Lightweight and Hardcore

Grandpa had come over for dinner, and I asked him what was the most amazing thing he’d ever experienced in all his life. He proceeded to tell me about the time he’d seen Lightweight Larry and Hardcore Harry fight.

For those of you unfamiliar with America’s mid-century wrestling scene, Lightweight and Hardcore, as they were known, were a famous tag-team duo throughout the forties and into the very early fifties. After they split up, Lightweight, going by the name Evan Vanderpick, was on the verge of a successful transition to Hollywood stardom when he got caught up in a McCarthy-era scandal involving some Lithuanian prostitutes with alleged ties to a shadowy anarchist group supposedly popular at the time among people of eastern European descent. He was black-balled, never worked again, and died in 1968 of a heart attack while playing roulette at an Atlantic City casino (he reportedly keeled over as the wheel spun on what would have been the biggest winning bet in both his and the casino’s history). Meanwhile, Hardcore (whose real name was Arnold Fournbach) spent the fifties and most of the sixties drinking himself to death in obscurity.

Anyway, Grandpa told me that when he was twelve his Uncle Gerard had taken him to New York City for the weekend. Grandpa’s dad had died when Grandpa was just an infant, and Uncle Gerard had been the steadiest father figure in Grandpa’s life growing up. They were going to have a porterhouse steak at Kelly’s, they were going to stay at a Manhattan hotel, and, most significantly, they had tickets to see Lightweight and Hardcore match forces with El Bombardo and Punchy, tag-team wrestling’s most reviled villains du jour.

It was early 1942, and professional wrestling’s villains would shortly be almost exclusively portrayed as being German or Japanese, the industry’s nod to the war effort. But for the moment, even with Pearl Harbor less than six months fresh in the public’s mind, the heavies that everyone loved to hate were El Bombardo and Punchy. Of course, nationalism and xenophobia -- albeit in less focused, less passionate forms than those that would soon come -- were definitely key ingredients in the audience’s distaste for this swarthy duo of ambiguously foreign grapplers. In real life, El Bombardo was a second generation Greek-American (and the son, incidentally, of a rather well-respected archaeology professor from Cornell), and Punchy was a Palestinian émigré. However, despite the “El” in Bombardo’s name, which would seem to indicate Spanish or Latin American roots, both he and Punchy were characterized by wrestling’s promoters as being vaguely Italian, sort of commedia dell’arte-esque, maybe with a dash of gypsy thrown in for extra mysteriousness. At any rate, they were clearly the bad guys.

And Lightweight and Hardcore, Grandpa told me with an affectionate gleam in his eye, were as good as El Bombardo and Punchy were bad. They were billed as solid Yankee types, both from New England, both respectable but working class. Hardcore had been a whaler as a youngster, and Lightweight, a renowned ladies’ man, had been a dancer before enlisting in the rough and tumble world of wrestling. The press liked to say that, while Lightweight was clearly too tough to be a dancer, maybe he was too pretty to be a wrestler. That was the thing about Lightweight and Hardcore, Grandpa explained, they were everybody’s darlings, everyone’s favorite team, but they somehow managed to remain perpetual underdogs. The commentators always predicted that they would lose badly. And, in fact, they would always be losing very badly when, just at the end of the match, they would manage to pull a victory out of nowhere, much to the crowds’ delight. They were the lovable losers who always seemed to win.

Grandpa described the action of the match for me, round by round. It was the usual shtick. Bombardo and Punchy came out smoking cigars and ignoring the audience with casual boredom and mild disdain. Hardcore, who took his craft quite seriously, came out stretching and hopping, warming up for battle. And Lightweight, always the dandy, came out in a resplendent white robe, his name embroidered in gold across the back, strutting and preening for the crowd. Before the match had even begun, Bombardo (who, like Hardcore, was his team’s big man) managed to ash his cigar all over Lightweight’s beautiful robe, thus establishing Bombardo as a bully and setting the bout up as a grudge-match straight from the get-go.

Most of the fighting was between the two heavyweights. When Bombardo had the upper hand then Punchy would dance and cheer, egging him on from the corner of the ring. If Bombardo was on the ropes but not quite in need of tagging out, then Punchy would boo and hiss at the crowd and make mock punching gestures at those people who were constantly insulting him from their seats (there was an abundance of such spectators). Over in his corner, Lightweight would comb his hair lovingly with his oversized mother-of-pearl comb and gaze at himself in his silver-handled mirror, his signature props, featured at every fight. Lightweight would get so immersed in his grooming that he wouldn’t notice that his friend and teammate was getting mercilessly hammered and desperately needed to tag out. But always, just in the nick of time, Lightweight would dive in to relieve Hardcore. While Hardcore recuperated in the corner, Lightweight would dance around the ring, evading Bombardo’s blows while constantly fixing at his hair and winking at any women who might be seated up front. Lightweight did have a few crushing (and very acrobatic) moves, but he always saved these for the end of the bout; much to his opponents’ frustration, he invariably spent the early rounds clowning for the ladies and doing a great job at avoiding any actual combat.

Grandpa told me that as thrilled as he was to see Lightweight and Hardcore in action (they were, after all, his heroes; he spent most of his allowance on wrestling tabloids so as to follow their exploits, and he listened to their matches no matter what else might be on the radio), it was really the entire ambience of the event that made this his most treasured memory. It was the biggest, most raucous crowd he’d ever seen. There were peanut shells and overturned chairs everywhere, the cheers were deafening. Gorgeous women in bathing suits introduced every new round by carrying numbered placards back and forth across the ring. Uncle Gerard had even let him drink a beer. It was absolutely overwhelming, Grandpa said, and when Lightweight and Hardcore, hopelessly down points-wise, managed to pull it out in the twelfth round, it made it seem like anything was possible. It was as though everyone in the auditorium was triumphing along with them. Even as a twelve-year-old boy and a devoted fan of wrestling, Grandpa understood that Lightweight and Hardcore were merely entertaining athletes (or, perhaps, athletic entertainers), but it felt that night as though they were holy men, prophets of a gospel so promising, so full of energy and hope, that it inspired one’s heart not only with a joy at being American but with a pride at simply being alive. Indeed, when Grandpa had finished talking, he had tears in his eyes. He sat there holding his fork absent-mindedly, lost in nostalgic contemplation.

“Jesus Christ, Grandpa!” I screamed in Grandpa’s face, pounding my fists on the table in front of him. “That’s it? That’s what you’ve got?! What are you, fuckin’ 80…79? 79 years old, and the greatest thing you’ve ever seen is a couple of pansy-ass wrestlers in New York City? Some peanut shells and shit?! Jesus fuck, Grandpa!”

“I don’t see what is so pansy-ass about two men fighting,” Grandpa replied.

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “The tights, maybe, Lightweight’s preening. It just seems gay. And it was four men fighting, not two…kinda makes it seem gayer somehow.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grandpa said dismissively. “Superman wears tights; is Superman gay? And Lightweight was a ladies’ man, I told you.”

“Okay, Grandpa, whatever; that’s not the point,” I explained. “My point is that you’re 80 years old and you’re telling me that the most exciting thing you’ve been through is some stupid wrestling match? Come on! What about V-J Day or the Cuban missile crisis, you know? How about the fuckin’ moon landing? You weren’t impressed with the goddamned moon landing?! What if they’d wrestled on the moon, would that’ve done it for you? For Christ’s sake, Grandpa! You’ve lived through so much, my God! What about the moon? What about the fucking moon, Grandpa?!"

Grandpa shrugged his shoulders and gave me a look as if to say that he wasn’t particularly upset by the fact that his answer had been disappointing for me. He went back to his mashed potatoes. I sat finishing my coffee and wondering why we even bothered inviting Grandpa over.