CHRIS CODUTO/Arizona Daily Wildcat World Wrestling Entertainment wrestlers Val Venis (left) and Rico square off during WWE' televised event "RAW" at the Tucson Convention Center last night.

Convention center plays host to WWE television program

World Wrestling Entertainment was in town last night for the televised "WWE Raw" at the Tucson Convention Center Arena.

While the thought of professional wrestling may immediately trigger the word "fake" in the minds of most, so-called sports entertainers should most definitely be considered athletes ÷ at least according to them.

Current WWE superstar Rico, who was spotted at Gold's Gym on Church Street hours before last night's event, had some strong words in defense of his profession.

"You got your baseball players, football players, basketball players, those are all real athletes," Rico said. "But a lot of people don't realize that in pro wrestling, we do four to five days a week, sometimes twice a day, and that we're an athlete, we're a stunt performer, we're everything wrapped up. We're everything rolled up into one. And we don't have an off-season."

Unlike Major League Baseball, the NFL and the NBA, the WWE doesn't break for months at a time after their biggest event of the year. After Wrestlemania, the March pay-per-view event that is the equivalent of football's Super Bowl, WWE superstars have to perform and wrestle on television the very next night and two to three other days that week.

The WWE is year-round entertainment in which wrestlers may get only two to three weeks off a year. These performers are on the road most of the time, often abroad in Canada, Europe or Asia, and one may be hard-pressed to challenge the "athlete" label.

Rico, a former American Gladiators champion, bodybuilder and football player, said he still had no idea how much work he needed to put into becoming a pro wrestler until he actually stepped foot in the squared circle for the first time.

"I dare anybody, any person who thinks they're an athlete to get in the ring, and not wrestle anybody, but run back and forth on those ropes like you see us do for three minutes ÷ just for three minutes ÷ and we will see what type of out-of-shape you are."

"I didn't think I was out of shape, I thought I was an athlete, but I got in that ring for a minute and ran them ropes · I was huffin' and puffin' like I had just ran the Kentucky Derby myself, with two jockeys on my back."

The extent of "real" athletes in the WWE stretches far beyond Rico. Consider this:

-Three-time WWE Champion Kurt Angle won a gold medal for freestyle wrestling at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

-Two-time WWE Champion Brock Lesnar was the NCAA Division-I wrestling champion at the University of Minnesota.

-Former World Championship Wrestling title-holder and current WWE superstar Bill Goldberg briefly suited up for the Atlanta Falcons several years ago.

-Perhaps the most recognized WWE superstar, The Rock, was a defensive lineman on the University of Miami's 1991 national championship team.

A number of former and current WWE talent have an extensive sports history, primarily in football (though wrestler Chris Jericho's father played hockey for the New York Rangers while Jericho is a frequent hockey player himself). The athletes themselves would argue that professional wrestling is far more demanding on the mind and body than football.

And as much as the goal of pro wrestlers is not to injure each other while competing, accidents and injuries occur quite frequently.

"There's still collisions. There's still things that happen," Rico said. "I've had a separated shoulder, a torn rotator cuff on both sides, I've had a torn quad muscle off the kneecap ÷ they said I'd be out forever."

"When I'm in a hotel room, I put the desk chair right next to my bed when I go to sleep, so when I roll out of bed and I'm sore, I roll and I hit the chair and push myself up," he added.

If WWE superstars aren't athletes, the obvious question is: What, then, defines an athlete?