It was family time on a budget.
When I was in probably the fourth grade, I was big into professional wrestling. It was a heyday for what they now call sports entertainment, when Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes and the like were bigger than life — and we didn’t know about their private lives because social media was only a glimmer in some programmer’s eye.
The National Wrestling Alliance used to put on shows just about every month in Roanoke, where I grew up, and my dad often took me to the civic center to see them. To save on parking, we’d park across the street and dodge traffic to get on the property. And to save on food, we’d get McDonald’s and smuggle hamburgers in our pockets.
Since then, I have watched wrestling off and on over the years and been fortunate to write about it some, too.
But what I saw Sunday night near Lake Anna was a new experience.
Introducing the Micro Wrestling Federation, a promotion in which the entire cast is less than 5 feet tall. It was founded in 2000 and is the longest-running organization in the little person wrestling industry, according to its website.
The Pigeon Forge, Tenn., business puts on 500-plus events a year nationwide and has its own 350-seat “mini-arena” there in the Smoky Mountains. But perhaps it received its biggest attention a couple of years ago when it was featured on a Discovery Channel program called “Big Little Brawlers.”
The reason I bring it up, though, is it’s now a regular feature at the Log Home Brewing Co. on Courthouse Road in Spotsylvania County, not far from the Louisa County line.
Sunday’s show marked the Micros’ fifth time performing at the brewery, and they sold just under 300 tickets, the touring company’s road manager, “Little Miss,” told me. (I’m using only stage names here to keep up the fantastical nature of the whole enterprise).
Now, let me address the elephant in the special small-sized wrestling ring before we go any further.
Little people — I’m also not using what’s sometimes known as the “M-word” — obviously haven’t gotten a fair shake out of so-called “polite society” over time. They’ve been marketed as sideshow acts, been the butt of jokes and experienced prejudice the likes that an old, straight, white, typical-height guy like me may not even understand.
They’ve also been often used as a spectacle over the years in the better-known world of average-sized pro wrestling. As a novelty act, if you will, sometimes squaring off with taller grapplers for a laugh.
But that’s not what I saw in Spotsylvania.
You don’t have to take my word for it, however. The wrestlers I interviewed spoke of their livelihood as empowering for little people.
“Jamaican Jo” — no “E” on “Jo” to differentiate from all the other, average joes — is the champion of the Micro touring company I saw (the company has two traveling casts plus another that stays in Pigeon Forge).
The 30-year-old was born in Jamaica and grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, outside of Cleveland. He said he’s played sports all of his life, but that Micro Wrestling is where he gets to be a professional, to really show off his athleticism with high-flying moves and even compete for fans’ attention with wrestling businesses such as WWE and AEW.
Chief Little Foot of the Micro Wrestling Federation greets the crowd Sunday at Log Home Brewing Co. in Spotsylvania County. The in-ring persona of the “Tribal Chief” isn’t a gimmick. He’s a member of the Nakota Sioux tribe.
He’s no joke. Unless, of course, you mean the humor he employs in the ring.
“So now being known as a professional wrestler, somebody who people can look up to, is literally a dream of mine,” he told me. “I couldn’t ask for anything better, for a better job.”
And if merchandise sales are an indication, Jo’s doing pretty well for himself. Quite a few fans around Log Home on Sunday were wearing yellow T-shirts with his logo on them.
He also said he would encourage little people to get involved with his company, to talk to Jack Darrell, who runs the operation.
Little Miss, who joined Micro Wrestling in May 2017, has been a referee for the group as well as a wrestler. But Sunday, she was the emcee, working the mic with Micro ball cap atop her long blond hair.
She said when she and her peers have gone to some towns, there have been protests, or threats of protests. Maybe someone had a little person as a friend, or in their family.
But the negative view probably arose because they hadn’t been to a Micro show, she said.
“Like with us, it’s a lot about the athleticism,” she told me. “We’re trying to show that we can do just as much as everybody else can do, like average-height wrestling, we just do it differently.”
To wit, Topher Gibbs, who lives in Richmond, said after the show that the Micro performance ranked right up there with other wrestling he’s seen. The grappling moves seemed crisp.
“This is really good,” said Gibbs, who used to work in Fredericksburg for the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board. “It’s tighter professionals in here, much tighter wrestling.”
Similar comments came from Mark Nuckols, who traveled from Hanover County.
“It was more acrobatic than I was expecting, so I was happy to see that,” said Nuckols, who was there with his wife, Claudia.
Gibbs sat on my left in the crowd; Nuckols, to my right. There was even a lady holding a baby behind me.
The event was family friendly, too, as far as I’m concerned. The only profanity I heard all night was from the crowd, not the performers.
That’s undoubtedly good for Ron Harold, Log Home co-owner, who said his business tries to find different ways to attract crowds to the brewery. I understand that Strangeways Brewing in Fredericksburg also has drawn well with little people wrestling, though with a different federation.
So I’ll try to go see Micro Wrestling again, and tune into the company’s YouTube show on Mondays.
Other people may still quibble with the notion of little people wrestling as entertainment.
But, to me, it just seemed like a lot of little people standing pretty darned tall.
