|
Bar fight.
Wrestling is all the RAGE in Moncton.
Ryan Babineau says ever since the ACW (All Canadian pro Wrestling) called it quits in 2002, Moncton’s wrestling scene has been nonexistent. Sure, there’s some backyard wrestling going on, and Shediac’s René Duprée is certainly making a name for himself in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), but Babineau has high hopes that a pro wrestling league can survive in the Hub City, and he’s determined to prove it.
Moncton’s pro wrestling RAGE is creating a buzz in the city. RAGE started a year ago, and since then the league has gone through two warehouses, one on St. George Street and one in Dieppe. Now they’re settling into their new digs at Oxygen Nightclub. Every second Sunday, the wrestlers plan to get in the ring and beat the crap out of each other while paying customers look on.
Babineau, who goes by Ryan Storm when he’s in the ring, thinks there are enough wrestling fans in Moncton to make RAGE a success, even though people tell him otherwise.
“A lot of people say you can’t do anything in Moncton and that wrestling won’t survive. I think it will,” he says. “There’s fans. I think they will [support it] as long as they have a product they can get behind and you don’t screw them over.”
On Oct 3, RAGE had its first show at Oxygen, and they drew a good crowd. The wrestlers say they didn’t expect so many people to show up on their first night, and they hope to be able to entertain even more fans Sunday, Oct 17.
Shaun Leaman, also a RAGE wrestler, says there’s a lack of pro wrestling coming to Moncton, so he hopes RAGE can fill the void.
“WWE maybe comes once or twice a year, if we’re lucky, and it’s 75 or 50 bucks a ticket,” he says, adding that RAGE only charges $5 at the door.
The 12 wrestlers of RAGE all grew up watching wrestling on TV in the 1980s when the WWF was king. They played with Hulk Hogan, George “the Animal” Steele and André the Giant action figures in a miniature ring. They wrestled with siblings and friends using pillows and then moved on to a tame version of backyard wrestling.
“It wasn’t [the backyard wrestling] that you see nowadays,” Babineau says referring to the brutally violent form of wrestling some amateurs do. “Now it’s to the point where it’s stupid. What we did was just for fun.”
And then they got serious about wrestling. Stephen Petitpas of ACW fame is RAGE’s trainer, and Babineau says the league started training back in 2002 with the ring they have now. Last year, they officially formed RAGE.
Babineau, 21, says he wants to dispel the notion that RAGE is just an amateur backyard wrestling league. They’ve all trained hard, invested a lot of time and money into their craft, and, even though they’re all young guys between the ages of 17 and 26, they consider themselves professional wrestlers.
He also wants people to understand that it’s not fake. Well, most of it isn’t anyway. Leaman, 24, says there’s nothing fake about the pain they suffer when they’re body slammed, clothes-lined and pile driven.
“Everything you see in the ring hurts,” he says.
The floor of the ring does have some give to it, but it’s by no means a trampoline. Kevin Tyler, another RAGE wrestler, says they all regularly get bruises, bumps and scrapes, but they don’t often get seriously injured. The worst injury any RAGE wrestler suffered so far was a dislocated shoulder.
But Babineau concedes the results of the matches are fixed. He says it’s no secret that the outcomes and the winners of the Grand Slam and Tag Team Championships are predetermined.
Like all wrestling leagues, the wrestlers of RAGE each have their own personas - the characters they play when they step into the ring.
Why do they create these characters? Why all the drama?
“The basic [idea] of [wrestling] is the matches; it’s two guys in the ring wrestling over a title,” says Babineau. “But...you need a personality or a character to make it more interesting,” says Babineau.
“Once you add that character element, people care about the character, and it gets their emotional investment in a match,” adds Tyler, 23. “In wrestling, wins and losses don’t mean much. It’s the fans’ emotional attachment to you, and they care more about what you do than if you win.”
Perhaps the most intriguing personality on RAGE’s roster is Mr. Happy. Leaman plays Mr. Happy, who is a clown (and also the reigning Grand Slam Champ) decked out in a heavy coat of white, red and blue face paint.
Leaman says Petitpas, his trainer, suggested he be a clown because he was always goofing around.
“And I’m like, ‘Okay, it sounds kind of weird,’ but when I really thought about it, I said, ‘Well, in real life I am a guy who jokes around and clowns around and stuff.’ So, it’s just an extension of who I am,” he says.
Not only does the face paint make him stand out, but he says it also draws fans in, and people end up rooting for Mr. Happy.
“I’ll be walking around, and there’s all kinds of [normal] guys and ‘Whoa! This guy’s got weird face paint, so I’m gonna watch this guy,’” says Leaman.
Babineau’s character is Ryan Storm, half of a Tag Team with his brother Shooter Andrews. He says they’d be considered a “good-guy team, the team that fans can get behind, the underdogs.”
Tyler goes by his own name in the ring, and he says his persona is “the everyday guy” who wrestles, and after the match, he sits in the crowd, has a beer and socializes with his fans.
So what does the future hold for Moncton’s pro wrestling RAGE? Tyler says, first and foremost, they hope to draw bigger crowds and build a strong fan base in Moncton.
“We want to bring wrestling back to Moncton and if things take off here, who knows, I mean, Saint John and Fredericton? We could definitely branch out.”
Written by Ingrid Deon.
Here's Website
|
|
