The Art of Wrestling For Our Attention
Ohio Valley Wrestling Hits Germantown
Sometimes I fear the arts will lose. When I’m sitting behind the table at a malnourished event. When I see the same few faces at exhibition openings held in the rotating living rooms of those same faces. With so much so easily available at anyone’s request, I worry that entertainments beyond one’s own living room may be struggling to compete. Even the social element of joining a scene has a digital facsimile through ironically titled “in real life” livestreams and open-invite chatrooms stuffed with hundreds vying for the attention of few.
More concerning yet, I fear we’re not putting up much of a fight. We, the organizers, find ourselves again and again making flyers dangling local vendors and food trucks to entice an audience. We strain our work and ourselves into vertical videos and algorithmically optimal photos to adapt to this reality, to pull people back onto their feet, but efforts toward new messaging threaten to siphon energy and stubbornly stagnate the offerings themselves.
This brings me to Bash At The Bar, an event centering on the art of professional wrestling. It’s never been an obsession of mine. What I’m attracted to is its continuation of historical forms. This classmate of vaudeville, burlesque, and the carnival has through insisting, increasingly with a wink, that it is in fact not theater managed to keep its popular luster. For an artifice stretched so thin to still play for belief is baldly postmodern, with professional wrestling being to performance art what Disneyworld is to architecture. Or maybe what its surrounding gift shops and motels are to architecture. It’s as if Olmsted installed the Jack O’Lantern Spectacular permanently into Iroquois Park, challenging himself to convince visitors they’d just grown like that. Perhaps he’d have been surprised by how much they’d want to believe.
Louisville is a node in the network of those creating belief through combat thanks to Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), our city’s local promotion that’s sent gym-class thespians diving from the top rope since 1993. Every introduction to the organization mentions near-contractually that it was the subject of Netflix’s 2023 docuseries Wrestlers. Just shy of 150 people influential enough to have Wikipedia pages have cut their teeth at OVW, doubtlessly thanks to its well-regarded Wrestling Academy which Al Snow ambitiously had accredited in 2019, making it the industry’s first official trade school.
You’d think this history of success would earn OVW a little wrestling ring alongside the horses and bourbon bottles of our city’s iconographic tapestry, but I’d been completely unaware of the organization until observing it on-screen over Miller High Lifes at Magnolia Bar. Soon after I sat in Nachbar for Bash At The Bar, drinking away and falling into planters as paying men were slapped across the chest by the indomitable Freya The Slaya. I knew I’d be back next year.
In pursuing a pre-event interview with the Bash At The Bar team, I found myself on a Tuesday night in the live studio audience of Honky Talkin, a weekly talk show hosted at the Whirling Tiger. The show consisted of a musical guest, a “variety guest,” furniture pilfered from elsewhere in the bar, alongside a homemade plywood desk, and most importantly, host Tyler Lance Walker Gill (TLWG) with his in-house band The Wolfm’n. Cowboy hatted, pig tailed, and sporting a maroon blazer customized with iron-on patches, including branding-approved tigers and his initials, host TLWG opened the night by walking through the crowd, singing a country-western tune. It seemed easier to hook people from the bar a room over than to stop people’s scrolling in bed.
After a satanic-panic performance from musical guest Prayer Line, TLWG reemerged now dressed as ‘80s WWE star Hacksaw Jim Duggan, clad only in blue swim briefs, knee pads, and black combat boots. Visible on his arm was a tattoo with the word “wrasslin” atop a heart wrapped in barbed wire, one I’d already seen on Prayer Line’s lead man Jake Hellman. Both men are, unsurprisingly, members of the Bash team. Also on the Bash team were the night’s interviewees: OVW’s four-time female champion Freya the Slaya and announcer Steven Robert Johnson.TLWG ventured into some awkward discussion of kayfabe, a word in the wrestling world for maintaining suspension of disbelief in their audiences in and out of the ring, which Freya seemed to steer away from. With social media necessitating that a wrestler be always ready to flip into character at the point of a phone, it’s an interesting line of questioning, but to pursue it upon the stage is paradoxical. Freya would soon get her revenge by hitting TLWG with her signature chop, a double open-palmed slap that left two bright-red, hand-shaped welts on the doubting host’s chest. This is known in wrestling parlance as “taking a bump,” and with each visible fingerprint it became more impressive.
It was butt-rock night in keeping with wrestling’s “Attitude Era,” so the programming ended with TLWG and the Wolfm’n playing renditions of Nickelback, Creed, and the return of Hellman for a duet of Buckcherry’s regrettable-classic “Crazy Bitch.” Realizing he didn’t have pockets, TLWG, shoved his wireless amplifier pack into the ass of his shorts. Seeing Hellman away from his band and next to the costumed TLWG made the kanji characters, zombie, and word “horror” pop from his black tank top more than before. It became clear in that moment that they were both wearing costumes, performing more than just instruments for their audience. TLWG strummed us out on a miniature guitar and I set my sights on Saturday.
Floorspace remained at Nachbar upon my arrival for Bash At The Bar, and the day’s earlier thunderstorms awarded wet asses to those determined enough to sit on the back patio. Thirty-or-so thirty-or-sos occupied the space while the Bash Team nervously buzzed around. Vendors from Guestroom Records and Obselite Art sold vintage wrestling magazines and pop-art paintings of WWE superstars, at risk of rain. A bartender dressed as the Ultimate Warrior poured drinks for men in ballcaps. TLWG and his Wolfm’n conducted a soundcheck as rancid smells from the performance area’s adjacent bathroom occasionally wafted onto the poor keyboard player.
“This is the dumbest party of the year. I say that every year.” And so began TLWG, again costumed and returning to the butt-rock setlist from Honky Talkin’. Some listened to the music while being delivered high-stacked hotdogs from the POCO tent outside. A very stern-looking, well-mustached man in an AEW hat passed through the crowd, a person I later learned was not costumed but actual wrestler Truth Magnum. As the performance ventured into on-stage arguments escalating to prop-based violence and renditions of barn burnin’ country classics I sensed the room filling with characters. Soon enough vikings, bullmen, and masked psychos answered the call of “Why do we drink?” alongside parents, guys with long hair, and women with dogs. This priceless sense of unity-through-chaos peaked when the Wolfm’n’s drummer took center stage imitating through dress and rock-rapping Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst.
By nine o’clock the back patio of Nachbar had filled with increasingly strange costumes that as a layman, I had no chance of identifying. As the sun set, John Cenas gave way to men in capes and women wrapped in barbed wire. Hellman performed the night’s second set with his other band Strong Style, which I’d describe as uptempo doom metal, but was by his description dance music.
Bash At The Bar’s many personalities are unified by a flair for the theatrical, with everything they do, from music, to skateboarding, to wrestling, done loudly and with a willingness to shout that ensures everyone can hear and encourages others to be heard. Attendees felt themselves a part of the performance as much as the performers, with the entire event wrapped in a spontaneous, interactive air designed to be unnoticed but naturally felt without forced acknowledgement of community.
Back out back, a chop from Freya ran ten dollars, presumably a buck per finger, and audience members crowdfunded to see others’ chests hit with a thunderclap. The sadomasochistic good fun continued for about a half-hour before giving way to the costume contest. Participants were called onto the stage by the names of the figures they’d taken on, making their case through braggadocious speeches (and one poem), carrying on the wrestling tradition of “cutting a promo.” There is no learning curve to enthusiasm, with everyone together striving toward an ideal identified, literally here, through costume.
With the event wrapped I finally introduced myself to a relieved and exhausted Bash team. Johnson described that de-intensifying moment as what makes the “so much work” worth it. Alongside Hellman and Freya, he gave props to the team’s least public-facing member Mikey Roges as the unspoken engine behind the event, and reverently described Germantown legend Lake Tracy as “a crazy man.” Freya and Johnson’s sheer force of charisma made their success with OVW no surprise. Adept at attracting followers like bodybuilding politicians, the pair solidified their constituency with the common answer to my “why?” questions about the event being a simple appreciation for Germantown. I was encouraged to see the next stop on their neighborhood wrestling tour, being this year’s Dainty FUNdraiser at Merryweather, where Freya was set to lay the chop down on a less-willing opposition through actual OVW sanctioned matches.
Approaching the barricaded block of Hickory Street, now occupied by a full-scale OVW wrestling ring, I felt myself like a peasant visiting the town square only to find an itinerant theater troupe had arrived that morning. Had I not already been following this story, I’d perhaps have thought, “hey, why not?” The evening’s performers were tasked with capturing an audience composed mostly of people who’d be there drinking regardless. The temperature hovered around ninety degrees, and the air-conditioned bar was alluring.
The evening’s programming had been backloaded in combat sports tradition, with the top-shelf performers stashed until the end. The up-and-comers of the card’s first half struggled to sell their hits, flailing half-a-foot away from contact, with an uninitiated crowd providing no exclamations to mask the lack of sound on false impact. I, between wiping curtains of sweat from my forehead, tried to fill the gaps.The extent to which I was even helping is up for debate, as I and those around me, unfamiliar with these athletic actors’ ongoing stories, struggled to pick hero from villain. Though confusion ruled, the congregation remained, watching respectfully while sipping from oversized Country Boy Brewing cups and feeling the heat recede with the sun.
Professionalism started to show with the sponsored “Tub of Ale 8 One Match.” Before any wrestler entered the scene, a scrawny man in a straw boater arrived, quickly handing his hat off to a spectating child before introducing the large man helming the match, clearly our hero. Enter the villain, who spoke down to the crowd, establishing his role to the point of providing antagonistic instruction to the observers, setting himself up for ire to be best enjoyed as a heel. The small man was clotheslined into a backflip, and the large men took turns soaking themselves in the soda-sponsored ice bath with long-drawn windups. Perhaps more seasoned, these performers took pains to get the audience on-board and up-to-date. Unspoken cues for exclamation and directly spoken taunting gave the viewer not just a voice, but a role in the piece via a cleverly obscured onramp. The crowd was given the privilege of cheering Tinkerbell back to life, relishing in the suspense, knowing that there’s no guarantee it will work. Here, it did, our hero and his carnival-barker sidekick celebrating together at the bell’s ring, thanking the audience for their support through a performance of personal excitement and pride in victory. Their victory was assured and to them known, but this essential faux ecstasy shared a pinch of fairy dust with the viewer.
Sports fans know better than patrons of the arts that to share in victory is also to share in defeat. Germantown’s own Freya and a partner were put up next in a tag-team match against a pair of women, who to my eyes, were parodying Millennial influencer types. Immediately, the challenge of establishing four separate personalities presented itself, but, in another example of wrestling’s twists on historic forms, a double double act took the reins. Freya carried her belt, reminding the audience of her four-time champion status, but demonstrated a strained chemistry with her partner. Their opponents projected less authority, one even sported a neckbrace, but were synced in disposition, somewhere between Beavis and Butthead and Abbott and Costello. Much of the match saw Freya hamstrung outside the ring, maintaining her own image of competence while her partner received a beating from the loud-mouthed duo. The heroic Freya stretched far across the ropes to desperately reach for a tag, transposing the audience’s distress. The neighborhood champion and partner would lose on a technicality, setting the disappointed audience up for a future taste at redemption if they make a visit to West Buchtel’s Davis Arena for another round of OVW.
Regardless, Freya signed post-match autographs for fans and converts alike as the entertainers began filtering back into the bar. I congratulated her on the success of the event and apologized for the loss. “Still the four-time champion,” she said without missing a beat, tapping at the belt over her shoulder. Gladhanding for good, the wrestler’s art form is a malleable one, switching from audience to individual communication with the grace and veiled strain of ballet. Sharing this expression demands much, but requires nothing more than showing up where the people are and asking them to follow. Standing at event three of following this story, I realized it had worked on me. I closed the night smacking at a few in the Dainty batting cage, relishing in the secular church picnic atmosphere.
A canvas can be carried from gallery to gallery, but is it truly mobile? Once on view and up for interpretation the joy of creation is locked away beneath the paint like a one-way mirror, safeguarding the process behind a call for self-reflection. Curators beg others to glorify in the immaculate conception of creativity, but it’s worth remembering how much more fun it is to make a baby than give birth. Notions of populism strike fears of kitsch commercialization, but must this street always be a one-way? Or end with a knowingly ridiculous stop at Buc-ee’s? Wrestling lives within its lie, but may be more honest in its sale. Though continually niche, it’s maintained a level of popularity its Reconstruction-era siblings could only dream of, but like any expression longer than a minute thirty, it’s today suffering a slow bleed. Now but one piece of an overseas company’s sports entertainment portfolio, it’s more than ever up to the legacy institution’s local talent to carry on and grow its ties to its neighbors. Artists with brows high and low alike share in the slipping of financial structures once thought to carry them through history’s end, and while the democratic promise of the net seems the key to replacing institutions with congregations, you can’t have a memorable experience delivered via app. The separation of the screen inherent to digital communications is felt to the point of abuse. If art is to be the balm, it must connect directly with those attempting to break the spell, like two palms upon a chest.
William Smith is the Operations Director of Kudzu jelly as of the publishing date of this article. He was not financially compensated for this piece.
