Superfan Jimmy Ryan keeps old-school wrestling torch burning

There are fans. And then there are superfans.

Jimmy Ryan most definitely fits into the latter category.

The 60-year-old Charlotte native caught the wrestling bug early, in his pre-teen years, and has never looked back. His fascination with the business has taken him to 48 states and Canada, and he can spin yarns about his days on the road until the cows come home.

There’s not much about the wrestling business — at least the period fondly referred to as “the good old days” — that Ryan doesn’t know. Ask him who was behind the mask of a certain wrestler in 1970, and he’ll quickly tell you the name.

He’s a virtual encyclopedia of the wrestling business. Many wrestlers have even nicknamed him that. The late Gene Anderson gave him the moniker decades ago.

A few years ago, Ryan relates, the late Penny Banner asked him about it.

“Encyclopedia, what is your real name,” she inquired. “I’ve been knowing you all these years, and don’t even know what your real name is.”

Growing up in Charlotte, Ryan was weaned on Mid-Atlantic Wrestling and Crockett Promotions. As a youngster he lived in a trailer park, which just happened to be where a number of wrestlers set up camp while working the territory. He ended up befriending many of those wrestlers’ sons and got to know the big, burly grapplers up close and personal.

Those were great times, he says, that produced plenty of lasting memories. He remembers being only 5 or 6 when the villainous Mr. Moto and The Swedish Angel hoisted him on their shoulders and paraded him through a nearby grocery store.

“I had a very early influence,” he laughs, noting that one of the fringe benefits was getting invited to their homes for snacks and meals.

Ryan was finally able to attend his first live wrestling show when he was 12. A lady who lived at a nearby trailer park was good friends with local favorites Abe Jacobs and George Becker, and took Ryan to a show at the old Charlotte Coliseum. The main event that evening was Ernie “The Brute” Bemis vs. The Great Bolo (Tom Renesto.) Ryan says there was no looking back. He was hooked.

“That’s all it took,” he says.

Hooked on wrestling

When Ryan was old enough to catch a bus, he became a weekly regular, and it was nearly five years before he missed another wrestling show.

“I was pretty sick that particular Monday,” he explains.

Ryan still has an autographed picture he drew of the masked Bolo. He even wrote a report on wrestling in high school and earned another nickname — “Bolo.”

“Some of the guys in school started calling me ‘Bolo’ because I talked so much about wrestling and Bolo,” says Ryan. “Some old guys from school today still call me that. It’s sort of funny to hear it since I haven’t seen many of these guys in years. It’s weird.”

Some of his favorite wrestlers at the time, he says, were Len Rossi, Tex Riley, The Fabulous Fargos and the Garcia Brothers (Jose Lothario and Luis Hernandez). Bolo, Johnny Weaver, Reggie Parks, Joe Scarpa and The Infernos would later be elevated to the top of the list.

His favorite singles match was an early ‘60s bout pitting “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers against The Great Bolo at the Charlotte Coliseum.

“It left such an impression on me,” he says.

Ryan was just a youngster, but realized early on that there was something “special” about the sport.

The late wrestling photographer Gene Gordon smartened him up to the business and helped him land a job as a bellhop at the old Hotel Charlotte (later the White House Inn).

“He told me a lot of inside information about the business. I learned a lot from Gene,” says Ryan.

His job at the hotel also had its perks.

“(Actress) Joan Crawford once gave me a real nice tip for taking her bags up to her room,” he recalls.

Ryan also would meet a number of wrestlers at the local YMCA where they regularly worked out and engaged in such activities as handball and swimming.

“Johnny Heidman taught me how to swim,” says Ryan. “He used to take his sons there and play handball. He didn’t believe in working out with weights, but he stayed in shape by swimming and playing handball.”

The Y also was where Ryan once spotted Johnny Weaver and “Assassin” Jody Hamilton — two archrivals in the ring — playing handball together. Hamilton was, of course, sans mask, but Ryan immediately recognized him from his stance and gestures that gave his identity away.

“Jody had a certain stance, a certain way of moving, that was different from the other guys. I knew right off the bat who he was,” he says.

On the road

Uncovering some of the mysteries of the world of professional wrestling didn’t dampen Ryan’s interest in the least. He soaked up as much knowledge as he could about the business, hanging around arenas, corresponding with fans outside the area and introducing himself to as many wrestlers as possible.

A friend owned a newsstand magazine store where Ryan spent countless hours scouring out-of-town newspapers for wrestling results.

“I loved getting results,” he says, “because you could tell who all were working in the different territories around the country.”

Ryan started taking his fandom out on the road in the mid-’60s when he first ventured to Atlanta. A friend who was a bus driver for Greyhound helped sneak him on the bus and let him ride for free.

Ryan’s first order of business was introducing himself to Atlanta promoter Paul Jones. The veteran matchmaker liked the young fan’s spunk and gave him free tickets every time he showed up in town.

“I’d go down every couple of months, stay at the Falcon Hotel, attend the Friday night matches at the City Auditorium, and the TV tapings the next day at the studios where Ed Capral was the TV announcer,” says Ryan.

Ryan would routinely talk to the wrestlers after the matches, and his fascination with the business blossomed. He soon began writing for various pro wrestling magazines.

His first interview, he remembers, was with Rocket Monroe and Rip Tyler.

“We were riding from Atlanta to a little town called Carrolton. Corsica Jean was promoting. I rode with Rip and Rocket,” says Ryan, rattling off a litany of anecdotes about the grapplers.

Ryan’s second interview was with the team of Al Greene and Frank Martinez, who were behind hoods at the time as The Blue Demons, and the group drove from Tampa to Jacksonville.

“Don Serrano was in the car with us. He was a babyface, and Green and Martinez were heels. It was the first time I had ridden in a car with heels and babyfaces at the same time.”

Ryan notes that the heels dropped Serrano off a couple of blocks before they got to the arena. “That way he (Serrano) walked with his suitcase up to the arena. They (The Blue Demons) would put their masks on before they pulled up to the arena.”

The business was very closed and secretive back then — “kayfabe” in wrestling parlance. Fraternization between heels and babyfaces, of course, was a definite no-no.

Ryan did most of his traveling back in the ‘70s via bus and “a lot of hitchhiking.” He took his first train ride outside the country three years ago when he traveled to Nova Scotia for a Cormier Brothers reunion. The only states he hasn’t been to are Alaska and Hawaii.

“I’ve been all over Canada — Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, where I lived six months and got to see two different promotions while I was there. I’ve made quite a few trips in a lot of different states. I’ve forgotten many of them.”

Human encyclopedia

Name an old-time wrestler, especially one from the Mid-Atlantic days, and Ryan will recite recollections of that wrestler. Chances are the two either traveled together or partied together at one time or another.

In a span of minutes the “human wrestling encyclopedia” can list scores of wrestlers — and related stories — during his days on the road. Names of wrestlers, some obscure and long forgotten, roll off his lips like he’s mentioned them a thousand times before.

And he probably has.

He’s traveled from Montreal to Toronto with Gino Brito and Mike DuBois. He rode with Johnny War Eagle and Nick DeCarlo from Montreal to Barre, Vt.

“Nick was dating Johnny War Eagle’s sister at the time,” says Ryan, proud of his immediate recall of such trivia.

But there’s much more, and in rapid-fire succession.

He rode with Reggie Parks from Shreveport, La., to Dallas, and with Ken Mantel (Ken Hudson at the time) from Nashville to St. Louis. He traveled with Doug “The Pro” Gilbert and Bobby Shane from Tampa to Miami. He rode with King Curtis and Killer Kowalski from Tampa to Jacksonville. “Talk about two opposites,” he laughs.

“I stayed with Dale Lewis up in Oregon, right outside of Portland,” he relates. “Reggie Parks was one of the most easy-going, laid-back guys. He didn’t have a big ego. I wish all wrestlers would have been like him. A lot of them have passed away. Doug Gilbert was a nice guy. I still correspond with him. He lives outside of Omaha. Doug works for the library. He picks up and drops off books.”

The business opened up a whole new world for Ryan. It offered many advantages.

Former wrestling manager “Gentleman” Saul Weingeroff, who was a deputy sheriff, took him on a tour of the Nashville jail.

Grappler John Foley took Ryan to a bar in Helena, Mont., on his 30th birthday and got him drunk following a wrestling show. Bret Hart and Norman Frederick Charles III, he quickly recalls, were on that same Stu Hart-promoted card.

Ryan once got “locked up” in Amarillo, Texas, on someone else’s warrant back in the late ‘70s. He was hitchhiking to a wrestling show at the arena when he was stopped by police.

“Brute Bernard and J.J. Dillon came down to the jail to let them know who I was,” explains Ryan. “They still wouldn’t let me out until the fingerprints came back and proved I wasn’t the person they wanted. They had it in for the wrestlers because of all the barroom brawls. Terry Funk and Dick Murdoch had been in a lot of those brawls, and the police there weren’t too friendly with the wrestlers.”

Ryan spent three days in the slammer.

“I had an ID, but they didn’t want to accept it.”

Ryan spent an extra week with the late great Ray “The Crippler” Stevens at a five-acre piece of property he owned in Amarillo.

He remembers taking a long ride during the late ‘70s from Amarillo TV on Saturday morning to Colorado Springs, Colo., for a Saturday night show and Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Sunday night.

“It was a lot of miles. Me and Brute Bernard took the mattress off the bed. I slept on the mattress, and he slept on the box spring. It was me and Brute and Bob Orton Sr. and Tommy Gilbert (who, Ryan adds, was working as Johnny Starr at the time).

“Brute liked to cuss in that French-Canadian accent of his,” notes Ryan. “He could get quite vulgar. But he was a lot of fun to be around.”

It wasn’t a politically correct world back then, he says, and many of the stories couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper even today.

“They really don’t make them like that anymore,” he says wistfully.

Ryan laments that he misses the camaraderie and mystique of the business and “getting to party with the boys.”

“It was more laid back and a lot more free talking,” he says.

‘Like a hippie’

Ryan lived in Venice Beach, Calif., for a year, and in Montreal, Canada, and Washington, D.C., for six months. He lived in Los Angeles a couple different times. No matter where he went, though, he always saw people he had known, and there was always new people to meet.

He stayed at hostels, at Y’s, and really with anyone who enjoyed a good story or two.

“It was easy to stay with different people back in the ‘70s. Times were different. I’d go into a bar, drink a few beers, talk to people and tell them where I was from, and that I traveled around the country. They’d come and let me stay in their house. People were like that back then. It was a whole different era. I was like a hippie. That’s what it was.”

It didn’t matter where a wrestling show was being held. Ryan was bound to know someone on it.

“I’d always feel at ease because I always knew some of the guys on the show no matter where it was,” he says.

There also was a spot in every town, he adds, where he could go and talk about wrestling. And, if a wrestler owned a business, he’d find his way there as well.

One such establishment, he recalls, was Jose Lothario’s restaurant in Tampa where Jose’s younger brother, Salvador, was the cook. His wife, Jean, ran the business, says Ryan.

Ryan was privy to the location of the various wrestling offices in every town, and he enjoyed many a conversation with grapplers and staff who worked out of those offices.

“I’d sit and talk with every one of them about different things. I got to know them quite well. That was the fun of it ... seeing the expression on their faces.”

It wasn’t unusual at all for Ryan to “bump into” wrestlers who went from one territory to the other.

“I’d sit around and talk with guys like Fred Blassie and Lou Albano. Lou used to have a fifth of liquor in his suitcase. He’d drink before he went to the ring to wrestle. I couldn’t believe it. I’d talk with the boys, and we’d share some great stories.”

He’s also shared meals and drinks with a number of the old-time stars. In many cases, he says, they treated him to lunch and bought him drinks.

Ryan recalls once working the state fair in Tulsa. It was a job he got through Johnny Ringley, who was once married to Frances Crockett, the daughter of the late promoter Jim Crockett Sr. Ringley was working for Bill Watts in the Tulsa office at the time.

While there he recalls going to popular wrestler Irish Mike Clancy’s pizza parlor in Tulsa.

“Not the best pizza in the world, but not the worse, either,” he critiques. “His wife was running it. Mike was the deputy sheriff in Tulsa. I went downtown to the sheriff’s department to talk to him.”

Misses the old days

Ryan still makes occasional wrestling-related trips to events such as the Gulf Coast reunion in Mobile, the Cauliflower Alley Club banquet in Las Vegas and the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame ceremonies in New Amsterdam, N.Y. He also has checked out the Jack Pfefer Wrestling Collection at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., where he made copies of vintage programs and letters.

He’s proud of his memorabilia which includes magazines, programs, posters and photos. He’s got wrestling books dating back to 1911. He was a regular at the old WFIA (Wrestling Fans International Association) conventions during the ‘70s.

Ryan never felt like a stranger anywhere his roaming ways would take him. As long as there was a wrestling show within reasonable distance, or a wrestler or two to chew the fat with, that was “home” for him.

And he always returned to Charlotte.

Catch him on the street, in a bar, at a show, and chances are that Jimmy Ryan will wax nostalgic about his favorite pastime.

Wrestling reunions like Fanfest allow him to relive those glory days and revisit the times when the business was, as Ryan puts it, “magical.”

“Fanfest wouldn’t be the same without folks like Jimmy,” says Greg Price, promoter of the annual NWA legends reunion in Charlotte. “I see Jimmy at Fanfest; I see him everywhere. It’s loyal fans like Jimmy that our Fanfest weekends specifically cater to. I could listen to his stories for hours on end.”

Dick Bourne of the popular Mid-Atlantic Gateway site recalls first meeting Ryan at a Fanfest in Fayetteville, N.C., six years ago.

“We sat in the hallway of the hotel for about an hour looking at one of his scrapbooks. I was amazed at all his life experiences, his many travels. His love of wrestling had taken him to every corner of our country. He’s one of the few people who can look you in the eye and truthfully say ‘I’ve seen it all.’”

Longtime wrestling fan Rusty Loudermilk of Pittsburgh met Ryan more than 30 years ago.

“I met Jimmy as a child when I started going to the matches at the old Charlotte Park Center,” says Loudermilk. “Jimmy was ‘the encyclopedia’ when it came to wrestling knowledge then, and he still is now. Jimmy has traveled the country, paying for most of it out of his own pocket, staying at hostels and low-rent hotels just to get to matches and shows. He’s traveled with guys like ‘Freebird’ Buddy Roberts, Ronnie Garvin, Don Kernodle. The list goes on and on. Most every old-school wrestler and anybody else involved in the old-school wrestling business knows of Jimmy ‘The Encyclopedia’ Ryan.”

“What they might not know,” adds Loudermilk, “is that Jimmy looks like a hippie from the 1950s and ‘60s. But Jimmy, quite frankly, is the most kindhearted and loving person that God ever put on this planet. Jimmy’s very loyal as a wrestling fan, but he’s even more loyal as a friend.”

Ryan says he still follows the business, but realized many years ago that the sport — or at least the one he used to know — is just a fading memory.

There’s no comparison, he says, between this generation of sports entertainment and pro wrestling of yesteryear.

“I have the love for the business,” says Ryan. “I watch the new stuff just for the sake of watching it. The old stuff was 100 percent better.”

“I remember way before they had the entrance music and had all the pretty girls come out,” he adds. “To me that’s not old school.”

Ryan, who has worked in the campus cafeteria at UNC-Charlotte for the past 13 years, enjoys shooting pool in bar leagues and likes going to an occasional movie. But nothing comes close to professional wrestling.

“Wrestling is No. 1. It’s in my blood. Just like show business. Once it gets in your blood, you can’t get it out.”

And that’s old school.

Reach Mike Mooneyham at (843) 937-5517 or mooneyham@postandcourier.com.