OK, not your neck, but the necks of guys like Dennis "Mideon" Knight, who is known for winning a legendary 1996 tag-team title match in Madison Square Garden for the WWF. Saturday, during the National Wrestling Alliance's Super Bowl of Wrestling, Lovett and Knight face off for the Southern Heavyweight Title, which Lovett currently owns.
The NWA is essentially the minor league of wrestling, and you know what that means: These guys are still hungry. It also means there's blood! "TV wrestling has skits and acrobatics, but our league is a lot more athletic. We hit for real," says Lew Spectre, Knight's manager, who often enters the ring. "Every manager has a different way of controlling his wrestlers. I use mind control. I get people out of the asylum, or crazy islanders, and use brain control on them." Wrestling characters, he says, "are a blown-up version of what we are [in real life]. I don't walk around in leather pants every day... but two or three days of the week, I do." And Knight? "Is he really a crazy Satanist? No, but he is a big biker."
During the event, every NWA title will be defended. "It's a real big wrestling show," the likes of which haven't been seen in South Florida in two years or so, Spectre says. There will be about ten matches, including Three-Way Tag Team Warfare and something called the Rodeo Death Match. There will also be special appearances by "Head of Security" Snakemaster Abudadein and Amy "Hot Ass" Love, 23, who says she's "a really good girl" who steps up to the guys, wearing her little two-piece outfit with hearts on it. "I usually get beat down before I get to do anything," she laments, but she'll at least try to unleash a Double-arm DDT ("I hook your arms and slam your head into the mat") or a Cross-body off the top rope ("That's when I throw my body weight and knock the opponent silly") before conceding.
Says Lovett: "It's a very macho sport. It's not dancing. It's not sportfishing." But Lex, you, uh, walk around in tights and little bikini bottoms! "Oh, yeah!" he says. "And if somebody doesn't, we harass them, because they're not dressing professionally." -- Deirdra Funcheon
