Who would have thought being 18 and having your parents move to California for six months and let you live in their house with no jobs and no bills and lots of drugs could get boring? Not us, but it did! That is basically how Ingalls Pro Wrestling was formed.
We
started wrestling along time before all the half truths about backyard
wrestling started to show up in the news. IPW originally began as an indoor
event between Snake, Kaine, Keg O’ and The Punisher one day in Keg O’ parent’s
single wide house trailer. To say the least, things were cramped.
We started wrestling out of the dullness of being in the same pot
smoking ritual, day in and day out (Punisher excluded). We wrestled a
few times off camera and then thought it would be cool to video tape
ourselves. We attempted to wrestling with actual submission moves,
chokes, and holds.
At first this was all in good fun but our competitive
attitudes soon led to actual hatred between us.
By this time more of our friends started coming over to watch and eventually also wanted to wrestle. Big Poppa Pat (OR Firefly at the time) was one of the first wrestlers outside of the original four to join IPW. For the first time Big Poppa and another new entry to the IPW, “Sac” wrestled each other for the light weight belt. This match turned out to be the Groundbreaking match that formed Ingalls Pro Wrestling into what it is today. They did something we had not thought of… Faking! Big Poppa finished off Sac by side walk slamming Sac on to the couch (which wasn’t too good for it) and pinned him for the win. Eventually we realized this way of wrestling was much more fun than our original plan. We decided to take our matches out doors and with it some of our desire to sit around getting high all day.
Our
first backyard wrestling matches took place at Harley Charley and Bad Ass
Brad’s backyard. With spay paint being our ropes and rock solid ground
being our mat we didn’t exactly look the best, but we were still having a good
time. Two events took place in this backyard before the neighbors
complained about the noise and language. We then moved on to Big Poppa’s
and The Punisher’s house.
Realizing how much fun this was we wanted to make it right. We purchased 2 x 4’s and sunk them in the ground. Then we had “the bright idea” that bungee rope would be strong enough to spring us back. (All the ropes accomplished, was taking $40.00 of our money and they looked decent. Those ropes wouldn’t hold back a strong gust of wind.) We also placed mattresses on the ground as a cushion so we could do some more real looking moves. Obviously 2 x 4 would not be strong enough to hold us up on the top rope, so we used milk crates instead. You can see on the picture to the right how well that worked out.
As our search for a
better ring continued, the neighbors across the street renovated their house.
They began to throw away vast amounts of plywood. We decided to use the
plywood on top of the mattresses so that it would actually make noise when we
fell on them. After finding the plywood we ran into a number of telephone
poles that would be perfect for our backyard wrestling ring. We
concreted
the posts in the ground. Our luck continued when at some point, while
rummaging for hardcore weapons, we found about 100 foot of ¾” rope in the
garage. We quickly found out this rope was rotted. Soon after the
discovery of our rotten ropes a factory threw away their steel cable from
their ten ton crane. We used this cable, wrapped with garden hose, for
our top rope. $70.00 worth of colored duck later, our ring turned into
the work of art we all dreamed it would be. We later added an entrance
ramp with fireworks that would go of with a click of switch.
We never claimed to be the best or the most hard core. Our biggest concern was having fun and bringing excitement into the once boring lives of our friends and fans. We always put on a good show. We believed it took more than being able to bleed and having the ability to break your neck to put on a good show. However we were not scared to have some extremely hardcore matches including a 10 foot ladder match. One thing that made Ingalls Pro Wrestling special was our ability to make ourselves look like complete idiots and have a good time doing it. It's possible if you took “Who’s Line Is It Anyway” and mixed it with backyard wrestling you would get IPW.
As
of today Ingalls Pro Wrestling is a mere shadow of what it once was.
At our own fault we are being told to tear the ring down. When the final
ring first was completed, it looked good! We all agreed to put it up and
take it down every event. It’s funny how things work out. It was
hard to get people to clean up after a exhausting event. If we would
have all kept working together to keep the ring clean it might still be here.
At our own fault we let the ring sit all winter and decay into a pile of
wreckage. We could have disputed the order but felt it would be better
to comply than risk being fined and having the ring and other things
condemned. All in all, thinking back on IPW, we are grateful we had the
opportunity to wrestle, be creative, remove the drugs from our lives, and have
a good time. Its funny how God can work things into your life. If asked if
we would do it all over again, we'd would have to
say, “Are you stupid? Of course we would do it again!”
Go to the Events Page For the complete History of IPW
