When you get invited to watch Extreme Midget Wrestling
I showed up sober. This was my first mistake. A beer and a whiskey cost twenty-seven dollars – second mistake. Midgets aren’t known for their supreme athleticism. It’s no mistake. It’s not even a secret. They’re not built for it. Top heaviness is only good if you’re a spear, or a sledge hammer. Top heavy isn’t glamorous off the top ropes. It’s a literal downward spiral.
The worst part about it, excuse my French, they’re fucking short. Relax the grip on your booster seat – let me explain. This problem was no fault of the midgets. They’re playing the cards they were dealt. It was the most obvious oversight that caused the majority of the problems.
The line wraps around the block. The demographic; unsettlingly diverse. Old, fat, young, ugly, impressive, stoned, drunk – everyone enthusiastic about undersized wrestlers flying through the air. We pass a few women dressed like escorts. A drunk man slur-selling free tickets. A fat security checking ID’s in the dark. It’s a safe place, Riverside, California.
The crowd is as thick as your mother’s eggnog. Smoke from plastic cigarettes, normal cigarettes, and funny cigarettes fill the auditorium. A drink flies toward the stage early, setting the tone. The heel has the microphone. His shorts came off a cabbage patch doll. He’s closer to forty than thirty, with curly Canadian-blond hair. He hates the crowd and they hate right back at him.
This Canadian born villain was in the first match. We watched the scrum, mostly on our toes. The ring must have been built by the talent, that’s the only explanation. Classic four cornered ring, turnbuckles, three horizontal ropes, loud echoing canvas. It’s raised two, maybe three feet. One quarter the scale of a traditional WWE ring. The surround crowed is on their feet.
Do the math. Three-foot, eleven inches, plus two feet of elevation, surrounded by an average height crowd. Sprinkle in a few six footers and you’ve got yourself a line of sight problem. We stand in the back. Alcohol is more expensive than gold in the venue, it takes most of our concentration keeping it in the plastic cups. There’s cheering. Maybe it’s a fight in the audience, maybe a bouncer has got someone by the collar, or maybe the show has begun.
Unless you’ve scored yourself front row tickets, you’re looking at the back of someone’s head. Occasionally we’d get a glimpse of a midget head, part of a torso, or a raised, thin, aluminum chair. But anything with excitement brought on a surge of tip-toes and the action was hidden again, behind the spectators.
I’m sure there was acrobatics in the ring. I saw, for a moment, a little person with the moniker “King Midget” tattooed on his chest. I watched a mini-referee pound a beer before a match, someone did the worm, a pin, and a three count, disappointment of defeat, delight of victory. The action was there. I heard it. But for the most part, it was guess work. Second hand information. The jeering first row sent a delayed message. Ninety percent of the show, I watched via cellphone picture, held up by a taller than average audience member. The man holding the cellphone wasn’t recording. He was enduring the same upward looking neck torture we all were. The only way to watch the matches was to hold up a cellphone, hundreds of people try to circumvent the crowd, attempting to get a bird’s eye on the small ring in the middle of the room.
An aluminum baseball bat, foot stomps, dynamic body slamming – it all took place on a five inch iPhone display. It’s the first time someone holding a cellphone up at a live event wasn’t despised by the people in the rows behind him. The cellphone holders became beckons of light. All eyes focused on the numerous mobile devices. For the most part, they didn’t bother recording. They simply used the viewfinder to watch the show. The entire show.
The irony of a spectator pinching his fingers against a screen and spreading them to enlarge the picture of a midget is too much. Once the crowd came to the realization that the show would not be watched firsthand, equal parts chaos and boredom ensued. The sticklers left straight away. They filed their complaints, made disgusted faces, took their thirteen and a half dollar beers and hit the road. Then there was the rambunctious. These people stamped their feet, tossed their mostly-empty drinks, smoked, and yelled out obscenities. “Show us your tits,” to the chubby male midget in a singlet was my favorite.
By the third act, the crowd had mostly had it. The best seats in the house, the VIP section on the balcony, were becoming abandoned. Most of the standing crowd had shifted and scattered. A narrow group of diehards braved the poorly practiced intermission act of two women pretend hair pulling. Extreme Midget Wrestling, despite the initial excitement, had fallen short.
We didn’t stick around for the autographs. We left before the championship fight. I’m sure it was all it was cracked up to be. Steel chairs, baseball bats, backflips, submissions, blood, sweat, tears. It would have been fun to watch. It could have been incredible if things were just a bit…taller. You’d think midgets, of all people, would have taken height into consideration.
