Mask a Silly Question, Get a Silly Answer: How I Met The Masked Superstar

DEDICATION: This episode is dedicated to two highly influential Franks: the late great podcast host and friend FRANK READING and the late great radio show pioneer JOE FRANK.

The minute I walk into my psychotherapist’s office, she asks me where I’ve been this whole time, as I am now three months late for a ten o’clock appointment we scheduled 15 Mondays ago. I tell her I kept hitting the snooze button and overslept. She’s not buying it.

Her office is a lot different than I remember it. A mural of Mexican wrestling legend Mil Mascaras has replaced the blue and white attention-grabbing accent wall that once reminded me of a Parliament Lights cigarette ad — my happy place when therapy sessions get intense, my happy place on New York City subways.

Tacky masked Luchador pillow covers have replaced the bright yellow throw pillows I used to hug during crying jags. “What’s with the pro-wrestling décor?” I ask her. The room looked a lot better when it had a subtle mix of warm and cool tones.” She tells me the newest trend in therapy is therapeutic décor. All the cool psychotherapists are doing it.

The Lucha Libre wall art and throw pillows are meant to ensconce me in the wrestling world, an environment of comfort and safety. “Do you feel comfortable and safe?” she asks and I immediately say: “No, not at all, exactly the opposite. This is freaking me out.”

The Mask of The Masked Superstar

She then dons a wrestling mask I instantly recognize as the Masked Superstar mask. “No? Perhaps, this will do the trick.” It’s a professional-grade mask made of gray spandex with thick black trim around the eyes and three black stars on the crown. In a flash, her nimble fingers tie the laces on the back of the mask. When the mask is snug on her face, she directs me to look into her eyes. She intends to hypnotize me. 

Highly susceptible to hypnosis, I quickly fall into a trance, and for the second time since I walked into her office, she asks me: “Where have you been this whole time?”

No longer able to hide in a Parliament Lights cigarette ad, I look to the accent wall behind her for a hiding place, anywhere she can’t get access to my memories. I take refuge in a barely noticeable wrestling ring tucked in a far corner of the Mil Mascaras mural.  

I wipe my feet on the ring apron so I don’t track any dirt onto the ring, but also as a show of respect to the ring and all who’ve wrestled in it. How do I know to do this? And why am I doing this? My goals here are concealment and subterfuge, not reverence and cleanliness. 

My entrance into the ring is met with a smattering of applause. What? Who did that? Even though it’s too dark to see out into the arena to find the source of the applause, I know I’m not alone. The place is packed to the gills with wrestling fans. Why are they here? 

Where have you been this whole time? She’s found me. Seeking refuge in a wrestling ring was a mistake. I should have looked for a Mexican embassy instead, but who would think to paint that into a Mil Mascaras mural? 

In the Ring With The Masked Superstar?

RING ANNOUNCER (Michael Buffer?): And his opponent, hailing from Brownsville, Pennsylvania, at a height of 6 foot 3, weighing 291 pounds…THE MASKED SUPERSTAR!!!

BOOS erupt from the crowd! 

The MASKED SUPERSTAR is wearing his signature one-shouldered black singlet. I can tell it’s truly him by the reddish-brownish locks flowing from the back of his shiny gold mask. His startling aqua blue eyes beam with intelligence and conviction. He plans on dispatching me as quickly as possible, as the Masked Superstar is not known to suffer fools and amateurs gladly.

I am in awe of this man, as he is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time—ranking right up there with Blackjack Mulligan and Abdullah the Butcher. My awe is mixed with fear of what the Masked Superstar may do to me. 

The fight bell dings and I suddenly have a strong urge to urinate. 

To my surprise, we circle each other in the ring, mirroring each other, sizing each other up. How I know to do this is beyond me. But I’m doing it, gosh darn it! I’m actually doing it. 

We circle closer to each other now, both of us within striking distance. Then it happens. We are suddenly face-to-face in a collar and elbow tie-up. My hand is on the back of his neck. His hand is on the back of mine. It occurs to me to shoot my forearm into his face with enough force to break our lockup and send the Masked Superstar stumbling backward. He didn’t expect me to do that; neither did I. 

Now that he looks stunned, I rush toward him with no particular plan in mind. I’m operating on pure instinct. Should I try a shoulder block or a clothesline? I do something that is basically a very lame cross between the two moves. 

Sensing my indecision, the Masked Superstar raises a leg that lands right in my midsection. The boot to the belly makes me double over in pain. Wasting no time, the Superstar puts me in a front face lock, lifts me off my feet, and suplexes me onto the mat, where I land on my back with an earth-shattering THUMP. Muscle spasms wrack my whole body. 

All he has to do is pin me for the count. I won’t try to get up. Whatever fight was in me at the start of this mismatch is gone. It’s truly over now. But The Masked Superstar’s not finished with me, not in the slightest. 

He sits me up and applies a sleeper hold from behind me. I want to tap him on his arm to signal my submission to the referee, but I can’t find the strength to do even that much. 

The Superstar’s grip on my neck is so tight I can smell his forearm. It smells like an earthy blend of sweat and sweet vanilla-like tobacco. As I try to lift my arm again, Superstar says: “We’re putting on a show here, idiot. Stay put!” And now I can remember one of the reasons why the Masked Superstar is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time: his voice. 

His voice was always even-keeled, businesslike, natural, and unaffected. During his promos he could even be soft-spoken and deferential to his opponents, acknowledging their skills and accomplishments, sincerely without being overly sweet. Listen to what he said about Bob Backlund during a promo shoot for an upcoming title fight in 1983:

The Masked Superstar's Promo Skills

“Backlund…I’m going to give you credit. You’re a good champion—a very, very good champion. You’ve held on to that belt for some time. But what you don’t understand is, I’ve been planning for this for ten years. Ten years I’ve been in this professional wrestling vocation– very, very successful. Often times not, but always a winner…” 

This was a title match promo. Who says that? Most opponents would’ve been ranting and raving. “Backlund, I’m gonna rip your arms off and beat you with them!!!” But not the Masked Superstar. Credit. I’m going to give you credit. And that’s why I enjoyed listening to Masked Superstar promos. He was easygoing but still intense. I imagine if he slowed it down more it could be hazardous to operate heavy machinery but he found the right tempo and stayed confident. It was the kind of confidence that allows an athlete to give his opponent credit without being seen as a wuss.  

His promo skills weren’t the only thing he had going for him. The Masked Superstar had pure scientific wrestling skill. A true ring tactician through and through, the Masked Superstar broke rules when he wanted to, not because he had to. He should’ve been the WWF champion, but it never came to pass. It was the Hulk Hogan era and Hogan’s reign was a juggernaut. 

Never a believer in the cult of Hogan, I pinned all my hopes on the Masked Superstar. To me, he was the true messiah of the WWF, ready to usher wrestling into a new era of greatness. There was no real reason the Masked Superstar couldn’t have beaten Backlund to become the WWF champ, even if it was just for a short transitional stint until Hogan assumed the crown.

In the end it really all came down to who was more detestable to fans: an America- bashing Iranian sheik or a ring-savvy coolheaded masked man who spoke with the grace of a true athlete? Of course, we all know the Iron Sheik became that transitional champion, instantly dropping the belt to Hogan to begin the rebirth of wrestling. Sometimes there’s a price to pay when you’re not hate-able enough.         

But, look, it’s not like the Masked Superstar didn’t get a chance at Hogan. On the night of February 18, 1984, in the Philadelphia Spectrum, Superstar and Hogan fought in a title bout for the WWF championship.

It was a lackluster matchup, to say the least. Small contests of strength between them at the outset of the match were spliced with a lot of Hogan mugging for the crowd and a lot more Superstar walking outside the ring to regain his bearing. This could have been a great match if they tried to make it a nail-biter of a fight. Instead, they settled on Hogan chasing Superstar in and out of the ring trying to unmask him. 

Fed up with Hogan trying to remove his mask, the Masked Superstar just walked out of the ring and back to the dressing rooms, calm, cool, and collected. If it were anybody else, the walkout would have seemed cowardly, but not with the Masked Superstar. Coming from him, the walkout looked classy—as if he were saying: “Hey, did you come here to fight or unmask me? Enough with the gimmicks, and STOP MUGGING FOR THE CROWD, DAMN IT!”

“UNMASK him!” (FRANK READING) comes a shout from ringside. “Unmask him, Mr. Gonzalez!” It is the late great Frank Reading, my friend from the Sports History Network boxing podcast RINGSIDE WITH READING.

I want to tell him it’s pointless to unmask him: everybody knows William Reid “Bill” Eadie is the Masked Superstar, but I’ve forgotten how to say the word pointless. So when the word comes out of my mouth it sounds like “disappoint us”. Clearly, a temporary hypoxic condition is setting in my brain.

It was Frank who got me into podcasting, Frank who gave me a CD of the Masked Superstar against Black Jack Mulligan so I could research my first podcast topic. I must’ve watched that match a million times, and in it, Blackjack managed to unmask the Masked Superstar the way Andre the Giant had ungloved him once upon a time. 

The referee lifts my arm to see if I’m still alive and my arm drops even though I want to reach out to Frank, shake his hand, tell him how much I miss his friendship. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THIS WHOLE TIME?

I’m speeding down a tunnel in my mind and I wind up in a Catholic school gymnasium sometime in the mid-1990s. I’m in a wrestling ring again but this time I’m next to the great Mexican champion Tito Santana. Tito was gracious enough to be in a Polaroid photo with one of the residents of the group home where I was a counselor. The three of us smiled as we held Tito’s championship belt aloft. 

After the snapshot, I had a chance to sneak backstage (or what passed for a backstage at a Catholic school gymnasium) and meet Bill Eadie. In addition to being the Masked Superstar, Eadie was also AX, one half of the tag team known as DEMOLITION—the WWF’s answer to the legendary ROAD WARRIORS. Like the ROAD WARRIORS, DEMOLITION adopted the post-apocalyptic fashion and attitudes of the MAD MAX movies. The Road Warriors were badasses, while Demolition were barely runners-up.

Eadie was packing his spiked leather AX garb into some kind of duffel bag, the silver makeup covering his entire face looked runny and mildly irritating. And there again, the same mingled odors of sweat and tobacco emanating from his pores.

Eadie probably wanted to get the hell out of the gymnasium as fast as he could, but there I was standing a few feet behind him. “Excuse me, Mr. AX. Were you the Masked Superstar?“ I asked. Still busy stuffing heavy-duty spiked clothes into the bag and not bothering to turn around, Eadie replied: “Yep.” 

“You were great. And I think you should’ve been the WWF champion, not Hogan.” When I said this, he stopped packing, and said one thing and one thing only: “Politics.” Amazingly, I didn’t ask any dumb follow-up questions. We just let the word hang there. That one word explained everything. Eadie zipped the duffel bag with finality. He meant it as my cue to leave. The fan encounter was over.     

And suddenly I’m back in the wrestling ring where the Masked Superstar is slowly choking me to death. As the ref lifts my arm a second time to see if I’m still alive, I see my father is sitting ringside too, only a few seats away from Frank Reading.

My father has lost interest in this match. He’s playing dominos with a few of my gruff Perth Amboy uncles. After studying his tiles for a long time, my father raps the domino table to signal he’s unable to lay down a tile. The play passes to one of the many uncles wearing sleeveless motorcycle denim jackets.

My father looks up and makes eye contact with me. Visibly angry and ashamed, he yells out to me in Spanish: ¡Quítate esos malditos tacones! ¡Los tacones altos son para mujeres! 

Translation: “Take off those damn heels! High heels are for women!” 

My uncles break out in laughter. 

And for the first time since I entered the ring, I stare down at my feet and notice I’m wearing a chic pair of Lulus Gwendolyn Red Suede Lace-Up High Heel Sandals. 

To appease my father, I stretch forward to unwrap the long laces tied above my ankles. The ref lets my arm go as I strain forward. My arm stays aloft from the effort. 

“You’re supposed to keep your arm up on the third arm lift, not the second. Don’t you know anything about pro-wrestling?” the Masked Superstar hisses in my ear. As I reach forward for the heels, I inadvertently lift the Masked Superstar to his feet. He’s barely holding on to my neck. The sleeper hold loosens and I jab an elbow to the Superstar’s gut that makes him double over. I really want to take these heels off but the laces are wrapped so tight around my ankles it’s like untying a pretzel knot. 

Now I’m hopping on one high-heeled foot while I struggle to remove the other shoe. The crowd is laughing as they pelt the ring with crumpled paper cups and half-filled beer cans–one of which lands square to the side of my head, pushing me over the top rope of the ring and into… 

My psychotherapist’s office, where I’m wide awake, sitting in a chair, staring at the accent wall behind her. A sexy mural of Elvira, the buxom Mistress of the Dark, replaces the Mil Mascaras mural. Off my surprise, my psychotherapist says: “My twelve o’clock thinks she’s a witch.” I nod and look down at my feet and see a pair of men’s leather boat shoes. “I thought I was wearing high heels,” I say. “You were. You can take them off and put them on whenever you want to. Time’s up.”

“So, is that it?” I ask her. “The answer to where I’ve been this whole time? The Wizard of Oz messageI never really left Kansas; happiness was with me this whole time? On my feet?”  

“Not quite as simple as that kind of fortune-cookie wisdom,” she says as she leads me out of her office. “You were in a sleeper hold.”

“But I broke free…” I say. The revelation makes me smile. 

Just before I exit, I stop at the threshold to say: 

 “I promise I’ll never be late for another appointment again.” 

She says: “ I know. See you in two weeks. You’ve been listening to WRESTLING WITH HEELS ON. Only on the SPORTS HISTORY NETWORK.”

Hi everyone.  My name is Ariel Gonzalez, originally from Brooklyn, now living in the Garden State and I have a new podcast called “Wrestling With Heels On.”

On the podcast, I get to reminisce about my favorite wrestling bad guys from yesteryear.  Light on stats and heavy on nostalgia, this little trip down villainy lane gives me a chance to visit the dark corridors of my wrestling soul, and it’s also fun to have a podcast.

Wresting With Heels On podcast hosted by Ariel Gonzalez artwork (presented by Sports History Network)
Photo Credit: Sports History Network
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