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A Fighting Chance

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By PHILIP MORGAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 23, 2008

Updated: 08/23/2008 12:24 am

TAMPA - Roucka, an aspiring superstar with World Wrestling Entertainment, practices her rage for the camera.

"You think you can pull a fast one on me," she practically screams, "and think I'm not going to get revenge?"

Her opponents, the swaggering Bella twins, stand defiantly, acting unimpressed.

"Good!" praises Dusty Rhodes, known as "The American Dream," whose menacing lisp and dramatic flair made him one of wrestling's all-time great TV smack talkers. He advises Roucka to turn up the heat, move around a bit, throw in more Spanish. "You've got to be burning up!"

Rhodes is the showmanship coach and creative writer for Florida Championship Wrestling, the world's only training school for WWE.

Open about a year, the school on South Dale Mabry Highway has 63 athlete-actors - almost all of them men - enrolled. They're studying to become the next stars of TV's "RAW," "SmackDown" or "ECW," all produced by WWE. Students sharpen their skills by performing for audiences two or three times a week; negotiations are under way to broadcast the Thursday night performances for local TV audiences, says veteran wrestler Steve Keirn, who runs the school.

Dreaming Of The Big Leagues

The rookies are all under contract and are reportedly paid $500 to $1,000 a week to hone their craft. They can earn hundreds of thousands or even millions a year if they make it to WWE's wrestling shows. They come from the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Brazil and eight other countries. Keirn predicts about 75 percent of them will make it to the big leagues.

For as much as it seems anything goes in the ring, these student wrestlers must adhere to a strict code of conduct. They can't be late, they're fined for cursing in the ring and Keirn lectures them on being polite and humble around fans. They're randomly tested for steroids and other drugs, he says.

Most, like Imani Lee, have dreamed of landing here since childhood.

Lee, 32 - 6-foot-5 and 320 pounds - recalls the many nights he spent as a little one watching wrestling on TV with his grandfather. He saw how his grandpa loved it whenever the big guys fought it out. "And I was like, man, I want to wrestle!"

Keirn's school is a converted warehouse with four rings and black walls covered in larger-than-life images of professional wrestlers. Keirn performed in the 1970s, '80s and '90s as half of The Fabulous Ones and later as the tobacco-spitting Skinner, an Everglades crocodile hunter known for his Gator-breaker move.

It's a different show today, he says. Audiences demand much more athleticism, so while some trainees are bulky monsters, no one is out of shape. Most of the men are chiseled giants, 6-foot-3 or taller. The seven women - divas, they're called - are fit and beautiful.

Though WWE holds tryouts around the world, hopefuls constantly contact Keirn asking how to break into the business. He suggests they first assess themselves realistically.

"You need to strip down to your underwear, look at yourself in a full-length mirror - back and front - and ask yourself, 'Would I pay money to see this guy?'"

More wrestlers these days pack college educations along with swift dropkicks and killer hammer locks. Vincent Ceron is a towering Brazilian who becomes Kafu in the ring.

"He's a nice, reasonable guy until someone pushes his buttons, treats him with disrespect," Ceron, 30, says of his alter ego. Then, "the wild side comes out and he kind of brawls a little bit."

Kafu started his professional life as a civil engineer. The San Jose State grad helped design assisted-living centers in California while wrestling with independent companies at night and on weekends.

In this over-the-top gladiatorial soap opera, baby faces (good guys) are usually pitted against heels (villains). Heels remain as evil as they've always been, but baby faces are no longer super-good. Crowds want a guy who's tough, rugged and tries to abide by the rules, says Keirn. "But at the same time, if you bite him, he'll bite you back."

A few of the wrestlers use their foreign-born status to their advantage in carving out roles as heels.

Englishman Stu Sanders' character is simply a superior human being. "I'm quite arrogant. I'm also a bit of a bully in the ring, and I see myself as being more intelligent than most people," says Sanders, 28.

Scotsman Drew McIntyre, 23, decided early on that it was much more fun to aggravate people. His character wears his kilt proudly, dislikes Americans and hates being in America; he's here only to make it big in wrestling.

"That gets them angry every time."

Trainers tell students to draw their characters from inside themselves, explaining that the most convincing persona "is you with the volume turned up."

Diva trainee Milena Roucka says her stage rage is just a ramped-up version of her real tantrums.

"I don't get road rage any more," says the 28-year-old Canadian model of Costa Rican descent. "I get all my rage out in the ring."

When wrestling was largely live regional entertainment, a performer could stay in one place until the crowd got tired of his character, then move on to where he wasn't known, Keirn says. Modern wrestlers, seen by millions on television, don't have that option.

"Unless you're a creative character who has the ability to move forward and change and be unique and do stuff that's different, you can get lost in the shuffle of repetition and people get tired of seeing you."

Ultimately, says Rhodes, the ones who endure seem to have an innate ability to captivate the audience. "You can't say, 'Go over here and buy some charisma.'"

Beauty And Beastliness

Though they feign enmity in the ring, heels and baby faces encourage each other through their drills. They cheer a classmate who manages his first kip-up, a leap from a supine position directly to his feet.

They talk trainer Billy Kidman into the ring to show how it's done. Without using his hands to push off the mat - he holds a pen and clipboard instead - Kidman leaps smoothly from his back to his feet, to great applause.

On some mornings students do drills, like springing into the air and landing flat on their backs. If they wrestled the night before, they spend the next morning analyzing their performances on film.

"When I'm critiquing my matches, I want to make sure every move or hold I do is crisp and legit and looks forceful and real," says Nic Nemeth, 28, who was planning to go to law school before the WWE tapped him.

Fans want more realism these days, so the Cincinnati native figures the moves he brings from high school and college will help him deliver.

Brianna and sister Nicole - their real last name is Garcia - deliver beauty and beastliness. They got into modeling and tried out when they heard that WWE was looking for twin divas.

In the ring, the 24-year-old sisters adopt the Hollywood look, all glamour and sequins. Then, they get down to work. "We slap," says Brianna. "We love to slap."

To them, the WWE is the best of all possible worlds.

"We get to kick butt and wear makeup and have our hair down," says Nicole. "You can't beat that."

Reporter Philip Morgan can be reached at (813) 259-7609 or pmorgan@tampatrib.com.

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