They say you should never meet your idols; it makes them too human and ruins their appeal. This does not apply to ‘80s wrestlers who, because they live their gimmicks, are barely human. They’re a generation of Roger Rabbits in their own personal Toontowns. If anything, they’re even more ridiculous in person, like the time I wrestled Koko B. Ware.
Koko was a superstar at the height of the ‘80s wrestling boom, coming to the ring with his parrot, Frankie, and doing the Angels In The Outfield arm wave way before it was cool. While he wasn’t a main event guy by any means, Koko was memorable enough to be inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame and has as much credibility in the wrestling community as a guy with a parrot on his shoulder could possible have. In a Darren Aronofsky twist, Frankie has since died in a house fire.
I wouldn’t say Koko was my idol (I currently own a cat), but he was the first old-timer I got to wrestle, so I was a little apprehensive about being a courteous and respectful adversary. Which means I actually called him “Mr. B. Ware.” “Mr. B. Ware,” I said, “my name is RJ, we’ll be wrestling each other tonight.”
“That’s great kid,” he replied, “can you shave my hair?”
Before I could even answer, Koko took out an electric clipper, which easily dated back to 1987 (you don’t shop for appliances after your peak year), plugged it in, handed it to me and leaned over the garbage can. Apparently, Koko’s signature hair-do was a tightly shaved fade and he couldn’t perform unless it looked perfect. Within the first minute of meeting Mr. B. Ware, I was now the barber from Coming To America.
As you can imagine, shaving an old, African American man’s hair with a clipper that’s older than me was going less than smoothly, especially to the sounds of him grunting and yelling “harder!”. To break it up, I mentioned to Koko that I caught some of his early work when he was a bad guy and was surprised at his intensity. Little did I know I planted a (bird) seed, which, I would live to regret.
Post-shave, we put together a fun, basic match – he was even going to “let” me slam him.
I made my entrance in typical prick fashion – irritatingly slow – and then got on the mic and made some allusions to parrot abuse. Little did I know, my entrance would be the quickest part of the night. Koko made his entrance wearing a mall-grade airbrushed shirt commemorating the late Frankie and one of those plush, parrot-shaped hats that no one buys at the zoo. And in case you still hadn’t clued in to the fact that he used to own a bird, Koko’s theme music (sung by himself) had the complex chorus of “bird, bird, bird” and he got everyone in the audience to do the arm flap. And when I say everyone, I mean he went up to literally every single person in the audience and did the “bird” with them. This spectacle took 15 minutes, long enough for his song to stop and restart three times, breaking the record of Surfin’ Bird for the amount of times “bird” is mentioned in a song.
The match went off without a hitch, save for when he “let” me slam him. I learned that when old wrestlers say, “let”, they forget to add, “if you can, because I’m going to be as heavy as a sack of parrot shit so you’ll actually have to slam me.” Semantics.
The match ended when my partner interfered, causing a disqualification and we both ran away like Moe and Curly at the end of a Three Stooges short. I sat down; ready to get undressed, when the ring announcer ran backstage and told us we better get back out there because “Koko just called you out.” We walked back through the curtain to find Koko in the ring, microphone in hand, looking absolutely livid. “You two are punks! You two are sissies! You two are…”
At this point, Mr. B. Ware used a term that is no longer acceptable in polite, or even rude, society. But considering we were at a wrestling show – the social equivalent of a 1970’s time capsule from the South – the term was met with a reaction so positive that even I began questioning my own sexuality. My partner and I again retreated to the back.
Was Koko really pissed at me or did he just have a bad case of the Bird Flu? The next sounds I heard were Koko knocking over the entranceway. I was in deep shit. He stormed backstage and I sheepishly said “Sir, was everything okay?” He grabbed the back of my head and said, “Come with me, boy.”
Koko proceeded to drag me out and beat me around ringside, through the fans and the merchandise table. As I was crawling away, I saw him pick up a garbage can and hurl it at me upside down. If you’ve never had poutine before, I’d describe it as a French Canadian taking a dump, because that’s exactly what it felt like sliding down my back. And to make it more poetic, this was the very same garbage containing Koko’s hair that I had shaved only hours before. All the while, “bird, bird, bird” played over the speakers, creating my own personal Worldstar Hip Hop nightmare.
I was convinced I’d done something to piss Koko off, but when we finally got to the back and he explained to me that my comment about his early days had fired him up and he wanted whip the fans into such a frenzy that he could come back and wrestle next month – I had been duped by the original Birdman.
Koko flapped his wings and took off into the night sky.