Glam, exams and body slams
The stars of Ontario’s wrestling circuit hold crowds in thrall with a blend of strength and showmanship
In Port Hope, the smell of hotdogs fills the air, and the colourful lights of the midway flicker in the night sky. Chris Gray, 34, long brown hair slicked back with conditioner for a sweaty effect, stands quietly behind a tent, a brawny figure in camouflage accessories. A little girl in a polkadot dress, roughly the size of his leg, finds him, and they high-five.
This day started hundreds of kilometres away, in Park Hill, Ont., where Gray awoke before his children to work out. Then he drove to London to teach English literature at an adult high school, and then another four hours in the car, to tell the oldest story in the world: good versus evil.
Gray is an independent wrestler, and works for more than a dozen companies performing everywhere from small-town fairs to large arena shows.
Tonight at the Port Hope fall fair, he is wrestling for Classic Championship Wrestling, an Ontario company that takes its family-friendly soap opera of body slams on the road. The promoter has a narrative arc in mind, but relies on Gray to help fill in the wrestling parts — he’s like a producer.
Gray sits down with each pair of wrestlers as they arrive in the locker-room to chat about ideas that match their shticks — maybe a head butt here, an over-the-top insult there. He makes sure there isn’t repetition. A wrestling match has to go up and down. Sometimes bad guys have to win.
Tonight, Gray is fighting in the title match against Todd “The Law” Shaw. Shaw is the villain tonight, a police officer with a nightstick. Both men are in their 30s, with two kids at home: Gray — wrestling as lovable redneck Cody Deaner — is known for his deep connection with the crowd. Shaw, hair closely shaved, is the rookie, nervous about the talking parts, worried he might stutter if he thinks too much.
Before the bout, the promoter, Jay McDonald, offers suggestions to Shaw to ease his nerves:
“I’m going to hit Deaner with my finisher,” McDonald suggests, a mischievous smile on his face. “I’m gonna win my belt, and I’m gonna go home and celebrate with a dozen doughnuts.”
Shaw hates doughnuts. Not just the police officer cliché — he hates doughnuts.
“Make sure you mention those doughnuts or you’re fired,” Gray chimes in, smiling.
“I hate you,” Shaw says as he paces.
“Then I’ll DDT you,” Gray continues, referencing the inverted headlock impact move made famous by Jake the Snake, “and I’ll have 12 kids come in the ring and each one will shove a doughnut in your mouth.” Shaw shakes his head. Later, Shaw heads for the ring and tells the crowd his prediction for doughnut-laced victory. Gray waits his cue on deck, which is just behind a tent with sunglasses for sale, and the little girl finds him.
Hand in hand, they approach the ring, and more children follow, engulfing him.
“He’s great at what he does, one of the best in Canada,” says Cyril Richards, a Halifax promoter.
Gray circles the ring, and his voice turns into the friendly growl of Cody Deaner. This is the part that feels like jumping out a plane with a parachute, relatively assured of safety, but not certain what will happen in tonight’s instalment of pile drivers and moral lessons.
He asks the kids who they like and who they hate, and they follow him like the Pied Piper. This is the controlled adrenalin rush, the feeling he chases — despite the wear on his body, the long drives, the time away from his family.
The fight hasn’t started, but the kids already know who to bet on.
When Gray was a kid in the 1980s, Hulkamania was running wild, and he and his brother would watch him in the family’s woodpanelled living room in the beachside village of Port Bruce, Ont.
The second oldest of five children, Gray was the ham who loved standing on his head, mimicking the outlandish wrestling announcers, and idolizing Hulk Hogan. He was wiry, but sure of himself.
“He used to wrestle the teddy bear, throw that on the floor, jump on it from the couch, do holds on it, and finally the poor bear had no stuffing left in the middle,” says his mother, Susan Gibson.
He made shirts out of grocery bags, and walked into his living room, ripping them off in homage to Hulk Hogan.
“There didn’t have to be an audience necessarily, except in his head,” his mom says.
Gray’s parents divorced, and he moved to Aylmer, where he excelled at high school sports, but he never went in for wrestling offered at school. It was too boring compared to the wrestling he fell in love with as a kid. During his last year of high school the teachers were on work-to-rule. He took his extra free time as a sign, and every night he drove three hours to Niagara Falls to train to be a professional wrestler at a school there that has since closed.
On his first day, 18-year-old Gray — much lighter, and with short hair — learned how to take a fall. The next day, he couldn’t get out of bed, and had new respect for his heroes.
“Honestly, go down into your living room, on the hardwood floor, and throw yourselves backwards, and see if it knocks the wind out of you.”
Gray wanted to pursue his wrestling career full time, but compromised with his dad. He studied English and social science at Western while beginning his wrestling career. He then went to teachers college, following in his mother’s footsteps.
In 2000, he started wrestling as Completely Cody Steele, an arrogant, high-flying bleach-blond wrestler who could be villain or hero. As Steele, he wrestled a few times for the WWE, once on television, in Rochester, N.Y., an unforgettable moment for the kid from Port Bruce. He never got a full-time contract, so he took a risk and changed his character.
Cody Deaner, a mulleted gohard who wouldn’t be out of place on the TLC show “Duck Dynasty” came into the world in 2005. The character was closer to Gray’s life growing up in rural Ontario.
“All the most popular wrestlers are just extensions of their personality with the volume turned up.”
As Deaner, he wrestled on Spike TV with TNA Impact Wrestling in 2009, and then returned to the independent wrestling scene, working across Canada and the U.S., with at least a different dozen companies, playing fairs, legion halls, hockey rinks and college campuses.
As an independent wrestler, he books his own shows and sets his rates. When he was a rookie, he often wrestled for free and was happy to make $40, even if it barely covered his travel. But those days are gone. He’s a known draw, holds the championship belts with four different companies and he’s “well out of the $40 range.” He has to be shrewd if he’s leaving his family.
“I come home with a pile of cash that makes my wife (Rachel) smile,” he says.
This past winter, he produced a video to get the attention of Global Force Wrestling, which is working on a TV deal in North America, and Gray has a lot of faith in the growing league. He hopes he’ll be back on TV again, which increases his demand and value. Getting back on TV “means everything,” he says.
At social gatherings, parties, he doesn’t bring up his wrestling. If it comes up, he’ll talk about it.
“This is work and I love it, but it still is work,” he says.
Gray met Rachel online on Plenty of Fish back in 2007. She messaged him that she’d come to his match, but a lot of people say that and never do. So he was surprised when she showed up with most of her family holding a sign: “Cody Deaner is so hot right now.”
They eventually married, and settled into this house built by Rachel’s late father.
Life outside the ring is much more relaxed. When they married, people assumed he’d give up wrestling. Same when his daughter, River, was born. He never considered it.
Every day when Gray comes home from teaching, his son, asks to wrestle. Only two, he has distilled it to its essence: “Loud” and “bounce.”
When he isn’t wrestling, Sundays are spent at church, and Gray volunteers with the youth group Monday night. He wrestles year round, and after the kids are in bed, he’ll shoot and edit his own videos at home or he’ll network on social media and talk to fans.
In April, he was asked to come to Emalee Mayhew’s birthday party. She has posters of Deaner on her walls, next to horse pictures and drawings made by her little sister. Her parents and grandparents chipped in to bring him to Comber as a birthday gift.
When he came to the door as Deaner, Emalee — hair dyed a brilliant shade of red like her favourite female wrestling duo, the Bella Twins — started crying.
Gray was taken aback: “In her mind, I’m Hulk Hogan. To me, I’m just Chris with my wife and kids.”
Grandma Ellie Mayhew was impressed: “I could not believe this man could sit here and talk to these 11-year-old girls,” she says.
“He is a very humble guy, even though the outer layer of him is rough and tough and he’s got the grizzly beard … He’s just like one of us,” says Emalee’s mom, Deb Mayhew. “I know he’s not this ginormous huge celebrity, but in my kids’ eyes — me watching my kids get so excited brings tears to my eyes. It’s just totally worth it, bringing them to see him as many times as they want.”
Gray loves teaching adults, but he’s not sure what September will bring. He mostly has short-term contracts in London and Strathroy. He also works as a supply teacher. It’s unstable, but he needs that flexibility for wrestling.
He knows people think it’s crazy not to want the full-time job with a pension. But it’s not what he dreamed of when he was a kid.
“When I was five, I wanted to be Hulk Hogan,” he says. “It was all I ever wanted to be.”
Sitting in his kitchen, hair tied back in a ponytail, Gray rubs the back of his neck. The other day he had to stop doing dishes because his back was on fire.
The human body was not built to collide with the steel-and-wood skeleton of the wrestling ring, and this is the “wear and tear” of the job, he says.
Gray hasn’t broken any bones, or torn any muscles, but he feels it. He was once told that taking a fall in the ring is like getting whiplash in a minor car accident.
“If you go to a good, credible wrestling school, that’s one of the things they warn you about,” says Jordan Marques, a retired Toronto wrestler. “So you kind of know what you’re getting into right from day one.”
He says in the last five years, the wrestling world has learned more about concussions, and people are taking better care of themselves.
Gray has never had a diagnosed concussion, but has likely had a handful of minor ones.
“The risks are very real,” Gray says. “That’s why wrestlers get offended when people use the F-word and call it fake.”
With 16 years behind him, Gray has never been more in demand. He likes being an independent wrestler because he can control his own schedule, and time with his family. He and his wife are expecting their third child in August. He has hopes of touring the world, and wrestling on television again.
“My goal has always been to make a living doing what I love,” he says. “That’s all making it means to me.”
Lots of people have asked for the secret, and Gray says it really is simple: If you want the kids to have fun, have fun first. Read the crowd to sense the mood, project the feeling you want them to have. Go all in.
Not everyone gets the chance to follow a dream, says his mother: “Life goes on, and they just follow a path where there is no risk involved, and to me it’s this risky dream-chasing part of him that I think is admirable.”
Back in Port Hope, away from his family and classroom, he taunts The Law, along with 50 cheering children.
The match ends in a crescendo of shrieks, as Deaner administers the DDT, and the loudest child is given the honour of making sure The Law is truly down for the count.
All that is good is restored in the universe.