Growing up, my parents would take me to wherever professional wrestling was being held, if it was within 100 miles or so.  If they didn’t, my friends Mike Ingebretson’s or Chad Olson’s parents would take us.  I saw some great professional wrestling growing up. I’m thankful for that to this day.  However, it is the very bad and unusual that I seem to remember with the most fondness.

 
In the summer of 85, I found out about a show in a Britt, Iowa at the Hancock County Fairgrounds, the day it was taking place.  I was 12 at the time and needed a ride.  My mom agreed on short notice to drive me the 40 miles to Britt and find this show.  I didn’t even have time to grab my friends Chad or Mike.

 
We left immediately, but we were still going to be arriving very close to belltime.  When we got to town we could not find the fairgrounds.  We stopped to ask a lady and she could not hear or speak.  I don’t think calculating the odds of this happening again under these circumstances is mathematically possible.  My mother wrote “fairgrounds” on a sheet of paper.  The lady pointed and gave what would turn out to be helpful hand gestures that led us the mile or so to our destination.  This day was going to be something.

 
I hardly remember enough of the show to write about, but the memories I do have from that day are extremely vivid.  First of all, it was HOT.  It was in a show barn with a dirt floor and had an odor that was predictably off-putting.  There were 100 or so people in attendance.  The show was just starting and the first wrestler announced was The Wrestling Snitch.  Now even as a near-teenager, I knew this was a laughable name.  That name makes me smile even now as I write it.  If anyone has any info on the whereabouts of The Wrestling Snitch, I would love to get in contact with him.  Sadly the Snitch was the bad guy and lost in short order.

 
I was so hungry for wrestling at this time in my life, ANY wrestling, that I loved everything that was being  done in that ring.  Match 2 featured The Alaskan Rick Renslow.  I was super stoked.  I had seen him wrestle the AWA champion Rick Martel on TV in a “jobber match” recently.  Renslow was the guy that always lost, but he WRESTLED ON TV!  And I just finished watching The Wrestling Snitch.  In comparison, Renslow was Hulk Hogan.  To his credit, Renslow wore his full gimmick to the ring, which was made of heavy fur.  It had to be intolerably miserable in that outfit.  I don’t remember who won the match, but in my heart Renslow pulled out the victory.

 
There was supposed to be women’s match and an 8 man battle royal, but one woman didn’t show.  No worries, we now have an 8 man/1 woman battle royal.  The woman is the first person eliminated, in about a minute.  So now the one thing that made the battle royal interesting was no longer a part of the battle royal.  We stayed for the end, I went down and got a few autographs.

 
In the 30 years that have passed since that show, I have probably told the above story 25 times.  Each time it makes me laugh.  It just encapsulates wrestling and my relationship with it.  The unpredictable nature of what should be predictable, the ridiculousness, the making lemons out of lemonade, and the feeling of being a fan.  It is not lost on me that every show that I’m a part of running, creates a story for someone.  I want it to be a good one.  I want it to make the person happy while they are telling it for the 25th time.  And I will selfishly always hope the storyteller is laughing slightly more with us than at us.

 
Thank you for reading.  If this is your first time visiting thinkingwrestling.com, I hope you consider reading the older blogs as well.  Please comment or ask any questions you have.  I am going to blog more regularly.  In future blogs, I will mix in my thoughts on the current professional wrestling scene with the nostalgia blogs like this one.  I hope you enjoy reading this as I enjoy writing it.
Troy Peterson

Owner of Impact Pro Wrestling and lifelong professional wrestling fan.