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Thursday, March 22, 2007

The DESK

Here I sit on the eve of March 22, 2007. My legs are sore from walking up over 10,000 steps for the past week as I carried stuff to my new place not too far away (boy are my legs pumped to squeeze someone's head). The movers come tomorrow morning for the big stuff. This is my last night sleeping here, on the couch since the bed is apart, and I write to you now from the desk you see pictured.

At this rather old desk that I purchased after college in 1986, I conceptualized and put together the Growing Up Wrestling book in 2005. And for the past three years, I've sat night and day editing, emailing, sorting, PR-ing, researching, booking flights, chatting, and everything else necessary for the STRONGHOLD wrestling documentary. You can see some of the many hard drives that contain over 150 hours of transferred footage, (9) 300 Gig drives total including backups. The desk was surrounded by nicely framed photos of wrestlers, especially my favorite Antonino Rocca, but they're all boxed up now.

Soon I will be setting it up at my new place, and continuing to edit the film. It will be nice to have a different perspective as I edit and think. In a week or so I meet with Justin to hear his first cut of the theme song for STRONGHOLD. Then I may take a trip to Florida to get, what else, hot shirtless guys wrestling on the beach. I have a knack now for getting almost any mainstream guy to wrestle. It's a high actually. The other night at a local "straight" dance/sports bar, a few 20-somethings were standing by me and showing off their tattoos. One guy had an ARMY t-shirt on. I looked him straight in the eyes, probably about 10 inches from mine, and said "Do you like to wrestle?" Without skipping a beat, he looked back at me with that "understanding" need, said "YES", opened his cell phone, and took my number. Hot damn! Good thing my new place will have a mat room. I just may actually get to wrestle again sometime soon!

Anyways, I have a candle lit on the other side of the room right now to commemorate my last sleeping night here. I unplugged the TV and cable and won't be able to watch anything until Monday when they reconnect at the new place. Four days without TV, what WILL I do!

OH, there is a possibility I may get the three men that move me tomorrow to wrestle, I'll let you know if I convince them. The only rule: shirts must be off! Smile.

Vic

Monday, March 12, 2007

Bill "Iron Cross" Hughes Passes

I was just informed today that Bill Hughes, a long-time wrestler and early contributor to the WrestleMen site, died on Sat, March 10th, after a bout with cancer. I never had the chance to meet Bill, but I did talk to him on the phone several times. As a matter of fact, Bill was the first person I spoke to in April 2004 when I began the forthcoming STRONGHOLD wrestling documentary. Though he declined to be interviewed on camera, I hoped to convince him as the film progressed.

As many of you know, Bill was a feisty man, and that was what was most attractive about him. A good heart inside a feisty wrestler's body. Bill hosted many wrestling matches in his gym in Long Beach, CA for years. If you are a member of the WrestleMen.com site, Matches #6 and #10 were photos contributed by Bill to the site in 1997. He will surely be missed, but not forgotten.

Please feel free to click on the comments link below to leave your condolences and share your memories with Bill.

Vic