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It’s not accessible to accomplish it in wrestling—especially aback you’re beneath bristles anxiety tall. If athletes like Dylan Postl (aka Swoggle) appetite to be in the ring, they accept to accomplish boxy choices.
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Dylan Postl would like to go home. This is understandable.
Since abrogation his home in Oshkosh, Wis., bygone morning, Postl has aureate from Milwaukee to Cleveland; performed in a able angry actualization in the gym of a Catholic primary school; had some after-hours fun and early-morning airline issues; bent a acting flight from Cleveland that got him as far as New York City; active a Nissan Versa to drive 21⁄2 hours to the outskirts of Albany for an autograph signing at a arcade mall; apprenticed addition hour west to action in addition academy gym; put on the aforementioned believing beam for added photos with admirers than he could count; and wrestled at said school, aloof 30 account afterwards aboriginal affair the aerialist with whom he’d be working.
Somewhere in that 36-hour amount he managed to catnap off for a little while. Alike accustomed the afoot activity of an absolute pro wrestler, it has been a bit much.
Still, Postl, scraggly-bearded and anon to be 31 years old, will acquaint you that he loves this. He loves angry aboriginal and foremost, and alike as it takes its toll, he loves the absolute scene’s DIY ethos: capacity his attache with merchandise, hawking it for 20 bucks a pop afore the show, authoritative his own schedule, munching on chargeless pizza in the locker room.
He additionally loves breadth it brings him. In the accomplished year, that has included four trips to the United Kingdom. In July 2016 he went to the Gathering of the Juggalos, the anniversary Insane Antic Posse fan anniversary in Thornville, Ohio, breadth he performed in an alfresco arena in a addled acreage and saw attendees do things he’d rather not describe. On a Saturday in February he is at this junior-senior aerial academy in Saint Johnsville, N.Y., a asleep apple of about 2,000, for a actualization adopting funds for a chic cruise to Boston. As Postl sits exhausted at an octagonal cafeteria table, a few seventh- and eighth-grade acceptance approach, adamant with backwardness as they activity acknowledgment and address selfies.
Postl has performed on about every blazon of date his business offers. Until May of aftermost year he spent a decade assuming for the industry’s titan, WWE. There he was accepted as Hornswoggle, a actualization who completed the archetypal actualization arc of nonverbal-leprechaun-turned-leather-pantsed-rocker. The highlights of his administration included actuality airtight off the top of a ladder in advanced of 80,000 bodies at WrestleMania 23 and abutting in the pyrotechnic crotch-pointing taunts of D-Generation X.
Like abounding a acclimatized entertainer, Postl has distilled his performances to their appropriate elements. “Good ass bite, appealing appropriate burst at the end,” he had said beforehand that afternoon. “That’s all I gotta anguish about.” His role on this evening’s actualization would be to acknowledgment an accessible claiming from a able-bodied villain. The afterwards six-minute match, which Postl won, was the blazon of comedic achievement at which a younger, added abstracted Postl would accept balked.
As a Wisconsin jailbait advantageous $100 a ages to train, he reveled in the abounding across of wrestling’s physicality: active the ropes, demography aback anatomy drops, active suplexes. “I never capital to chaw an ass or cruise a guy or compression a guy’s nipples,” he says. Yet these days—even with added freedom than anytime to calligraphy his own matches—Postl’s tune has changed. “I did all of that tonight,” he says. “I do all of that in aloof about every bout I do now. Because I realized, Hey, I can wrestle, but the admirers don’t necessarily appetite to see that all the time.”
What admirers appetite to see from Postl about differs from what they appetite to see from added wrestlers. Postl, afterwards all, stands aloof 4' 5", the aftereffect of achondroplasia, a abiogenetic ataxia that is amid the best accepted causes of dwarfism. Able angry has continued congenital elements of comedy, yet for performers like Postl it is about a prerequisite. Aback “midget wrestlers”—as they are best generally indelicately labeled—appear in boilerplate pro wrestling, it is usually as a one-off gag, a sideshow aural a sideshow. For the sub-five-foot barb with austere aspirations, the limitations are frustrating. Abounding face the best of assuming as living, breath jokes, or not at all.
David Klutho for Sports Illustrated
Size affairs in wrestling. In a principally concrete anatomy of storytelling, actualization can bend in for both actualization and plot, with bigger commonly apparent as better: Hulk Hogan’s 24-inch pythons, Andre the Giant, etc. But ball cuts both ways, and aback the mid–20th aeon little bodies accept had a approved abode in the boxlike circle. Rarely accept they been as arresting as Postl, whose abreast decadelong run in WWE was unprecedented, and whose indie-circuit cachet as a standalone allure is about as uncommon. Best generally little actuality wrestlers in 2017 can be apparent in specialized touring groups with names like Half-Pint Brawlers and Midget Angry Warriors. They accomplish the ambit through America’s confined and armories, angry on all-little-person cards. The ability that makes it adamantine for them to able best angry cards is amplified there into a atypical strength.
A quick chat about that word. Midget has been on the amiss ancillary of political definiteness aback the Little Bodies of America accursed it at their countdown meeting, in 1957, and in contempo decades the accumulation has won victories alignment from changes to the AP stylebook to the name of a band of miniature pickles. While pro angry generally uses its own dated, carnie-inflected vocabulary—faces, heels, kayfabe, shoots—rarely is it added at allowance with association at ample than on this subject. The m-word has accepted a adamant survivor in the industry. As Postl says, “The chat midget makes me money.”
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The wrestlers themselves generally accomplish an important acumen amid the word’s cheeky use and its helpfulness in sparking accessible interest. “You’re not gonna see on a affiche little bodies wrestling,” says 4' 11" absolute wrestler Robbie (the Giant) Araujo. “You’re gonna see midget wrestling. Added bodies are gonna appetite to see midget wrestling. It’s demography what we are and all-embracing it.”
“You accept a artefact and you accept a brand,” adds Daniel DiLucchio, who wrestles as Short Sleeve Sampson. “You accept to explain your artefact in your branding.”
The LPA, in befitting with analysis responses from 90% of its about 6,000 associates (out of an estimated 30,000 little bodies in the U.S.), formally opposes the use of midget, preferring little actuality or alike the added accurate dwarf. Its associates accept generally protested angry events, ambitious name changes of apparel like Extreme Midget Wrestling, and branding alternatives accept arisen, with agreement such as micro and mini acceptable common.
Whatever you alarm it, Postl and his adolescent performers are borer into a angry attitude that can be traced aback six decades, to a Detroit-based barb and apostle called Jack Britton. According to the accepted account—possibly apocryphal—Britton was assuming on a agenda in Montreal in the 1950s that frequently alveolate two or three little wrestlers adjoin a distinct ample opponent. Britton saw green: He set up a Montreal booking appointment for alleged midget angry and active out crews of performers to assignment together, generally in tag-team bouts.
Over the abutting two decades performers from Britton’s 40-man stable—Sky Low Low, Little Beaver, Lord Littlebrook, Fuzzy Cupid—toured the U.S. and Canada as appropriate attractions. Money flowed. Britton’s top draws were paid like the stars they were: Geno Brito, Britton’s son, recalls Little Beaver, aka Lionel Giroux, earning six abstracts and active a Ford Thunderbird in his prime. On shows abundant with wide-bodied bruisers and methodical grapplers, teams of four-footers block one addition about the arena offered change-of-pace appeal. Abounding little wrestlers were accomplished athletes able of absorbing concrete feats and acute action, but instead a reliable blueprint formed about a alternation of crowd-pleasing ball spots, like dog bags and active amid the referee’s legs—rare $.25 of bare absurdity in an era aback angry still insisted aloft a blind of legitimacy. “Their bout was absolutely altered from any added match,” says Dave Meltzer, longtime editor of the Angry Observer Newsletter.
As pro angry neared its mid-’80s bang period, midget angry waned. The stars of Britton’s era had aged. The change of the genre’s comedy-based actualization did too. Vincent K. McMahon’s Apple Angry Federation (now WWE) broadcast from the sport’s acceptable Northeastern beginning and became a civic conglomerate, burning up the territorial circuits breadth freelancing little bodies generally fabricated their rounds. Angry was refashioned as a boilerplate TV product.
But McMahon’s aggregation would accord midget angry its high-water mark, at atomic in agreement of visibility. It came on the under-card of 1987’s Wrestlemania III, in advanced of an arise (and about absolutely apocryphal) army of 93,173 that abounding the Pontiac Silverdome to watch Hogan and Andre argue for the apple championship. The third of the show’s 12 matches acclimatized a alive altercation amid the admired Hillbilly Jim (6' 7", 350 pounds) and the abhorred King Kong Bundy (6' 4", 458 pounds), anniversary abutting by two little bodies as teammates: Beaver and the Haiti Kid with Jim, Littlebrook and Little Tokyo with Bundy. The bout concluded when, in abuse of its declared size-segregation rules, Bundy aerial Beaver and airtight him to the mat, causing a disqualification. Aback Bundy confused to abide the beating, Littlebrook and Tokyo abject a decumbent Beaver out of the way, extenuative their adversary from their partner. “Even the added midgets don’t like what he did!” crowed annual anchorperson Gorilla Monsoon.
There would be no aftereffect bend nor adventitious for revenge. The abatement reportedly burst Beaver’s back, accidental to his retirement anon after. And afterwards their highest-profile achievement to date, little bodies all but abolished from wrestling.
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Jack Darrell Hillegass had never met a little actuality afore he accomplished that they could accomplish him money. It was 2006, and Hillegass, a aloft stripper, was booking macho revues and actor comics for night clubs in Murfreesboro, Tenn., aback he was alien to a little actuality wrestler accepted as P.O.D. (for Pissed-Off Dwarf). P.O.D.—real name Chris Guyre—ran a traveling all-little-person angry actualization accepted as the Micro Angry Federation. I can advertise this, Hillegass thought, and for the abutting three years he did, eventually usurping P.O.D. as the company’s arch and owner. At the time, Hillegass was active beneath an alias in Tennessee to avoid an Ohio bastille book afterwards actuality bedevilled for his role in an Ecstasy addition in 2000. In 2009 authorities arrested him at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, breadth he was active one of his angry shows. He concluded up confined 6 1⁄2 years in an Ohio prison. His accompany kept the aggregation afloat until Hillegass confused into capricious accommodation in January 2016 and retook the reins. “I was in a centermost abode with a angle and a f------cellphone booking midget angry shows while all the added guys are OD’ing and attractive for cigarettes,” he says.
Hillegass shares this axial the aperture of a Memphis band club called The Pony. It’s a atramentous Thursday afternoon in May. He wears biscuit burden shorts and a atramentous Micro Angry Federation baseball cap aloft a analogous atramentous hoodie that hangs about on his still-muscled 48-year-old frame. He has accounting a book (“a 98% accurate narrative”) about his activity that he hopes to bazaar alongside his aggregation of MWF wrestlers. “I’d be a abundant added absorbing actualization if I had 10 midgets continuing about me,” he says. Behind him, the quartet alive tonight’s actualization advice lug barge in from the 10-foot bivouac anchored to Hillegass’s Ford Excursion, to assemble a arena alongside The Pony’s catwalk. Anniversary wears a atramentous MWF hoodie with the byword i abutment midget violence.
David Klutho for Sports Illustrated
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Midget angry abundantly exited the industry’s capital date afterwards the 1980s, but it never absolutely vanished. It survived on the fringes, in alone armories and shows like Hillegass’s. Half a dozen troupes currently bout the U.S., assuming bank to bank in advanced of crowds that ambit from handfuls of admirers to hundreds. The four wrestlers with Hillegass in Memphis are well-traveled. All accept formed elsewhere; all affirm by him as a promoter. Of their added bosses, they broadcast abhorrence belief of skipped paydays and apart biking in the burden amplitude of a U-Haul. “This is the best I’ve been in,” says Jacob Brooks, a absorbing 26-year-old from Mississippi who wrestles as Lil’ Show. “And I’ve been in all of ’em.”
Hillegass, in turn, speaks of his wrestlers’ talents with durably ardent optimism. He bristles aback bodies apprehend comedy—“It’s a WWE-style actualization with a aggregation beneath bristles anxiety tall,” he says—but he acknowledges that the activity is alone allotment of the draw. “They’re not advancing for the wrestling,” he says. “They’re advancing for the little guys.”
To that end, aback he was arise from bastille aftermost year, he broadcast his shows to accommodate Wendi Furguson, a 2' 10" comedian. Hillegass says he spent $15,000 on a truck, bivouac and arena for a additional aggregation of wrestlers to bout simultaneously—tonight they are in Illinois—and $12,000 on a March cruise to Las Vegas, breadth he active a berth at the Nightclub & Bar Show. He claims that while he has fabricated abundant money in the aftermost year to drive a new Mercedes, he sleeps on an air mattress in a basement accommodation in Cincinnati in adjustment to reinvest in his company. Amid his goals: a Nashville banquet amphitheater breadth his wrestlers would be abutting by assorted little bodies entertainers, like comedians and look-alikes. “The accomplished Lollipop Guild affectionate of thing,” he explains. He would alarm it the Microtorium.
“People sometimes acquaint me, Oh, you’re base these people,” Hillegass says. “It’s the best cool affair I’ve anytime heard in my life. How can I be base addition who’s accomplishing article they love?”
Booking MWF costs venues amid $3,500 and $10,000, depending on the admeasurement of the show. The company’s best gigs—like the one the night afore Memphis, in West Lafayette, Ind.—are generally country-western bars, breadth the crowds are usually big and lively. Strip-club shows like tonight’s, the wrestlers say are beneath than ideal. The affidavit are beneath abstemious than practical: There’s a diffuse breach amid matches for the dancers to assignment the stage.
No one in the show’s cast, anniversary of whom earns $200-$350 per show, says they feel exploited. Likewise, none article to the appellation midget as a business hook, admitting Hillegass has attempted to actualization it out of his own promotional materials. Nevertheless, The Pony’s covering promises midget fights.
The MWF members’ affidavit for assuming vary. Furguson, who has been accomplishing actor ball for six years, has begin the steadiest assignment of her career. Brooks and his brother Jamie, who wrestles as Baby Jesus, anchorage WWE dreams. Jordan (J-Mazing) Rafael wrestles to supplement his assets as a aerialist in Vegas auberge shows, best afresh as a jester at the Excalibur. He recruited Eddie (E-Money) Piedra into angry afterwards they met on the set of the 2013 blur Oz the Great and Powerful, in which they both played Munchkins. Piedra is extenuative money to move aback to L.A. from San Antonio, acquisitive to breach added absolutely into acting. In the concurrently he angle angry as a adventitious to abolish crowds’ preconceptions of little people’s able-bodied abilities, acceptable account one powerbomb at a time. “If they arise abroad with a altered attitude, afresh I’ve done my job,” he says. “We’re not aloof a sideshow.”
David Klutho for Sports Illustrated
Around 10 p.m., afterwards the civic canticle and a dejected aperture set from Furguson, Rafael and Piedra assignment the aboriginal of the night’s four matches. It sets the accent for the evening: 15 to 20 account of ascent activity that draws the 75 or so assemblage into hoots and hollers and climaxes with a pin, afore a half-hour abeyance during which the club’s dancers do their thing. Best of the clubgoers arise absent during the matches. Dancers booty seats and cheer; at one point, while the Brooks brothers affray assimilate the balustrade with clipboards and cookie sheets, one of the women runs over to battery them with dollar bills. In the additional bout E-Money helps Lil’ Actualization bluff to exhausted Baby Jesus for the championship; J-Mazing teams up with the closing for tag-team animus in the third; and the consistent affray devolves into bluff anarchy to set up a four-way capital accident in which Baby Jesus reclaims his title. The army applauds and whoops.
It’s now accomplished 1 a.m. The wrestlers admix about an animated basement breadth forth a adjacent wall, allurement a anchorman for his thoughts. It was an absorbing show, arranged with flips and aerial head-scissors and aback handsprings, the affectionate of activity that could win over about any audience. Told this much, they glow. But there is little time for reflection. Anon they will be on the alley afresh for a five-hour brief ride to a actualization at a basin anteroom in Ripley, Miss. Aboriginal they charge detach the ring, so they get to assignment abstraction apart the turnbuckles while the DJ calls Ginger to the capital stage.
Even while watching a actualization as absorbing as this one, there can be a acrimonious unease. It is generally difficult to abstracted the achievement from its marketing. Says Leah Smith, accessible relations administrator of Little Bodies of America, “They’re still saying, ‘Come watch us because of our height, not our skill.’ ”
Is there a abode for little bodies in pro angry that isn’t exploitative? DiLucchio says his bald actualization on a actualization has fatigued protests, mainly from well-meaning academy groups aggravating to accouterment exploitation, which has led to promoters alteration venues or bottomward him from the gig altogether. “Them aggravating to allege on my account is absolutely accomplishing added damage,” he says. “This is my job. This is me advancing and active a dream.”
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But at the accomplished levels the beheading of that dream has been abundantly one-dimensional. In the mid-1990s the afresh WWF featured Dink, a four-foot doppelgänger accessory to a antic wrestler called Doink. (He was at one point abutting by the analogously sized Wink and Pink to adverse the abominable Sleazy, Queasy and Cheesy.) Later that decade the WWF alien several “minis” from Mexico, breadth little wrestlers accept enjoyed added boilerplate success, but the adventure accepted short-lived. Ditto for WWE’s attack at establishing a “juniors division” of abate wrestlers in 2005, which flopped while clashing amid ball and seriousness. In contempo decades little bodies accept appeared in WWE as miniaturized impersonators of stars, trotted out by a battling to be belittled.
So the choice, to the admeasurement one exists, seems to be amid alive as a high-profile antic or toiling out of the accent while advancing the ability added seriously. It would be artful to argue that the performances of little bodies wrestlers are artlessly scaled-down translations of beyond wrestlers’; abounding accept concrete limitations—shorter limbs, collective issues—that adapt their movements. Still, there are affluence who can hip bung and hurricanrana like anybody else.
In 2014, Postl had the best befalling of his WWE career: a pay-per-view preshow bout in East Rutherford, N.J., with El Torito, an acrobatic 4' 5" Mexican who, dressed as a bull, formed as the accessory to a matador-themed tag team. The brace comatose through tables and hit anniversary added with chairs, alarming the army of 16,000 to chant, “This is awesome!” Afterwards years of rarely accepting to put on abounding matches, Postl acquainted vindicated. “When I got through the curtain, anybody was on their anxiety clapping,” Postl says. “It took a lot to not say: I f------ told you.”
But alike that bout was presented as a gag. A leash of little bodies replaced the accepted annotation crew; aforementioned for the arena anchorperson and referee. The bout was contested beneath “tables, ladders and chairs” rules, but instead of actuality abbreviated as the accepted TLC, it was accepted as WeeLC. “Personally, I admired it,” says DiLucchio, who formed on the announcement aggregation as Jerry Lawler’s miniature stand-in, Jerry Smaller. “It gave anybody a aftertaste of what a midget angry actualization could be like.”
On a blindingly ablaze Saturday afternoon in April, Postl lies on his aback in a atramentous bend of the Starland Ballroom, a concert area in the axial New Jersey suburb of Sayreville. He is befuddled from addition aboriginal morning of travel. A complete like barrage rumbles from the adjacent arena as wrestlers rehearse for the night’s show. It’s actuality run by WrestlePro, a acclaimed Jersey-based outfit. Postl is asked how he has been in the two months aback the bout in upstate New York. “Awesome,” he says. “Awesome.”
He has absolutely been busy. Alive beneath the trademark-adjacent moniker Swoggle (WWE owns the rights to Hornswoggle), Postl has been appointed solid, including four matches in four canicule during WrestleMania anniversary in Orlando, aback an arrangement of absolute promotions commonly alight on the WWE mega-event’s host city. Aftermost weekend the bounded aggregation he runs with two adolescence friends, All-Star Champion Angry Wisconsin, drew a almanac 875 admirers to Oshkosh’s assemblage center. He has additionally become a approved in added outfits, abating some of Postl’s apropos that promoters are hiring him mainly for a blow of WWE-derived name recognition.
At the merch bend that afternoon, it is bright how far that boilerplate acknowledgment still goes. Postl was arise from his WWE arrangement aftermost year; aback the Torito adventure band from WeeLC faded, the aggregation had little for him to do. (There was additionally a 30-day abeyance for abortion to aftermath a urine sample for one of WWE’s approved biologic tests.) About every fan who approaches in Sayreville to acquirement a T-shirt or photo references his time with WWE. I acclimated to watch you on Raw. . . . Remember aback you . . . Would you anytime go back? (“In a heartbeat,” he replies.)
Asked if he would accept been able to stitch calm a career on the absolute ambit after actuality accustomed in WWE first, Postl doesn’t hesitate. “Not at all,” he says. “And I wouldn’t accept capital to. I’d accept been impaired to.” Here is the amount of accepting gone forth with all the jokes. Postl was 19 and blooming aback WWE active him for what was accepted to be a six-month gig as the undersized accessory of a abrupt Irish baddie. He played the allotment with abundant blitheness to parlay it into a about decadelong tenure. If he was best generally deployed for laughs, he additionally congenital up the ascendancy bare to accompany a acknowledged career in the industry he’d consistently loved.
He is not abiding how abundant best this continued attempt activity will last. He is 31 now and in the bosom of what he refers to as his resurrection, savoring the befalling to assignment added advisedly and accumulate what he jokingly calls his “indie cred.” Aftermost February he had said he ability accept three years larboard in him; now he says he will action until the minute his anatomy tells him to stop, so that he is in the concrete action to appropriately accession his son, Landon, who is now seven.
“Real activity scares the s--- out of me,” Postl says. “This is all I’ve done.” Perhaps, he says, he will alternation to become a chef.
He sits in a baby lounge backstage at the Starland, agleam with diaphoresis from accepting performed alert tonight: already in a 30-man action aristocratic and already in a six-way bout with bristles beyond wrestlers. His entrances to anniversary prompted two of the loudest army responses of the night, and admitting acceptable neither, he served as the six-way’s fulcrum, aboriginal cartoon action by gnawing on anniversary opponent’s rear end, afresh acclaim by affective anniversary astern over his arch in a activation alternation of German suplexes. He’s asked how he would appraise his performance.
“I had a hell of an ass-bite tonight,” he says, animated impishly. “Hell of an ass-bite. Afresh I got to wrestle.”
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