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CounterPunch
February
22, 2003
Boxing Missoula
Ringside at
the Wilma
By SUSANNA SONNENBERG
In the widescreen version of Missoula, a day in
the life of the city includes chemistry class at the University,
towels on sale at Penney's, the thud of videos in the drop-box,
cars in line for coffee at Malfunction Junction, the soft pink
lunchbox packed with Gogurt, the worn-out scraper on the windshield
and the dog who picked a fight with your dog at Blue Mountain.
A score of habits, a dozen cares. The same thing on Monday as
Friday. It's the way we live.
Except on Wednesday nights. In the past
year a mid-week fever has broken out after dark, the uncommon
energy of many people gathered in a dangerous way. Boxing at
the Wilma has gradually taken root as Missoula's best way to
step outside the way we live. Like the characters in Fight Club,
the boxers, promoters, managers and patrons of Boxing Night are
not, in fact, dangerous, but they all court a high that is almost
forbidden in its carnal thrill, and they do it in a cinema cathedral.
The story of boxing at the Wilma begins
with a run-down theater in desperate need of revitalization,
a theater built to be grand in 1920, an elegant theater of rumors
that never quite settle to rest. This distinctly urban structure
overlooks the banks of the Clark Fork River and was built to
house a hotel, apartments, offices, retail space, a restaurant
and a swimming pool, as well as a magnificent movie house heavy
on velvet and adornments. In the '20s, the Wilma--at first known
as the Smead-Simons--provided travelers with a place to remember,
a place San Franciscans could admire and that could make Missoulians
proud.
The Wilma belongs to another age, and
like a dottering great-aunt, she seems eccentric and confused
now, uncomfortable with the changes around her. She has not yet,
however, succumbed to the familiar fate of other great movie
palaces, which is closure and scrapping. Her underground swimming
pool was finally bricked over a couple of years ago, now calm
beneath the dance floor of the Green Room and Red Light Bar.
The Wilma signals Missoula's identity as a gentle, quirky town
of contradictions. In the past decade, owners have struggled
to reinvent her identity, in the process holding up a mirror
to Missoula's as well. For years, Ed Sharp presided over the
building with his legendary Chapel of the Dove, the set of subterranean
rooms that opened one upon another to reveal glassed cabinets
filled with theater programs and bits of decaying costumes, dozens
of portraits of his cherished pigeon, the stuffed edifice of
the pigeon itself and, finally, Sharp, propped against pillows
in his large chair, his IV drip perpetually beside him. He welcomed
visitors with a dull nod, barely a sign of being awake, and his
specter added to the indescribable weirdness of the building.
The building feels like it should be
peopled, but it isn't. Endless renovations transform the spaces,
but no workers are seen at the task. The installation of a new
elevator occupied the better part of year, but it never seems
to be used. Subtle changes mark each visit. Weren't the mailboxes
over here? Was the floor always marble? Portland developer Tracee
Blakeslee, who bought the building in 1996, lavished funds upon
the movie theater and refurbished the seats, replaced the sound
system and reinstated a high-quality screen. Greyed carpet and
shabby wallpaper gave way to bright fabrics and golden flocking.
Still, she has felt unattended: movie screens shuffled then disappeared,
the overdone glow of Marianne's restaurant faded into another
closure. At last, the Wilma settled into her present identity:
small apartments, a basement nightclub, and the grand theater
for movies, ballets, concerts and symphonies. And boxing.
Boxing is not Missoula's regular life.
Boxing has no regular venue as bowling does nor a ubiquitous
presence like the casinos. Boxing in Missoula has an unreal hype
to it, like Brad Pitt or Ted Turner. Big-money games--"real
boxing"--are publicized and broadcast on cable, fighters
granted celebrity that tempts us to read about them in the checkout
line at Safeway, watch Barbara Walters interview them.
But boxing is here now, and it makes
an odd sort of sense for it to end up, one night a week, winter
or summer, at the Wilma, another institution not exactly indigenous.
These fights have a hometown feel to them, the makeshift initiative
of the square dance in the barn. The crowd is composed of friends
and kids, groupies and on-duty cops who high-five audience members
they know. Young men and women gather in groups outside for a
smoke beneath the marquee's yellow bulbs. Big guys in t-shirts
stamped SECURITY keep an eye on the entry, and the lobby buzzes
for hours with opening night energy.
I have spent a great deal of time in
the Wilma Theatre, usually by myself, attending a movie for work
on a weeknight when no one else showed, and I would pick a seat
out of the 1,000 and submit to the thunderous pulse of the sound
system. Just me. This bred its own kind of energy, a high of
solitude and space that many Missoulians find in the wilderness
and I find in a movie theater.
The Wilma is no average movie theater.
It flaunts its glamour and size, honors its past decadence. How
rare it is to walk into any space so large devoted to just one
thing, especially in a city of this size. Missoula can't afford
Safeco Field or Golden Gate Park. For outdoor bigness we have
Glacier, and for indoor bigness we have the Wilma, palace of
movies, a giant space meant to be dark, meant to be glimpsed
only in a dim glow.
The Wilma really takes your breath away,
not only because it is splendid and regal and imposing and not
only because Blakeslee has spent such a sum restoring it, but
because it's a dream. This romantic notion of going to the movies
died decades ago and sputters weakly against the glare of the
multiplex. Only a few current patrons could possibly have experienced
movie-going when it last looked like this, and the regular teenaged
customer is likely to refer to Jim Carrey's movie, The Majestic.
Movies place quotation marks around experience.
What I knew of boxing, until a few weeks ago, I knew from movies,
where the fights revealed themselves in gorgeous angles of slow-motion
against a surging score. Movie boxing showed off Brando, Douglas,
Holden, Quinn, Stallone, De Niro, and a meaty power that even
in defeat had nobility. Movie boxing meant punks and retribution,
salvation through endurance, the irresistible cinematic marriage
of corruption and principled decency. Movie boxing did not smell.
Ringside in the Wilma, you smell sweat
and rank effort, the plywood of your table is damp with spilled
beer, blood flecks the air, you can see the doctor's skin through
his latex gloves, and the table beneath your hands shudders.
The crowd growls and roars for blood and triumph, for victory
and dominance, measured in strength and bodies. Here in the Wilma,
the sport is blood sport, a modern gladiator exhibition, the
crowd screaming for the kill.
American movies of the West have their
own tradition, and no matter the story, somewhere in the middle
of the picture, the action moves from horseback to barside, rough
arrogance thrust up alongside scrappy spunk, each embodied equally
in the roles of the new sheriff in town and the beautiful, resourceful
madam. Male and female roles are sharply accentuated. And there's
Marlene Dietrich, who embodies both and confuses each. The real
West grasps at its romanticized image: she used to be called
Miss Kitty, now she's called a ring girl.
The woman of Wednesday nights is uber-female,
glossed, oiled, waxed, robust and displayed. She is, and would
you please welcome, the Budweiser Ring Girl! We've already met
her, standing at attention in a row of her sisters for the national
anthem. They are dressed in matching Old Glory bikinis and each
one has her hand cupped over her left breast as she sings. Our
ring girl picks her way up the metal steps, steadied by a helpful
man's hand, her six-inch heels (in Lucite, white vinyl and rhinestone)
wrong for the job and dangerous for her. She swings a leg up
and through the ropes, which he holds apart for her (in this
she is accorded the same benefits as the fighters), and she hefts
the number board into the air and struts a square around the
ring. She preens before the audience, which rates her with cash
appreciation and roars of approval. Bills wadded into tight stones
hail down at her feet, tossed by friends and patrons. Her revealed
flesh demands attention, and up on the stage of the ring, her
platform heels set her upon another stage still. Music bursts
in: "All I'm asking for is a little respect!" She waves
a baby-doll wave to the crowd, smiles and blinks and smiles bigger
as the wadded money flies into the ring to bounce off her body
and fall to the floor.
When the ring card has been thoroughly
exhibited, Bill, the announcer in tuxedo and hair gel, introduces
the fighters. His voice throws a Las Vegas curve around the word
"Stevensville," giving the town a reputation it has
never deserved. The ring girl crouches from the height of her
heels and tries to gather her cash with delicacy, but of course
it's not delicate because she must hurry and get out of the ring
and she is in her underwear. In the final moments, Russ "Big
Dad" Hansen kicks a few balls of cash across the mat to
her and she clutches them to her pierced navel as she descends
those treacherous steps. Back on firm ground, she shivers and
pulls on a jacket or slips her cutoffs up over gleaming legs.
Then she serves beer.
Many women revile the idea of the ring
girl, the very concept, but in this context, these women are
on equal ground with the men who approach the ring. These young,
hapless fighters rip off their grubby t-shirts and strap athletic
protectors around their shorts. With their protective helmets
allowing for only a glimpse of face, they flash just as much
anonymous flesh, parade their prowess, strengths and frailties
in the same ways the ring girls do. We inspect their maleness
and rate their masculinity, scoring aggression, build and stamina.
In boxing--fighter, spectator or supporting cast--we are all
reduced to impulses.
Our favorite legends of the West hang
on physical hardship and human endurance, the American heritage
of raw physical power. On Wednesday nights, right here on Higgins,
that power springs to life again, so much bare skin visible,
so much nakedness shimmering for inspection. The boxing scene--loud,
rowdy, inebriated and chaotic--has the flame of predatory, sexual
energy, not because it is particularly sexy (though some may
be stirred by bikini-ed breasts and flexing forearms) but because
it raises a hallelujah to our epic heritage of mate selection.
What recommends modern society is that we all wear clothes and
speak in relatively low voices, but some primitive truth buried
deep in our cerebral cortex knows this is also our predicament,
and it is from here, for the sake of the perpetuation of the
human race, that we respond to boxing.
Who boxes? Who chooses hand-on-hand combat
with another man, ready to be pummeled and broken? These men
(there's usually a women's fight as well) pop out of the corners
of Missoula, from behind cash registers and restaurant sinks,
from the high schools and Frenchtown. They answer the ads on
The Blaze: Males wanted aged 18 to 48. You think you're bad,
call Big Dad. They show up Monday nights at The Inn on Broadway
for weigh-in and approval, fork over a fee for a license and
two nights later step into the ring. Men say to themselves and
to each other, "I can fight and get paid."
It's a rush, and you can see it. The
fighters bounce at the back of the theater from foot to foot
waiting their turn, pumping up their blood until their names
are called. Then they run down the aisles as their friends urge
them on. They bound into the ring, assess each other. The announcer
calls for the fight and Big Dad steps forward. He locks them
in the brief prayer of sports: good conduct, no dirty fighting,
watch the ref. This is about bodies and flesh, appearance and
entertainment. Then with a bell, they're at each other and their
focus narrows to a laser zone of opponent and aggression.
Sure, the occasional man knows a bit
about boxing, but for the most part, these Wilma Wednesday boys
are not good fighters, and these are not good fights. ESPN main
events have dictated expectations, but what we get here at home
are two rangy, loose, unstructured bodies flying at each other
and taking over the ring with no agenda. Within seconds, these
men have spent themselves, blown all the energy that adrenaline
would carry, and what's left, for another two and half rounds,
is a restless, juvenile lunging punctuated by spurts of poor
judgement.
The ref, Big Dad again, keeps a tight
eye on his fighters, dancing at their edges with piercing attention,
breaking them apart when they seem too close to danger. Hansen,
in his pressed black pants, brightly colored dress shirt and
stiff black bow-tie, offers a startling contrast to the pale
naked boys collapsing in their dirty sneakers.
Big Dad knows it's a show, and he tells
his boys as much before the fights begin. Why do people come?
It's a silly question to him. "You come for the entertainment.
You're sitting in a movie theater and watching live boxing!"
He pronounces it "thee-yater," highly aware of the
old-fashioned circus nature of the show. In other words, you
can have it all. You can sit in those Wilma seats, face the stage,
be a watcher and still have the air fill with the sparks and
sweat of gladiators. You're sitting in a movie theater, and you
have permission to scream at the top of your voice that is hoarse
and hard with beer, "Knock his fucking skull in!"
The Wilma's main-floor seats are filled
almost to capacity with patrons who have paid ten or 20 bucks
apiece sprawled out in various states of attention and repose,
Bud beer in hand, coats slopped over the chair in front. They
chatter and crane their necks, men eye women, and the cocktail
waitress, breasts first, ambles the aisles hawking medical beakers
filled with schnapps. On a good night, boxing pulls in about
900 people. This is not the same crowd that has shown up over
the years for the annual "Nutcracker Suite" or MCT's
"The King and I."
Now the stage, with the sudden transformation
of all theater, provides the platform for the makeshift ring,
its mustard-yellow mat roped in bright red. The ring is crowded
by tables and ringside seats, some for the judges, some for the
regulars and business groups who buy out the season tickets.
Stage right, Dr. Bill McNulty leans back against the gathered
curtain and keeps a deceptively disinterested eye on the action.
Stage left, a gaggle of women in swimwear help each other with
hairbrushes and shoe straps. Ringside, you strain to overhear
what the trainer shouts in the fighter's ear before he wipes
him down and tosses the towel inches from your face. You can't
look anywhere else, waiting for the ring girl to squat down to
her cash reward or swing her leg through the ropes, ass facing
you and covered by only three square inches of cloth printed
with the American flag.
The sport gets better and faster and
tougher, the tension tightens. The fights mean more, the promoter
pairing the experienced fighters as the night goes on. Better
matched, the sparring men keep each other going, teeth bared,
upper cuts controlled. The tables pushed up against the ring
shake with their footwork and the air rings with cries of "Hit
him!"
Boxing at the Wilma is nobody's real
life. Even the theater herself has a day job, a demure identity
welcoming couples to middling comedies with the smell of popcorn.
Not one person present at the fights, it seems, confines him-
or herself to this world. Such a high is meant only for the occasional
hit, the temporary release and escape. This boxer is a high school
student at Hellgate, that one a manager at Holiday; this Ring
Girl is a marketing major at the U, that one a stripper. Big
Dad, who drives an immense white Dodge Ram with plates that read
"BG DAD," runs a tanning salon and cuts hair. The ringside
doc has a real practice in the Bitterroot, the trainers are contractors
and carpenters. Then, of course, there's Shane and Michelle.
Shane and Michelle Cole are ICU nurses
at St. Patrick Hospital. Outside hospital hours, they're a legend
in the tight, small, brief world of Wednesdays. Michelle works
as a substitute ring girl and Shane judges fights now while he
recuperates from an injury. He has been one of the best, going
right to the championship in Missoula last year where, after
losing his final fight, he famously proposed to Michelle, his
Ring Girl, down on one knee in the ring. The winner had to concede
the spotlight and step aside. As Shane tells it, 3,000 people
leaped to their feet with roars of congratulation. "I wanted
it to be something we'd always remember," he says, explaining
how he planned the event meticulously for weeks. Even though
he had been throwing up before the fight and even though he'd
lost, he and his bride were embraced by their chosen family.
Most of the older men managing and supporting the event come
from "boxing families," and most of the fighters have
been boxing in one form or another since they were 6 or 8. Shane
seems puzzled by the question, "Why do you box?" "It's
in you," he says.
By the second time I return to the Wilma
for boxing, I'm hungry for it. I can't get the rush from my mind,
and this time I want to be closer, drifting up in a haze to find
myself clad in shorts and gloves in the center of the ring, the
ref with his hand upon my shoulder. I can feel it. I feel the
desire to interlock with my opponent, power coursing through
my arms. It doesn't feel aggressive or fearful, only primal.
I hear the crowd but I'm not part of it, lost in my thoughts,
waiting like Mia Farrow in Purple Rose of Cairo for someone to
step down, take my hand and guide me into this dream.
Susanna Sonnenberg lives in Missoula, Montana. This article originally
appeared in the excellent Missoula Independent, click
here to see the stunning photos that accompanied Sonnenberg's
article. She can be reached at: susanna807@earthlink.net
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