Seattle Semi-Pro Wrestling fears a state smackdown

Where do you draw the line between real fake wrestling and phony fake wrestling?

Seattle Semi-Pro (SSP) Wrestling performers and their fans await the answer from the Washington State Department of Licensing. The decision will determine whether their oddball institution goes down for the count.

And the man who blew the whistle on them: a former SSP grappler-turned-real-archenemy known as The Banana.

A satirically trashy, riotous homage to TV pro wrestling, SSP has been in limbo since a Jan. 7 emotional blowout that might have been its final show. The ultimate smackdown is scheduled for Thursday, when the Department of Licensing will begin a hearing to determine if

Ronald McFondle, Domestic Violence, Mascara Generico and their colleagues are a "fight-cabaret theater troupe," as they claim, or professional athletes subject to regulations and fees that could put them out of business.

Audience participation

For about six years, the monthly events had drawn hundreds to King Cobra on Capitol Hill — where audience members threw empty beer cans at the performers and later, because of the occasional full can, less-painful plastic balls.

Enter The Banana — aka Paul Richards, 40. He had left the outfit disgruntled after about a year and a half of piledrivers, suplexes and leg drops. SSP co-founder Nathaniel Pinzon, 31 — aka Deevious Silvertongue — said The Banana was meant to lighten up a roster of characters that were in the PG-13-to-R range. But Richards said Pinzon and the other organizers were turning The Banana into a joke.

"I took this crappy gimmick called The Banana and turned it into something decent, and they did everything they could to bury me," said Richards, who works at a mailing service and documents his exercise regimen on his MySpace blog. A fan of Mickey Rourke's current film, "The Wrestler," Richards said, "When he walks out in front of the deli counter and remembers fans cheering for him, I can seriously identify with that."

Of his final match, Richards said, "I was supposed to be the star, and I was relegated to standing off to the side."

Luke Keyes, 28, stepped into the yellow skin and rechristened the character Kung Fu Banana to distance himself from Richards' persona.

For his part, Keyes, a video-game programmer whose medium build could never be mistaken for that of a World Wrestling Entertainment star, relishes playing a heel. "I want to perform onstage, but I can't do a Shakespeare soliloquy to save my life. What I can do is pretend to beat someone up."

Emphasis on "pretend."

"People come to see the characters and the storylines, not great athletes," Keyes said.

Meanwhile, after Keyes replaced him last summer, the original Banana dimed out SSP to licensing headquarters in Olympia.

"It was revenge, plain and simple," Richards said. "I just told the state, 'Wrestling show, no license, here's the location.' "

Co-founder Pinzon shrugged off the revenge talk and took a philosophical stance: SSP might have had to deal with the licensing issue sooner or later.

Performers unpaid

None of the Semi-Pro crew makes money from the shows.

Pinzon earns his living as a bouncer at a gay karaoke bar — where he said he's fortunate to have seldom bounced anyone. Sporting curly hair and a Liberace-esque cape, he said of his training routine, "I jog a lot. More time gets put into my costumes, more time gets put into, like, what I'm going to say on the microphone. I'm not really a pick-'em-up-and-slam-'em kind of guy, because I'm kind of smaller stature."

Pinzon said the shows were the kind of parody that would result if the "South Park" creators took on wrestling, and that audiences are in on the joke.

Trudie Touchette, the Department of Licensing administrator in charge of the case, said she never has seen one of the shows. But, she said, "I believe that they fit the definition of our law — wrestling exhibition or wrestling shows mean a form of sports entertainment in which the participants display their skill in a physical struggle against each other in a ring, and either the outcome may be predetermined or the participants do not necessarily strive to win, or both."

A neutral presiding officer with the department will read the wrestlers' — or "wrestlers' " — written arguments Thursday. If the ruling goes against them, each participant (referees included) will need a license and a physical, and future shows will require a promoter (also licensed), security, medics and representation from the Department of Licensing. All of which could tap them out.

"It's not meant to put anyone out of business," Touchette said. "We have many small wrestling promoters or shows. They continue to operate under the guidelines that are established in the law."

Jennifer Morgensen, 27, said she's a huge fan of SSP, and "the idea that it would not be seen as theater is absolutely ridiculous to me."

In fact, Morgensen also has performed at King Cobra in a circus-cabaret theater show. "I'm an acrobat," she said. "Sometimes you don't land right and you break a toe. Are you going to make all acrobats athletes?"

For The Banana, there's no such slippery slope. "In 'West Side Story,' there aren't any drop kicks, there aren't any suplexes. In SSP, you have people performing wrestling moves — true, in some cases they're performing them badly."

Does torpedoing his former grapplers make The Banana a good guy or a heel?

"As a wrestler, I was always the good guy," he said. "But if I've got to be the bad guy, the hammer that comes down, then so be it."

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com