ROH Fightin' Words December 2010

Fightin’ Words
By Mike Greenblatt

For our third issue of Lucha Libre De Puerto Rico in 2002, Publisher Cary Silkin, Vice-President Mike Palermo and myself went all-out in an effort to secure advertising. For that, we needed a few extra trips to San Juan. Problem was, nobody was buying. Publisher Silkin and I spent long hours of business meetings on the beach plotting the course of the magazine’s future while VP Palermo pounded the pavement searching, cajoling, pleading for local businesses to part with some of their hard-earned dollars. (It must have been hard since he didn’t know the language.) When he came back with next-to-nothing, we sent him out again at night while we had long business meetings over dinner. The next day we would start the process all over again. Palermo might have been tired and his feet might have been burning from the hot 90-degree sidewalks of neighboring towns like Carolina and Aguas Buenas, but those meetings were a drain to my fragile eggshell psyche and I needed a massage.

At least we were getting to meet some of our heroes. Abdullah The Butcher was especially nice. He told us all about his restaurant in Atlanta and we even got to have lunch with him. When he first picked up his fork, I cowered in the face of threat but Abdullah—Canadian Lawrence Robert Shreve, 69—had no intentions of gouging a rut in my forehead. He was just trying to eat his egg. Still, the legends swirling around this man are manifold. It is said that the furrows in his forehead caused by decades of blading are so deep that he frequently likes to scare people at the dice table by putting chips in his head and watching their reaction.

His first championship was of the tag team variety with Doctor Jerry Graham when they defeated The Tolos Brothers in 1967 to win the Canadian tag title. Between ’69 and ’72, he was a three-time IWA World Champ based in Montreal. He also defeated former NFL star Ernie “The Big Cat” Ladd in Ohio to become NWA Champ in 1973. In ’75, he defeated Bobo Brazil to become NWA U.S. Champion.

Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, he traveled around the world, wrestling in Japan, Puerto Rico, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Africa, Europe and throughout the U.S., mostly as a one-night visiting wrecking crew. This two-decade roadshow included stints in ECW and WCW (He has never wrestled for WWE or TNA). In 2002, he worked for Ring Of Honor as Homicide’s partner facing The Carnage Crew.

At over 400 pounds, with mounds of fat hanging from his arms, he is, to say the least, intimidating as a physical presence. Yet I found him a true gentleman, well-spoken and softly intelligent about a great deal of diverse topics from food, travel and sport to philosophy and popular culture. I can safely say that getting to meet and hang out with him was one of the true perks of my Lucha Libre De Puerto Rico experience.

The issue wrapped. It went on sale. It sold. Still, it was costing more to put the mag out than we were taking in due to the lack of advertising. We had interviews that issue with Abdullah, Apolo, Rey Fenix, Abyss, Ricky Santana, Victor Quinonez, Savio Vega, Fidel Sierra, Konnan and Rick Steiner. I smooched it up with the sexy Abvriela for my Editor’s Page. We also got to meet the legendary Mouth of The South, Jimmy Hart, who was gracious and non-stop.

Once again, I was faced with the same dilemma I had faced earlier with Wrestling World magazine. I had one last issue to make money or we would have to suspend publication. This time for good. I knew I had to take my best shot.

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