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"FacebookPinterestsailerphoto.png \n\nGQ: You have a pretty serious theatre background. That seems like the base of your wrestling, huh?\n\n Benjamin Sailer: You know, that&amp;#39;s what wrestling is. If you see it just as guys doing moves to each other, and that&amp;#39;s what you go out and do every time, nobody&amp;#39;s going to care, and you&amp;#39;re going to just waste away. It&amp;#39;s funny, but I just have really silly, simple techniques\u2014like when I come out I go around and I give everybody high fives in the crowd. I don&amp;#39;t care if it&amp;#39;s 500 people. I&amp;#39;ll touch everybody because once they&amp;#39;ve touched you, now their invested a little bit. It&amp;#39;s like &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve touched that guy, and now he&amp;#39;s up there getting beat up.&amp;quot; They&amp;#39;re going to latch on just a little bit more.\n\n GQ: So I&amp;#39;m guessing that&amp;#39;s also why you chose to go with the traditional trunk. Being that exposed has to invite your audience in.\n\n Sailer: Exactly. They&amp;#39;ve almost seen me naked. You book a 300 pounder wearing a long sleeve shirt, pants and a mask\u2014they&amp;#39;re gonna hate him.\n\nGQ: You&amp;#39;ve basically just described Mick Foley.\n\n Sailer: [Laughs] Yeah, pretty much. I&amp;#39;ve worked with Foley though, he&amp;#39;s a good guy. But definitely that big monster type, they do well for me. My whole thing was to be\u2014and every wrestler&amp;#39;s got these crazy gimmicks, crazy names\u2014there&amp;#39;s gotta be one real &amp;quot;Guy&amp;quot; out there. Kind of give balance to it all.\n\nGQ: You even go so far as to use your real name.\n\n Sailer: That&amp;#39;s actually a funny story. I&amp;#39;d been training for a while, maybe six months, and I&amp;#39;m sitting in the locker room putting on my boots when this guy walks up to me, kind of dressed up but it didn&amp;#39;t really strike me, and he says, &amp;quot;Hey, kid, what&amp;#39;s your name.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Oh, I&amp;#39;m Benjamin Sailer man.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Oh, OK. Well Where you from?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Bismarck, North Dakota&amp;quot;. He goes, &amp;quot;Oh, OK.&amp;quot; And then I realize he was scribbling this down and then he walked away. I said to myself, &amp;quot;Well what in the heck was that?&amp;quot; That&amp;#39;s how I ended up using my real name. I didn&amp;#39;t realize that it was the ring announcer. I thought he was just asking who I was.\n\nGQ: Do you feel exposed in the tights, or do you like that exposure? Is it a part of the performance?\n\n Sailer: When I&amp;#39;m wrestling, I don&amp;#39;t even notice it. I&amp;#39;ve tried other kinds of gear, like long tights, but when I&amp;#39;m wearing that kind of stuff I notice it because it&amp;#39;s in my way, or I feel it&amp;#39;s in my way. You do notice it when we&amp;#39;re performing at these venues that are just bars or nightclubs. You go ten feet out the back door, and you&amp;#39;re back in the real world, most people, they don&amp;#39;t have a clue what you&amp;#39;re doing in little shorts. So there have been times when I&amp;#39;ve gone away from the wrestling business and been still in my gear, and found myself like, Oh, I&amp;#39;m sort of in the real world in trunks.\n\nGQ: Have you seen the new show on Starz called Spartacus: Blood and Sand?\n\n Sailer: You know, a buddy tipped me off to it, and I sort of watched a little bit, but I think the first couple episodes gets you into the characters, and I didn&amp;#39;t know what the hell was going on. So I gotta wait for them to restart it. Gladiators were actually a lot more like pro wrestlers than people think because they really didn&amp;#39;t die in the ring a whole lot. The point was they were valuable entertainers, and they didn&amp;#39;t want them dead.\n\nGQ: And visually I guess you&amp;#39;re still carrying that tradition forward?\n\n Sailer: Yeah, I feel it&amp;#39;s the same because the gladiators recreated wars for those people that weren&amp;#39;t able to go see them, or didn&amp;#39;t want to. And I think it&amp;#39;s the same for this, you know? A lot of wrestling fans don&amp;#39;t like football because they feel with wrestling it&amp;#39;s a safety net where everybody&amp;#39;s going to be okay, and that it&amp;#39;s just for fun, you know. Even though it gets real serious at times, they have the underlying thought that everyone&amp;#39;s gonna be okay. So they don&amp;#39;t think it&amp;#39;s as brutal as, say, football.\n\nGQ: So you as a performer don&amp;#39;t have a problem with people saying that wrestling is fake?\n\n Sailer: I would say that a lot of entertainment is fake, if that&amp;#39;s what you want to say. That&amp;#39;s the dumbest logic to use, to say, what a poor form of entertainment, it&amp;#39;s scripted. You gotta look at it as your ability to script a sporting event, so anytime you see a sporting event in a movie you look at it and you go, How is it presented? You can apply a real cheesy Disney formula to your wrestling match\u2014the same as Disney would use for a sports team movie.\n\nGQ: Then you&amp;#39;re not really troubled by the life of professional wrestling in the face of MMA?\n\n Sailer: No. &amp;#39;Cause they&amp;#39;re totally different fan bases. But wrestling is doing a lot to hurt itself by trying to compete with MMA. It should be trying to differentiate itself from MMA.\n\nGQ: How would it? How would wrestling differentiate itself?\n\n Sailer: I think it goes back to that underlying feeling that everybody&amp;#39;s going to be okay. No matter what, it should come down to everybody&amp;#39;s okay. So as a parent, I&amp;#39;m not going to let my kids watch UFC and all that jazz when teeth are flying out and jaws are getting broken, people are getting seriously hurt. I would rather watch a more fun product\u2014and I think there are some great children&amp;#39;s wrestling companies out there.\n\nGQ: But all of pro wrestling can&amp;#39;t be just for kids. So, how do you appeal to those 20-somethings that were into it back in the 90s?\n\n Sailer: Well, I think that is what Vince McMahon is realizing now, that he has a complete monopoly on wrestling. Vince has programs on different networks, at different time slots, on different days. So he&amp;#39;s starting to brand them out better now.\n\nGQ: And on a regional level\u2014working with smaller, local promotions\u2014does that create a similar kind of healthy differentiation?\n\n Sailer: Here&amp;#39;s my honest, honest feeling\u2014television killed pro wrestling. What I&amp;#39;ve been talking about is wrestling as theatre, right? So go to a play and tape it. Put that on TV. Is anybody gonna watch a play on TV? It&amp;#39;s awful. But when you&amp;#39;re there, it&amp;#39;s unbelievable, right? It&amp;#39;s the exact same with wrestling. Everyone who&amp;#39;s ever gone to a live event went &amp;quot;Ho-ly Shit. That was unbelievable. I was 10 feet from it. Oh my God. It was awesome.&amp;quot; So once you get on TV, you lose that. And here&amp;#39;s the sad thing\u2014you use the television, so now you can get bigger arenas. Now you got\u2014in the heyday\u2014you had 10,000 people, 20,000 people in arenas, 10-15 years ago. But really all the wrestlers cared about were three people, and those were the three cameramen that were filming the whole ordeal. And the people that paid money to get there live pretty much got ignored. Some of the bad guys might get on the mic and insult you a little bit, but other than that you&amp;#39;re pretty much just an observer.\n\nGQ: Can the pro wrestlers on those rosters survive solely from wrestling?\n\n Sailer: No. You gotta have a healthy dose of the dream, man. You keep lying to yourself and saying that it&amp;#39;s gonna happen so that you keep doing it.\n\nGQ: So it&amp;#39;s that deep for you?\n\n Sailer: It&amp;#39;s become everything I know. Once you get in those ropes, it&amp;#39;s like Monaco in there, it&amp;#39;s a principality. I can get in there and commit felonies. I can hit people with chairs, I can start &amp;#39;em on fire and stab &amp;#39;em with knives, dude. It&amp;#39;s a complete independent state of the United States. And the rules? You can wear pink spandex with neon green spandex, that&amp;#39;s fine. Your name can be the Flamingo and you can dance like a bird. It&amp;#39;s fine, that&amp;#39;s cool. Anything is accepted, anything goes. And that freedom of being in there, no one can tell you what to do. I&amp;#39;m not being told how to do my wrestling. I make my wrestling and it comes from what I think wrestling should be and what it represents.\n\nGQ: Then why get married in the first place? You&amp;#39;re 25, on the road, maybe some groupies here and there. Why leave the party?\n\n Sailer: I&amp;#39;m not a gambling man. I don&amp;#39;t take risks, and I don&amp;#39;t gamble, and with women that you&amp;#39;re going to meet in those bars, there&amp;#39;s a gamble. I need to have this home base to come back to that&amp;#39;s got everything together. I got clean clothes, I got food in the refrigerator, and I love her. She&amp;#39;s the coolest chick and I&amp;#39;ve known her for a long time and we&amp;#39;ve been through a lot. It&amp;#39;s nice to go from the chaos of being on the road and stretching a buck and stealing beer and running amuck in the streets of Des Moines\u2014it&amp;#39;s nice to come home to have everything in order.\n\nGQ: Does supplexing a guy in the middle of a ring feel as good at 25 as it did when you were 12?\n\n Sailer: Well first of all, once you get in the ring, you&amp;#39;re in this different world. And hitting those ropes man, that feels unbelievable, running off of those ropes, it&amp;#39;s one of the greatest feelings. And once you slam a guy, the sensation of slamming him isn&amp;#39;t what gets you, it&amp;#39;s the reaction of the crowd. If I slam somebody, and nothing happens, nothing happens for me. But the greatest feeling is the one that you predicted. It&amp;#39;s like, &amp;quot;Oh, they&amp;#39;re gonna love this.&amp;quot; It&amp;#39;s kinda cocky, and kinda arrogant but you spend so much time writing the story that you would hope that it comes across as how you planned it out.\n\nGQ: And slamming a guy with a chair?\n\n Sailer: I&amp;#39;ve only hit a couple of people with a chair in my life and I&amp;#39;ve regretted it every time.\n\nGQ: Oh yeah, did you cringe up a little bit?\n\n Sailer: No, because I know you read huge in wrestling. Like every little flaw you have, every hesitation reads unbelievably huge in wrestling because it&amp;#39;s such a motion orientated thing, that any change in your motion really reads as hesitation and whatever. Everytime I&amp;#39;ve hit someone with a chair I have just swung it. And crushed them right in the good spot, on the top of the head. And I absolutely guarantee that shit hurts, cause I crack these guys. Because that&amp;#39;s how much I love this sport, that I don&amp;#39;t want to do it injustice by half-assing it.\n\nGQ: So who volunteers to be the person getting hit by the chair, and what is their personality like?\n\n Sailer: Exactly. That was the fucked up part in both situations, is that it was the promoter that wanted it. And it wasn&amp;#39;t called for, it&amp;#39;s rarely called for, and it&amp;#39;s something that&amp;#39;s gone over the top, and played in the demise of a lot of wrestlers because you ain&amp;#39;t supposed to get hit with that shit. It&amp;#39;s bad for the brain. That was a big part in Chris Benoit&amp;#39;s demise too, was that he was taking chair shots all the time. And he didn&amp;#39;t care, he was the toughest son of a bitch that ever lived. But they said he had the brain of a 93-year-old Alzheimer&amp;#39;s patient.\n\nGQ: Are there personalities like that out on the circuit, like Chris Benoit, who take that much punishment?\n\n Sailer: You gotta look at the psychology of a steroid user. And I don&amp;#39;t know if you know people who use steroids, but I do because I&amp;#39;m a pro wrestler, and we come across it. There&amp;#39;s a certain mentality that comes with it. I mean you&amp;#39;re giving yourself extra testosterone, you&amp;#39;re injecting yourself to 175-200% of your normal levels of testosterone. Of man. So it disrupts how you think, what you think you can do, what you&amp;#39;re capable of. Guys that are on that stuff, that&amp;#39;s how they think, that they can take it. It&amp;#39;s the only drug that you can habitually use and people might love you for what you do when you&amp;#39;re on it. No one&amp;#39;s cheering for meth addicts, no one&amp;#39;s packing stadiums to see meth addicts. But if you&amp;#39;re hitting home runs, and making sacks on the football field, people love that shit. Same with wrestling. If you&amp;#39;re a big jacked up guy people go nuts for that, they love it. But steroids aren&amp;#39;t like that at this level cause number one, steroids are goddamn expensive and we&amp;#39;ve already proven that wrestler&amp;#39;s are poor as shit. So, we can&amp;#39;t afford it.\n\nGQ: Academics now study pro wrestling as theatre, or pro wrestling as a drag performance even? Would someone like RuPaul, a drag performer, be welcomed into the actual community of pro wrestlers?\n\n Sailer: Anything goes. She&amp;#39;d be completely accepted. It doesn&amp;#39;t matter. Everything&amp;#39;s accepted in pro wrestling. And gay people love pro wrestling.\n\nGQ: Really. Have you seen that community in Minnesota?\n\n Sailer: I&amp;#39;ve seen that in a lot of places I&amp;#39;ve gone. Like I said, it&amp;#39;s this magical world where anything goes and everything&amp;#39;s accepted. The misconception is that a lot of wrestling fans are rednecks and they&amp;#39;re beer drinking and trailer dwelling. I don&amp;#39;t think that&amp;#39;s really the truth. I think maybe for a lot of fans that&amp;#39;s true, but a lot of wrestling fans are highly educated and they enjoy it for this social anomaly, like who are these guys, these mystery men, how does this even exist. Who tells them that they&amp;#39;re able to do this. And truth is it&amp;#39;s nobody. We&amp;#39;re all self-motivated. It&amp;#39;s theatre.\n\n \u2014FREDERICK MCKINDRA"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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