Smackdown!
If you think pro wrestling is outrageous, you should see the battles that go on among the sport's local promoters
If you think pro wrestling is outrageous, you should see the battles that go on among the sport's local promoters
By Mark Athitakis
published: October 04, 2000
published: October 04, 2000
Excerpt:
Bruce Collins, the Bay Area's other promoter, was blind to all this squabbling when he started his company last year, but it didn't take him long to get embroiled in it. He is a man apart from the White and Alexander model of a promoter -- proud, noisy, and this close to getting really pissed off. Collins, by contrast, is a techie by trade, bespectacled and goateed; instead of talking like he has something to prove, he speaks gently. Pro wrestling was the one connection he had with his late grandfather, Clair Boreman. Collins got his start selling T-shirts parodying well-known wrestlers, and after building up a few contacts, he decided to start his own wrestling promotion. Boreman's Wrestling Planet, he called it, in honor of his grandfather, and he fashioned it in the style of wrestling his grandfather liked -- the no-frills fundamentals with none of the explosions, foulmouthed bickering, and mature-audience content. "I wanted it to be something that everybody in the family could go see," he says. "Today, if you go to the indie shows, they're greatly affected by the WWF and WCW, so much so that now you have guys flipping off little kids in the audience, even when it's a smaller indie promotion."
