Grappling With The Wrestling World, The Epilogue

I genuinely thought my professional wrestling career was dead and buried with its ashes scattered, tombstone etched, funeral long over. But in the summer of 2005, while I was still half-assing “work” at LeisureLink, a little spark flared back to life. Out of nowhere, I got a message on AOL Instant Messenger, yes, AIM, the digital equivalent of sending smoke signals, from a Los Angeles wrestling promoter whose name I’ve long forgotten. That’s not shade; my alcohol-addled manic brain just genuinely deleted him to make room for more important memories, like the entire discography of Front 242.
You have to understand: by then, I had pretty much nuked my standing in SoCal wrestling. I’d screwed over PCW after skipping out on a show and skipping into a new life, gotten into my final message board war, and gotten myself rightfully banned from the forums on SoCalUncensored.com. Banished. Excommunicated. Digitally executed. So when a promoter actually reached out to me, I half wondered if it was a prank.
But he insisted: he ran a new promotion called Hybrid Pro Wrestling, and he wanted me to appear on his shows. He said there was a wrestler named Xtreme Loco who needed heel heat, which is what you try to accomplish by getting the audience to boo a villain, because his promos were about as effective as a broken Speak & Spell covered in Cheeto dust. I was cautious because once you walk out on a company in wrestling, you’re not just blackballed… you’re blackholed. I let my ego and untreated mental illness take the wheel, and naturally, I said yes.

The Return That Nobody Asked For

My first appearance that summer was an in-ring segment titled “The Aaron Proctor Show.” Who came up with that name? Me. Obviously.
The promoter was planning a DVD release, so he had an actual camera crew and a commentary team. I’ll never forget hearing XPW alumni announcer Kris Kloss excitedly calling my entrance like I was a returning legend instead of the community theater villain I actually was.
The segment was a half-work, half-shoot (read: half real, half fake) explanation of why I left PCW and why I was suddenly back, allegedly managing champions. I ran down Brawlin’ Bo Cooper in a scripted promo until he stormed the ring and dropped me with a Death Valley Driver. It was cool because the crowd always loved seeing me get beat up. This was meant to set up the next show, where I’d manage Xtreme Loco in his feud with Cooper.
But the crowd reaction?
Oh, they booed, but not the good kind.
Not the “You’re such a dastardly villain!” boo.
More like the: “Oh great, this clown is back,” boo.
And the boys in the back? Most of them treated me like I had the plague and an IRS audit all at once. A few were friendly, but most remembered what I’d done at PCW and wanted nothing to do with me.
Wrestling has traditions. Some are good, some absolute garbage, but one of the most sacred is you don’t walk out on a show. It makes you unreliable. It puts people at risk. And I had done exactly that.
Which always made me wonder: Why the hell did this promoter want me on his shows at all? Did he lose a bet? Was this a dare? A social experiment? We’ll never know.

The Second Act Nobody Needed

I came back the next month, this time calling out Bo Cooper again while accompanied by a punk rock valet with a pink Mohawk the promoter named Roxy, who had the personality of a Hot Topic store mannequin who’d come to life. I think he wanted me to head up some villainous stable of misfits, which piqued the interest of the rebel in me.
Bo came out to kill me again, but this time Xtreme Loco hit the ring and brained him with a steel chair. Beautiful. Classical. Shakespearean, even.
This set up my planned third appearance, which would end up being my final wrestling appearance ever.
Because someone, no idea who, but I have theories, got into the promoter’s ear. Suddenly, Roxy was managing someone else, and the promoter invited me to the show but said he “didn’t have a spot for me.” Classic wrestling speak for: “Hey kid, creative’s got nothing for you.”
The match went on without me: an ambulance match between Loco and Cooper which was pretty high-concept for an indy fed. Meanwhile, I was backstage, awkwardly wandering around like the ghost of a wrestler who died of embarrassment.
I talked to John Webber, aka The Stepfather from this saga’s second entry, for what’d be the last time ever save for a Facebook argument we’d have about 8 years later when I was in conservative cosplay mode. Of course, like all the other shit I’ve pulled, I regret breaking that friendship, too. 
I sat in a corner quietly until the show ended. Then I went home and drank a whole bottle of Scotch straight, no mixer, trying to swallow the truth: My wrestling career was over. For real this time. And I’d done it to myself.

The Backyard Epilogue

There was one little footnote to my days in pro wrestling. Everything ended up coming full circle. During my 2006/2007 Pasadena mayoral campaign (because my life is a series of genre shifts) a twentysomething backyard promoter emailed me through my campaign website. He’d heard about my wrestling background and asked if I could referee his main event at a backyard wrestling show over on Los Robles.
Backyard wrestling. Despised by the pros. Participating in it was the same reason we never booked The Young Bucks. During a mayoral campaign. Sure. Why the fuck not? Who did I have left to piss off? Maybe I’d win the coveted Unhinged Teen Vote.
So there I was, in full goth regalia, standing on blue gym mats in some kid’s front yard, with garden hoses tied up as makeshift ropes attached to trees. I refereed a match between two completely untrained, dangerously enthusiastic kids who used barbed wire, light tubes, and thumbtacks like they were filming a low-budget remake of ECW’s infamous Mass Transit incident. Look it up. During the match, I tried to channel my inner Charles Robinson, but with more eyeliner and existential dread.
Maybe twenty people were there. Maybe they voted for me. Probably not.
I never told a soul about that show until years later. But that was the real end. Back where I started: the backyard.

The Part Where I Grow Up… Sort Of

These days, I’m just a fan and I’m finally okay with that. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of wrestling history, and when I’m not watching Tully Blanchard, my favorite wrestler ever, absolutely cook someone on the mic, or binging Mid-South, WCW, ECW, or Attitude Era WWE, I’m usually converting my wife into a wrestling nerd, one current storyline at a time. My favorite wrestlers these days are probably Gunther and Rhea Ripley but Ethan Page and Trick Williams sure have bright futures ahead of them.
I’ll never fall out of love with wrestling. And I’m glad the backstage culture, from what I hear, is more accepting, less toxic. People always ask me if I’d ever try to go behind the curtain again, maybe take the good parts of my wrestling resume to some small indy promoter as a weekend hobby. I tell those people that I’m 44 years old and I had a wild reputation of physical participation in the quasi-sport. If I took a bump now, I’d end up in the hospital or the morgue.
I keep in touch with a few of the wrestlers, managers, ring announcers, refs, and fans I’ve met along the way. Reminiscing about old times with Benjamin Tomas can be quite therapeutic at times. Sharing an old story with TARO or Disco Machine still makes me feel like I was one of the “boys”, that I belonged to a family for a short while. I lost contact with a bunch of people, sadly. If you’re out there, Scott Abeyta or Thunderbird or any others who I’ve not named, hit me up. I’d love to hear how you’re doing.
Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d gotten control of my drinking sooner, gone to therapy, gotten medicated, stopped blowing stuff up for sport. Maybe this blog would be written by a WWE superstar. Maybe not.
But I like this version of me. And I like being a fan. The story’s still good, it just didn’t go the way 24-year-old me imagined. Speaking of stories, I have a ton of those. An old, comforting memory of a car ride to a show in Fresno or a backstage blooper at the South Anaheim Marketplace pops into my head all the time and I get to relive it over again.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.