Everything is Wrestling (to me)

The problem with being a former closeted wrestling fan is that you don’t know where to start with a confession, because I have no gauge other than my one other wrasslin’ loving friend’s reaction as to what’s good and what’s incredibly boring, but I promised you Québec heavy content, so that has to start and end with my father.

I grew up in northern Québec, in a very French city where we couldn’t get all of the toys that the rest of English Canada could because in the 80s, a lot of things wouldn’t even ship to Quebec for very annoying language law issues (I think). This is only important because as I was starting my action figure federation (the roster was actually shared with my friend Mostafa that we spite booked against each other more than WWE and WCW did, but that’s a whole other story) with GI Joes as the jobbers, very few actual wresting figures, and my signature tag team “Black and Blue Bruises,” which was the inspired combination of Mr T and Skeletor. Looking back, they should have been the Bruisers, but I’ll give my younger self a pass on that one.

My dad actually built us a toy ring that was somehow the perfect size for the insane height differences in our very diverse roster(s) with wooden dowels for ring posts , rope and a perfectly square box he stole from my mom’s closet. This was the most he engaged in my fandom until Nitro started playing on the French sports channel (badly dubbed over by local Québécois wrestling personalities including intros and outros of an in studio commentary team consisting of “Bruno,” an honest to goodness sports commentator and a revolving door of local wrestling stars. We’d watch together; not speaking much, just trying to hear Heenan and Schiavone’s banter that the station didn’t care enough to fully mute. “The greatest night in the history of our sport” just doesn’t hit the same in French. I thought he was just humouring me, but years later, I was sure I caught him watching ECW late at night when I’d come home from a night out with friends, which was a thrill, but he turned off the TV and I was too self conscious about my own fandom to get confirmation.

You’d have to be creative to catch wrestling when I was a kid. For some reason a memory that has never faded was when I witnessed Ludvig Borga ending Tatanka’s undefeated streak on a Saturday morning on a furniture store TV while the adults were shopping. Problematic now? Definitely, but such a thrill then.

Without the internet, I didn’t even know there was a local indie until late high school: Jonquiere Championship Wrestling. My mind was blown when I found out that one of the basketball referees of my high school league, was actually the JCW heavyweight champion “Killer Bee.” Why he had an English name, I never was able to find out, but JCW is still going strong, at least according to their website.

After I moved away from home, I completely forgot about my connection with my dad through wrestling until after he passed away in 2006. Going through a bunch of his stuff, I learned so much about this quiet, stoic man that I subconsciously patterned myself off of for years, not the least of which was an 8X10 of a young Ralph (my dad) and none other than Mad Dog Vachon and Baron Von Raschke. Why he never told me about this is a mystery, but it makes me so happy that our bonding over pro wrestling was a two way street, and the evening I came across photo evidence was, for me, truly the greatest night in the history of our sport.