EVANSVILLE, Indiana — Local teenager Dave Smith hauled carloads of kids to the Soldiers and Sailors War Memorial Coliseum every week in the early 1950s to watch live wrestling. Now 74 years old, Smith still rarely misses a match and gets a $2 senior discount on the $10 admission.
Before wrestling became a TV business, every big name did battle at the Coliseum — Steve Austin and Randy Savage among them. For some locals, that excitement never faded.
Every Wednesday night, fans of the scripted but nonetheless brutal violence line up outside the Coliseum an hour before showtime. Though it's unlikely to sell out, the premium seats fill up fast. In line, people greet each other by name and swap jokes. Many, like Smith, are longtime fans if not quasi-lifers.
"The Coliseum has 882 seats, and I would love to see them full," says wrestler Buzz Dupp, a Nashville transplant to Evansville. "I know I won’t make the WWE [World Wrestling Entertainment] or TNA [Total Nonstop Action] but I would love to wrestle when this place is full. It has a lot of history."
The wrestlers themselves range from students of the Jamie Dundee School of Wrestling, also held at the Coliseum, to independent contractors who battle their way from small towns to large cities three or four nights a week. Named wrestlers can earn up to $400 a night, while the others can earn as little as $5. Many are college students or have part-time jobs.
Spectators at the Coliseum are rarely more than a few rows away from the action, and at least once during the night there is a good chance the fight will spill out into the crowd. The metal barrier and security people are there to protect the wrestlers from enthusiastic fans as much as the other way around. The venue's relatively small size is a crowd pleaser, even if the wrestlers would prefer to see a bigger draw.
This is the life that was portrayed so unforgivingly in 2008's The Wrestler, which brought renewed attention and interest to untelevised matches like those at the Coliseum. Some wrestlers feel that the movie gave away too much. Sometimes "smart marks" will call out a wrestler's next moves and burst the bubble of disbelief, while other fans expect a level of physical abuse that some of the more extreme scenes in the movie portray. But because of these details, the movie nails the dedication and hardship that the sport requires of the athletes.
They don't ever expect to be featured on Friday Night SmackDown, win a Slammy Award or — in some cases — even get paid, but they show up every week and give it their all. Come take a peek into some of the grueling, outrageous and ultimately charming hometown heroes of our favorite theatrical medium.
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Die-Hard Fans
It is an hour before the doors open and another half-hour before the wrestling begins, but Joni Cundiff, Ann Kratzer and Penny Lowe are there to be sure they get a front row seat. CCW stands for Coliseum Championship Wrestling. Built in 1916, the Coliseum is also home to the Downtown Rotary Club and Demolition City Roller Derby, one of the two flat-track roller-derby teams in the city.
