Two households both alike in dignity, and by households I mean wrestling promotions. In the old days of regional wrestling promotion, the local outfits were not unlike mafia families, working around each other, and careful to not overstep the perimeters of one operation to another. Often these regional promotions would work together, say to book overseas talent: along the same lines as a traveling circus, bookers hire an elephant act to play the circus in Dallas; another booker hires the trapeze act in Phoenix, and with the wrestling promotions it was similar: A good solid Japanese villian, touring the provinces, as it were, might run a nice couple of months in the Kansas City promotion, and by the time the local audience had tired of the Jap Act, he would get his in the ring comeuppance against Kansas City's local babyface good-guy wrestler, the feud would blow off, and someone would drive this Japanese performer on down the line to the next stop, where he would repeat the routine in St. Louis. These touring wrestlers were in effect sub-contracted entertainment acts, no different than touring bands or the above mentioned circus acts, and they had a shelf-life region to region, that was the weakness of their position -- the law of diminishing returns: you could only sell so many tickets on so many Saturday nights in one town to see the same Jap or Russian get their bums kicked by the local good ol'boy, before it was time to blow off, and get a new bad guy in town. The strength of this position of course was: if you were Andre the Giant in 1968 or 1972 for instance, you called your shots, and you demanded a big price. I defy anyone to tell me that if Andre the Giant was alive, and from the location you read this you could drive a mile down the road, and pay seven dollars for entry to see Andre the Giant, that you'd pass because you need to catch up on your Netflix Queue. These men were legendary at a time when all there was was carny word of mouth. And you must understand, the Andre I'm talking about is not that man in the Princess Bride nearly fully deformed by Acromegaly, the disease that first gave him great size, and then, ironically, began to shrink him, and give him that bizarre shape of having a massive torso, and small limbs, late in his life, ultimately crippling and killing him. The Andre of the late sixties and seventies was a phenom. A man over seven feet tall and three hundred and fifty pounds who could perform standing dropkicks, and moved around the ring with uncanny agility.
I digress on Andre here to set up the importance to the survival of these regional promotions that they book top talent. Booking the Andre level performers, be it St. Louis, Tokyo, Manhattan, or New Zealand, meant success to these outfits. You needed Andre, and you needed to pay Andre. But the other factor to the thriving regional wrestling promotion was the value generated and maintained by their title belt. The belt must be protected at all costs, and this takes on a multiple meaning in these old days -- the belt had to be on the right guy of course, the guy who could work a match, and a guy the fans wanted to see win out against the villians traveling through town. This was key. There was another aspect to the near obsessive protection of the belt -- consider this fictional set-up: You have a promotion in St. Louis, and a promotion in Kansas City -- two households alike in dignity. They've traded talent, lost talent, fought each other over booked talent, and now you have this Boss Hog Kansas City promoter come up with the plan to finally and completely do in his rival in St. Louie -- When this Andre-esque freak of nature comes cross-country, the KC Boss Hog offers him 100,000 dollars to go to the rival promotion in STL, and when the big blowoff match comes, NOT LOSE to the STL good-guy wrestler, and instead beat him for his belt in front of the STL fans -- a real shoot wrestling match, except the pretty boy in St. Louis won't know that until he's in the ring, and it's too late, and what can the promoter do then? Remember the business back then was still predicated on the locals believing the matches were legit, they couldn't very well run down to the ring and drag the Giant off the poor kid in the middle of a world title match with their building sold out. So KC pays an Andre to go to STL, play along, and then at the climactic match, in an ironic twist on the fixing of athletics, Andre DOES NOT lose the match, steals STL's title, and comes back to KC for his money.
Shades of a dustbowl Yojimbo here, because of course once this Andre comes back to KC, Boss Hog KC promoter wants him to drop St. Louis's belt to their own homegrown Kansas champion, then KC would have both belts on their boy, and the STL promotion would be destroyed.
IN THE OLD DAYS schemes like this did occur between regional promotions; and for that, each promotion kept a wrestler on retainer that was known as a hooker. A hooker was a legit fighter, something akin to today's mma fighters; a man practiced in the art of submission wrestling. These goons had one purpose -- if you thought your belt might be in danger from another promotion you quickly got it off your star, your money-making champion, your best actor, and on to your hooker -- that way the belt was protected by a man who could handle hijinks in the ring by turning the wrestling match into a real fight, and legitimately defend the title and promotion. This happened in the thirties and forties all the time, and audiences never knew that some times the matches were real, because they thought all the matches were real.
Now back to this Andre like character, a man-monster, on his way up the road to Kansas City: because St. Louis must make him the counter-offer to backstab Kansas, Kansas quickly puts the belt on their legit tough guy, a Texan from Glasscock County. A tough old bugger who, as per usual in these things, has seen it all, and is getting too old for this shit. His mission, and with it a payday that could get him home to his family in Texas, and out of this filthy business for good: Beat Andre in the ring legitimately -- the only way to guarantee holding both belts. Now this is one tough man, the Glasscock Hooker (heh). But then again, this isn't your average wrassler coming back up KC way, this is a minotaur coming. And the Hooker can't know for sure that Andre will lay down for the money, or if STL has given him a better offer; if Andre does not lay down, and makes a fight of it, the Hooker doesn't know if he could beat him in a real fight. But he's fixin to find out. And that match, with both belts, and both promotions, on the line, and how much of the match is legit, and how much a work of two actors, and when the change comes from one to the other, and how the match ends will be the final act of the film.
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