“I am an asshole. I am a piece of shit. I am sleazy.” These are the things that I constantly remind myself of as I get closer and closer to show time. As I stare into a mirror, I look at myself with a weird mix of disgust and pride. My attire tonight is Hawaiian print professional wrestling trunks which look like swimwear that Magnum PI might have sported in the 1980’s. I have on a matching Hawaiian print neckerchief which only adds to the flamboyance in which I strive to portray. I have on aviator sunglasses; the kind of sunglasses that an asshole cop might wear while he’s writing you a ticket for only driving two or three miles over the speed limit. My hair is thick and teased and reminiscent of a lions mane. My perfectly groomed facial hair is a style of mustache that is 25 years past it’s social acceptance and leaves me resembling an adult movie star of the 1980’s. The ensemble also includes my knee-high bright white wrestling boots which personifies the loudness of my character. My outfit is accessorized with white knee pads and athletic wrist tape. The old familiar stench of baby oil reminds me that I have about half of a bottle rubbed into my thighs, arms and chest, making me glisten in the bright lights. The baby oil magnifies the hair on my chest making it stand out even more, adding to the sleaze factor. Looking at myself, it is a wonder that I need to be reminded to be an asshole or a piece of shit or sleazy as if anyone who looks like this could be anything but. The next thing I see is the stage manager who is running into the room to tell me “five minutes until you’re on!” She is a beautiful woman, a wife of one of the other wrestlers but is seen by the majority of us as one of the boys. I grab my loud and tacky Hawaiian shirt which will serve as my entrance wear, my cigarette, my lighter, I hand my prop inhaler to the referee and tuck what’s left of the bottle of baby oil into the back of my trunks and head towards the standby position to get ready to go on. Sometimes I wonder if I am a prop comic or a professional wrestler. We are now less than five minutes away from my transformation from Joseph Ryan Meehan to a man with rock star charisma, a man with movie star good looks and the man who is single handily bringing sleazy back to professional wrestling: Joey Ryan!
Tonight, we are at The Mayan Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. The company I am working for is Lucha Va Voom. Lucha Va Voom is not your average wrestling show. It’s a hybrid mix of comedy, burlesque dancing and professional wrestling. If you take a quick trip through the dressing room, you will see a variety of different performers walking around. Male, female, gay, straight, midgets, a multitude of different nationalities speaking a variety of languages, and even celebrities who have come just to watch the show are hanging out. Everybody is so comfortable with everything there. Most performers feel free to walk around naked or half naked in their costumes for the show despite photographers from various news outlets there covering the event. In fact, being in costume and character will only help the story. It’s very much a family at Lucha Va Voom. Most of the wrestling is in the tradition of Lucha Libre which is a Mexican style of wrestling, complete with masked characters. I am one of the few who are without a mask. Because of this mixture of entertainment, it is rare to find an actual wrestling fan in the audience. The Mayan Theatre will be packed with about 2,000 people who are out on dates or out on the town looking to get drunk and have a good time with their friends. The wrestling on these shows almost calls to be a parody of the wrestling I would do on a regular show. Everything needs to be gimmicky, shtick-y and way over-the-top. Lucha Va Voom is by far my favorite place to work.
I find myself in the entranceway about to ascend into the arena. Still reminding myself of the kind of person in which I am going to portray. Asshole. Sleazy. Bad guy. The art in it is not acting like you’re trying to be any of those things but as if that is actually who I am. Nobody thinks of themselves as a terrible person so if you’re trying to be one then it’s less believable to the audience. Joseph Meehan might know that he needs to be all those things but Joey Ryan has to think he’s being cool, hip and sexy. After all, good is only a point of view. If the audience believes that Joey Ryan thinks he is being good while doing these horrible acts then you capture their imaginations and they become emotionally invested in your work. The production at Lucha Va Voom is top notch and they display each wrestler on the giant video screens as they are about to make their entrance. I hear “you’re on!” I light up my cigarette and begin to smoke in front of the camera and I hear the ring announcer at the stage area say my name in Spanish. Then the I hear the DJ start playing my entrance music of “Pina Colada.” With two scantily clad ring girls at my sides, I make my entrance and head to the stage. As soon as the audience sees me, the crowd starts to roar. It’s a mixture of cheers, boos, laughter and delight. I am a real spectacle. The reaction of the audience boosts my adrenaline and now Joseph Meehan no longer exists. There is only Joey Ryan. I don’t even notice that I’m struggling to breathe as my lungs fill with cigarette smoke. At this point, I am the star of the show and I must act as such. An audience can see right through somebody pretending or somebody with a lack of confidence. Right now, I must believe that there is nobody better at what I do than me. I pause for a moment to acknowledge the audience before I kick my leg up onto the railing which leads into the ring. With my crotch in the faces of the people who are just on the opposite side of the barricade, I take a puff of my cigarette and try to look as despicable as possible. At this point, I am no longer an asshole or piece of shit or sleazy. I am cool, hip and sexy. When I get to the stage in front of the ring, now with 2,000 pairs of eyes fixed upon me, I begin a slight dance to the melody of my theme music. In my best stripper impression, I begin to take off my Hawaiian entrance wear shirt to the roar of the audience. I then pull out the rest of the baby oil which I had securely placed in the waistband of my trunks and begin to pour the rest of the oil all over my body. I try to incorporate an awesome mix of sleaze and seduction in this act as I pull the waistband of my trunks open and pour the last of the bottle down the front of them. This gets a huge reaction from the audience as I begin to rub all the oil over my body. I then head from the stage area into the ring. Before I get into the ring, I take one last look at the audience and again kick my leg up on the ropes of the ring. Once there, I take one last puff off of the cigarette and then step into the ring. This is all before any wrestling actually takes place. I look around at the audience sitting ringside and make lewd gestures towards the females in the crowd. This would not make my mother proud. Then I turn my attention to the entranceway and await my opponent.
For anybody that knows the real me, it is glaringly apparent why I have to constantly remind myself to be in character. If you took a time machine to visit me before the age of 20, you wouldn’t believe I was even capable of this. The real me is shy and awkward. I have trouble making eye contact and I don’t speak very coherently. I prefer not to talk about myself unless I am specifically asked, so small talk is nearly impossible without the right partner. I tend to keep thoughts to myself which always makes people assume that I want to say something but am not comfortable in doing so. Maybe that’s something that is true but either way, more times than not it creates tension in what should be relaxed situations. Often times, I get accused of being bored in social settings because of my shyness. Whether it’s on a date or at a party, people think I am not having a good time because of my tendency to be introverted. I believe a lot of this stems back to my childhood. My lack of confidence might be attributed to being the youngest of four brothers and often being picked on. Maybe being a chubby kid and not having the faith in myself to talk to girls in my adolescence has somewhat stemmed over. It could also simply be genetics or environment as a trait I picked up from my father, who shares some of the same tendencies. As I reached my teenage years, my preferences switched from being a fan of sports to a fan of comic books. I became a bit of a dreamer and locked myself away for hours with just me and my comics. I developed a very vivid imagination and often drifted into fantasy worlds. This imagination inside me would eventually lead to my most successful idea once I learned to use it and manipulate it with abandon instead of keeping it bottled inside me. It led to my greatest creation: the creation of Joey Ryan.
The question that I get asked most is how or where I came up with my alter ego. The simplest answer is that I stole it. I stole it and then tweaked it. Growing up in the 1980’s and having three older brothers, I was a fan of the professional wrestling of that era. Once I realized that I could creatively do anything I want in the realm of professional wrestling, I went back to what drew me into being a fan. In the 1980’s wrestling was more fun and like a real life cartoon. Wrestling these days is very MMA influenced and is striving towards realism. Everybody wants everything to be presented as real as possible. As much as I appreciate that style, there is an aspect of fun missing from it which can be brought to it as well. The 1980’s was an era where you believed that Hulk Hogan could go toe-to-toe with Superman. I’m not referring to the era of the early 1990’s either when they had garbage men and hockey players or guys dressing up as superheroes as wrestlers. The 1980’s were when wrestlers could look and feel like superheroes without dressing up like them or announcers telling us they were superheroes. I decided that’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a 1980’s wrestler in the 2000’s. I pondered long and hard about what could I take and use. I decided that the man who personified everything that was cool and hip back then was Magnum PI. However, this is where the tweak comes in. For as cool and hip as Magnum PI was, if you were to see somebody today looking like that, your first instinct would be that he was creepy or sleazy. That’s when the light went off in my head! I would be the biggest bad guy in wrestling that I could be by acting and looking like the biggest good guy from the 1980’s. It was brilliant! It was an idea that I am still proud of today. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just jump from being a shy and chubby kid to a 1980’s bad ass overnight. It was a long and hard journey to get me there...
- Joey
