When you need help don't call Ron West......

I learned a lot about refereeing from Ron West. Ron started refereeing at a very young age and has been in the business a very long time. He truly is a living legend. He survived working for a lot of promoters. He is the most underated booker I  have ever known. I watched his kids grow into fine young men and have traveled many, many miles with him over the years.

I first met Ron West in 1972/73 when he came to work for Ann Gunkel in her Atlanta Promotion. He did not stay very long and showed up a few weeks later working for Jim Barnett's Atlanta Promotion. I never asked what the deal was and never will. I know he made the right decision and it worked out well for him and his family.

Ron lived then as now in Cleveland, Tennessee. His father would travel with him some and I even met his Mom once. He comes from good stock and it shows in the way he treats people. Ron is currently working for a circus as their advance man.
As he told me, "I sold fat men for years, now I am selling fat elephants. The only difference now we use three rings."

But on to my tale......

I was working in Columbus, Georgia in a match featuring Mr. Wrestling 2 against Stan Stasiak. It ended in a wild melee with both wrestlers being  DQ'd and yours truly being knocked through the ropes to the floor. Leon Ogle who was booking for Fred Ward at the time told me to stay on the floor until someone came to help me. I stayed on that floor for what seemed like an eternity. I had my eyes closed and was doing my best not to open them. As anyone who has ever worked in Kayfabe days knows, if you sell properly you will get sympathy from the fans. Such was the case here. Everyone wanted to help me up and I was having to fight to stay down. I hear Ron's voice and I think finally someone to help. He kneels down on one knee and places his hand on my throat and says stay down a little longer.

This proved to be a slight problem. The people around ringside started yelling for the EMT's and a stretcher. I can still hear one lady's voice in my head yelling that I was having a seizure. What they did not know was Ron was choking the life out of me. He had one knee on my chest and was shooting with a choke hold all the while laughing his butt off.    Oh what a business...

Friday night the same week in Atlanta they work a similar deal with Ron taking the bump. This time however Tom Renesto has me run-in and count Wrestling 2 out in some kind of finish that gets Stasiak's hand raised. I was then supposed to roll out of the ring, throw Ron over my shoulder and tote him back to the dressing room. I thought right, my chance to get even...

Get this picture...  I am almost blown up from running in and doing the count out... Ron does not help me get him up, so I had to struggle to get his dead weight over my shoulder... Now I am really blown up.

I had him where his waist was on my shoulder with his legs hanging over my front and his face hanging down my back...  I have mad fans taking pokes at me while trying to get up the aisle and two hundred dead pounds over my shoulder...  Ron decides to bite me about mid-way down my back... not working but biting the devil out of me...

I took my thumb and tried my best to give him a thumb enema, but he had wrestling trunks on under his pants and the harder I shoved, the harder he bit. I dropped him on the floor in the dressing room and we were laughing so hard I could not get him back...

I got home that night and took my shirt off to go to bed... My wife screams at me wanting to know where the teeth prints came from... Ron West bit me... sure he did, she said I saw Ron recently and we were recalling some of these incidents. He said that while he was working for WWE as an agent that they did a deal where referee, Dave Hebner was bumped and Ron went down to the ring. He said Dave yelled at him... Just don't help me... I have never met Dave Hebner but I sure do understand how he felt...

The world would be a better place if there were more folks like Ron West in it.