Sunday was Father’s Day, a day for which we pay tribute to the man that placed the seed inside our mothers, helping in creating our respective lives…
…unless your dad is a piece of shit. Then we don’t pay tribute to him, and carry on with life.
Anyhow, seeing as we’re in the aftermath of Daddy’s Day, I thought I would honor my dad:
Dwane Richard Iron.
My dad hates wrestling.
Or so he’d like you to believe.
Truth be told, I’m not really sure if my dad loves, or even likes wrestling. Quite frankly, sometimes I wonder if the guy even gets it– something which I’ll elaborate on shortly.
Some of my earliest memories of wrestling are watching it with my dad on Sunday mornings, during the WWF Superstars/Wrestling Challenge double shot that aired on WOIO Channel 19 in Cleveland. I vividly remember him often throwing me playfully on to his king sized bed, delivering a series of bodyslams, hip tosses, and his favorite, “The Razor’s Edge,” a variation of the powerbomb executed by Razor Ramon.
As I got older and progressively more obsessed with all things pro wrestling, my dad drifted away from it. During the “New Generation” of the WWF and the rise of the “Big Boys” in WCW, my dad hardly watched. When he did, all he did was comment on how he couldn’t believe that I was still watching “that fake shit.”
In 1997, my mom and dad seperated. I had to live with my mom, only getting to see my dad on the weekends. One particular weekend, I had brought over a Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazine. As I was combing through the pages, I heard my dad yell, “Hey, turn the page back a sec.” I didn’t realize it, but he’d been browsing the pages along with me the entire time. I did as he asked, flipping back to the previous page.
“Hey, that’s Shane Douglas from ECW,” dad said. “And that guy right there is Taz. He’s a bad boy, you don’t wanna mess with him.”
Though I often read PWI, I glossed over anything that wasn’t WWF or WCW related. So, I had to ask.
“ECW— what’s ECW?”
“ECW is Extreme Championship Wrestling,” dad began. “It comes on Channel 35 late at night. Those guys beat the shit out of each other with chairs and tables and everything. It’s real wrestling, not like that phony WWF shit you watch.”
In retrospect, it’s hilarious that my dad actually believed that ECW was real. At the time, though, I didn’t know any better. I needed to see what this “real” wrestling was all about. So, late on Saturday nights, my dad was the one that first exposed me to ECW. Channel 35 was a local station that didn’t come in very good at all. More often than not, my dad would be sitting on the couch watching it with a beer in a hand, while I stood next to the TV, fiddling with the bunny ear attennas in an effort to make the static on the screen dissipate.
Dad didn’t really get into the WWF ever again, but he did enjoy “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Being a blue collar, beer swilling, foul mouthed S.O.B., dad could relate to The Texas Rattlesnake. In fact, though he never actually bought it (when he was a custodian for the Cleveland Public School System, he found it in some kid’s locker at the end of the summer), my dad frequently wore a Austin 3:16 sweater, that just had an ice blue “3:16″ logo with beads of water dripping from it. Very fashionable.
Dad wasn’t exactly happy once I entered wrestling, but he followed what I did and occasionally attended shows. I was real excited after one show for Absolute Intense Wrestling in Cleveland. On this show, I teamed with Colt Cabana, who I’ve always enjoyed and look up. That night, Cleveland’s own Dolph Ziggler was in the crowd, and he tweeted that night about how Colt and myself make a great team. Needless to say, I was pumped.
Later that month, my dad ordered the Survivor Series on pay per view. While watching the pre-show match, dad just kept talking about how phony everything looked. To try to shut him up, I told him how Ziggler recently tweeted about me. “Good for you,” he said, brushing it off as if he didn’t care. Later that night, Ziggler, who was a heel at the time, had a match on the PPV.
Dad stared at the screen disgusted as Dolph made his way to the ring. I stared at dad confused. “What? What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, maintaining a displeased facial expression. “This is the guy you want sticking up for you?!”
I stared through him, stunned. “Huh,” was the only word I could get out of my mouth.
“This guy is a dickhead,” dad said, getting up out of his chair with disstain to grab another beer.
I started laughing. This guy, who just a half hour earlier was mocking wrestling and it’s realism, was now utterly pissed simply by the entrance of a pro wrestling bad guy that might have had some sort of influence over his son. Incredible.
A month or two ago, I had a show in Lakewood, Ohio for Olde Wrestling, and my dad decided to get off of his ass to come watch. I was in a tag match that evening and unfortunately, I lost. My dad had skipped out early that night, so I called him up the next day to see if he enjoyed himself.
“Yea, it was a pretty good show,” he said. “But I didn’t like those guys kicking your ass.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed as I continued pressing the phone against my ear. “I assure you, I’m fine.”
“You know what I did to those guys?” Dad asked.
“Wait.. what did you do?!” I asked.
“Well, I didn’t like what those guys did to you, so after you walked to the back and they got out of the ring, I walked to the front row, stuck my foot out, and tripped those assholes.”
All I could do was shake my head in disbelief.
Wrestling— real phony, huh dad?
I wouldn’t trade you for any dad in the world. I love ya, pops.
-Greg
