone ever tell these
guys not to try everything they see on TV at home?
By the time Theroux
gets to the Power Plant where he meets his ex-Marine trainer, Sarge, he’s
forgotten the bloody faces of the AIWF wrestlers and seems ready to take on the
ultimate challenge of getting in the ring himself. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t
perform very well. He throws up while running; he does leg exercises until he’s
ready to collapse and tires, his voice screaming, "I’m a cockroach," to his
trainer.
And he can’t even get vomiting right, let alone anything else,
as Sarge booms the command, "Blow chunks!" while he heaves on the
street.
Maybe the Power Plant is a little annoying, maybe the staff takes
itself a little too seriously, always talking in their deepest, most
intimidating wrestler voices and refusing to answer any of Theroux’s questions
that will confirm that the matches are staged. But the bloodletting insanity of
the AIWF makes the WCW look like good clean fun, maybe even the bastion of
athletic ability it claims to be.
Theroux’s investigation offers some
very funny moments while revealing that TV wrestling’s greatest danger isn’t
under the spotlights, but in the mind of the spectator who, as Theroux puts it,
loses his perspective.