Thursday, March 24, 1977 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page. N ne Thusda..arc-2, 17- -EMIC-G N.D.L Tony Marino, the ref, and Luis Martinez Ivan Kaloff (top) and Gino Hernandez otoritru uble By DAVID GOODMAN Photography by STEVE KAGAN MY MOM HATED Big Time Wrestling. She never let r 8F me watch it. "Thii is garbage, she would say "Turn the set off."E, : But lots of moms were in Detroit's Cobo Hall last Saturday to take in an evening of Big Time with a line-up topped by The Sheik's match with Bobo Brazil. t Lots of dads were there, too--and they brought their kids and the kids brought their grandparents. A Big Time Wrestling crowd is not the typical fight audience. Entire families as well as city kids with their weekend dates come in significant numbers to see the bouts, and cigarette, not cigar smoke, turns the air a hazy blue. As we enter the half-filled arena, two overweight, middle-aged men are grappling on the mat of the converted boxing ring. They look like Olympic weight- lifters e hot-putters of twenty years ago, with sag- ging bellies and shining, sparsely covered crowns. f Charlie Cook, the good guy, is battling The Spoiler, 4 the bad guy. There's always a good guy and a bad guy in Big Time Wrestling. The good guy almost always won Saturday night, but not before being sorely tried by his opponent. Cook is straddling the Spoiler, grabbing his mask and threatening to reveal his hidden features. "Take it off!" roars the crowd which has never seen his face. "Off, off, off!! !" Cook never rips off the mask, but he does pin his rival. The crowd shouts its approval as victor and vanquished clear the ring for the next contestants. O ENJOY BIG TIME Wrestling, you have to will-z ingly suspend your sense of disbelief. You have to F.:... pretend for a few hours that the feigned brutality and.r.4w: the simulated agony are the real thing, and that the ..8 v'. . pre-arranged, pre-determined exhibitions are in fact real life-and-death struggles. The Spoiler Anyone standing or sitting close to the ring can hear the wrestlers cuing each other in on the next move. "Ok, now I'm going to jump on you," a wrestler whispers to his rival. "I'm going to throw you against the rooes." The referee gets into the act as well, telling the > fighters to liven it up when the action gets too slow. 8 See MOTOR, Page 10 x -.' asS* O-r '.. N .N \~N '<~' '~ a .; x w. G '<''?Aa . wa } y1 p . . s I Cheer leaders M..... _s x.: ... r