Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 21, 1994 TAG: 9405230123
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE LENGTH: Long
Handsome Jimmy, they used to call him.
He walked the walk, talked the talk and wrestled around the world. Now he's found his paradise on Earth about six miles up Alleghany Springs Road, where he lives with his wife, Angel, four goats, a dog and a professional wrestling school next door.
Jimmy Valiant, the "Boogie Woogie Man," or the "Boy from New York City" as he was billed, spent four decades in the spotlight of professional wrestling.
"I wrestled seven days a week for 24 years - a lot of times, twice on Sundays," Valiant said.
But in 1990, he left behind the major arenas, the big money and the television appearances when Ted Turner bought out the National Wrestling Alliance in Charlotte and asked all the wrestlers to move to Atlanta.
These days, he's content with weekend matches on the smaller, independent wrestling circuits; making personal appearances for stores at radio remotes; going into the schools with an anti-drug message; and teaching young up-starts the ropes and promoting their dreams of making it to Hulk Hogan-status.
Those dreams can become a reality, Valiant says. He remembers seeing Hogan as a young wrestler so green he could hardly lace his boots.
At Valiant's wrestling camp, which opened in 1992, he takes in wrestling wannabes and teaches them all the right moves: how to fall, how to develop a ring persona and what to expect in the rough-and-tumble world of professional wrestling.
"We take them right from step one. We teach them how to fall, and then you know, all the basic holds. And not only the wrestling, we talk about diet, you know. We help them with their body. We help them with their interviews. ... We practice interviews just like it's in front of a camera.
"I tell them go home look in the mirror in the bathroom like they're shaving ... just practice interviews ... you know 'Boogie Woogie man, I'm going to get you,' try that. Then try to be humble, then try to be mad."
Valiant said he also helps the men with their lives, whether it be trimming off excess weight (he's 90 percent vegetarian himself) or taking better care with personal hygiene.
At 51- an age he at first reluctantly reveals, then tosses off with a what-the-hey attitude - he's been in wrestling 27 years. He has the experience and the wisdom to impart to these hopefuls.
"They come to me, like their papa," Valiant said.
"These boys are so excited. They close their eyes, and this is their dream and we're going to make it come true to them and they are going to become professional wrestlers."
That message is within sight at Boogie's wrestling camp. Posted on the wall in red large letters is this slogan: "Can the Dream Become Reality? Only You Can Make It Happen."
Wrestlers from across Virginia and out-of-state come to the camp on Sundays, looking to learn the right moves to launch their wrestling careers - whether that's going to be weekend gigs to supplement their incomes or a stab at making it to main event status on major cards like the World Wrestling Federation.
Valiant began drawing up plans for the camp after meeting up with Killer Brooks during a trip to the United Arab Emirates in February 1992. Brooks had a camp in Texas, and encouraged Valiant to think about opening one, which he did, six months later.
Boogie's classes are taught in a building he contracted out by advertising on a radio call-in show. It has all the accents of a real wrestling arena. There's the ring, complete with ropes and padded turnbuckles. Wooden benches encase the ring on three sides, there for spectators at the September ceremonies where the grapplers graduate to professional wrestler status.
Dozens of framed photographs and stories about Valiant are posted on three walls. The American and Virginia flags fly from above. There's even a concession stand, operated by Angel Valiant, a physical therapist with a local home health care agency.
Just feet away are two dressing rooms, one for the good guys and one for the bad guys (appropriately marked with a drawn-in frowny face).
There's the outdoor toilet, also cinderblock, with bold letters proclaiming "Office" on its door.
Students like Frank Parker of Christiansburg have found the camp an affordable way to test their mettle.
"Before he opened the camp, I didn't even know he lived around here," Parker said.
Parker had been looking into wrestling camps, but the closest one was Norfolk - too expensive at a $2,500 fee and too far away from home.
Valiant charges a $250 membership fee and $20 a lesson.
"I'm not after their money. The reason I ask for $250 upfront is to see if they're serious," he said.
Many aren't.
"Some join and they come two or three times and you don't see them again ... It's not for everybody."
The lower prices might be more in line with what most wrestlers can expect to earn on the independent circuits, where $25 or so might be the payday.
"They don't mind. They just want to wrestle," Valiant said.
Valiant has seen big money come, and he's seen it go. He's left it twice when he walked out of two marriages carrying only a suitcase of personal belongings. Both times, the failure of the marriage was his fault, he said.
"I've had all the Cadillacs, the Lincolns, and new homes, everything honey," he said. "It never did mean that much to me, otherwise I couldn't have left it."
Material things mean even less now.
"I got a lady now and, hey, we started with nothing and we just build as we can," Valiant said.
They met at the grand opening of the Pulaski Wal-Mart on April 6, 1991, when Angel's daughter tugged her mom toward the area where Valiant and other wrestlers were signing autographs.
She jokes now that she thought there was a circus in town when she saw Valiant standing with a midget wrestler and Rolling Thunder, a mammoth of man.
As she stood with her daughter for a picture with Valiant, he asked her "Are you married?" When she said no, he responded: "Do you want to be?"
That first meeting is etched both into their hearts and throughout the wrestling camp. On a wall clock, on the entrance door, on the back of a denim jacket proclaiming "Boogie and Angel."
"I'm glad I wasn't a fan because I got to know and love him for him, not for some image," she said.
On a recent Sunday afternoon at the camp, Frank "The Tank" Parker was showing two new recruits how to execute some wrestling moves.
He practiced over and over, taking care to come off a top rope to land just-this-close to Stacen Allen, a wrestling hopeful from Lexington.
Later, they moved on to pile-drivers, where an opponent's head and neck appears to be driven into the canvas. It's supposedly such a dangerous move that some wrestling alliances have banned it.
Angel Valiant watches closely, giving a sigh of relief when the wrestlers get up after the move.
Jimmy Valiant recognizes there are critics who challenge whether wrestlers should be called professional athletes.
"You got to have a certain amount of show biz in everything. It'd be pretty boring if it was like collegiate wrestling," he said.
Valiant spends most of his week at home, making improvements to the house or building sheds on the property, handiwork he enjoys even though he had never done it before moving here.
A hobby he has given up has been getting tattooed. Mostly because he is "sleeved" now: his body is balanced with small and large tattoos, ranging from his first he got when he was 12, a deuce of diamonds, to wrestling boots complete with laces.
"On the right elbow, I have my whole family tree," from his father and mother to his five grandchildren. The only additional tattoos he'll get are the names of new grandchildren.
It's a good life he and Angel have built for themselves, Valiant said.
"I've done it all, I've been all over the world. Now, I have my camp, I want to stay home."
by CNB