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By Brian Bedsworth
Assistant Arts & Entertainment
Editor
A barrage of four-letter
words and jeers rains down on
ihe ring as Count Grog, a stocky,
grisly man in a black T-shirt, steps over
(he rope. Big Slam, Juice, Maj. Deßeers,
(md several other hulking, brute-sized
(vrestlers are already busy pummeling
each other with an assortment of golf
clubs, card tables, preschool toys, com
puter keyboards and a model F-14 fight
er jet
> The shouts from the crowd hang as
(hick as the cigarette smoke in the
sweaty air. Grog talks tough to his oppo
nents and even gets a few whacks in on
(hem with a metal folding chair, but it’s
pot enough. Unfortunately for Count
Grog and his cohorts, The Brotherhood,
they lose this match to their arch neme
ses, The Boyz.
■ “It hurts. My ribs hurt,” a battered
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DTH/MILLER PEARSALL
Hit him, baby, one more time: Britney Spears wannabe
Lazarus (above) struts for the crowd at King's in Raleigh before
pummeling his opponent. Southern Championship
Wrestlers (right) make their way through the crowd on their
way to the ring.
Recent UNC Grad Says Sayonara to Science, 'Whassup' to Wrestling
By Brian Bedsworth
Assistant Arts & Entertainment Editor
J What will a degree in biology from UNC get
ypu? For one recent graduate, it’s brought two
concussions and a cracked jaw.
Alvin Hearring graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in biology in 1997. But instead of hitting
the books at medical school, he’s been hitting the
naats (and other wrestlers) with Southern
Championship Wrestling.
“My professors all joked about it,” said the
soft-spoken, 190-pound, Washington native of his
choice to pursue a career in professional
and
sweaty
Grog says after the
match. But even so, you can bet he’ll be
back in the action next month.
Count Grog, a.k.a. 39-year-old Greg
Mosoijak of Fuquay-Varina, doesn’t just
wrestle, but also runs Southern
Championship Wrestling, an indepen
dent wrestling league based in Raleigh.
On the last Thursday of every month
a surprisingly diverse crowd crams into
King's, a club in downtown Raleigh, to
witness a sometimes bloody show of
machismo as a colorful cast of characters
battles it out for the monthly title. It’s all
the brutality and pageantry of WWF or
wresding.
Several times a month, Hearring leaves his
Best Buy day job behind, musses his medium
length blond hair and affects a twitchy, slightly
schizophrenic persona to become Wort, his char
acter at SCW.
“He’s supposed to be kind of like Brad Pitt in
‘l2 Monkeys,’” Hearring said about his in-the
ring character.
“One night at the training center I was acting
stupid and that’s what I came up with.”
Before acting “stupid,” Hearring was acting
pretty smart. After graduating from UNC, he
went to North Carolina State University to corn
WCW,
but in a more inti-
mate setting -a testosterone-fueled soap
opera.
“I usually wear a cape and do a kind
of vampire thing,” said Mosoijak, whose
family is originally from Dracula’s
homeland in the Carpathian Mountains
of the former Yugoslavia. Other SCW
wresders, while less sinister, have Count
Grog beat on originality.
Lazarus dons black stretch pants, a
bikini top, pigtails and makeup, because
he’s convinced he’s Britney Spears.
Oops, he did it again - drop-kicked
someone in the face, that is.
With his tweed blazer, horn rimmed
glasses and suspenders, Mervin Snead
(Radford University sophomore Jon
Brumberg) is something straight out of
“Revenge of the Nerds.”
And 320-pound James Ivey, or
Poison Ivey, of Henderson, crushes
opponents with a special move called
the Ivey Enema.
Poison Ivey, Count Grog and the oth-
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plete his master’s degree in poultry science.
About that time, his friends were getting him
interested in professional wresding on television.
After seeing a flier for SCW on N.C. State’s cam
pus, he started regularly attending the indepen
dent wrestling league’s events at King’s, a club in
Raleigh.
“(Wresding) kind of fits me,” Hearring said.
“I’ve always been boisterous. I like to show off a
lot”
With qualifies like these, it didn’t take long for
the prospective poultry scientist to make a major
career change.
Hearring asked SCW Commissioner Greg
't hursday, September 2 1. 2 O{M)
Independent Wrestling
2, League Wows Crowds
With In'Your'Face
Action, Characters
ers have been beat
ing each other sense-
less in the name of
Southern Championship
Wrestling for almost six years
now.
Mosoijak, who has wresded for 22
years, started working as a referee with
the Carolina Championship Wrestling
Alliance in Smithfield in 1993, but said
he felt like there was no room for
advancement
“They had their own guys they want
ed to push. It was really frustrating.”
In November 1994, he and several
other disgrunded wresders left the
league to start their own. The first SCW
match was held at Durham’s Bethesda
Athletic Center, where the league stayed
until 1996. By that time SCW had
already expanded to area National
Guard armories, other towns like
Butner, Sanford and Goldsboro, and
Raleigh’s Berkley Cafe.
“It really clicked (with the Berkley),”
Mosoijak said. “We were packing the
crowd in.”
But after remodeling last year, the
cafe was too small to house SCWs ring
and growing legions of fans. King’s
began hosting the carnage in October
1999. Crowds, made up largely of stu
dents from N.C. State University and
Raleigh’s other colleges, range any-
Mosoijak for some advice on getting started in
the league, and by last December had started
training.
“I did a little tryout thing where they beat the
hell out of me,” he said. “But I passed that and
started training. I’ve picked it up pretty quickly.”
Hearring is already wrestling in single match
es, no small feat for someone still in training.
“I’ve been lucky so far. God must have some
kind of destiny for me,” he said.
Hearring said he hopes that destiny includes
wrestling in main events and working his way up
the independent circuit to one of the majors, such
as WWF or WCW.
Conspiracy Theory Check out www.unc.edu/dth
for a review of’Bait,” in which funnyman Jamie
Foxx unwittingly helps the cops catch a bad guy.
Page 5
where from 50 to 500 people at each
event, Mosoijak said.
“We’re a big hit with the college
crowd,” Mosoijak said, adding that
SCWs high-impact, hard-core style is
one of its biggest draws with that group.
“(SCW is) some of the best live
wrestling you can see,” said Ashley
Perry, a junior architecture major at
N.C. State who has been to several
SCW events. “There’s some blood from
the wrestlers, but nothing traumatic. It’s
just spit and sweat flyin’ - it’s great”
But, as a sign of SCWs universal
appeal, college students still don’t make
up the majority of the crowd. Frat boys
rub elbows with blue-collar workers and
grandmothers with elementary school
children.
“I like it because it’s just a good
show,” said Jon Beecham, a construction
worker from Cary who regularly attends
SCW. “It gets pretty violent. They kill
each other with the weapons,” he said,
referring to the golf clubs and other
makeshift instruments of pain that the
wrestlers commonly use in the ring.
But it’s crowd participation, even
more than the violence, that keeps many
people coming back.
“You get a lot more into the action
here,” said Holland Blake, a UNC
Hospitals employee from Hillsborough
who has been coming to SCW for two
years.
The crowd yells at the wresders, whe
yell back, making the crowd even more
excited. At one point in last month’s
championship match, Big Slam (a gar
gantuan, 400-pound wall of pain), threw
Juice (the leader of The Boyz) out of the
ring and into the seats as the crowd scat
tered.
And if having a bloody wresder fall in
your lap isn’t enough, there’s also the
appeal of seeing tomorrow’s WWF and
WCW r stars in a smaller setting. Several
SCW champs have moved up through
the ranks to national recognition, includ
ing the Hardy Boys, Joey Abs, Lodi and
Steve Corino.
“We have a pretty good track record
of sending people up,” Mosoijak said.
The league itself is also moving up
the ranks, growing every year. Mosoijak
said he is always looking for new venues
and new towns to expand to.
“Chapel Hill is a place we’d love to
go to,” he said.
he vnrnta to expand west
ward to Boone, Mosoijak said there’s
really no limit to how big the league can
get or to where it could expand.
“There are still lots of little towns
around here lacking in entertainment.”
The Arts 8 Entertainment Editor can
be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.
DTH/MILLER PEARSALL
“That’s the big goal, to get a contract,” he said.
But winning the support from fans and the
league is sometimes easier than winning support
from family.
Hearring said his parents are less than openly
enthusiastic about his career choice. To soften the
blow, he said he recendy brought them a video
of several of his matches.
“They say they hate me doing it, but they
probably watch that tape four or five times a
day.”
The Arts 8 Entertainment Editor can be
reached at artsdesk9unc.edu