I missed this film first time around, but watched it last night, thanks to Tuffy P who bought a pre-loved copy from the local DVD place. I had heard that Mickey Rourke did a great job, but beyond that knew little about this flick.

What a job pro-wrestling must be – painful passion theatre. Rourke’s character was a star in the 80s and finds himself past his prime, broke and lonely. His dyed brown pretty-boy hair doesn’t begin to disguise the scars of a hard life on the road. This is a beautiful, sad film, brilliantly acted. I really felt for Randy the Ram, too old and beat up for the only world in which he fit in. If you haven’t seen this one, I highly recommend it.

When I was a boy, my father took me and a buddy to see a wrestling match at Varsity Stadium. We had a local villain here who called himself The Sheik He had a sidekick/manager with a fez who was part of his schtick. The Sheik was the evil non-Christian foreigner. That was made clear at the start of every match, when the manager dude would lay down The Sheik’s prayer rug so The Sheik could kneel and pray (to the east, no less). The Sheik always had a foreign object stuck in his shoe. Everyone in the crowd could see it except the referee, who was blind and stupid.

This was a big match. The champion, an American named Dory Funk Jr. came up to Canada to take on our very own evil doer. The crowd tolerated the warm up matches and was on the edge of their seats in anticipation, when The Sheik entered the ring with the goof in the fez, prepared the prayer rug, and knelt to pray.

Mr. Funk was obviously anticipating The Sheik’s dirty tricks and he had some good old American dirty tricks of his own. He jumped into the ring while The Sheik was praying and started beating him about the head with his championship belt. Blood was everywhere. The crowd went wild. I understand Mr. Funk now runs a pro wrestling school.

My father used to tell me he once played poker with some wrestlers. I remember asking him, “Dad, is wrestling fake?” He’d say, “It’s real son…the guy who’s supposed to win always does. Just remember, they ride on the same bus”. My dad told me that the wrestling tour used to have a young guy along as a gofer, and they were trying to integrate him into the show. As Dad would say, “they let him be a crippled kid with crutches. He’d hobble up to the ring with an autograph book before the match, and hold it up for Nanjo Singh to sign. Singh would kick the kid’s crutch out from under him and the kid would tumble to the ground. The crowd went wild.”

Back in those days, we never much thought about what happened to wrestlers when they got old. At least one that I remember became an announcer. When I was a kid, Lord Athol Layton was at the end of his wrestling career and picked up a gig as commentator on the wrestling show on channel 11, out of Hamilton. I remember watching it as a kid on Saturday afternoons. I remember Whipper Billy Watson on the show doing promotions to support handicapped kids. These guys were all the generation before the Randy the Ram character in The Wrestler, but I suppose there were a lot of similarities, and even then, they rode on the same bus.