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At least 10,000 cardboard boxes are crammed around the ring at George South's wrestling school on Latrobe Drive. In them are relics of pro wrestling's past such as Sting masks, Rowdy Roddy Piper dolls and Ricky Steamboat action figures.
Outside the ring is Ricky Steamboat, 55. The action figure has long dark hair. Steamboat's is close-cropped and gray. The action figure is six inches tall. Ricky is?
“I'm 6 feet,” he says. “I was 6 feet. I got dropped on my head too many times.”
Ricky poses for a picture with his son, Richie Steamboat. Richie is 6-foot-2. Yet when they stand back to back, Richie is a center, his dad a guard.
“You want me to make him look even taller?” Ricky asks, slumping toward the floor.
Richie slumps with him. When you're an aspiring wrestler and your last name is Steamboat, you're already tall enough.
Richie falls to the hard ring again and again, the impact crackling through the humid little room. His T-shirt is soaked with sweat. Trainer South makes him repeat a move he has repeated three times.
Richie, 21, will wrestle his first main event tonight at Sugaw Creek Recreational Center. The first bout will be at 8; ringside seats are $20 and general admission $10. Richie will go against Mr. Florida, a man whose evil is so contagious he has to wear a mask.
In the 1980s, professional wrestling ruled Charlotte and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat was one of the rulers.
The Dragon spent so much time on the top rope he could have been charged rent. But there comes a time when everybody has to land, and two herniated disks forced The Dragon to retire in 1994.
Richie was 7, old enough to remember his dad's matches. “I'd cry because I thought he was really hurt,” Richie says. “He'd look up at me and wink.”
When Richie misbehaved, his mom, Bonnie, would often tell him to wait until his dad got home. Many of us heard a similar message. But our dads
weren't named The Dragon.
“There was a wrestling joke that if you gave Ricky a chain saw and a machete people would still cheer him,” South says. The Dragon was always the good guy.
South, 44, says Richie also is.
“He's such a good kid I almost wish he wouldn't get into wrestling,” South says.
Richie has wrestled professionally. He played linebacker four seasons at Lake Norman High. He had a fine amateur wrestling career.
At national events, fans who cheered the father didn't necessarily cheer the son.
Says Richie: “You've had a bad day, some guy is wiping your face in the mat, people are yelling, ‘That's Ricky Steamboat's son!' That gets old, but it gives you motivation, too.”
He's motivated. After South, the plan is to head to the Midwest to work with another famous former wrestler, Harley Race, and then compete in Japan and Europe. “If everything works out he'll have an audition with the WWE,” says The Dragon, a WWE producer.
On Thursday, it is Charlie Dreamer, a smooth wrestler with shoulder-length blond hair, with whom Richie must contend. “Reverse!” South shouts. “Headlock! Monkey jump! Reverse!”
Enter The Dragon. There are two spectators. He tells his son to apply every hold as if there are 10,000.
The Dragon suggests a move with which nobody is familiar. “Nineteen eighty-two,” he says, laughing. “What was old can be new again.”
The Dragon still has an amazing presence, and he's in shape speaking of what was old being new again. “I wouldn't mind getting back in the ring,” he says.
He worries about not living up to his legend. But if he's convinced he's worthy, he'd especially love to join his son in a tag team match.
Why not? The Dragon is one of the great wrestlers of all time. The world is ready for a gray-haired action figure.
