El Satanico (front) stares down Chris Ace (back) from across the stage. Photo by Joshua Beech
Joshua Beech – Contributor
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Chris Ace had had enough of El Satanico.
Satanico — a tall and lanky antagonist with a face behind a gruesome red and black mask — had been a spectre haunting the proceedings since they’d begun at dusk. At the beginning of the night he’d accompanied Rekij, another ne’er-do-well, aiding in a dishonest win-over crowd favorite, Johnny Swinger. Since the beginning, everyone seeing this struggle unfold knew that El Satanico was Ultimate Bad, and hopefully Chris Ace would get his chance to best him.
On behalf of the commissioner of Superior Wrestling, who couldn’t be in attendance, Ace — a serious, tattooed tough guy with flowing brown hair — moved to ban Rekij from ringside in an attempt to secure a fair fight later in the main event. That didn’t stop El Satanico from interfering in the three-way match (Stunt Marshall vs. Dusty McWilliams vs. Assassin) that took place immediately afterward, yet again robbing fans of the catharsis of a decisive finish. It looked like McWilliams might have pulled out the big victory, too.
This elemental struggle between the righteous and the profane is the last thing you’d have expected to encounter last Friday, July 8, in the parking lot of Seeds Coffee Company in Homewood, Alabama. To an outsider it is a far cry from the epic scene described above. Professional wrestling is an easy thing to dismiss: the costumes are silly, the action is outlandish and the characters are barely more than living, breathing cartoons.
Those invested, on the other hand, see a primal tale of violence of which they, as audience members, play a considerable part. Crowd participation is an aspect of professional wrestling that those viewing from the outside readily misunderstand. Like a Greek chorus, the spectators react and act as a voice in the show, enhancing the characters with cheers or boos or chants of “You look stupid!”
This is what they yelled at Cameron “Awesome” Johnson, or CJ, a hairless and rotund man with a pink shock of mohawk hanging lifelessly to one side of his tiny head. The crowd was willing to wait and see how this strange looking wrestler behaved before passing judgement, but as soon as he said that the only reason he was fighting in a dump like Birmingham was because of the paycheck, the gloves were off. One fan yelled out, “You look pregnant!” Others cackled around him in derisive laughter as CJ snarled and slapped his belly tauntingly.
“I think they’re hurting his feelings,” said Dana Jaffe, who was being exposed to wrestling for the first time. She unwittingly played her part, as well. After Joe Hogan — a middle-aged wrestler who looks like a sweet uncle — quickly dispatched CJ, Johnson walked away, rightfully shamed, looked at Jaffe, and responded, “They did hurt my feelings.” Whether or not that was true, it would remain to be seen.
This specific level of interaction, a mutable line between fiction and reality, is the lure of wrestling to its fans. They played their part for the show, but they did actually yell at a grown man and tell him he looked stupid, and to be fair, he really did look pretty stupid. Jake Vernon, another newly-exposed attendee, called it “ballet stunt improv comedy.” He “absolutely loved it” and didn’t seem to be afflicted with Jaffe’s sensitivities towards the performers.
Ultimately, Chris Ace did not prevail on his own terms. Even though Rekij had been barred from ringside, El Satanico had another trick up his sleeve in the form of Cameron Johnson, showing up to interfere in the match, ending it on disqualification. It was yet another indecisive finish, but the fans were excited to see this new alliance between Satanico and Johnson, if only because it gave them another chance to taunt and boo at Johnson. He had become a crowd favorite, though you wouldn’t have known it from listening to the crowd, who showed their appreciation by hurling more insults.
Afterward, reality kicked back in and this arena under a crescent moon resumes being a parking lot on a sultry Friday night in Birmingham. Hogan, who is running for mayor of Sylacauga when he isn’t booking dates as a pro wrestler, said there was nothing better than “playing the bad guy,” even though he was hero of the night after defeating “Awesome” Johnson. “You get to go out there and be things and say things and do things that you would never be able to get away with in real life. It’s just so much more fun.”
Chris Ace is Chris Pihakis, a co-founder of Superior Wrestling and one half of its creative nucleus. He was the one who determined who was good, who was bad, and how that characterization was achieved. He was immediately interested in the reaction to the show on social media.
“We got two new likes,” Pihakis said, adding that he was happy with the turnout and the show. At the end, he’d called out El Satanico and challenged him to a match at the next show, which he declared in the ring for the date of August 19. In the “locker room,” he was worried, because they don’t have a venue lined up yet, and if doesn’t happen in August, it won’t happen until March of next year, because according to Pihakis, they are “not competing with football.”
After the match, the date was changed to August 21 and a venue secured at the Trussville Civic Center.
Continuing to look at his phone after changing back into normal blue jeans, he laughed, reading a text he received: “The fat guy trashing Alabama has at least two Alabama tattoos!”
Some of the wrestlers hung out for a bit in the dwindling crowd of the Seeds parking lot as the ring was breaking down, taking pictures and thanking the remaining fans for playing along. Just as the role of fan turns into a performance, so does the performance become entertaining to the wrestlers themselves. Without the fans, there wouldn’t even be a show, and so they always hope to see more at the next one.
