Black ‘n’ Blue Inc.

The guys behind This Week in Wrestling bring wrestling back to the Hub City — with a vengeance.

It wasn’t looking good for Joe "The Prince of Pain" Kane as his opponent, Malice, set up a rickety table in the ring and grabbed him by the throat. Even though he made it to the final match in the All Access Wrestling championship tournament, Nov. 10 would not end well for the New Orleans’ native. Malice, a much larger man who looks as though he would dropkick his own mother, had batted Kane around the ring before grabbing him by the neck and seemingly effortlessly choke slamming him through the table. After a quick three count, the fans erupted and Malice was awarded the belt. As he exited the ring as the first-ever AAW champion, paramedics rushed to remove the injured Kane from the ring. The two had fought their way through six other contenders for the belt in the tournament, part of The Last Dance - AAW's premiere event organized by Chad Vidrine and Judd Lormand of Acadiana Open Channel's This Week in Wrestling.

The night, however, was not just about the championship. It was also about providing a breeding ground for local and independent talent. Wrestlers like Kane, Kevin Northcutt and Joey C came to get noticed and gain a foothold in what will hopefully become a thriving, local wrestling promotion. The event was also a showcase of nationally known talent like A.J. Styles, Norman Smiley and Primetime Elix Skipper. Further still, it was a dose of nostalgia for fans old enough to remember the events that led to such a hatred between the main event stars, Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Kamala The Ugandan Giant.

The stars came out to gain the support and admiration of the 800-plus fans crammed into the Robicheaux Center that night. And they succeeded. All through the night, the fans were rabid, cheering and lauding the participants engaged in a gymnastics party from hell.

Then there's Sassy Vegas, one performer who didn't win his first-round match against Kane, but who did leave the building with something more valuable - the total hatred of the fans.

Sassy Vegas: Born on the Beach

If you take his word for it, Sassy Vegas is Acadiana's own American Idol. According to him, he auditioned for the show and brought the judges' panel to tears. But before he could finish his tryout, they stopped him. They wouldn't allow him in the show, because if America heard him sing they would instantly vote him the winner.

With his singing career a little deflated, Sassy decided to return to the ring and use his wrestling career as a springboard for his vocal styling. Although he likes the physicality of wrestling, he would much rather be behind the microphone, singing to sold-out crowds in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Sassy's in-ring career began in August of 1997, when he decided that the business was facing a shortage of good, flashy wrestlers. Lormand claims that he met Sassy at the Jet 24 on Johnston Street around that time and advised him to seek training from Adrian Street at his school, Skull Krushers, in Pensacola, Fla. Sassy denies even knowing what a Jet 24 is and claims to be from an exclusive section of Cocoa Beach, Fla. However, he does confess to selling all his worldly possessions and heading off to be trained by Street, one of wrestling's shock performers best known for kissing Terry Taylor during a match.

When he arrived for training, Street could not be found, and Sassy had to decide whether to spend the night on the beach and be able to pay for wrestling school or get a hotel room and go home without realizing his dream. The natural-born entertainer chose to sleep in the sand. It was under Street's tutelage that he honed his style, but he now says that he has far surpassed his teacher's panache. Sassy describes himself as a touch of Neil Diamond, a hint of Wayne Newton and a dab of Terry Funk, a hardcore wrestling legend. Growing up, he idolized Diamond and Gheorghe Zamfir, the master of the pan flute.

After a few months of training, he wrestled his first match against Nature Boy Buddy Landell. Sassy admits that the match went all of five minutes before he succumbed to Landell's figure-four leg lock.

Undeterred, Sassy traveled the South as a wrestler for a few years, selling tons of records and touring extensively in such far-flung places as Paraguay. Eventually, he wandered down to the Lafayette area in 2000. Some people say that he looks a lot like James Belanger, a secondary education major at University of Louisiana at Lafayette from the "swanky" side of Abbeville or Chris Adidas, another indie wrestler. Sassy denies any connection between the three, but does admit that he can understand the mistake being that they are all "strikingly handsome."

Moments before his match at The Last Dance, an AAW staff member runs to the ring and hands the ring announcer a sheet of paper. Apparently, before Sassy comes out, there are some rules to get straight. There will be no recording of the match. There will be no flash photography. And ladies with a heart condition should be advised not to get too excited.

Asked about the rules, Sassy says, "Well, I learned from experience, in my concerts in Indonesia and all over Portugal, that if you don't set up ground rules for these people, it's going to be awful. They are going to go crazy. Once I start singing, women tend to faint and rush the stage trying to tear off some of my clothes. We wouldn't want that to happen. (It's) just to make sure everybody behaves themselves."

As soon as the rules are out of the way, "Hero" by Enrique Iglesias hits on the loudspeaker, and Sassy Vegas saunters down to the ring. He says, "That's pretty much what I am doing here. I am going to be everybody's hero. Can't deny it, the people loved me and I will be the little boys' (in the crowd) hero. Honestly they need a hero right now. These are trying times."

As he swaggers and gyrates his way to the ring, he extends his hand for a few high fives, just to yank it away at the last moment. That and his flamboyant appearance - long, Elvis-like sideburns, wavy hair, shiny black tights and a sparkling black and silver shirt - draw the ire of the crowd. Usually, he keeps where he gets his ring attire a closely guarded secret, but figures that because people around here can't afford it, it will be all right to tell them that it is made in France by an elderly lady.

He says he wears such flamboyant outfits because, "I'm a star. I deserve to be in shiny clothes. If I came out in a burlap sack, I would still be Sassy Vegas. I would still look good." After entering the ring, he climbs the turnbuckle and gyrates to his music as the fans start chanting unflattering things about his sexual identity.

Seemingly unfazed, Sassy asks, "Do you think I'm sexy?" The crowd lets him have it with another round of boos and taunts. He then struts around the ring and asks, "Baton Rouge, are you ready to rock?" The crowd is not amused.

After the match, he confesses that, "I confuse them a lot. They pretty much have the same educational level. You know, a lot of them have three teeth and they are all in their pockets. I mean, some of these older fans out there have one foot in the grave and one foot on a banana peel. It's easy to lump them all together, all these 'Cajun' people. They got a lot of graduates from the Diesel Driving Academy out there in the crowd."

Sassy then draws more of the crowd's loathing by stating that even though they don't deserve it, in an effort to further his singing career, he is going to sing for them.

Needless to say, his wobbly soprano rendition of "I Am so Beautiful to You" doesn't win him any friends. When his opponent comes to the ring, Sassy bails out and seems reluctant to get back into the ring. Sassy is more concerned with dancing for an uninterested ring girl than locking horns with Joe Kane.

When he finally gets in the ring, he orders the referee to check Kane's gear. As he obliges, Sassy launches into another verse of his song. Eventually, the two get down to business, and the crowd sees what is behind his cowardice. Kane puts on a wrestling clinic, using Sassy's body as a practice dummy. However, the sneaky Sassy slips in an eye gouge, allowing him to take control of the match for a brief period. Instead of capitalizing on his momentum, he wastes more time gyrating and singing, allowing Kane to recuperate.

"I'd see the little kids in the crowd, the little Sassy fans, and honest, what do they have to look forward to?" he says, explaining his showboating. "Working offshore? Working with T-Boy in the shop in Broussard? He's going to remember this for the rest of his life. He's gonna remember, to the day he dies, the day Sassy Vegas came to town! I wanted to bring a little light into his life, his little Sassy-Vegas-fan life. So, I decided to sing for him, and Joe Kane, the yellow, egg-sucking dog that he is, took advantage of that."

At one point, Kane hits a sunset flip and, in the process, yanks down Sassy's tights. He stumbles about the ring for what seems like an eternity before he is able to get them up. During his antics, a fan hollers, "Crack kills." Another ribald fan in the crowd yells, "I have seen a better chest on a chicken." Another still, dubs him C.C. Adcock of Lil' Band O' Gold fame.

Somehow in the middle of the ridicule, Sassy pulls himself together and takes Kane down with a body slam. As Kane lies on the mat, Sassy climbs the turnbuckle and prepares to ice him with a moonsault. The match would have been over if Vegas had nailed Kane with the top-rope maneuver, but again he would waste his opening by agitating the fans. Just as Sassy cuts the back-flip, Kane rolls away leaving nothing but empty canvas for Sassy's landing. Kane hops up, hits his finisher, the Bare Back, and gets the victory.

"I was robbed, honestly," Sassy says. "That was a miscarriage of justice. But like my Grandpa Vegas says, 'You got to shake them haters off.'"

He was going for his patented "Sassy Sault," which he used to call the "Snicker Sault," because once he hit you with it, you weren't going anywhere for a while. However, it is less often than not that he lands it. Asked about his record, he clams up.

"Of what? Record of sell outs? Record of how many records I sell? I think I sold 50,000 records in Bolivia, the I Am so Beautiful to You Tour. That's what you're talking about, right?" he squirms. Explained that the question is about how many notches he has in the "W" column, Sassy says, "I really don't keep track of that. That's pish-posh."

But even with his submarginal record, if you ask him, he is not only a great wrestler, he is the only wrestler.

"There are other wrestlers in AAW? 'Cause I didn't see any. I am the only thing happening in AAW," he gloats. "Do they honestly have other wrestlers? Joe Kane, Kevin Northcutt, the Flying Elvises? Come on, they couldn't even hold a note if it had a handle attached to it."

"You can know every hold from A-Z, but if you don't have style, if you don't have panache, you don't have anything. I have a lot of that - a lot of style, a lot of sass, hence the name Sassy. I didn't just give myself that name - I earned it."

And just why is a wrestler with such a lackluster record such an integral part of AAW?

"I have got what they call 'It' in the business, OK? It's charisma. It's style. It's panache, if you will, OK? They're in black and white, baby, and I am in Technicolor," reasons Sassy.

Vidrine agrees, saying, "Sassy is a great in-ring performer that has one huge intangible going for him. He has that natural charisma and microphone skill that you cannot teach.

"One thing is for sure - at every show, you will remember something Sassy Vegas did. As for his singing ability, I have heard better sounds from a drunk on Bourbon Street. But don't tell him I said that."

After the match, a battered Sassy grabs the microphone and asks the crowd, "I tried my best; isn't that worth something?" The crowd replies with a chant of "You suck." Undeterred, he starts back with the song that brought him to the top of the charts in Bolivia, "I Am so Beautiful to You." If the fans are worried that this is his swan song, they can rest easy.

"Not to fear, I will be on the card. People just show up to see me. But they really need to be more respectful and remember the rules," says Sassy.

As far as his next opponent goes, "They could go out to one of these guys from the bayou who works for Halliburton in a machine shop. They could get anybody. They are going to go down hard. And I might sing a song or two."

It seems so simple, right? Two guys in a ring hammering on each other. However, the uphill battle for immortality is not limited to the wrestlers. For the event's promoters, slapping a headlock on a dream is just as hard.

The Road to Wrestlemania

It's curtain time, and no one knows the whereabouts of Nature Boy Buddy Landell. Landell has been promoted as one of the special old-school participants in the AAW tournament. As their volunteer crew of 35, clad in black T-shirts emblazoned with AAW's blue logo, puts the final touches on the arena, Lormand and Vidrine must make a decision. Minutes before the first bell rings, the AAW promoters scramble and rewrite Landell's role in the event.

Landell was set to meet a mystery opponent and was actually voted as the favorite to win the title on AAW's Web site. At the last minute, his slot went to Hacksaw Butch Reed, who was supposed to be Landell's surprise opponent. Fortunately, the cat was never let out the bag, and Reed remained a surprise opponent. Facing Reed would be Jacey North, a Marine turned indie wrestler. It was a close save for Lormand and Vidrine, one of the benefits of keeping a few things to themselves. The fiasco gave them a good idea that it is better to have a couple of surprises than a couple of letdowns.

"The last minute stuff is unbelievable. You try to plan stuff out as early as you can, but you get bit in the butt by something," says Lormand.

"With the no-shows, you now know why you will always see that little sentence 'card subject to change' on each promotional poster. You never know when someone is going to get sick and cancel or any other reason for an advertised talent to not be there. You just have to regroup and move on ... the show must go on," says Vidrine.

The show would go on with minimal backfires. Other than Landell, only one wrestler, Ernest "the Cat" Miller, fell through. Miller was also never publicized and was scheduled to be a surprise guest at The Last Dance. He called at midnight the night before to tell them that he had to meet with World Wrestling Entertainment and would not make it.

"It's never 100 percent. You book a guy - it's over the phone," says Lormand. "It's verbal. There is no written contract. It's a verbal agreement between two people - a wrestler and a promoter - and when the wrestler doesn't show, the promoter gets screwed."

For them, The Last Dance was a trial by fire. The event - contrived in April, but announced in August - was the first time that either had run a wrestling event. The last eight months had been full of planning, scheduling and promoting the event. However, it did not compare to the last days before the event. Both men agree that the last minute backstage preparations for the event were the most hectic times they have been through.

"I have worked 50-hour, 60-hour weeks during finals. I have had some crazy times, but the week prior to this event was definitely the busiest week of my life. It was unbelievable. You want to talk last minute stuff? (It's) the little things people forget about," says Lormand.

One of the last-minute hurdles reared its head early in the day, when someone realized that there were no ring steps for the performers to use to climb into the ring. Lormand had procured a ring, sans steps, that needed some work from a promotion in New Orleans. After the repairs were done, it set them back about $2,500. Between shows, it is broken down and stored at his house, along with the championship belt.

"It all comes down to when the bell rings, if they will be ready. In some ways, this event has been in the making for eight years," says Lormand.

Perhaps it has been in the making since the two diehard wrestling fanatics were youngsters. For them, wrestling is more than just something that comes on television a couple of times a week.

"Wrestling is a sickness that gets inside of you and you can't get rid of it. It doesn't affect everyone; some people can watch wrestling for a few years and get out of it. Some people can watch it for a few weeks and get out of it. From the moment I watched professional wrestling, I have never stopped. I need it," says Lormand.

In Lormand's early 20s, he started reading Prodigy news boards and decided to publish a newsletter filled with the backstage scoop and gossip he found on these sites. His first break into the business came in 1995 when he met a few wrestlers and a promoter before an event in Houma. Lormand showed them his newsletter and expressed interest in getting involved with the promotion. Impressed with his newsletter and his knowledge of the business, one wrestler asked him to manage his tag team.

That night, he went to the ring with two of his AAW stars, Kane and Northcutt, as their heel, or bad guy, manager. It was his job to get the crowd riled up and into the match. He might have done his job a little too well, because after popping his mouth off to the crowd, a fan in the fourth row hurled his chair at Lormand, just missing his ear by a few inches.

"I was scared, to say the least," he recalls. "It scared the fire out of me, but at the same time I knew I was doing my job, and it was a rush."

Lormand started traveling the independent circuit across the South, stopping for shows in Pensacola, Fla., Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans. During this time, he met a plethora of young stars who were also trying to break into the business. He also met the legends of his childhood, who were now staples on the circuit. Lormand was running with the stars who he idolized as a youngster - guys like Michael P.S. Hayes, Dirty Dick Murdoch and Tommy Rich.

This experience just added fuel to his sickness, and at some point he decided it wasn't enough and his addiction wouldn't be satisfied until he did it on his own.

Lormand devised a plan to return to college, get his degree and work toward starting a promotion business. His next break came in January of 1997, when he enrolled in History 102 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. One day, he wore a wrestling T-shirt to class on the same day that Vidrine, who was also enrolled, had donned a wresting shirt. The two had never met, but Vidrine knew of him through the newsletter. They sat together and talked wrestling throughout the course. One day, Vidrine broached the topic of AOC.

In 1996, Vidrine and a friend from work were set to do a sports talk show when his friend was transferred. Vidrine, who was already certified at the station, canned the idea, but after telling Lormand, the two had TWIW on the air by October.

During the five years that the show has been on, it has skyrocketed in popularity. There is no way of knowing how many viewers tune in, but it has won The Times Best AOC Show and constantly places in the top three rankings. The show became so popular that callers would clog AOC phone lines an hour before the show was scheduled to start, waiting to dish about who was the latest victim of the Stone Cold Stunner or who had what belt that week.

With such a rabid following calling the show every week, the pair says that they knew they could make a wrestling promotion work in Lafayette.

Even though the event was all they lived, breathed and ate for the past months, Lormand and Vidrine didn't get to watch The Last Dance. However, they did sneak a peek to see how the crowd would react during certain spots. The biggest concern was if certain things would go over and if the crowd would bite on the evolving story lines.

Clash of the Champions

Throughout the night, little angles emerged. In the first match, two men battle over an AAW contract. The first one to enter, Morgan City's Mustang Mike, comes out to the ring playing the heel role as he badmouths the fans. His opponent Joey Cefalu, who pays his bills as a bartender during the week, could use this contract. Life is the road for the New Orleans native, traveling about 40,000 miles a year heading to events. His persona, dubbed Joey C, stays true to the city that invented Carnival in the new world by parading out to the ring in a flamboyant Mardi Gras outfit complete with a festival-colored feather boa.

Just as the crowd gets into the match and Cefalu takes the lead, a figure emerges from the back. The crowd instantly goes nuts as the man, clad in the garb of an oil sheik, walks to the ring. Some fans cheer. Some fans boo. Some fans do both. Even Mustang Mike and Cefalu stop wrestling, because Skandar Ackbar is heading their way.

About 20 years ago, Ackbar was the most hated man in the wrestling world. Every Saturday night, he was storming around the ring in some civic center or auditorium as one of his goons did battle in the ring. During the days of the gas shortage, he gave fans weary of long lines at the pump someone to hate. Then, to seal the deal, he did something unthinkable. Something that, to this day, is one of the most unforgettable events to ever occur in a wrestling ring.

During a match between Kamala and Duggan, Ackbar sneaked into the ring and launched a fireball right into the face of Duggan, the all-American hero known for his trademark "U.S.A!" and "HOOOOO" chants. The fireball singed off half of Duggan's beard, and he would suffer actual burns.

As the crowd settles down, another figure explodes out the back to the same reaction. This time it is the 6'7" tall, 455-pound Ugandan Giant himself. Kamala enters the ring slapping his belly and proceeds to attack the good guy, Cefalu, much to Mustang Mike's delight. Then suddenly, cementing his status as the ultimate heel, he gives the same treatment to Mustang. Soon, both opponents are writhing in pain in the wake of a splash from the big man.

Ackbar grabs the microphone and announces, "I don't want to hear any of this U.S.A. crap. Duggan, this is the final chapter and I am writing the book." At this point the crowd is set to explode, and they begin to chant for Duggan and the good ol' U.S. of A. But they will just have to wait.

A couple of hours later, in the main event, Duggan isn't faring too well as he faces two men. At some points, the referee can't control all the action and Duggan falls prey to the choke of Ackbar. But even that can't stop Duggan. As he staggers in the grasp of Kamala's heart claw, he spouts a U.S.A. chant. With the fans behind him, Duggan fights back, drops into a three-point stance and nearly takes Kamala's head off with a clothesline. The referee slaps out the elementary three count, and Duggan has gained his revenge once again.

Just as it seems that Duggan and Old Glory will reign forever, a streak of blond and tattoos sprints toward the ring. Malice, who won the crowd's favor and applause one match earlier, is now getting their heat as he slides into the ring and begins to pummel Duggan. After a few seconds of youth and angst having a go at old age, Duggan comes alive and sends him reeling. Duggan grabs the microphone and challenges Malice for his belt at the next event.

But Duggan will not leave it at that. He storms around the ring, nostrils flaring, and says, "Let's give them one they can hear in Iraq!" The crowd obliges and some 800 people blast out "U.S.A." at the top of their lungs.

Eventually, Duggan leaves the ring, but not before his date with Malice is set. No doubt the good guy will be in peril, the crowd will chant "Sassy sucks," the heel will do something nefarious - and the fans will eat it up.