LARGER THAN LIFE
PEOPLE
by Frank Tankard
Tyler Cook, Oberlin senior, follows his boyhood dream of becoming a pro wrestler.
When Tyler Cook was in the third grade, he was asked to write an essay answering the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" The answer was easy: a professional wrestler.
PHOTO/RYAN MCGEENEY
TodaytheOberlinseniorspends his weekdays taking classes in strategic communications from
the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. During the week, he's just another student in a classroom, but on weekends, to small groups of dedicated professional
wrestling fans, he is larger than life.
"I HAD LIKE SIX OR SEVEN HANDPRINTS ON MY CHEST, BIG OLD RED WELTS AND BRUISES. I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO
mother Kendra says. When he got to pick a movie to watch, he'd pick a wrestling video.
CAME BACK."
— TYLER COOK,
OBERLIN SENIOR
Buff, blond, curly-haired and wearing tiny, butt-tight shorts, Cook transforms into the characters he used to watch on TV in his family's living room in Oberlin, a shrinking town of fewer than 2,000 people in northwest Kansas.
Through junior high and high school, his class projects were always on wrestling — essays about his favorite wrestlers, an artistic calendar displaying wrestlers' birthdays, a music
Cook doesn't know where his obsession with professional wrestling came from; his older sister had no interest and his parents — who call his complex aerial moves "the flips" — didn't quite get it.
"I don't know why it hooked me right away," he says. "But I know my parents never liked that I watched it."
Inspired by the flashiness and flamboyance of Mr. Perfect, "Ravishing" Rick Rude and his all-time favorite, Shawn Michaels, Cook would strike poses standing on the arm of the couch, roll around on the floor and test moves on his parents.
When his friends came over, they'd have to fight him in at least one match using his collection of wrestling action figures, his
video set to the wrestlers' moves. When his parents bought him a car before college, he had HBK put on the license plate, after Michael's nickname: "The Heartbreak Kid."
Cook was fascinated by the wrestlers'
personalities and their power over fans — he admired how Michaels could easily get people to love or hate him.
In junior high and high school, Cook was on the wrestling team — but you can't smack a dude with a chair in that type of wrestling, and you don't have the power, or the magic.
After graduating high school, Cook wanted to go to the University of Kansas, but his father told him a school that big would eat him alive. So Cook did some research, and surprised his parents by saying he wanted to go across the state to Johnson County Community College.
"What the little stinker done, he got on the internet and found out there was this wrestling program in Kansas City," Gale, Cook's father, says.
By the end of his freshman year, Cook had contacted Midwest Renegade Wrestling, a small, independent outfit from Lenexa. One day, they told him he could work security during a show. He and two other wannabe wrestlers showed up. That night,
all three were asked to try out. This included an initiation, with all of the wrestlers taking turns chopping him, smack across his bare chest.
"I had like six or seven handprints on my chest, big old red welts and bruises," he says. "I was the only one who came back. I never saw the two other guys again."
He was reffing matches by the end of the summer. Then he served as a a "youngboy" for the Kansas state title holder, Mark Sterling, accompanying him at the ring and learning from him.
A year ago, after transferring to KU, he got his first match: a 5-foot-10, 350-pound monster named Abyss swiftly kicked his ass.
He has since fought in a main event and gets a title shot
with Mark Sterling next month. He travels a small circuit on weekends, wrestling in Lawrence at the National Guard Armory, 200 Iowa St., with NWA Central States Wrestling (formerly Midwest Renegade Wrestling) and in Iowa and Missouri. He often doesn't earn enough money to even make up for gas. The most he has ever been paid for a show is 550.
In wrestling there are good guys, called babyfaces, and bad guys, called heels. With Cook's handsome face and blond curls, he's what his trainer, Michael Strider, calls a "natural babyface."
"He's apple pie. He's Americana," says Strider, a wrestler with thick arms and bleached hair. "Most of the young ladies who come to the
show come to see Tyler in his speedo.
His parents have made the trip to Lawrence to see him several times, and though they've never quite understood wrestling, they're proud. Still, his father wonders whether the wrestling will last.
"I mean, it's all right that he does it, but at the same time, I stress school," he says. "I keep telling him he's not 6-foot-8, 280 pounds like some of those boys."
Tyler knows that if he wants to make it to the top — World Wrestling Entertainment — he has years of work ahead of him.
He needs to look no further than a man he practices with named Derek Stone. Stone started when he was 19 years old and made his living on the
Tyler Cook, Oberlin senior,
struggles against a Hype Gotti
choke hold.
wrestling circuit for seven or eight years, wrestling for the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) and smaller leagues in 200 to 250 matches a year. Stone, now 34, has two ruptured discs in his back and has worked overnight at Target for three years. He describes wrestling as an addiction.
"It's something that if it's good for you, you will get hooked on it," he says. "It's sort of like any adrenaline rush."
Cook says he figures he'll balance a day job with wrestling after he graduates next December. But if he gets the chance to make wrestling his career ...
"That'll be a little way down the road."
TYLER COOK'S TOP FIVE WRESTLING MOVES
Superkick - The superkick is a side crescent kick right to the jaw of my opponent. It's the finishing move of my favorite wrestler, Shawn Michaels. He refers to it as "sweet chin music."
I dive head first off the top rope with my arms and legs spread wide, almost like I'm flying. I get straight upside down and then back-splash
Swanton Bomb - This is a top rope move made popular by Jeff Hardy.
on top of my opponent.
T-bone Suplex - My friends and fans all call me T-bone, so it's only likely that I'd use this as one of my moves. I grab my opponent behind the neck with my right hand and put his right arm behind my neck. I then grab his right leg with my left arm right under the knee. I then suplex him straight over my head, dnumbing him on his head.
Double Axe-Handle Smash
- This move is a top rope move where I jump off and hit my opponent on top of the head with both of my hands clasped together. I grew up watching Shawn Michaels, Rick Rude and Randy Savage use this move.
Fisherman's Suplex — This is a move I grew up watching "Mr
Perfect" Curt Hennig use as his finisher. He called it the Perfect-Plex. I put a standing front facelock on my opponent and throw his right arm over my head. I grab his right leg with my left arm and lock my hands. I then take my opponent straight over my head, keeping my hands locked and bridging for the pln.
10.26.2006 JAYPLAY
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