"I’m no different than anybody else, except I’m short," Blanton said, looking me squarely in eye. He got his start on the Georgia circuit, wrestling full-sized opponents under the nickname Too Tall Shortts. tornado states, as an extreme midget wrestler. It catches you in a trap, and you can’t walk out.īecause security wasn’t tight, I was able to go backstage after 4-foot-8-inch Little Fabio defeated 4-9 Madd Mexx "The Immigration Sensation," who was billed as an evil Mexican but from a distance looked somewhat like Mickey from "Seinfeld." I introduced myself to Little Fabio, whose real name is Chris Blanton, the 23-year-old son of a little-person father and full-sized mother.īlanton studied history and political science at Georgia Southern University in Savannah before he quit school to travel the world, or at least most of the U.S. Extreme Midget Wrestling might be the polar opposite of the Big Elvis show at Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon. "Why can’t midget wrestling be a legitimate act here?" "You’ve got 15 shows on the Strip five circus shows (which is what Ward calls Cirque du Soleil) and a million comedy and magic acts branded in every different way," Ward said after pulling his long hair into a ponytail. He’s the Vince McMahon of midget wrestling, but he sees himself more as its George Bernard Shaw – some men see things as they are and say why, Ward sees things as they are in Las Vegas and says why not Extreme Midget Wrestling?
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Ward recently moved to Las Vegas to become a professional poker player. The head of the Extreme Midget Wrestling Federation is Skyler Ward, a friendly fellow of 44, who, like seemingly everybody else in attendance Sunday, hails from Oklahoma City. The attractive woman wearing a red evening gown, holding a poofed-out Shih Tzu on her lap that also was wearing a red evening gown, seemed only mildly amused. The kids in the crowd and three guys sitting ringside wearing Mexican wrestling masks really seemed to enjoy it.
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Except instead of a folding chair, the midget wrestlers mostly used thin TV dinner trays made of aluminum to smash political correctness – and each other – upside the head, because a folding chair would have been too big.
Then an eight-little-man battle royal broke out in the middle of the ring, knocking over the flag, and then it was just like real – er, the wrestling you’ve seen on TV.
This was before I learned that 3-foot-6-inch Baby Jesus, who sports a cross on his sparkly yellow-and-blue wrestling tights – at first I thought he might be from Sweden instead of Oklahoma – had taken the championship belt from Little Show on Saturday night. I was sort of questioning that decision, and feeling a little weird for being there, and thinking that the Little People of America, Inc., just might have a point. This was right after a few bars of Randy Newman’s "Short People" were played over the public-address system. A fog machine belched a few thin wisps into the air that looked more like cigar smoke, when you could smoke cigars in a casino, and then Sean introduced the small wonders. Suffice it to say that Sean was not wearing a white tuxedo coat when it finally was time to rumble. "Half the size, twice the violence!" barked the ring announcer, who called himself Sean, perhaps to limit any comparisons between himself and Michael Buffer. It also goes to show that not everybody can get Neil Diamond tickets on Labor Day weekend. This goes to show that Extreme Midget Wrestling is still popular in Oklahoma and in other states with a panhandle and elsewhere, despite using the M-word. There must have been more than 1,000 spectators at the Royale Pavilion. Like Engelbert Humperdinck.Īs I said, that was years ago, and now Extreme Midget Wrestling is back, though I’m not sure it ever went away. Sky Low Low supposedly worked in the tail of World War II bombers, fixing rivets, but that wasn’t why I liked him. He was my favorite midget wrestler when I was 11. Sky Low Low, a Canadian whose real name was Marcel Gauthier, was born in 1928 and died in 1998. There are no giant photos of Sky Low Low, who stood 3 feet 6 inches and, as they say around the midget wrestling circuit, weighed very, very little. Elvis.Įngelbert Humperdinck and Elvis, together. Up and down the hallways and corridors leading to the Riviera Royale Pavilion, scene of Sunday night’s Extreme Midget Wrestling Federation card, there are giant photographs celebrating the Riv’s proud and glorious past.
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