ST. PAUL, May 14 — At the end of “The Baron,” a play about old-school professional wrestling currently running at the History Theater here, the eternal question that is as much a part of the sport as heels and bad accents is finally raised.
Real or fake?
“Neither,” answers Jim Raschke, a k a Baron von Raschke, one of the stalwarts of the American Wrestling Association, a fondly remembered Midwestern circuit that bears little relationship to the World Wrestling Entertainment organization of today. But if it’s not real or fake, what is it?
“Just wrestling,” Mr. Raschke says quietly from the stage. It is a philosophical, existential capstone in an evening in which men in leotards serve as muses in a meditation on what constitutes authenticity.
Then an argument erupts, and another combatant from the evening comes out and hits Mr. Raschke over the head with a folding chair with a loud, and very real, thwack.
“I got a little emotional when that happened,” said Rachel Gierke afterward. Ms. Gierke came to the play from Chippewa Falls, Wis., because as a child, she fell hard for Mr. Raschke’s signature move, the Claw, in which he would wrap his condor-wing-size hand around the skull of his opponent and squeeze him into submission.
Before there was Stone Cold Steve Austin, before there was Jesse Ventura, before there was “W.W.F. Smackdown” and “Raw,” there was the A.W.A., a legion of doughy but powerful white men who took to their anointed roles as heels (bad guys) or babyfaces (good guys) with athleticism and a real pride in their craft.
Founded by Verne Gagne in 1960, the A.W.A. came to thrill high school auditoriums and television audiences alike with seemingly immortal stars like the Crusher, Nick Bockwinkel and Mad Dog Vachon. These were men who worked small towns across the northern reaches of the Midwest and Canada, bringing serious wrestling chops to the ring and taking from it the love and hatred (really a form of mutant screamed adulation) of the crowd.
“The Baron,” written by the playwright Cory McLeod along with Mr. Raschke and Karl Raschke, his son, is a tribute to those men, and to a time when most of the drama in wrestling was conjured in the ring and not driven by the smack talk and scantily dressed corner girls that later made the professional wrestling of Vince McMahon’s W.W.E. a mainstream cable-television staple.
Near the beginning of the play, the Crusher, played by Joe Kudla, speaks for many wrestling traditionalists: “I know barmaids that can wrestle better than those beep-beep W.W.E. bums,” he says, holding a beer keg aloft with a single arm for emphasis. “These turkeynecks can’t tell a wristwatch from a wrist lock.”
The audience members scream their approval, as they have been doing, the Raschkes say, for the last month. (The production is scheduled to end on Sunday.) Some of the people show up to boo and cheer as wrestling fans weaned on the Baron and his merciless Claw, but many others have no idea where to get started with a four-figure leg lock.
“I think that people used to show up at wrestling matches for catharsis,” said the elder Mr. Raschke after the play, sitting at a table with his son and Mr. McLeod. “People liked to root against the heel because it represented the boss who was unjust or other unfairness in their lives. It is good against evil, classic melodrama.”
Mr. Raschke, long retired, is old-school all the way, so much so that he was uncomfortable discussing the specific tricks of his trade.
“I didn’t want to get into some of the inner workings of the business,” he said, scratching one of his massive ears, which seemed after years of punishment to be made out of distressed pork chops. “It is sort of like magic in that you want to protect the craft.”
After the play dozens of people lined up to talk with the Baron and have pictures taken standing next to him, virtually all posing while doing their own version of the Claw. “I think that people came in the door looking for blood,” the younger Mr. Raschke said, as if to explain his father’s success. “But if the wrestlers were good, if they were able to put across a good story, I think something else happened.”
Mr. McLeod had little experience with wrestling when he took on the project, but he found out enough along the way to worry about verisimilitude and the reception of some of wrestling’s more storied practitioners.
“When Mad Dog Vachon came to the show, I was really worried whether he would like it,” Mr. McLeod said. “I knew if he didn’t and he got ahold of me, I’d be a goner.”
