Muscular Christianity

At first glance, South seems like nothing special: He has 20-inch biceps for arms, and a mean-muchacho mustache. He wears his banana-hammock shorts high and tight, and when his shoulder-length pony tail becomes un-slicked, it frizzes into an angry mane. But many of his colleagues share these traits, with one notable exception: the John 3:16 scripture on the seat of his trunks. For upon second glance, George South is the oddest of ducks — he’s a Christian professional wrestler.

Christianity and athletics have commingled since the mid-nineteenth century. It was then that the “Muscular Christianity” movement (which promoted character-building through sport) took root in British schools, as exemplified in Thomas Hughes’s 1857 novel Tom Brown’s School Days. Making its way across the Atlantic, Muscular Christianity found adherents among the likes of gospeler Billy Sunday, an ex-baseball player who sounded like a pro wrestler when he denounced sinners as “beetle-browed, hog-jowled, peanut-brained, weasel-eyed four flushers.” Since then, enough Jocks for Jesus tomes and Christian athletic associations have proliferated to keep faith-professing athletes booked on the church-banquet tour in perpetuity.

Professional wrestling, however, has remained a godless province, watched by 34 million viewers — fakery be damned — who catch national broadcasts six nights a week. Wrestling script-writers used to conjure up ritualized battles between good (the babyfaces) and evil (the heels). But today’s wrestlers, says Dave Meltzer, of the Pro Wrestling Torch newsletter, all inhabit the same moral wasteland, no longer breaking down into faces and heels, but into “badasses and badder asses.” Consequently, groups like the Parents Television Council release studies finding that the World Wrestling Federation’s Smackdown! show alone accounted for over 11 percent of the combined sex, profanity, and violence on television in 1999. Where wrestling fans used to be treated to milk-drinking babyfaces and mustache-twirling foreign menaces, they now witness subplots incorporating everything from rape to transvestites.

Needless to say, the sport isn’t noted for religious iconography, though there has been some. In the ’80s, scores of Bible-belt youth were scared witless by wrestler Kevin Sullivan, who pledged solemn devotion to Lucifer. On the Christian side of the ledger, most characters working religious angles were objects of scorn or heels in disguise. There was snake-oil salesman Brother Love, and Earnest Angel, a heel manager out of Memphis who used to clock the opposition with Bibles. A few years back, the WWF tried to launch The Sisters of Mercy, a nun tagteam consisting of Sister Angelica and Mother Smucker — an idea that met its just demise after one outing.

In recent years, there’s been a slew of ex-wrestlers who have joined the ministry: Everyone from Tully Blanchard to “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase. But they are just that — ex-wrestlers who have forsaken the profession that corrupted them. This year, in Texas, the Christian Wrestling Federation was founded by Robert “Jesus Freak” Vaughan, a Sunday School teacher and former football player who put together an evangelical wrestling road show. But none of the talent has ever actually wrestled professionally. Of that rather narrow demographic — the preaching, active-duty professional wrestler — there is, by my count, only one man who still prizes his faith and his work, and who has never forsaken either: George South.

I first meet South in a strip-mall parking lot in Concord, N.C., which lies just a few miles east of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Here, in a converted grocery warehouse that sits behind a hair replacement shop and a Mexican mart, he runs a wrestling school. South bellows a hearty “Hey Buddy!” — his favorite salutation — as he emerges from his GMC van in Converse All Stars, an “I love Jesus” cut-off tank top, and shorts slit to accommodate his quadriceps.

A 20-year veteran of the business, the 37-year-old South used to wrestle as “Gorgeous George” — a moniker he’s dropped since “it’s false advertising,” he says, pointing to the furrowed scars on his forehead. Now, he is “Mr. Number One,” which is not a boast, but an homage to Paul Jones, the former National Wrestling Alliance champ and South’s boyhood idol, who used to wrestle under the same. Jones now runs a garage in Charlotte and has contracted cancer, affording South the opportunity to witness to him and pray with him weekly — a dream come true that South says could be rivaled only by “him beating me with an Indian deathlock.”

South was born in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Sugar Grove, N.C. Both of his parents died in a car accident when he was six, scattering George and his 13 siblings and forcing them to rely on the charity of townspeople. Early on, South discovered his two animating influences: Christianity and “rasslin.” When he was 13, his brother Bill helped out with the former, informing George that everyone was on their way to heaven or hell. When curious George inquired how you arrived at each destination, Bill replied, “Well, to get to hell, you ain’t got to do much. You’re headed there anyway.” George opted for heaven, and was relieved when Bill told him the plan of salvation wasn’t much more complicated: “Just ask Jesus into your heart, and ask the Lord to forgive you your sins.”

South was introduced to wrestling a short time later, when “The Nanny,” an elderly woman who took George in for nine years until he graduated from high school, turned him onto television matches. From there, he started frequenting the Monday night bouts at the old Charlotte Park Center, rooting for Paul Jones as if his life depended on it. The first time South attended, “I spent 15 minutes just sniffin’ the popcorn,” he says. “When I saw that ring, I thought I’d start crying; I was in heaven.”

South became what the pros call a “mark for the business,” believing every last staged “spot” (the wrestlers’ pre-planned moves). After high school, he got a job driving a truck at a textile mill. But his calling beckoned when he saw an ad to “Fulfill your dreams — be a wrestler.” South showed up for the casting call in his work clothes. “It was like a movie,” he says, recalling how he opened the creaky door of an old building in Charlotte to see a Samoan, an old man, a woman, and a midget who invited him into the ring. “I was so stupid, I said okay,” recalls South, “They took turns. The old guy, Rusty Roberts, tied me in knots. The woman hurt me worse than the rest of them. The midget kicked me in the ribs as hard as he could. They tore my work pants. I was bleeding. They about killed me.” George was hooked for life.

South spent the next five years or so wrestling on the Carolina circuit (which he says is to professional wrestling what the “little shriner circus is to Ringling Brothers”). From there, he hooked up with the league that would become — Ted Turner bought them out — World Championship Wrestling. South simultaneously wriggled into Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation.

Though he called himself Mr. Number One, his ranking stood much lower. South was an “underneath guy” or “jobber” — a stooge paid to sacrifice his body and lose matches, which he calls “a lost art” now that everybody wants to be a main event guy. Of the 4,000 professional matches South estimates he’s fought, he says he’s won “about 100.” In his dated highlights reel, you can see him getting stomped by the best. From “Nature Boy” Ric Flair to Dirty Dick Slater, every match seems to end with the words that were music to Mr. Number One’s ears: “That’ll be the end of George South.”

While South was never a contract player, he saw plenty of TV time — until he mixed his faith with his wrestling persona. South had always passed out tracts in the locker room. But in the mid ’90s, he finally decided to work his faith into his wrestling gimmick during a Georgia Championship Wrestling broadcast on Turner’s TBS Superstation. Determined to debut his John 3:16 rasslin’ britches during a match with “Heavy Metal” Van Hammer, George was pulled aside by Grizzly Smith, the federation’s road manager, and was told Ted Turner wouldn’t stand for overt displays of religiosity. If South did not remove his trunks, he would not be paid. “I could go out there with a woman half-nekkid or cuss on the microphone, and that’s okay,” says an incredulous South, who notes that “Stone Cold” Steve Austin now sports the blasphemous “Austin 3:16” on his trunks. “I wasn’t goin’ out there to preach, I was goin’ out there to get my tail kicked like I always do.” After holding up the broadcast for 30 minutes, South relented, and wore his drawers inside out. Afterwards, “I apologized to the Lord,” says South, “I didn’t do TV after that. I could’ve gone back, but it was with that stipulation.”

Instead, South has returned to the hardscrabble independent circuit. After two decades in the business, he has witnessed just about everything. There was Brutus “the Barber” Beefcake, who shaved South’s head four weeks in a row at the WWF. (“You’d make 150 bucks for rasslin’,” says South, “plus 300 bucks for lettin’ ’em cut your hair — plus afterwards, you get trimmed up by the WWF beautician.”) There was Rattlesnake Westbrooks, who used to eat dogfood and cockroaches backstage (“his dressing room shows were better than his matches”). Then there was The Convict, who ended up getting busted for boosting the checkbook of the National Guard Armory where they were wrestling. “That guy lived his gimmick, Buddy,” South says.

South has taken his encyclopedic wrestling know-how, and put it to good use. His Exodus Wrestling Alliance stages full-service dust-ups, after which George takes to the center of the ring, coated in enough sweat to make him look like a glazed donut, and shares the undiluted gospel. And on the indie circuit, where witnessing can be a tougher proposition as one dodges flying cups of tobacco juice — George still wears his scripture britches and passes out tracts and Bibles at intermission.

Behind the strip-mall in Concord, South’s wrestling school is a no-frills cinderblock edifice with a ring, 50 metal folding chairs, an open-faced fan, and nothing else. If trainees complain about the lack of air-conditioning, George tells them to come back in the winter, when they can wrestle with icicles hanging from their nose. This is not the WWF’s training center, “The Power Plant,” which George derisively dismisses as an antiseptic, climate-controlled fantasy, the equivalent of “singing in the shower.” Here, he allows wrestlers to learn how to work a hostile crowd of paying customers, while he trains them in “the old school style — when the wrestlers really worked.”

The “school” doesn’t even bear a sign. Advertising, he complains, typically attracts every beer-gutted bus driver who ordered wrestling boots out of a catalog and thinks he is owed a WWF contract. George mostly shoos them off, or makes them take so many consecutive “bumps” (or falls) that they expire from exhaustion. “They’ll quit before I ever touch them,” he says, “Most of them can’t get off the couch and walk to the refrigerator without being out of breath.” For those who stay, George charges $ 3,000 — though he rarely, if ever, sees all the money. He often settles for wampum — such as a new pair of wrestling boots.

On a sweltering summer night, George is prepping for one of his training shows, where his charges will dazzle a local Baptist youth group. George runs a broom over the floor and sets the radio to a classic rock station while swilling mouthwash — a professional courtesy for the tight clinches, he says. One by one, the wrestlers straggle in. There’s John and Andy Adcox — two coal-eyed squirts from George’s church whom South has informally adopted since their father died in a car accident a few years ago. Andy wrestles as The Little Package, while John says he is Superstar, which causes him to roll his eyes, as he hates the assigned name, preferring Maddog. There’s The Carolina Dreamer (inexplicably introduced as hailing from Tampa, Fla.), who shows up in shower shoes eating chicken fingers, while hauling the Dr. Perky grape soda that will serve as that night’s concession. In the corner, oiling himself up is Shogun, the Sexy Samurai, who is not an Asian warrior but a tree surgeon with blonde-surfer locks.

As his wrestlers take warm-up bumps and South yells instructions, the Baptist youth file in, their senses overwhelmed. The mat-splatting bodies sound like sacks of potatoes getting dropped on trash can lids. When the matches start, one little girl begins to cry. But two chubby adolescent boys — not youth group regulars, but wrestling aficionados — grab ringside seats and start heckling. They give the business to everybody. They place a chair in the ring to help expedite the demise of The Little Package. They ridicule the guest referee, their own youth pastor, who splits his pants in the middle of the bout. “Your moon is shining,” says one.

While South keeps his junk-talking to a minimum during the match, even when they mock his receding hairline, he takes a microphone to the middle of the ring afterwards to scare the little heathens into the kingdom. Practiced from years of microphone work in wrestling broadcasts, and from teaching Sunday School at Reedy Creek Baptist Church, George tells the kids that nothing in this life matters — not even wrestling. He says they can ignore the eternal verities as long as time permits — but they can’t know when their time will expire. He tells them that they have heard the plan of salvation from this “dumb rassler” in this “ol’ ugly building” and if they ignore it, they do so at their own peril. He offers a stripped-down version of Pascal’s wager: “When it’s all over and the smoke clears,” George says, if he’s wrong, then “I haven’t lost anything but peace of mind. But if we find out I’m right and you’re wrong — look what you’ve lost.”

Nobody comes forward for George’s altar call. But a few weeks earlier, after his teenage sons, George Jr. and Brock (also aspiring wrestlers), had spit water on the crowd and thrown each other through tables, George preached a similar sermon, and three people came forward to accept Christ — including the referee whom George had love-tapped during an earlier match. South, who also runs side ministries, like delivering food to the homeless, says church crowds can be the toughest. “Some of the meanest people I know are Baptist preachers. They’d make excellent heels.”

The next day, I visit South’s house, the front porch of which contains turnbuckles and ropes and all manner of wrestling debris. “Welcome to the Addams Family, Buddy,” says South. During the week, he plays Mr. Mom to his five children and a black cat named Dog. His wife works “a real job” at a downtown brokerage, and George is grateful for the benefits, as he says it’s terribly difficult to take out insurance as a professional wrestler.

South’s converted garage is a wrestling museum, a grappler’s Copperstown — with all manner of board games and action figures, fight marquees, and photographs. Many of the photos are of his friends, and many of them are dead. There’s “Hotshot” Eddie Gilbert, whom George says he discussed God with just a few days before his “heart exploded” in Puerto Rico — from drugs, George thinks. And there’s “The Juicer,” Art Barr, whom George fought shortly before he expired. South’s roll call of dead friends — there are many others — lends his ministry an added urgency, and he has no patience for genteel types who say the gospel doesn’t belong in a wrestling ring. “Jesus didn’t go to the people who were well,” South says. “Well people don’t need a doctor. Sick people do.”

That afternoon, we are off to Wentworth, N.C., a small town outside Greensboro where George has been wrestling for the last several weekends under the imprimatur of the Renegade American Wrestling Alliance, one of North Carolina’s best indie federations, headed by Chris Nelson, aka Slim Jim Bolen. When we get to “the arena” (a converted Bingo hall) — Slim Jim is in full meltdown, as the ring he just bought from a South Carolina wrestler named High Performance is anything but. The ring’s center spring keeps popping out from under the metal girders, and when George gets there, he is forced to jerry-rig the coil so that they don’t have to rassle in the parking lot — which George has seen happen elsewhere. “Easy on the ring tonight,” Slim Jim tells his troupe, “it’s just for show.”

Backstage, it is a Star Wars bar of oddities. Slutty-looking valets — perhaps on furlough from their Dairy Queen shifts — preen about in high heels. A member of the Daulton Boys — a black-dustered cowboy outfit — carefully conceals a metal weight in his ranch-hand glove. Vern the referee, who will change costumes and double as V-Jak, a hardcore wrestler, shows me the blade he will use to cut his forehead open during a six-man tag team trash can match. The United Nations of Devastation tagteam — consisting of Hubie the Canadian and Drake the Swede — will draw some of the most serious heat of the night, as the crowd, deprived of Cold War Russians and Oil Embargo Arabs, are still starved for foreign-born heels. When I ask Drake what Sweden could have possibly done to incur such wrath (price-gouging at Ikea?), he refuses to break character, telling me in a perfect West Virginia accent how much he hates Americans.

As he suits up, George ignores the coquettish valets. Slim Jim says that tonight, the wrestlers are generally curtailing their swearing, “out of respect for George.” As he checks his Food Lion bag full of Bibles, which he will distribute at intermission, George talks over the night’s spots with Little George — a slight 21-year-old playing George’s son. To match Big George, Little George is forced to wear an “I Love Jesus” T-shirt, which South finds amusing, since L. G. is currently trying to chat up some of the looser-looking arena rats.

The Georges are matched against the Southside Players — two black gentlemen who in civilian life are a health-care-facility worker and a Hardee’s manager. The Georges and the Players talk over spots before leaving the dressing room, wish each other safety, and the Players even bow their heads in silent prayer. While South is supposed to be a heel, there’s no chance two dice-shooting brothers are going to go over with the redneck audience, who delight in taunting them in Ebonics (causing one of the Players to flip a heckler off). Throughout the match, George is tepid, reluctant to “leave my feet” against two dilettantes. Instead he quietly tells them to keep their heads up in the clinches (to avoid accidental head-butts). The Georges make short work of the Players: As Big George distracts the ref, Little George hammers them with a foreign object pulled from his pants.

We leave the arena after midnight, and on the way home George is critiquing the show like a fussy mother. He is incensed that one wrestler kicked another “in the goo-loos” right in front of the ref, who jeopardized his credibility by not disqualifying him — “that’s in the fake rule book,” says George. He is scandalized at the indiscriminate violence — all payoff with no buildup — that younger wrestlers favor. Before the bell even rang, it seems, Slim Jim had hit one opponent with a crutch, a cookie sheet, a trash can, and a wet paint sign. “Where do you go from there?” asks George. But above all, George can’t wait to turn heel on his faux son, Little George, who he says, has all the enthusiasm of “a knot on a log.”

In wrestling’s minor leagues, there will be lots of nights like this. Still, it wasn’t a total loss. George passed out his Bibles. And though he wasn’t permitted to preach, a fan told George at intermission that he’d memorized John 3:16 after seeing it advertised weekly on George’s trunks. “Most people think if we don’t get called to [be a missionary in] Africa, God ain’t gonna call us,” explains George. “But He might. He might call you to do just what you do everyday. Like in Wentworth, Carolina tonight, Buddy.”

Matt Labash is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.