From: danm@ether.UUCP (Dan McDonald)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
Subject: CWUSA Old News 1 of 2 (Portland Wrestling)
Keywords: Newspaper Article of Sept.15, 1992
Date: 23 Dec 92 19:21:17 GMT
Organization: Handmade Designs, Salem, OR.

This article is old, but still interesting.  I have now managed time
to enter it into the computer.  I think some of the people interviewed
are now wrestling for CWUSA, but I still can't see it--no cable.

Here's a repeat of my standing offer--anybody who is going or wants to
go and wouldn't mind another, I'll go with you.  Saturday Nights...it's
a trip.

Newspaper article follows...

dan
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Dan McDonald     danm@ether   ...uunet!sequent!ether!danm

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From _The Oregonian_, 9/15/92  Sports Page

_The School of HARD KNOCKS_
by Ken Wheeler of The Oregonian staff.

They seek to start life over by studying pro wrestling.

{large picture by Brent Wojahn} Jim Pope (top) puts the moves on
fellow student Brian Cox with an arm bar during a session at Sandy
Barr's wrestling school.

    Brian Cox still has the letters.  "Box this big full of them,"
he says, as he levels his hands about eight inches apart.
    Those letters don't mean much anymore.  Still, Cox, 22, can't let
them go.  Pieces of promise from yesterday; promises that didn't come
true.
    So here in this wrestling ring on the second floor of a warehouselike
building out on North Marine Drive, the barrel-shaped Cox looks to start
over.
    "My whole life, I wanted to be a professional wrestler," he says. "I'm
here taking a gamble that I'm going to be good."
    There is a great deal at stake for this hulk of a man with a narrow
strip of blond hair and ring in his left ear.  There are more than the
letters back home in Idaho Falls, Idaho.  There are a wife and three
children and a real shortage of hope.
    "My being here has a lot to do with working construction, making $5
an hour and looking down a path going nowhere," Cox says.

                                o

    This evening, the 6-foot-2, 295-pound Cox is one of nine students who
have shown up to be kicked, pummeled and generally slammed around during
two hours of instruction in promoter Sandy Barr's pro wrestling school.
    The cost is $50 a week, with classes either one or two nights.  "They
can find out real quick--within #300--if it's worth their time," Barr says.

                                o

    Cox did not plan to end up here.  "When I was in high school," he says,
"I was geeing offers from colleges everywhere to play football.  Had a
box like this full of letters.  Had offers from schools like USC, Oregon
State, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
    "Twenty-seven schools offered me full rides.  But I was one of those
guys who didn't have the grades, so I was stuck in my hometown.
    "It hurt.  I thought I had the grades.  But I was one of those guys
who screwed around during my freshman, sophomore and junior years.  In
my senior year, I settled down and was in the honor society.  I thought
it was all right.
    "Then when I couldn't get into college, I was disappointed in myself.
Idaho Falls is not a big town, and a lot of people had big expectations
for me.  I was embarrassed for myself and for people like my parents.
There had been all of these coaches coming to my house, and then there
were none."
    But life does go on, and now there is the wife, the 2-year-old twins,
a 3-month-old son and the hurting.  "I'm trying to save enough money to
bring them down here," Cox says of his family, then climbs back into the
ring to try to get hold of his dream.

{Picture on page C5 by Brent Wojahn}  Victor Turnbull works on a flying
drop kick while instructor Sandy Barr (left rear) looks on at pro
wrestling school.

                                o

    Karl Pope of Portland is 29 and the 1-year-old school's success story.
After nine months, he had his first professional match.  And he already
has been to Japan for matches there.
    His brother, Jim, 25, is a classmate.  "Our goal is to be a
championship tag team," says Jim, who at 6-foot-1 and 235 pounds has about
an inch and 10 pounds on his older brother.
    After competing at Franklin High School and Portland State, Karl says,
"I still wanted to wrestle, and I always had been a pro wrestling fan.  We
heard about this school and decided to come see what it was about."

                                o

    Until a few weeks ago, 29-year-old Tim Kinder worked as a counselor
in a group home at Seattle: drug addicts, sex offenders and assorted
other clientele.
    He lived at Olympia, and commuted to Portland for the wrestling school.
"Two weeks ago," says the 6-2, 310-pound bear of a man, "I made the final
commitment."
    He quit his job and moved to Washougal to "work every day of the week"
toward a wrestling career.
    It was not a decision that came easily.  "I'm married and have three
children (ages 9 and 5 years, and 8 months) and another on the way,"
Kinder explains.  "But I've got a really understanding wife and kids, and
I think i can make this work.
    "I want to be as good as I can be, to be a world champ.  My motivation?
It's more to prove things to myself than anything else.  Money comes second,
but hopefully I'll be able to take care of my family."

                                o

    Tim Olsen of Portland, practically square at 5-9 1/2 and 295 pounds,
was a natural for wrestling school.  For six years he has been a bouncer
at various clubs around town, and he has taken body building about as far as
he can.
    "I've dieted for three body-building competitions," he says, "but never
put a foot on the stage.  This (wrestling) is No. 1 with me know.  It's
something I think I'll be good at, and something I enjoy doing."

                                o

    Robert Blair [Dirty White Boy--dlm] is a regular on Barr's Saturday
night wrestling show at the Sports Arena out on North Chautauqua Boulevard.
But this is midweek and Blair doesn't have to annoy the skimpy wrestling
crowd by riding his Harley chopper up to ringside, so he stops by to offer
tips to the hopefuls.
    Later, he sits down amidst the twisted-iron jungle of gym equipoment and
sounds more like a post-graduate instructor.
    He's from Cut And Shoot, Texas, he says, and worked as a stuntman for
Universal Studies in Hollywood for three years until he broke his back in
a motorcycle stunt jumping cars.
    Then he got into wrestling, he says, and he's definitely one of the bad
guys.  "It's the only way to live," he says of the villian role. "We have
all of the fun, get away with more, and get all of the girls.
    "I've been all over the world.  I've been trying to get out of this
godforsaken town ever since I got here, but every time I try to leave, my
motorcycle breaks down and I'm stuck back here in Rain City.
    "As long as I'm stuck here, I might as well see if I can help these guys
get out."

                                o

    Olsen is not the only bar bouncer in the class.  There's 32-year-old
Dan Sharp of Coos Bay, another who brings his bouncing skills to class.
    Sharp has been a millworker and a cook as well as a bouncer for a
couple of years at the Blue Moon Lounge in Coos Bay.  He used to commute
from Coos Bay to Portland for the wrestling school--"about 4.5 hours each
way"--but has lived in Woodburn the past couple of months.
    Sharp knows why he is here.  "I like to get up there and be a show-
off," he says, "like to be the center of attention.  When you are in the
ring, everyone is looking at you."

                                o

    "If it's something you want to do, and you get the chance, you got to
take it," says 29-year-old Andy Ehlers of Oregon City.
    "I'd like to be the evil guy, but I'll probably end up being good,
'cause I'm basically good-hearted.  But being the bad guy kind of brings
out the little kid in you, I guess.
    "I'm in this mostly for self-satisfaction, and I'll take it as far as
it will go."
    And it's much the same for the runt of the class, 23-year-old Victor
Turnbull of Vancouver, Wash., who weighs only 165.
    "Too small?" Turnbull answers back, "I don't think so.  I figure on
working out and getting bigger as time goes on.  Besides, I've wrestled
all these big guys in here and I've taken them all down.
    "It's a rush.  Me being as little as I am and being able to wrestle the
big guys is a thrill for me.  Yeah, I hurt every night when I'm done, but
you learn to deal with it.  Eventually, you get used to the bumps and the
bruises."

                            o

    Class over, the students head into the evening's warm darkness.  The
voice of an auctioneer, working a swap meet on the ground floor at the
other end of the big building,comes softly to the vacant ring.
    Barr hesitantly sizes up the group.  Not all, he admits, are likely to
make it.  But most, he insists, have an honest chance if they have the will.
    And, as Ehlers puts it, "You got a dream, you can either go for it or
sit and wonder."