Professional wrestling can get a bad rap for being staged, but the screams during my visit to Chattanooga's Total Wrestling Entertainment were very real.
"Hit the ref!" one woman kept shouting from the front row.
"What are you doing, you IDIOT?!" shrieked a girl, who looked to be about 10, when another wrestler rushed in out of nowhere and unexpectedly ended a match. Standing outside during intermission several minutes later, she still looked upset.
Seeing a match is like watching a live reality show - you know it's orchestrated, though to what degree I couldn't tell from my seat, but you're happy to suspend your belief, especially when it's done well. I do it while watching my favorite TV shows every day. Though I know for a fact that my ringside viewing delivered actual hits and slaps. They echoed.
"I love being able to perform. I love being able to actually get in there and take a slug or two and be able to dish it back," says TWE's "No. 1 Jaden" Newman. "That's where people tend to think I'm a little crazy," he adds, a smile in his voice.
His grandfather started the biweekly productions in 2013 and 21-year-old Newman now often takes to the ring, even traveling across the U.S. and, soon, the world to perform.
"It's a lot closer to a Broadway play than it is an MMA fight," TWE's Roger Cantrell says of professional wrestling - though a lot of improv is involved. The winners may be prescribed, but the matches, at least at TWE, are not scripted.
Pro wrestlers will tell you there are three characters in every match: the good guy, the bad guy and the audience. And the audience is a key player. The characters, moves, even the overall outcomes, are often dictated by the audience's reactions.
For experienced wrestlers, a match is more like a dance than a choreographed routine. Circling the ring, they learn to read each other, the audience an unwitting director.
"Unlike a movie script ... we have a different element in our acts: the fans. And if fans don't like something, they're going to let you know," Newman says.
Similarly, a wrestler may try several characters before landing on one. "It's a lot of trial and error," says Octavius Black, part of the "Young Bloodz" duo. "The crowd plays into it."
And that means that, just like people, characters are not one-dimensional. They can be good or bad depending on the audience's perspective, and that can impact how things play out.
In a Broadway play, however, the characters are skins to be shed following the performance. In wrestling, they're extensions of the performers.
"It's more or less who we are as individuals," Newman says. "Everywhere I go, I'm the best. Some people can perceive that as I'm not a nice person because I think so highly of myself, but other places I go, they like that confidence."
Most wrestlers can trace their involvement back to a character they idolized growing up. Wrestling is very much a generational thing, says Cantrell, 52, who grew up watching with his dad and grandfather. Back then, Memorial Auditorium was a big stop on the professional circuit, drawing names like Jackie Fargo. Black, 33, and his cousin Spoony Mack, 39, also got into wrestling after growing up watching it with their grandmother, and Black's young son is now starting to mimic what he sees his dad do in the ring.
"It's about getting others to join this family," Newman says. "That's what I like to call wrestling at the end of the day: family."
Milling around outside after the show, the promoters rattle off the names of a dozen or so former TWE wrestlers who have transitioned to the national stage. Talking back and forth, they tally them up like doting grandparents producing updates on their scattered brood.
The productions at TWE are even family-oriented. There is no cursing and no drinking (though each wrestler's theme song is played at ear-bursting levels).
That's not to say things don't ever get out of hand. While it's "professional courtesy" that the moves not leave lasting marks, Cantrell says, TWE's Ray "By Gawd" Fury recently broke his leg in the ring while trying to pin his opponent. In October, Newman suffered a labral tear in his shoulder, and has had four concussions as a result of wrestling, one of them major.
Cantrell also recalls the time a woman from the audience bought a pizza and threw it at him.
"The madder they get at me and hate me, the more I feed off of it. It's such an art form to learn to be hated," he says. "For your five or 10 minutes out there, you can hold that crowd in the palm of your hand. God, there's such an adrenaline rush to that."
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If you go
Total Wrestling Entertainment typically hosts matches on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month, with additional bouts showcasing its partnership with other outfits in the area and beyond. Feb. 8, for example, is the Scenic City Rumble, which includes wrestlers from Prime Time Pro Wrestling in Washington, D.C., and ACTION Wrestling in Atlanta.
The match, being held at East Hamilton School (which the show that night benefits), is part of a series that leads up to a world-class event in August, "No. 1 Jaden" Newman says.
TWE is located in a former storefront in Red Bank, and can seat around 200 or so people. Some matches sell out, organizers told me. On the rainy night I went, there were probably 40 people there.
There is a concession stand with everything from burgers to cheesesticks, and they do accept credit cards. Regular shows cost $12.