Midget wrestler is professional bad guy

Chris Blanton has made a name for himself as a heel in the world of professional midget wrestling.

He’s the man in the ring everyone loves to hate — Little Fabio.

Little Fabio — also known as Chris Blanton — is a member of Midget Wrestling Warriors, a group of traveling, professional wrestlers. He grew up in Rome and attended Coosa High, and still lives here.

He said wrestling takes a mental and physical toll on him, with the hard work, rigorous travel schedules and the beating his body takes on a nightly basis.

He has cut back to parttime wrestling and parttime barista work at Barnes & Noble.

“It’s a great job for me, because they are flexible with my schedule, so I can take time off for tours when I need to,” Blanton said of Barnes & Noble. “Plus, the work gives me something to do, stay busy.

“Also, I occasionally get recognized, which is fun.”

He found his passion after high school, he said.

“I did wrestle for two years in high school,” he said. “My dad was a coach … and he was never big on professional wrestling like the WCW. He called it fake.”

However, a friend of Blanton’s was a big fan and convinced Blanton to watch a full match.

“I sat down and he put a match on and I watched it all the way through and he talked to me about all the work that went into it,” Blanton said. “I fell in love with it.”

A little later, he was with a friend who had some connections with local wrestling shows.

“A guy was trying to put together a midget wrestling show, and my friend got excited saying I was right there and I was a midget,” laughed Blanton. “I got on the phone and the man asked me how tall I was.”

from A1

At 4-feet 8-inches tall, Blanton said the man first wasn’t sure he was short enough.

“I told him, if I wasn’t a midget, I didn’t know what else you could call me,” he said. “I told him I’d wrestled before in school and he told me about the program he ran and told me where to go.”

Blanton went to Cedartown, to a restaurant with a training room and wrestling ring in a room behind the kitchen.

“That’s where I trained and I performed in shows in Cedartown,” he said. “I started getting bookings in other places and I got a call from a promoter in Dallas.”

Blanton worked for four years with the Dallas company, touring for three or four months at a time, performing in 48 states.

“I left college because I wanted to do this professionally,” he said. “I found what I loved.”

The world of professional wrestling is not what anyone who knew him in high school would have expected from him, he admits.

“I was really shy in school, very introverted,” he said. “Wrestling helped me step out of my comfort zone. Now I wrestle in front of 3,000 people, and I’m talking smack with a microphone in my hand and I’m absolutely comfortable.”

Blanton is what is known in the professional wrestling world as “the heel.” He is the bad guy, the man the crowd loves to hate, to boo, to — yes, it’s true — throw things at.

“I started as the ‘baby face,’ the new guy, the good guy,” he said. “But now, eight years later, I’m Contributed photo

Little Fabio — also known as Chris Blanton — grew up in Rome and attended Coosa High, and still lives in the area.

seasoned and I know what I’m doing, so I can get the crowd riled up. The bad guy is more fun.”

He’s very good at it, because he said he’s had people throw beer bottles at his head.

“I love it,” he said. “I get up there, talk smack, they want to see me get beat.”

However, he does still get nervous, he said.

“Like anyone, before a show while I’m behind the curtain, I’ll get nervous,” Blanton said. “But I hear my music start and I walk out and I turn on a different personality.”

For a while, he entered the ring

to a 1970s adult movie theme music, he explained.

“I’d come out in a bathrobe and my tights and do some moves and act up,” he laughed. “As the good guy, you only get to go out, wave, shake hands and then get the crap beat out of you. The heel gets to have fun.”

Despite his love of the show, he does still get butterflies about the dangerous side of the profession.

“You always think about what happens if you get injured,” he said. “It is very physical and when you go in the ring with another wrestler, you are literally putting your life in each other’s hands. You could break your back, your neck.”

Blanton remembers a show in Arizona in which he got put through a table.

“I was knocked out,” he said. “I woke up and the EMTs were putting a neck brace on me.”

This is part of the reason he becomes frustrated with the use of the term “fake” to describe professional wrestling.

“These guys are putting themselves out there, they are acting as far as the personalities go, because obviously we don’t really hate each other,” he said. “But, the physicality is real. When you think about it, professional wrestling is the only form of live improv left out there today. Add in the athleticism and amount of brutality, it’s hard work.”