August 21, 2023 • 21 mins
Ron welcomes host of Wrestling Observer Live Bryan Alvarez to the podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Ron Barr, and this is today's edition of
Ron Barr's Sports Byline USA podcast on the eight Side Network.
Brian Alvarez joins us on Sports Byline. He's the host
of the very respected Wrestling Observer Live, which has heard
weekdays and Sundays on the Sports Byline USA Broadcast Networks,
and it really is the bible for pro wrestling fans
around the world. And he takes calls bantering with an
(00:23):
eclectic batch of listeners from California to Wisconsin to India.
And Brian has said, your general wrestling fan is a
lot like me, So describe to me, Brian that fan.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
To me, well, your general wrestling fan is around forty
years old. They're obviously a lot of kids watching, a
lot of older individuals watching, But if you looked at
the vast majority, if you looked at the if you
look at your average wrestling fan, they're probably right around
forty years old. And they started watching wrestling its kids
(00:58):
in the eighties and they grew up with it, they
saw the ups and downs, and here they are in
twenty fifteen. Many of them have kids, their kids are
now watching wrestling with them, and it's not exact. But
I remember when I was in my early twenties, we
would always get the demographic breakdowns, and the average wrestling
(01:19):
fan was right around my age then. And every year
when we get the average demographic breakdown the age of
these wrestling fans, it's always right around my age and
it's continued that way. So there's a lot of people
just like me that started watching certain guys and we're
still watching it here today.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
What is the overriding appeal of that entertainment sport? Because
I remember when I was young, I happened to be
working at a concession area in a park in West Virginia,
and I remember gorgeous George coming through town and wrestling
and the fervor that I would see in the stands
as I was selling popcorn and peanuts. And even today,
if you happen to go buy a wrestling channel or
(01:56):
a show, you have to stop. It's almost addictive. But
what is the overriding appeal?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, you know, I don't worry too much about someday
not having a job covering wrestling, because no matter what
happens with wrestling, the idea of being able to see
two people who don't like each other get in a
fight is something that we've had as a civilization and
enjoyed from the very beginning and probably until the very end.
(02:25):
I mean, if the analogy, I don't remember who first
said this, I'm sure a million people have said it.
If you have a basketball game or a baseball game
or whatever, and a fight breaks out, all of a sudden,
everybody's paying attention because people are fighting, And that's really
what pro wrestling is. It is it's not real like
(02:45):
UFC or mixed martial arts, but when you're a wrestling fan,
it's really fun to pretend that it is real, and
you get wrapped up in the characters. And maybe you've
got a certain person that you like because they kind
of remind you of yourself, and there are other characters
that you don't like because maybe they remind you of
somebody that you don't like. And so then the opportunity
(03:06):
comes where the person that kind of reminds you of
yourself gets to fight this person that reminds you of
someone you don't like, and you live vicariously through it,
and you create rivalries and storylines, and these characters are
larger than life. They do things that normal people can't do,
and so it's a fun escape to see things that
you just can't see really anywhere else.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
You certainly have a credibility, and one of the reasons
for it is is that you're more than just a fan.
You wrestled professionally throughout the Northwest. Who gave you the
name Chico the promoter? His name was Tim Flowers, And
the very first match that I wrestled for him, somebody
didn't show up and I had been a referee, and
(03:50):
so I was refereeing shows, and he said, okay, listen,
I know you've wrestled a couple times elsewhere, so somebody
didn't show up for the first match. What I want
you to do because we still needed a referee later,
So to make sure that the fans don't know who
you are, we're going to have you wrestle in a mask.
And he gave me a Mexican wrestling match, and he
said you're going to be I don't know. He said,
(04:12):
come up with a name. So since I was wearing
a mask and it was going to be a one
time only thing, I was like, well, I don't know
a lot of Spanish, even though my last name is Alvarez,
so how about Super Chico super Boy because I was
very skinny back then, so they announced me as Super
Chico and I went out there and I wrestled the match,
(04:32):
and apparently, I mean, he really liked it, because I
ended up I ended up getting work after that. But
after the match was over, I ran backstage. I took
off all my wrestling stuff, I put my refereeing stuff,
and I ran to the ring so I could referee
the next match. And the idea was nobody's going to
know that this referee wrestled in the first match, but
(04:53):
they all knew immediately, and as soon as I got
in the ring, they started chanting Chico at me because
I knew I had been Super Chico in the opening match,
and I thought it was kind of funny. And then afterwards,
when Tim was talking to me about doing more wrestling
for him, I was like, Hey, that'd be great, you know,
I'd like to go. It is just my real name,
Brian Elvarez, and he goes, no way, buddy. They all
chanted Chico, your Chico from now on, and I was like,
(05:16):
oh god, I don't want to be Chico.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
There's a terrible name. But nobody ever chanted Brian. They
only chanted Chico. So at the end of the day,
this guy knew what he was talking about, but it
wasn't a name that I wanted at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, you said you didn't like that name. And all
of this fascination with wrestling started in your childhood. You
were just eleven. Tell me about what you did. You know,
I don't know how your mom put up with it,
but you used to videotape yourself as you grappled at
sixteen years old. You'd put things, you had friends come
in and everything. You put the couch cushions on the
floor pick it up from there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I was actually earlier than that. I started watching when
I was ten or eleven years old. My grandmother had
moved in and she was Mexican. She spoke no English
and she would sit on the couch every day and
she would just say lucha and I had no idea
what this meant, and so I asked my dad and
he said, she wants to watch wrestling because she was
a wrestling fan, and we didn't have any Lucha libre
(06:12):
on television here in Washington. So I just put onwe
Wrestling and she'd watch it every day. And at first
I was like, oh God, we got to watch wrestling.
And then after a while I kind of started to
get into it. And one thing is whenever I start
to really get interested in something, I want to do it. Like,
if I've been reading a bunch of great books, I
want to write a book. If I here I was
watching wrestling, I wanted to be a wrestler. And so, yeah,
(06:33):
my friends and I we started out just what I
im met a video camera and we laid out all
of these mattresses and we would just film ourselves having
these terrible matches. I was probably like thirteen, fourteen years old,
and it escalated from there. We got a job at
a gymnastics place that had a spring floor, and the
next thing you know, we're doing matches on their spring floor.
And then I'm going to try and get public access
(06:55):
television and we're doing this weekly television show that we
shot at the gymnastics place. And I mean we were
full bore all into it by fourteen fifteen, sixteen years old.
And my parents all they ever said was just don't
get hurt. And I think they just kind of figured
there's a lot of terrible things this kid could be doing.
All he's doing is wrestling, so he may as well
(07:16):
just let him go out and wrestle and have fun.
And that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I know you were wrestling. Did you go back to
referering after a little bit of time, because you did say.
I have a quote here. You said a guy didn't
show up, so you stepped in to take his place,
and it was absolutely the most horrible match you ever saw,
complete disaster.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah. I first, there were two promotions that I was
refereeing for, and the first one was nineteen ninety seven.
I was wrestling for a guy, or I was refereeing
for a guy named Dave Debashi, and I had done
all sorts of wrestling, but I'd never done like a
supposed a real show in a real ring. So I
was refereeing for this guy and that was the day
(07:57):
that somebody didn't show up and he told me, you know,
can you you wrestle on this show? And I did
and that was the horrible match, and so he still
wanted me to wrestle again, which I didn't understand, but
I was like, okay, great. And then later there was
the other guy, Tim, who was also running shows, and
he wasn't sure. He wanted me to wrestle, so he
had me referee as well. So I started in two
different promotions as a referee, and in both promotions the
(08:20):
promoter eventually came to me after someone didn't show up
and they said, can you work a quick match tonight?
And after I did, they ended up giving me a
job as a wrestler.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
What were the programs the cards like when you were
wrestling and back then, because it's a lot different now
it's slick, it's produced and everything, But what were the
locations like, the fans like during the wrestling matches and everything.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, it was very much like what you would see
today if you went to a local show. They were
small buildings. We wrestled in a lot of There was
a Cloverdale Fairgrounds where we ran a lot of shows.
It was in British Columbia, and that's exactly what it was.
It was the fairgrounds and they just chose one of
(09:03):
the empty buildings and there were bleachers in there and
they set up a or a ring in the middle
and we would have matches and they would run every
single month in the Cloverdale Fairgrounds. And essentially I wrestled
like in the B and I Marketplace in Tacoma, which
was like a it was a marketplace, and they would
put a ring up in the parking lot and people
would show up in the parking lot and surround the
(09:24):
ring standing and we would do matches there in the outdoors.
There was a point in the late nineties early two
thousands when wrestling was just on fire, like it was
actually a cool thing to be a wrestling fan. For
a very brief period of time, during the Monday Night
wars and when wrestling was popular, all of these little
(09:44):
local events that I was working at, all of a
sudden there were six seven hundred people showing up. And
so after a while, instead of these little tiny buildings,
they were running in the Temple Theater in Tacoma, which
was a really nice theater and it was like a
ballroom and they would put the the wrestling ring in
the middle of the ballroom and it's a very nice building.
And also they ran in the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall
(10:09):
or something like that, which I mean, if you follow
a lot of independent pro wrestling, the idea of running
in the Tacoma Dome exhibition Hall. It was huge, and
you know, we were all just kind of blown away, like, Wow,
we're in the Tacoma Dome right now wrestling these matches.
But it ran the gamut. I mean most of them
were small buildings elks, lodges for example, and places like
(10:29):
that where you get maybe one hundred two hundred people.
But during the peak around this area, we would get
six seven hundred people at the Temple Theater every single
it was usually once a month. They would run the
shows on like a Friday or Saturday night and it
would be packed.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Brian hold on just a second. Brian Alvarez is with
us again, the host of Wrestling Observer Live. You can
hear it weekdays and also on Sundays on the Sports
Byline USA Broadcast Networks. We continue with more of you
in Sports Byline. You're listening to Ron Barr's Sports Byline
US Say podcast. Brian Albarez is with us here on
Sports Byline USA again, the very best pro wrestling show
(11:07):
anywhere in the world, and it is heard worldwide the
American Forces Network, also Serious XM iHeartRadio, and right here
on the Sports Byline USA Broadcast Networks. Again, you can
hear it weekdays and also on Sundays. I want to
stick with the fans for just a second, because I
have a quote from you. You said, wrestling fans and
fans of the paranormal are very much alike. You don't
(11:28):
go up to your friends and say, hey, I think
I saw Bigfoot. This is just like wrestling fans. You
don't talk about your wrestling fandom to your buddies. You
like something that isn't cool in the mainstream. Is it
hard to be a wrestling fan?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well, it depends if you have friends who are wrestling fans.
If all of your buddies are wrestling fans, it's pretty
easy because he had something to talk about. But I mean,
when I go out in the real world, so to speak,
and somebody wants to talk to me about wrestling, it's
always kind of like, oh man, this is not gonna
end well, because you know exactly what's going to go.
They're going to say, hey, I hear you right about wrestling.
That's right. You know it's fake. Yes, I'm well aware
(12:07):
that it's fake now, and then you know they're asking
these questions and it's just it's it's it's hard to
be a wrestling fan because it's not. It's certainly not
if talking about football, certainly not talking about baseball where
everybody can talk about it and they're into it and
it's cool and everybody hangs out. I mean, it's it's
a fringe. It's it's a very fringe. I mean it's
(12:28):
it's it's way easier to talk about like video games nowadays,
and it is pro wrestling, and it's it's, uh, it
can be hard, but.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I it's it's, it's, it's it. The reason I made
the Paranormal comparison is because I do another show on
the Paranormal. And I did it because I was a
fan of Art Bell. I was just gonna do it
for fun. It was going to be a bonus on
our website. If you're a Wrestling Observer dot com subscriber,
you're also going to get this show. And I thought
I'd do it. Maybe no one's gonna listen. I don't care.
(12:59):
You know, I'm not charging them any extra. It's going
along with their subscription. If they don't like it, they
don't have to listen. But I want to do it.
So I did it, and the next thing I know,
I'm flooded with people saying, oh my god, this show's great,
and these are all the wrestling fans, and I thought, man,
that's kind of interesting. And the next thing you know,
it's it's one of the most listened to shows on
the wrestling website. And it's for the very same reason
(13:22):
if you believe, not not necessarily even if you believe,
but if you're interested in the paranormal, if you're interested
in UFOs or Bigfoot, luckness, monster ghosts, whatever, you believe
they're werewolves.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I mean, this is not something you just discussed with
people over over a casual dinner conversation. They would think
you're crazy. And so if you're interested in this stuff,
you kind of keep it to yourself. And it's very
much like being a wrestling fan. And I was very
interested to see that there is a there is quite
the tie in between fans of pro wrestling and fans
of the paranormal. Just two fringe things that people don't
(13:59):
get a lot of opportunity to talk about with their friends,
but hey, they can listen to it on the radio.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
You decided to come over to the dark side. I
say that being the media, of course, and you partnered
with Dave Meltzer. That's been a very special partnership. Take
me back to the beginning of it.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Well, I first met. I mean, I'd been reading The
Observer for a long time, and I was doing my
own newsletter, and I had a nine hundred line that
I started up because I needed a way to make
money because we weren't getting a ton of subscribers, and
to cut to the chase, I went in debt on
this nine hundred line because of the way that the
(14:37):
nine hundred lines were set up at the time, and
so I essentially had to shut the thing down. Essentially,
there was a kid that called and he rang up
this huge phone bill and his parents decided they didn't
want to pay it, and they had no legal obligation
to pay it, and so the bill fell in my lap.
And so I shut this line down. And Dave also
had a nine hundred line, and so I sent Dave
(15:00):
Meltzer a fax and I said, I had this line.
I had to shut it down. I know you've got
four or five options on your nine hundred line, like
press one for day, press, two for Bruce, press three
for whatever. I said, I'd be happy to come over
if you'd like, and he said sure, So I started
doing a segment on his nine hundred line, and a
(15:22):
little while later, probably a year or two later, he
got the job doing EADA dot com, which was really
the first internet based radio station. It was only available
on the internet, and so he had a two hour
show daily, and I guess the first show was rough.
(15:42):
It was a it was a rough go. And so
he essentially called me and he said, how would you
like to come on for the first twenty minutes and
We'll bounce the news back and forth and then I'll
either have a guest on or I'll take calls or whatever.
And I said sure. So I started doing the first
two minutes of his show every day and I would
I would go from three to three thirty Pacific and
(16:04):
then I would I would jump in the car and
I would drive to go coach gymnastics because I had
That's how I was making my money at the time,
was I was. I was teaching gymnastics, and I did
this for I don't even know how long, and eventually
my I guess my gymnastics schedule change or something like that,
and I had the opportunity to do the full two
hours with him every single day. So I was doing
five days a week as Dave's co host, making no money,
(16:27):
and I did this for I don't know a year
or two and finally they started paying me, and that
was pretty much I mean, I loved it before I
got paid, but it was even better when I got paid.
But that was how it began. And then eventually, after
YadA folded, we came over to Sports Byline and we
did that together for I don't know six seven years
(16:50):
until he got the job doing MMA reporting at Yahoo.
And once he got that job, he didn't have time
to do the Observer live anymore, and so I took
it over and I've been doing it ever since. So
I've been going NonStop on Sports Byline since two thousand
and one, I think YEP might have been a year
or two later. And I've been doing radio since nineteen
(17:10):
ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, I can only tell you that when the idea
was presented to us to add this programming to our networks,
I was kind of skeptical, but Darren Peck, the president
of the network, said now, this is going to be
something good, and he was absolutely right. I think it's
one of the greatest shows I've heard on our network.
And I'm very proud of the work you guys have done.
Let me ask you, since we only have a couple
minutes left, about the state of pro wrestling today. It's
(17:34):
obviously very slickly presented, and where do you see it
today and where might it be saying five or ten years.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
It's so hard to say because the one thing I
can tell you about pro wrestling is the future of
pro wrestling is entirely dependent on decisions made by people
who run television companies. Right now, WWE is on USA
Network every Monday night for three hours, and come twenty sixteen,
(18:02):
smack Down, their other show, is going to be another
two hours every single week on USA And as long
as they've got USA Network, they're gonna be fine, because
you've got to have strong national television to be successful.
But if the day comes where the USA Network decides,
you know what, I don't think we're in this pro
wrestling thing anymore. And it's been great working with you, WWE,
(18:25):
but that's it. We're severing ties and they can't find
anything resembling the deal that they've got right now, pro
wrestling could immediately be in a lot of trouble, and
granted it would take a long time to sink it.
Because WWE has I mean, they make hundreds of millions
of dollars a year, They've got the WWE network that
over a million people subscribe to. They would last for
(18:45):
quite a while afterwards. But like all of the other
wrestling companies, Impact Wrestling, Ring of Honor, Luca Underground, they
are all one hundred percent dependent on their television deal.
And on the flip side, if some crazy wealthy guy,
let's say Donald Trump decides I'm going to buy a
television network and I want pro wrestling to be the
(19:07):
prime time highlight of this network, I mean whatever promotion
he chooses is going to explode. So it's all about TV.
That's just the way it is. And it's impossible to
say where things will be in five years or even
ten years. Things change so fast, but it'll all be
built around television. We got about ninety seconds left, Brian.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I'm just wondering when you take a look at the
athletes and I think they're incredible, I don't know how
you jump off the top rung of a ring and
you look at the storylines, are they ever going to
run out of them? And are the athletes always going
to be there in your mind, and what's their motivation
for doing it?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Motivation is usually money. I mean, a lot of them
love it. But you can make a very very good
living in WWE. And there will always be people that
want to be pro wrestlers always. There will always be
people that want to get in there and not have
a real job. As a lot of people say, and
I'm not too worried about the future of wrestling in
terms of talent.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
In about about ninety seconds or sixty seconds, tell me, uh,
what's the funniest thing that you've heard over the years
and covering this entertainment sport.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Oh man, it's a cheap plug, but I'm gonna do
it anyway. If you're a wrestling fan and you've been
for a while, go by the Death of w CW,
which is the story of the rise and fall of
World Championship Wrestling, and read the chapter on the year
two thousand. It was the worst year in the history
of professional wrestling anywhere anywhere. The stories you will read
(20:29):
in that chapter, you you will you will presume this
must they must all be made up, But every single
one of them is true. The year two thousand WCW
it's it's unbelievable the stupid.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Decisions that were made, such as, oh man, they had everything.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
They had storylines where guys would go into the ring
and uh, the storyline was that they were having a
fake match on a wrestling show, Like how can you
go into it? Was it was unbelievable, the things that
they would do in WCW. It's just it was crazy.
Every every bad decision you could make, they made. Well.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I want to thank you very much for your time,
and also we're proud to have you a part of
those Sports Byline USA broadcast family of shows. Thanks a lot, Brian,
take care my friend. Thanks so much again. I want
to urge everybody to check it out. It's entertaining, it's informative,
it's a very special show, and you can hear it
weekdays and also Sundays on the Sports Byline lineup of networks,
whether it be our Radio Networks Worldwide, the Armed Forces Network,
(21:24):
or even iHeartRadio Stitcher tune in. It's Wrestling Observer Live
and Ryan Alvarez is the host of that show and
very interesting life. Rarely do you hear of somebody being
a wrestler or a referee. And now broadcaster on the
sport of pro wrestling. We continue with more of you
in Sports Byline. You have been listening to Ron Bar's
Sports Byline USA podcast on the eight Side Network
Hi, I'm Ron Barr, and this is today's edition of
Ron Barr's Sports Byline USA podcast on the eight Side Network.
Brian Alvarez joins us on Sports Byline. He's the host
of the very respected Wrestling Observer Live, which has heard
weekdays and Sundays on the Sports Byline USA Broadcast Networks,
and it really is the bible for pro wrestling fans
around the world. And he takes calls bantering with an
(00:23):
eclectic batch of listeners from California to Wisconsin to India.
And Brian has said, your general wrestling fan is a
lot like me, So describe to me, Brian that fan.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
To me, well, your general wrestling fan is around forty
years old. They're obviously a lot of kids watching, a
lot of older individuals watching, But if you looked at
the vast majority, if you looked at the if you
look at your average wrestling fan, they're probably right around
forty years old. And they started watching wrestling its kids
(00:58):
in the eighties and they grew up with it, they
saw the ups and downs, and here they are in
twenty fifteen. Many of them have kids, their kids are
now watching wrestling with them, and it's not exact. But
I remember when I was in my early twenties, we
would always get the demographic breakdowns, and the average wrestling
(01:19):
fan was right around my age then. And every year
when we get the average demographic breakdown the age of
these wrestling fans, it's always right around my age and
it's continued that way. So there's a lot of people
just like me that started watching certain guys and we're
still watching it here today.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
What is the overriding appeal of that entertainment sport? Because
I remember when I was young, I happened to be
working at a concession area in a park in West Virginia,
and I remember gorgeous George coming through town and wrestling
and the fervor that I would see in the stands
as I was selling popcorn and peanuts. And even today,
if you happen to go buy a wrestling channel or
(01:56):
a show, you have to stop. It's almost addictive. But
what is the overriding appeal?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Well, you know, I don't worry too much about someday
not having a job covering wrestling, because no matter what
happens with wrestling, the idea of being able to see
two people who don't like each other get in a
fight is something that we've had as a civilization and
enjoyed from the very beginning and probably until the very end.
(02:25):
I mean, if the analogy, I don't remember who first
said this, I'm sure a million people have said it.
If you have a basketball game or a baseball game
or whatever, and a fight breaks out, all of a sudden,
everybody's paying attention because people are fighting, And that's really
what pro wrestling is. It is it's not real like
(02:45):
UFC or mixed martial arts, but when you're a wrestling fan,
it's really fun to pretend that it is real, and
you get wrapped up in the characters. And maybe you've
got a certain person that you like because they kind
of remind you of yourself, and there are other characters
that you don't like because maybe they remind you of
somebody that you don't like. And so then the opportunity
(03:06):
comes where the person that kind of reminds you of
yourself gets to fight this person that reminds you of
someone you don't like, and you live vicariously through it,
and you create rivalries and storylines, and these characters are
larger than life. They do things that normal people can't do,
and so it's a fun escape to see things that
you just can't see really anywhere else.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
You certainly have a credibility, and one of the reasons
for it is is that you're more than just a fan.
You wrestled professionally throughout the Northwest. Who gave you the
name Chico the promoter? His name was Tim Flowers, And
the very first match that I wrestled for him, somebody
didn't show up and I had been a referee, and
(03:50):
so I was refereeing shows, and he said, okay, listen,
I know you've wrestled a couple times elsewhere, so somebody
didn't show up for the first match. What I want
you to do because we still needed a referee later,
So to make sure that the fans don't know who
you are, we're going to have you wrestle in a mask.
And he gave me a Mexican wrestling match, and he
said you're going to be I don't know. He said,
(04:12):
come up with a name. So since I was wearing
a mask and it was going to be a one
time only thing, I was like, well, I don't know
a lot of Spanish, even though my last name is Alvarez,
so how about Super Chico super Boy because I was
very skinny back then, so they announced me as Super
Chico and I went out there and I wrestled the match,
(04:32):
and apparently, I mean, he really liked it, because I
ended up I ended up getting work after that. But
after the match was over, I ran backstage. I took
off all my wrestling stuff, I put my refereeing stuff,
and I ran to the ring so I could referee
the next match. And the idea was nobody's going to
know that this referee wrestled in the first match, but
(04:53):
they all knew immediately, and as soon as I got
in the ring, they started chanting Chico at me because
I knew I had been Super Chico in the opening match,
and I thought it was kind of funny. And then afterwards,
when Tim was talking to me about doing more wrestling
for him, I was like, Hey, that'd be great, you know,
I'd like to go. It is just my real name,
Brian Elvarez, and he goes, no way, buddy. They all
chanted Chico, your Chico from now on, and I was like,
(05:16):
oh god, I don't want to be Chico.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
There's a terrible name. But nobody ever chanted Brian. They
only chanted Chico. So at the end of the day,
this guy knew what he was talking about, but it
wasn't a name that I wanted at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, you said you didn't like that name. And all
of this fascination with wrestling started in your childhood. You
were just eleven. Tell me about what you did. You know,
I don't know how your mom put up with it,
but you used to videotape yourself as you grappled at
sixteen years old. You'd put things, you had friends come
in and everything. You put the couch cushions on the
floor pick it up from there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I was actually earlier than that. I started watching when
I was ten or eleven years old. My grandmother had
moved in and she was Mexican. She spoke no English
and she would sit on the couch every day and
she would just say lucha and I had no idea
what this meant, and so I asked my dad and
he said, she wants to watch wrestling because she was
a wrestling fan, and we didn't have any Lucha libre
(06:12):
on television here in Washington. So I just put onwe
Wrestling and she'd watch it every day. And at first
I was like, oh God, we got to watch wrestling.
And then after a while I kind of started to
get into it. And one thing is whenever I start
to really get interested in something, I want to do it. Like,
if I've been reading a bunch of great books, I
want to write a book. If I here I was
watching wrestling, I wanted to be a wrestler. And so, yeah,
(06:33):
my friends and I we started out just what I
im met a video camera and we laid out all
of these mattresses and we would just film ourselves having
these terrible matches. I was probably like thirteen, fourteen years old,
and it escalated from there. We got a job at
a gymnastics place that had a spring floor, and the
next thing you know, we're doing matches on their spring floor.
And then I'm going to try and get public access
(06:55):
television and we're doing this weekly television show that we
shot at the gymnastics place. And I mean we were
full bore all into it by fourteen fifteen, sixteen years old.
And my parents all they ever said was just don't
get hurt. And I think they just kind of figured
there's a lot of terrible things this kid could be doing.
All he's doing is wrestling, so he may as well
(07:16):
just let him go out and wrestle and have fun.
And that's what I did.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I know you were wrestling. Did you go back to
referering after a little bit of time, because you did say.
I have a quote here. You said a guy didn't
show up, so you stepped in to take his place,
and it was absolutely the most horrible match you ever saw,
complete disaster.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah. I first, there were two promotions that I was
refereeing for, and the first one was nineteen ninety seven.
I was wrestling for a guy, or I was refereeing
for a guy named Dave Debashi, and I had done
all sorts of wrestling, but I'd never done like a
supposed a real show in a real ring. So I
was refereeing for this guy and that was the day
(07:57):
that somebody didn't show up and he told me, you know,
can you you wrestle on this show? And I did
and that was the horrible match, and so he still
wanted me to wrestle again, which I didn't understand, but
I was like, okay, great. And then later there was
the other guy, Tim, who was also running shows, and
he wasn't sure. He wanted me to wrestle, so he
had me referee as well. So I started in two
different promotions as a referee, and in both promotions the
(08:20):
promoter eventually came to me after someone didn't show up
and they said, can you work a quick match tonight?
And after I did, they ended up giving me a
job as a wrestler.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
What were the programs the cards like when you were
wrestling and back then, because it's a lot different now
it's slick, it's produced and everything, But what were the
locations like, the fans like during the wrestling matches and everything.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, it was very much like what you would see
today if you went to a local show. They were
small buildings. We wrestled in a lot of There was
a Cloverdale Fairgrounds where we ran a lot of shows.
It was in British Columbia, and that's exactly what it was.
It was the fairgrounds and they just chose one of
(09:03):
the empty buildings and there were bleachers in there and
they set up a or a ring in the middle
and we would have matches and they would run every
single month in the Cloverdale Fairgrounds. And essentially I wrestled
like in the B and I Marketplace in Tacoma, which
was like a it was a marketplace, and they would
put a ring up in the parking lot and people
would show up in the parking lot and surround the
(09:24):
ring standing and we would do matches there in the outdoors.
There was a point in the late nineties early two
thousands when wrestling was just on fire, like it was
actually a cool thing to be a wrestling fan. For
a very brief period of time, during the Monday Night
wars and when wrestling was popular, all of these little
(09:44):
local events that I was working at, all of a
sudden there were six seven hundred people showing up. And
so after a while, instead of these little tiny buildings,
they were running in the Temple Theater in Tacoma, which
was a really nice theater and it was like a
ballroom and they would put the the wrestling ring in
the middle of the ballroom and it's a very nice building.
And also they ran in the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall
(10:09):
or something like that, which I mean, if you follow
a lot of independent pro wrestling, the idea of running
in the Tacoma Dome exhibition Hall. It was huge, and
you know, we were all just kind of blown away, like, Wow,
we're in the Tacoma Dome right now wrestling these matches.
But it ran the gamut. I mean most of them
were small buildings elks, lodges for example, and places like
(10:29):
that where you get maybe one hundred two hundred people.
But during the peak around this area, we would get
six seven hundred people at the Temple Theater every single
it was usually once a month. They would run the
shows on like a Friday or Saturday night and it
would be packed.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Brian hold on just a second. Brian Alvarez is with
us again, the host of Wrestling Observer Live. You can
hear it weekdays and also on Sundays on the Sports
Byline USA Broadcast Networks. We continue with more of you
in Sports Byline. You're listening to Ron Barr's Sports Byline
US Say podcast. Brian Albarez is with us here on
Sports Byline USA again, the very best pro wrestling show
(11:07):
anywhere in the world, and it is heard worldwide the
American Forces Network, also Serious XM iHeartRadio, and right here
on the Sports Byline USA Broadcast Networks. Again, you can
hear it weekdays and also on Sundays. I want to
stick with the fans for just a second, because I
have a quote from you. You said, wrestling fans and
fans of the paranormal are very much alike. You don't
(11:28):
go up to your friends and say, hey, I think
I saw Bigfoot. This is just like wrestling fans. You
don't talk about your wrestling fandom to your buddies. You
like something that isn't cool in the mainstream. Is it
hard to be a wrestling fan?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well, it depends if you have friends who are wrestling fans.
If all of your buddies are wrestling fans, it's pretty
easy because he had something to talk about. But I mean,
when I go out in the real world, so to speak,
and somebody wants to talk to me about wrestling, it's
always kind of like, oh man, this is not gonna
end well, because you know exactly what's going to go.
They're going to say, hey, I hear you right about wrestling.
That's right. You know it's fake. Yes, I'm well aware
(12:07):
that it's fake now, and then you know they're asking
these questions and it's just it's it's it's hard to
be a wrestling fan because it's not. It's certainly not
if talking about football, certainly not talking about baseball where
everybody can talk about it and they're into it and
it's cool and everybody hangs out. I mean, it's it's
a fringe. It's it's a very fringe. I mean it's
(12:28):
it's it's way easier to talk about like video games nowadays,
and it is pro wrestling, and it's it's, uh, it
can be hard, but.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I it's it's, it's, it's it. The reason I made
the Paranormal comparison is because I do another show on
the Paranormal. And I did it because I was a
fan of Art Bell. I was just gonna do it
for fun. It was going to be a bonus on
our website. If you're a Wrestling Observer dot com subscriber,
you're also going to get this show. And I thought
I'd do it. Maybe no one's gonna listen. I don't care.
(12:59):
You know, I'm not charging them any extra. It's going
along with their subscription. If they don't like it, they
don't have to listen. But I want to do it.
So I did it, and the next thing I know,
I'm flooded with people saying, oh my god, this show's great,
and these are all the wrestling fans, and I thought, man,
that's kind of interesting. And the next thing you know,
it's it's one of the most listened to shows on
the wrestling website. And it's for the very same reason
(13:22):
if you believe, not not necessarily even if you believe,
but if you're interested in the paranormal, if you're interested
in UFOs or Bigfoot, luckness, monster ghosts, whatever, you believe
they're werewolves.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I mean, this is not something you just discussed with
people over over a casual dinner conversation. They would think
you're crazy. And so if you're interested in this stuff,
you kind of keep it to yourself. And it's very
much like being a wrestling fan. And I was very
interested to see that there is a there is quite
the tie in between fans of pro wrestling and fans
of the paranormal. Just two fringe things that people don't
(13:59):
get a lot of opportunity to talk about with their friends,
but hey, they can listen to it on the radio.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
You decided to come over to the dark side. I
say that being the media, of course, and you partnered
with Dave Meltzer. That's been a very special partnership. Take
me back to the beginning of it.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Well, I first met. I mean, I'd been reading The
Observer for a long time, and I was doing my
own newsletter, and I had a nine hundred line that
I started up because I needed a way to make
money because we weren't getting a ton of subscribers, and
to cut to the chase, I went in debt on
this nine hundred line because of the way that the
(14:37):
nine hundred lines were set up at the time, and
so I essentially had to shut the thing down. Essentially,
there was a kid that called and he rang up
this huge phone bill and his parents decided they didn't
want to pay it, and they had no legal obligation
to pay it, and so the bill fell in my lap.
And so I shut this line down. And Dave also
had a nine hundred line, and so I sent Dave
(15:00):
Meltzer a fax and I said, I had this line.
I had to shut it down. I know you've got
four or five options on your nine hundred line, like
press one for day, press, two for Bruce, press three
for whatever. I said, I'd be happy to come over
if you'd like, and he said sure, So I started
doing a segment on his nine hundred line, and a
(15:22):
little while later, probably a year or two later, he
got the job doing EADA dot com, which was really
the first internet based radio station. It was only available
on the internet, and so he had a two hour
show daily, and I guess the first show was rough.
(15:42):
It was a it was a rough go. And so
he essentially called me and he said, how would you
like to come on for the first twenty minutes and
We'll bounce the news back and forth and then I'll
either have a guest on or I'll take calls or whatever.
And I said sure. So I started doing the first
two minutes of his show every day and I would
I would go from three to three thirty Pacific and
(16:04):
then I would I would jump in the car and
I would drive to go coach gymnastics because I had
That's how I was making my money at the time,
was I was. I was teaching gymnastics, and I did
this for I don't even know how long, and eventually
my I guess my gymnastics schedule change or something like that,
and I had the opportunity to do the full two
hours with him every single day. So I was doing
five days a week as Dave's co host, making no money,
(16:27):
and I did this for I don't know a year
or two and finally they started paying me, and that
was pretty much I mean, I loved it before I
got paid, but it was even better when I got paid.
But that was how it began. And then eventually, after
YadA folded, we came over to Sports Byline and we
did that together for I don't know six seven years
(16:50):
until he got the job doing MMA reporting at Yahoo.
And once he got that job, he didn't have time
to do the Observer live anymore, and so I took
it over and I've been doing it ever since. So
I've been going NonStop on Sports Byline since two thousand
and one, I think YEP might have been a year
or two later. And I've been doing radio since nineteen
(17:10):
ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, I can only tell you that when the idea
was presented to us to add this programming to our networks,
I was kind of skeptical, but Darren Peck, the president
of the network, said now, this is going to be
something good, and he was absolutely right. I think it's
one of the greatest shows I've heard on our network.
And I'm very proud of the work you guys have done.
Let me ask you, since we only have a couple
minutes left, about the state of pro wrestling today. It's
(17:34):
obviously very slickly presented, and where do you see it
today and where might it be saying five or ten years.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
It's so hard to say because the one thing I
can tell you about pro wrestling is the future of
pro wrestling is entirely dependent on decisions made by people
who run television companies. Right now, WWE is on USA
Network every Monday night for three hours, and come twenty sixteen,
(18:02):
smack Down, their other show, is going to be another
two hours every single week on USA And as long
as they've got USA Network, they're gonna be fine, because
you've got to have strong national television to be successful.
But if the day comes where the USA Network decides,
you know what, I don't think we're in this pro
wrestling thing anymore. And it's been great working with you, WWE,
(18:25):
but that's it. We're severing ties and they can't find
anything resembling the deal that they've got right now, pro
wrestling could immediately be in a lot of trouble, and
granted it would take a long time to sink it.
Because WWE has I mean, they make hundreds of millions
of dollars a year, They've got the WWE network that
over a million people subscribe to. They would last for
(18:45):
quite a while afterwards. But like all of the other
wrestling companies, Impact Wrestling, Ring of Honor, Luca Underground, they
are all one hundred percent dependent on their television deal.
And on the flip side, if some crazy wealthy guy,
let's say Donald Trump decides I'm going to buy a
television network and I want pro wrestling to be the
(19:07):
prime time highlight of this network, I mean whatever promotion
he chooses is going to explode. So it's all about TV.
That's just the way it is. And it's impossible to
say where things will be in five years or even
ten years. Things change so fast, but it'll all be
built around television. We got about ninety seconds left, Brian.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I'm just wondering when you take a look at the
athletes and I think they're incredible, I don't know how
you jump off the top rung of a ring and
you look at the storylines, are they ever going to
run out of them? And are the athletes always going
to be there in your mind, and what's their motivation
for doing it?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Motivation is usually money. I mean, a lot of them
love it. But you can make a very very good
living in WWE. And there will always be people that
want to be pro wrestlers always. There will always be
people that want to get in there and not have
a real job. As a lot of people say, and
I'm not too worried about the future of wrestling in
terms of talent.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
In about about ninety seconds or sixty seconds, tell me, uh,
what's the funniest thing that you've heard over the years
and covering this entertainment sport.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Oh man, it's a cheap plug, but I'm gonna do
it anyway. If you're a wrestling fan and you've been
for a while, go by the Death of w CW,
which is the story of the rise and fall of
World Championship Wrestling, and read the chapter on the year
two thousand. It was the worst year in the history
of professional wrestling anywhere anywhere. The stories you will read
(20:29):
in that chapter, you you will you will presume this
must they must all be made up, But every single
one of them is true. The year two thousand WCW
it's it's unbelievable the stupid.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Decisions that were made, such as, oh man, they had everything.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
They had storylines where guys would go into the ring
and uh, the storyline was that they were having a
fake match on a wrestling show, Like how can you
go into it? Was it was unbelievable, the things that
they would do in WCW. It's just it was crazy.
Every every bad decision you could make, they made. Well.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I want to thank you very much for your time,
and also we're proud to have you a part of
those Sports Byline USA broadcast family of shows. Thanks a lot, Brian,
take care my friend. Thanks so much again. I want
to urge everybody to check it out. It's entertaining, it's informative,
it's a very special show, and you can hear it
weekdays and also Sundays on the Sports Byline lineup of networks,
whether it be our Radio Networks Worldwide, the Armed Forces Network,
(21:24):
or even iHeartRadio Stitcher tune in. It's Wrestling Observer Live
and Ryan Alvarez is the host of that show and
very interesting life. Rarely do you hear of somebody being
a wrestler or a referee. And now broadcaster on the
sport of pro wrestling. We continue with more of you
in Sports Byline. You have been listening to Ron Bar's
Sports Byline USA podcast on the eight Side Network
Host
Ron Barr
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