"I'm just doing it because I like it. This is something like a hobby of mine. If I start doing it as a full-time job, making money, sure I'll tell them I'm a wrestler, because it'll be my job. I'm not really embarrassed. Pretty much all my friends know; I invite them to the matches. But I don't go around telling people."
Louis, who holds a green belt in tae kwon do, got into wrestling for the opportunity to travel, make a little money, develop an alternative to school. He has been invited to Atlanta and Mexico by the LWF and hopes to take advantage of the offers once he graduates from San Jacinto Junior College in December with his nursing degree.
Photos by Deron Neblett
Deron Neblett
After $50-a-night gigs, Murphy has moved up in wrestling.
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"Wrestling is a lot harder to pick up than tae kwon do," he says. "Wrestling is a trade. Tae kwon do you learn for self-defense. In wrestling, you develop a toughness where you can give hits and take hits. This is more of a trade, a way to make a living."
Do you really expect to make it big? "It would be nice. It beats working."
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Name: Playboy Joey Corman
A.K.A.: Joey Corman
Gimmick: "It's just me."
Day Job: Wrestling is his life
Size: Eating his way up the scale
Big time? A long shot
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Joey Corman is asleep when you call his house in Tyler at two in the afternoon. It's part of his workout routine.
"I eat Burger King, peanut butter, bananas, anything with fatty content. I stuff it in, lay down and go to sleep. I'm pretty lazy and haven't been lifting, which is kind of a waste since I'm taking creatine. The WWF said they could use me for dark [untelevised] matches if I got up to 160 pounds and they like my work. I'm five-foot-six, so at 160 I'll look crazy big. I'm 150 pounds now. When I started I was 125."
Corman, 23, never wanted to be a normal person. He was always the kid in school busting jokes, tripping over nothing, making wise remarks. That's basically his persona in the ring. When he enters the ring at Humble, he's neither a villain nor a hero, just a little guy with a slightly deranged expression and a big mouth. He and his opponent, a leprechaun look-alike called Samir, bounce and flip all over the ring, improvising everything but the outcome. Corman prevails with a flip off the top rope.
Corman wrestles all over Texas, scraping up enough cash to pay his half of the bills in the apartment he shares with his girlfriend. "It's a love-hate relationship," he says, and he's not talking about his woman. "I love performing, going to different towns that haven't been exposed to live wrestling, and it'll be crazy and hype. Like someplace I went out toward Louisiana. The population is 500, and 900 people were at the match.
"But the travel gets to you, and there are some crappy rings. Crappy rings are scary, dude. You can't perform half your moves. You have to have a lot of trust in the ring. I trust Samir, and he trusts me. I know he won't let me die."
Corman is straight-up about his motives for risking his neck. "My goal is to make a lot of money. That may sound crappy, but that's it. I've bought every piece of wrestling merchandise ever. It's time for wrestling to give back to me."
Still, there's the feeling that even if the call never comes, Playboy Joey Corman will keep driving to Nowhere, Texas, for a hundred bucks or so, doing double flips off the top rope, running his mouth and just generally being Joey.
"You spend your whole life watching what goes on inside the ring," Corman says. "Once you get into the ring and look out at the world, it's completely different."
TASW can be reached at (281)548-5856, or visit www.taswwrestling.com. Other independent wrestling sites: www.whoowrestling.com, www.wowtex@virtualave.net, www.beyondfans.homestead.com and www.fukuforever.com.
