Why Wrestling Has Such A Hold ON US
BY KEVIN MCCOY
Daily News Staff WriterToday's wrestling is live and in color, in your face and calculatedly mainstream. By day, 28-year-old Brooklynite Paul Wein is a 5-foot-8, 160-pound employee in a serious Manhattan office. After hours, he's a 5-foot-8, 160-pound self-confessed wrestling nut and emcee of "Ring Fever," a weekly cable TV show devoted to legions of fans like himself.
Brooklyn Cable TV Show Boasts Huge Legion Of Fans
BY KEVIN MCCOY
Daily News Staff Writer
Here's how to measure the true strength of wrestling's amazing grip on New York and America. Get on the D train or the Belt Parkway. Head for Fun Time USA, an indoor amusement and sports arcade plopped down among fuel storage tanks and gas stations on Knapp St. in Sheepshead Bay.
Ignore the whirling kiddie rides. Avoid the electronic squawks of the video games. Your destination is the third-floor conference room adorned with life-size cardboard cutouts of The Rock, The Undertaker and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
Here, on a Tuesday night last month, a crowd of about 40 hunkered down for a taping of "Ring Fever," a Brooklyn cable TV show devoted to wrestling's secret weapon — its millions and millions of fans.
Like an alternate universe version of "Friends" buffs analyzing the love lives of Monica and Rachel, these believers are debating the issues that count.
Such as the recent surprise decision by the Young Radicals ring foursome to bolt faltering World Championship Wrestling for the World Wrestling Federation, the industry's reigning champ.
"I was flipping out," says Jonathan Lewin, who arrived early to snag a front-row seat at the taping.
Or why the WWF has been kicking WCW butt in the TV ratings war.
"We don't want [old-fashioned] rasslin'," says Sunil Sirju, a 16-year-old Franklin D. Roosevelt High School sophomore from Sunset Park. "We want sports entertainment." Don't quite get it, as a 1999 WWF TV ad smirkingly suggested?
Then let Sunil, who boasts that he watches TV wrestling shows on "Monday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday morning and Sunday night," explain. About cherishing the Hulk Hogan doll he got at age 2.
About trying to skip his 1998 graduation from Bay Ridge Christian Academy because Austin, a WWF megastar, was in Brooklyn signing autographs.
About collecting every cool wrestling T-shirt, poster, action figure, video and compact disk he can get his hands on.
"I guess it's a way of releasing my emotions," said Sunil, an aspiring sports announcer. "I like to live through the wrestlers, like when Stone Cold tells his boss off. Everybody would like to do that."
Know it or not, the city and nation are filled with such true believers. Nearly 20,000 fans who packed Madison Square Garden for the Jan. 23 WWF "Royal Rumble" made the show the company's top New York City revenue grosser of all time.
Fans who streamed in for the match — which reached hundreds of thousands more through a $29.95 pay-per-view broadcast — shelled out $5 for wrestling magazines and $25 and up for T-shirts, caps and football-style jerseys.
Inside, they roared as Triple H, the WWF heavyweight champ, beat Cactus Jack in a match involving scripted weapons such as a plank wrapped in simulated barbed wire and thumb tacks strewn across the ring.
"Sure it's fake, but it's the best show there is," said Anthony D'Antonio, 28, a Lindenhurst, L.I., construction worker sporting a black T-shirt of Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. "There's lots of action, and you don't have to think about it a lot. You just enjoy it."
Paul Wein, the 28-year-old host of "Ring Fever," would have been part of the "Royal Rumble" crowd except "tickets sold out so fast."
Not that he suffers from any lack of wrestling-related activity in his busy week. When not planning or taping his Saturday afternoon show, Wein updates a wrestling Web site and interviews wrestlers or fans.
He also attends independent wrestling shows around the city.
"It's something just about every night," said Wein. "Why? Wrestling envelops you with all the big guys in the ring and the story lines. There's something about the action that just enthralls you."
So much so that when his 5-foot-8, 160-pound build squashed his dreams of becoming a ring warrior, Wein gladly settled for the TV show.
In a small-screen homage to the ring action, Wein's TV gig involves absorbing mock beatings from Bad Billy Walker, a wrestler who trains at the Brooklyn gym of WWF hall-of-famer Johnny Rodz.
Chris McLaughlin, a 16-year-old sophomore at Brooklyn's Xaverian HS, declared the show taping a virtual public service. With no wrestling on local TV on a Tuesday night, where else would a true fan turn?
"I'm going to fail two tests tomorrow because I came to this," Chris smirked, unapologetically.
Got a problem with that? - Original Publication Date: 03/06/2000
