TPW

"TPW-Totally psychopathic wrestling Knoxville,Tennessee: middle/high school years revisited,scars far from healed,and the best goddamned undocumented teenage wrestling promotion in east Tennessee"

My brother told me his friends we're doing backyard wrestling after school one day after picking him up.
i thought to myself "that sounds killer!"

my mind flooded with 8th grader ideas.
we rolled up in a beat up red 89' Astro van
to the back of the K-mart off North Broadway.

trash and hobo encampments as far as the eyes could see
running along the polluted creek behind the strip mall.
they just changed the entire stores lights,
and for some reason our mom supported us in this endeavor;

but of course she was hesitant.
the blue BFI trash cans were filled,
brown boxes full of fluorescent light bulbs unbroken,
the kind we saw off ECW (EXTREME CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING) from borrowed VHS tapes.

we loaded the van full and headed to the backyard.
it was two houses off of east Caldwell avenue and Central avenue,
we met up with most everyone who ever stepped in the ring that first day.

basically they were all ICP fans and had the t-shirt collections to prove it.

Jackie was a skinny tall kid a bit mousy but held his own just fine.wore black bondage pants and all black ICP shirts. always wore finger less gloves and a backwards ball cap.maybe had a thin mustache that i recall.

TC  & MATT were the proprietors of TPW.

TC (toney cunningham maybe) was a short but built guy that could pick most everyone up for moves.he had a buzz cut #2 all over,acne,and an i don't give a fuck attitude in a happy way.kind of an ugly guy but great to have in your corner.

Matt was a taller guy also built.he had messed up teeth and seemed to be kind of a redneck but he was a really nice guy...hell everyone there was for a group of kids beating the shit out of each other.he wore an array of stuff;sweat pants and sleeveless shirts to jeans and band tee's.

junkyard dog was a really short small framed dude with short brown hair and a goatee .her wore a black jump suit and a bandanna a lot from what i recollect.

PAT man (Patrick) was one of the guys my brother Tyler actually went to school with.he was average build,always kept short hair,a white tee,steel toe boots.

jeff- was a redneck UT fan with a bad knee who wrestled hard.he was older than everyone too by at least 10 years.in the middle of a match one time when he was being a dick, TC told us about a bad knee he had so we took him out with a piece of PVC pipe lol.

johnny bird was a drunk redneck that owned the house next door and let us use his yard for extra space.he always had a beer in his hand.skinny, long black and grey hair hair,blue jeans. i remember a loose red brick patio,and cheap wire furniture.

Drew P. was one of my brothers friends from Fulton high school.small guy,buzz cut, neo Nazi with a bold black swastika tattoo but a nice guy who played magic the gathering card games and was able to pull off crazy aerial moves,double front flips,back flips; really a great wrestler.
one time he got a big piece of glass lodged near his spine after going through a table after a match. we had to pull it out,shit got real that day but we always took precautions to put on a good show and not totally wreck each other too bad.

Tyler my brother was a small framed average build guy.long brown hair,black clothes connoisseur. good wrestler,he helped bring the crazy,and the blood...sometimes a hatchet for prop to throw punches with lol.

crakkk-was a thin rail of a boy ,also went to Fulton high.spit in a bible at his grandmas house and closed it, quoted the crazy grandpa off of House of 1000 corpses dialog/quotes about chomping pussy a lot,wore giant black bondage pants and band t shirts.
one of our friends Robert G. who had home room with him at Fulton said he beat off in class a nutted on the floor when no one was looking....it's a strange world we live in.

i think the house that hosted belonged to someone who wrestled,i'm not really sure.
the basement was an unfinished dirt floor with a weight bench,
we stored the bulbs there and used them over the next several months.

and so the world of hardcore backyard wrestling consumed us that summer,even something as simple as walking down the alleys or streets we kept our eyes open for new stuff to drag back and use during matches;boards and tables to break and put each other through,more long glass bulbs,anything we could build,break,or use.

there were several big events TPW put on where neighbors and friends actually turned up to watch us beat the shit out of each other.

one event i remember was named "Hallow wicked". we set up trash cans full of bulbs.i remember a few of the guys wore long black trench coats during those matches to soften the blows of glass.it was a sea of broken white fragments when all was said and done.it looked like it fucking snowed afterword.

me and Jackie had a fire match one time,the first one to be caught on fire looses;simple enough.
that son of a bitch wanted to win bad,
it seemed to go on for an hour in that blazing sun.that yard had no fucking shade .

wearing blue jean pants was a good and a bad idea,
glass breaking over backs,all of those little tine cuts starting to ooze red.
the show was slightly pitched but we were still giving each other hell.

shopping carts turned vertical for ring posts to jump off,
slamming into tables littered with thumbtacks ,two parked junk cars.
barbwire bat's. thumb tack bats made from cheap dollar store aluminum broom handles, and flat tacks pushed through black electrical tape wrapped around.

we beat the shit out of each other for control of the lighter fluid and lighter.
that match finally ended after i narrowly missed being put through a table and my leg caught fire.i lost, but it was hard fought and i respected that mother fucker after that day.

Home depot buckets and sheathing wood tables to power bomb each other through, so great...

they recorded some of it with a silver VHS camcorder.we gave them a bunch of blank tapes to record and distribute but they never came through with all of that.

it only lasted several months but seemed like forever in my mind.

a year or two later i got inspired and was going to attempt to revive it with some friends.i just finished watching the footage i had from it; i got up off the old busted brown couch in my room, walked outside with the VHS copy of what footage we had taken.
it was dark in the front yard at 338 Hiawassee ave.

flood lights kicked on and it was slick from the rain.
i threw the tape in the yard with disgust for that past not being good enough;wanting to build something better.
i took Brenda the barbwire baseball bat and destroyed it.

lo and behold a few years later and i was not able to get enough people to start up the backyard brawling again, so another dream stomped into the dirt.i ran into TC  for the first time in forever at a shop somewhere and he let me know that i was the only one that had a copy of all the footage they ever shot.

i thought to myself "mother fucker....",
so i destroyed the only tape, not knowing i had the master copy.why the hell did i end up with it i'll never know, i only busted it for morale but alas it was all for not.

i found out several years later Jackie who i wrestled in the fire match had went to jail for killing another man, i think it was a domestic dispute. i've been meaning to track him down and send him a letter.

TC & Matt both went on to actually wrestle in promotions and have successfully wrestled in almost every US state.
TC became an ordained preacher ,and Matt is still wrestling.

crakkk did a 360 and started wearing pastel preppy polo shirts, hiding his sordid past, and dating rich girls the last i heard.

i remember going down in the backyard in the summer to practice with who ever showed up.
we left it all out there.
sweat,
blood,
glass,
flesh flaps on occasion.

i still have a scar just under my left knee about 2 inches long horizontal .after i was smashed through a barbwire table, i rolled up off the ground backwards and realized i had this huge bleeding gash out of nowhere.it may have been from the table or glass on the ground.regardless it made that match look pretty damn good.i didn't get stitches like an idiot and now i have a drinking story to tell if i'm wearing a speedo lol.

this is all snapshot memories of thoughts racing like a thoroughbred horse through my mind.
A catalog of items in a place and time documented and stored away for nothing more than a rainy day down memory lanes back alley brawls that could never be duplicated.

i don't think i'd trade those days for anything.