New Jersey
A wrestling show at the V.F.W. hall in Middletown. More Photos »
THE acclaimed movie “The Wrestler” is about a beaten-up, past-his-prime professional wrestler who has slipped to the sport’s lowest rungs, the independent circuit where crowds in the hundreds show up at Elks lodges and high school gyms to watch choreographed mayhem and fallen heroes. The movie may be fictional, but the story is played out in real life in small rings set up at temporary sites all over New Jersey, like the V.F.W. hall here.
Jon Rechart of Spring Lake Heights is a local version of the movie’s Randy (the Ram) Robinson, played by Mickey Rourke.
Mr. Rechart, 36, who performs under a name that cannot be printed in this newspaper, is a raucous, chair-swinging, heavy-metal-loving professional wrestler who has experienced the best and worst of his sport. These days, he is often found performing for the Hazlet-based National Wrestling Superstars, which stages wrestling events throughout the New York area that play to small audiences at out-of-the way locations. Some of the wrestlers make as little as $75 per show.
Mr. Rechart’s life, his career, even his scars and bruises, bear a striking resemblance to those of the Ram.
“I haven’t seen the movie,” Mr. Rechart said after a wrestling show earlier this month at the V.F.W. hall here. “I know it must be excellent because I’m a big Mickey Rourke fan. I’ve heard he’s portrayed as an over-the-hill broken-down wrestler who isn’t very smart. That’s me, at least the broken-down part.”
He has the medical problems to prove it, readily rattling off a long list of lingering injuries he has sustained in the ring.
“Both my knees are shot,” he said. “I got a torn A.C.L. in one leg that I never got fixed. In ’97, I broke my C2, C3 and C4 vertebras in the ring. A move went wrong and I got dropped on my head. Both rotator cuffs are shot. Every single day is a struggle with pain.”
Mr. Rechart’s forehead is a bulbous collection of scar tissue running from one side of his face to the other. He looks like a mugging victim.
“The scars are from forks, cheese graters, barbed wire, light bulbs, glass, beer bottles,” he said, listing the various items opponents have used to attack him. “If it’s not nailed down, I’ve been hit with it.”
Mr. Rechart began wrestling when he was 15, taking his act all over the world. In 1995, he got his break, signing with the World Wrestling Federation, the leader in the industry. He wrestled under the name of Xanta Klaus, Santa’s evil brother who steals presents. Top performers in the W.W.F., which has since been renamed World Wrestling Entertainment, can make seven-figure salaries, appear regularly on television and wrestle before huge live audiences. Although Mr. Rechart was a lesser-known performer within the W.W.F. family, he, like the fictional Ram, was enjoying the trappings of big-time wrestling.
“I had a couple of six-figure years, a condo in Spring Lake, two cars,” he said. “Life was good.”
He was with the World Wrestling Federation for two years, through 1996, and since then has bounced back and forth between the minor wrestling organizations that make up the independent circuit, with a few stops in between with better-known groups like Extreme Championship Wrestling. Lately, most of his work has been with National Wrestling Superstars. He would not say how much he is paid for an appearance, but he is considered among the bigger names on the independent circuit.
Still, performing at places like V.F.W. halls means squeezing out a living, playing before small crowds, getting changed in storage rooms and having to do so only because the major league groups don’t want you. He was joined in Middletown by a wide assortment of wrestlers, from younger performers hoping to make a name for themselves to once-prominent wrestlers trying to cling to their glory days.
Brian Wickens, who wrestles under the name of Bushwacker Luke, is 62. He was once a star in the W.W.F. One time, he said, he wrestled in front of 87,000 people at Wembley Stadium in England. Roy Wayne Farris, 56, is the Honky Tonk Man, a former W.W.F. champion. Both appeared at the Middletown show, where much of their night was spent selling their autographs and posing for pictures with fans, at $15 a photo. Michael Felice, a 25-year-old from Bridgewater, works two jobs and said he was still waiting for his first break.
Mr. Rechart has already had his breaks. Now, he is waiting for another one, which may never come. Still, he comes back for more, even when the pay is low and he has to let his opponent carve up his face with whatever weapon he might be wielding. But like Randy (the Ram) Robinson, he lives for those moments and the intoxicating cheers, no matter how faint they may be.
“I’ll be just as nervous tonight as any night,” he said before entering the ring. “It’s a rush you just can’t duplicate, whether it’s in front of 200 people or 20,000. You can’t get that doing anything else. They call it a sickness. Wrestling is a disease, and I have it.”
