Bayou Independent Wrestling steeped in Southern tradition
MONROE, La. — When the doors opened, a little boy with blond hair sprinted to the front row and threw his whole body across four seats.
He looked around for confirmation, then ran for a different set of chairs.
Being close to the action matters at Bayou Independent Wrestling.
"If you're sitting in the front row, you better be watching out because here they come," promoter Josh Newell said. "That's part of what makes it different. You get to feel it.
"It's more like the old days. A lot of people complain about wrestling now, saying it's too cartoony or they talk too much. Where here, I want you to hear," he said, slamming a fist into an open palm. "I want you to see it. I want you to see the bruises, the bumps."
When chest slaps and punches land, reverberation can be felt around the room.
The ring is a thin layer of foam padding over wood boards, topped by canvas and surrounded with a cloth apron. When someone stomps or falls, it's loud.
The fights often come out of the ring, carrying the brawl nearly into the audience's lap.
When one of the wrestlers is slammed to the tile floor, it sounds like meat hitting a slab. There's no cushioning, just tile floor.
The audience's reaction is visceral.
It's an immersive theater experience; everyone knows their role.
Where else will you see a small girl — red-faced, ponytail bouncing — scream the worst insults she can think of at a muscle-bound man wearing bedazzled spandex?
"The biggest thing is the interaction with the fans. you know, you're one of 400 people instead of 10,000, and the wrestler can stop and sign an autograph or shake your hand and give you a moment, a memory," Newell said.
One of the heels (a wrestling term for a bad guy), pulled a sign from an audience member and started to rip it before the babyface (good guy) started arguing about it. The audience love it, and the half-torn sign stayed in the air for most of the night.
"This isn't for everybody, but the people who love it, they really love it and they get into it and they gravitate toward it. It's so cool to see," Commissioner Nick Harrison said.
It reaches people of all races and creeds, he said, pointing to the packed house. People drive in from Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas to follow the wrestlers.
The experience is steeped in tradition, particularly for Newell.
"My first non-WWE show was actually in this building as a kid for Deep South Wrestling, and I was hooked," he said of the West Monroe Convention Center. He was too young to attend the Mid-South Wrestling shows he watched on TV, but Deep South came after.
He launched BIW in 2006 with Dr. Steve Williams and promptly lost a lot of money.
"I was 23. Didn't think I'd ever do it again, but Doc kept kind of reaching out and helping and we've been going ever since," Newell said.
They had some bumps, but he kept scheduling events and putting in the effort.
In its 14th year, BIW has developed a devoted following. One family carried in a stack of signs to hold up for their favorites.
For the March 7 show at the West Monroe Convention Center, BIW set out about 450 chairs and had to add more. Newell said they could only handle about another 50 people.
"The crowds keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We had to put out more chairs just to accommodate everybody and it looks like it's going to continue to grow and grow. I'm excited. I love it," Harrison said.
It was also a night with several other local event options for families. Newell said when he started, people in Monroe and West Monroe complained there was never anything to do. Now, BIW is a draw. "There's nothing what we do within 60 miles for sure. Even if you go to a WWE show, it's nothing like we do. It's wrestling, but it's different," Newell said.
The show keeps going
Newell said BIW tours in Louisiana, Mississippi, eastern Texas, and he's hoping to expand into Arkansas.
West Monroe is the home base for BIW, but getting to travel, Harrison said, is amazing.
Wrestlers work like independent contractors and can work with BIW or other wrestling organizations as needed.
BIW uses a deep roster of talent from around the country. Mainstays include Cassidy Riley, Vordell Walker, Frankie Thomas, Danny Chance and Apocalypse Adam Asher.
Harrison said it's rare if a BIW event doesn't include a women's match.
The slate changes up with tag teams, triple-threat matches and high drama over titles.
Faces and heels fight about who's going to pay for what treachery in a family friendly show. The arguments get ugly, but stop short of trading "fornicate thou"s.
‘Old-school wrestling things’
Harrison works multiple jobs. He's an elementary school teacher, works in radio and does Grambling State University football radio in the fall.
His daily schedule bleeds through in the ring when he tells Steve Anthony that he hasn't been around to reel in the shenanigans of bad guy stable Southern Royalty "because I've got like 14 jobs."
Riley knocked Harrison down in a bid to reach Thomas on March 7.
Afterward, the interactive nature of the show spilled over onto social media.
Newell posted that Riley wouldn't be fined for the accidental shove, Riley apologized and Harrison magnanimously decided to forgive because there was no ill-intent, only a sore elbow.
When BIW started, Harrison was working for Sports Talk 97.7 FM in Ruston. He'd already known Newell a long time when he was asked to be involved.
So he started as a fan and became a manager.
"Heels need managers because sometime you need a mouthpiece to get the crowd riled up while you're in the ring. It's one of those old-school wrestling things where the bad guys always had a loudmouth manager to talk crap for them. They handled all the dirty work," he said.
Now, Harrison is the "good guy" commissioner.
Lots of wrestlers flip back and forth between whitehat/black-hat.
‘They hate Alabama, so they hate me’
Thomas took a different route.
He was a wrestling fan since childhood but lost interest for a while. He played football in high school and eventually decided he wanted to be in the ring.
"I was like ' I can do that, I'm athletic,' so I bought a ring and I got with the right people and they started helping me and showing me things and it kind of just went from there," he said.
He's been doing this for 14 years.
The Tuscaloosa native said his persona is a face in his home state but a heel everywhere else. He makes a show of being a University of Alabama fan. He said the act works everywhere he goes, so he went with it.
Once in Baton Rouge, he burned a Louisiana State University flag and had to have a police escort from the building. When the crowd's against him, they chant "LSU!"
In West Monroe, he put a literal spotlight on Riley and insulted the town and its natives from a small balcony. When it was time to enter the ring, he snarled "Shut up, just shut up!" at a group of teens.
"They hate Alabama, so they hate me most of the time here," he grinned.
He does about 10 shows a month and travels to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas. But he lives here.
"Last weekend, I was in New Orleans and I was a bad guy doing Alabama stuff, and they hated me. But a little kid with special needs came up, and he only came to that show to see me," Thomas said. He gave the child a hug and free T-shirt.
Getting to interact with people, hearing the crowd chant his name is important, but it's not the best part.
"You can sit at home and pretend to be a hero and play video games all your life, but you've got to go out there and be somebody's hero eventually — just being that role model," he said.
'This is that vice’
Ironically, one face might never show his own.
The wrestler known as Rey Fury said he's "always babyface. Always. Always. The kids love me."
Lucha libre wrestling originated in Mexico and has a history of concealing the wrestlers' identities. They wear masks that cover their whole heads with openings at the eyes and mouth.
Fury grew up in New York City and knew he wanted to wrestle since he was a child.
"I didn't have any backup plan to do anything else, as bad as that sounds," he laughs. “It's just been something I wasn't able to shake off.”
He didn't have an in to the industry in New York, and he moved to Mississippi when his girlfriend moved to be near family when they had their baby.
"That's when I saw a flyer for professional wrestling on a Domino's box. I was like 'Well, I'm going because I've got to get in with somebody,'" he said.
He went to the show, then next and met workers who trained him for free.
"They didn't have any tan guys with long hair that wanted to be wrestlers. I guess I was a little different for them; they welcomed me with open arms. Ever since, I've just been on the road, taking seminars, getting trained by other veterans and just making every state I can," Fury said.
His signature move is The Froggy Elbow. "So I'm dropping F-Bombs from state to state, baby."
He's been wrestling for five years and travels regularly with his merchandise table, which he calls his bread and butter. He sells masks, shirts, luchador dolls.
He loves the fans, the rush he gets when he comes out of the curtain.
"If I have stressful week — I could be having personal problems going on at home, at work and once it's time to come out here and put on a show, all that goes away. It's like a stress reliever, especially for a guy that doesn't smoke and doesn't drink. This is that vice," he said.
‘I like beating up on people’
Angel Millan wrestles as Angel Camacho. He's a 10-year veteran who started in Ohio and moved to Oklahoma and is prepping for a move to Texas.
Millan never wanted to wrestle as a kid. He watched, but it wasn't a dream. Then his best friend and coworker wanted to try it.
Once he started, he fell in love. Millan did wrestling and football at the same time for years, but the ring won his heart.
He does most of his wrestling in Texas and some shows in Oklahoma. He's in a show almost every weekend.
Millan says he's teddy bear, but Camancho is a bad guy right now.
"I like beating up on people. It's a lot more fun," he said.
He loves the audience feedback but sometimes it's about remembering what you can and can't say to a 5-year-old heckler.
"I've done shows that are just adults, no kids. That's a little different, but family friendly shows, you can still be mean without hurting anyone's feelings," he said.
‘People say it's fake'
For the talent, avoiding injuries is a vital part of the experience.
Millan weighs 400 pounds, and his finishing move is a splash from the top rope.
"You can imagine how much trust there has to be between me and the other guy," he said.
Unless they've been there already, most opponents are really scared. One guy who knew Millan's signature kept asking him not to hurt him, then asked the others in the locker room if they'd experienced it.
In any given show, an athlete might throw another wrestler and get hit or kicked in the face.
"Every guy in the locker room, we have that brotherhood, that camaraderie, that they can be trusted, to an extent. It might be my first time meeting them, but if they're in that locker room, it's probably for a reason," Fury said. "We have that unspoken brotherhood, we protect each other, we look out for each other no matter what. Once in a while, you run into some bad apples, but those guys get weeded out."
The specific skill set requires training, effort.
"If you want to be good, honestly, no matter how long you've been doing it, practice never really stops. I started wrestling, I want to say, three months after I started training," Millan said. He didn't start fully going out until he'd been working at it for about a year.
In a normal week, Fury said he goes to the gym three or four times and tries to get in the ring once or twice. Sunday is training day.
Learning how to take the hit isn't the same as not taking a hit.
"That looked like it hurt. You alright?" a fan asked Harrison during intermission following his tangle with Riley.
"I'm alright, man. I'm good," he replied.
He jokes it wasn't the first time he'd been handled at a BIW show, and he's sure it won't be the last. Being prepared for it doesn't make it hurt any less.
"People say it's fake. I don't think it's anything fake about it. You hit the mat. You bleed. You sweat. You suffer. It's all a part of what you do and how you make it happen," Harrison said.