Friday, February 12, 2021

The Fabulous One With Not-So-Fabulous Offspring

Lane (right) is the father of an insurrectionist. Wild.
Photo Credit: @WrestlingIsKing

Retirements in pro wrestling are fleeting, never permanent. So are retirements in pro wrestling blogging, it seems.
Once upon a time, tag team wrestling was a huge deal in the United States, generally in the Southeastern territories. Stan Lane generally was considered among the specialists in this milieu, most well-known for his team with Steve Keirn in the Memphis, Florida, and Minneapolis territories known as the Fabulous Ones. They were an outsized and flamboyant duo known for unintentionally homoerotic calendar shoots, but also for being one of the best teams wherever they went. They had something for everyone, as most great wrestling acts do. See, wrestling isn’t just for the in-ring freaks like me or the people who love listening to guys yell charismatically. New Japan Pro Wrestling, for example, is popular with women in the home base because they have an inordinate number of ripped and boyishly cute mega hunks on the roster. I’d assume gay men and other people of various other genders who are attracted to masc-folk are in it for the pecs, abs, bulge, and ass too.

Lane, in his male stripper ring gear and with his flawlessly styled hair and well-manicured beard, was a prime candidate to receive affections from the ladies in the crowd. The thing about pro wrestlers mostly then but probably now too is that they’re inscrutable horndogs if they haven’t settled down. Some of them were/are horndogs EVEN IF they settled down. While the men backstage often threw derision at their conquests, calling them “ring rats,” (N.B. don’t ever call a female wrestling fan a ring rat unless you’re advertising that you’re a piece of shit) but really, who were bigger sluts in those days than the guys who meticulously sculpted their physiques, rubbed themselves down with oil, and got all worked up by grabbing each other for anywhere between eight and 20 minutes a night? Trust me, if they weren’t all hornt up for each other, they were hornt up for SOMEONE.

Where am I going with this? Well, these liaisons after the show were bound to end with some broken condoms or nights where the guy successfully begged to get in there with no latex protection between his phallus and her inner vagina. Some of these women got pregnant, and some of them wanted a cut out of their famous baby daddy’s pay envelopes from working Ocala, Tampa, Orlando, or whatever Florida shithole they were working in a given night. Lane, so the accusation goes, knocked up someone in Central Florida. That woman gave birth to a baby girl, and the mother rightfully wanted child support from the deadbeat who eventually made his way up to Ted Turner’s cash cow in Atlanta. Rumor has it that Lane, in an attempt not to give any money to that woman, quit World Championship Wrestling and headed further north into the Smoky Mountains to work for his old manager when he was a member of the second incarnation of the Midnight Express, a little indie in the mountains of Western North Carolina that ended up becoming one of the most influential promotions in the early ‘90s. Okay, but what does it matter to talk about Stan Lane going to SMW to work for Jim Cornette to avoid child support? Isn’t just muckracking at this point?

Not when the child in question here turned out to be United States Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO 3). 

Boebert was already big news because the congressional freshman has turned out to be part of a new breed of far right fringe whack-jobs who are familiar if not adherent to the bonkers QAnon conspiracy. While she’s not as outwardly antisemitic or as in-love with Q as her Georgia counterpart Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Boebert’s vitriolic pro-gun, anti-minority views have given her a platform, both of scorn from both sane people and hardcore Democrats and of praise and future leadership from the entire Republican Party. What’s even more damning is that she allegedly gave a tour of the Capitol Building on January 5, 2021 to some sketchy people who may or may not have been there the next day storming it with ill intent and perhaps a few IEDs.

The funny thing about all this is that it was all hidden underneath the surface until someone unearthed a Facebook post from Shawn Bentz, who is both Boebert's mother AND Lane's first cousin, in the WrestleReunion page, long before Boebert was a national player.

I am not one to cast aspersions on people who go full Shelbyville, but it's also incredibly NOT surprising that a pro wrestler, no matter what region they're from, I am not casting aspersions on the good people of the South here, would be into their first cousins. I'm not saying you have to be touched to be in wrestling, but wrestling sure does seem to attract more people who perhaps need better healthcare for their mental wellbeing than what they're receiving. Either way, as of right now, Lane has not been reached for comment. I'm not entirely sure his comments would be anything different than "she's lying," which, judging by the YouTube comments, was his response due to a paternity test that, alleged by Bentz to be doctored, denied that he was Boebert's father.

Still, pro wrestling is such a fucked up business that the shock from hearing about how a popular tag team wrestler from the 1980s ended up siring and skipping out on a congresswoman who may or may not have helped to try and overthrow the government. The Sleaze Thread, originally on the Death Valley Driver message board (originally started by TONY KHAN himself), shows the width and breadth of fucked up shit in pro wrestling. Still, while it shouldn't throw long-time veterans of wrestling observation like myself for a loop, the sheer serendipity of current events intersecting with this thing I've spent most of my life following, enjoying, and being vexed by, can still make me turn my head, even for just a second.

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