VINCE FAHEY: GETS THE HOT TAG OF BASTIEN FRIENDSHIP AWARD HONOREE

At recent Cauliflower Alley Club reunions, aspiring wrestlers and fans alike have enjoyed the perks of CAC membership by having access to numerous seminars given by elite professionals who have made the wrestling industry tick.   The Fine Art of Managing, How to Promote Yourself and Delivering Quality Promos represent some of the curriculum.  One of those responsible behind-the-scenes to make these seminars run smoothly has been Vince Fahey.   His name may not be familiar to you.  But his love of wrestling’s history comes shining through as he works diligently to coordinate the scheduling and execution of these seminars.  He also lays claim to a website domain dedicated to that very history, Kayfabe Memories (www.kayfabememories.com).

Fahey’s efforts have not gone unnoticed by CAC board members; they have chosen him as the recipient of the 2010 Red Bastien Friendship Award, given to a person not active within the wrestling business.  Through his website and volunteer duties at CAC reunions, Fahey’s desire to showcase wrestling from the past stood out to the board.   Making sure the next generation of young grapplers learn the lessons of the past, good and bad, is a necessary step to make sure wrestling history is stored and respected, and most of all — that it continues. 

“Vince has attended most of the reunions for about the past 8 years; he’s someone CAC can always count on,”  said Wes Daniel, one of the Cauliflower Alley Club’s executive board members.  “Vince donated space on the Kayfabe Memories massage board (www.infinitecore.com/superstar) so that CAC could host their own forum.  And he worked with Bob Leonard on the seminars, attending all of them.  He made sure there were comment cards for people to fill out, and certainly helped take the seminars to the next level.   Vince embodies the ideal behind the Ring of Friendship, and thru KM, he’s made himself an important part of CAC.”

By the middle part of the 1980s, with the nationwide expansion of the World Wrestling Federation on television and in the arenas, World Class Championship Wrestling’s syndicated television spanning the UHF stations across the United States, and Jim Crockett Promotions gaining a foothold on their own American exposure on Ted Turner’s WTBS,  Red Bastien’s active wrestling career had concluded.  Around this time, Red, along with fellow CAC member Billy Anderson, was training a new crop of wrestling superstars for their own storied careers, including Sting, The Ultimate Warrior, The Angel of Death and others.  

Concurrently, young Vince Fahey began to view professional wrestling from his Arizona television set for the first time.  In terms of the timeline, Fahey was not able to experience Red Bastien’s glory days in the ring first-hand.   But fast forward close to twenty years, and both men would eventually meet in Cauliflower Alley.   Bastien had become the club’s President, with Fahey joining as a new club member on the heels of his launching a website dedicated to wrestling history, Kayfabe Memories.

“I was familiar with Red, of course, and I made a point of introducing myself to him,” Fahey recalls.  “I gave him an explanation of what Kayfabe Memories was about.  We chatted quite a bit about wrestling history from there.” 

Arizona in the mid 1980s was an unlikely place for a young wrestling fan’s interest to be fostered.  “Wrestling wasn’t a hotbed here,”  Fahey said.  “You couldn’t escape McMahon at the time.  I looked at his wrestling on TV, like Saturday Night’s Main Event, as more of an oddity, a curiosity factor.   I started to meet people who were WWF fans, and who got all the ‘Apter mags’ at the time.  I started borrowing them and discovered promotions from all over the place, and learned about the different areas out there.” 

As mentioned earlier, these areas included World Class and the AWA, whose presence on ESPN was growing to an ever-increasing cable television audience.  “When I really got into it, when I was buying magazines myself, it was then I found the TBS Saturday night show, and I was hooked,” Fahey said. 

Fahey’s education into the current wrestling scene was growing, but he had a thirst to learn it from a historical perspective as well.  He purchased back issues of magazines and was a tape-trading enthusiast well into the early 1990s.  “As an avid reader, I like to learn more about an author’s work when I’m interested in them.  For wrestling, I wanted to see more to explore the rest of it, and so I had more to trade with, too”  Fahey said.

As the territorial nature of wrestling evaporated, Fahey’s interest waned for a few years until the latter part of the 1990s.  The internet spawned an opportunity to renew those passions, and led Fahey to develop the idea of Kayfabe Memories.  “As I looked around, there was nothing out there strictly dedicated to the territories; there was a wealth of information but it wasn’t categorized.  I wanted to have a place where history was collected and shared, to give back something to the boys… a presentation of their lives, and even get some of them involved.

The main website attracts fans and wrestling personalities alike to its sections dedicated to individual territories, covering wrestling capitals from Houston to St. Louis to Memphis to New York to Atlanta to Toronto to San Francisco and many points in between.  The main focus is on the period of wrestling spanning the years 1965-1989, and the message board hosts individual territory forums.   “Kayfabe Memories wouldn’t be successful without the guys who wrote columns on the territories,”  Fahey said. 

Max Levy is one of those fans who has been there since shortly after the website’s inception.  “I wrote some of the columns for the Mid-South and World Class sections on the main site, and I posted actively on the message board.  Eventually, it became big enough that I was recruited to help moderate the board,” Levy said.  We share the same ideas on what we want it to be, the feel and temperament.”

Eventually the pros themselves came to find Kayfabe Memories.  A search through any number of territorial forums reveals familiar names to the sport and CAC as well.  “Early on, I started getting guys like Ken Wayne and Ken Timbs, Big Jim Lancaster, Greg Lake, Percy Pringle, Sir Oliver Humperdink… guys I used to watch, I was now talking to them regularly,” Fahey said.  

Some wrestling personalities had a natural apprehension about seeing their life’s work discussed.  “There were some who were reluctant to talk at all.   I told them that they were free to tell their stories as they saw fit; all I wanted to avoid were guys who wanted to make things up,” Fahey said.  One of those wrestlers has contributed in his own fashion, Cowboy Bob Kelly.  A CAC board member and Gulf Coast Wrestling representative, Kelly touts Kayfabe Memories to fans and peers alike.

“I was just thrilled to find a place to talk about Gulf Coast Wrestling. Shortly after I had made a few posts I got a message from Vince wanting to talk to me on the phone. He asked me if I would write a story for his site. I was honored to write about an old farm boy that was blessed and got to do what he loved and raise a family at the same time. Vince told me if I ever made it to Arizona to stop by and see him. My wife Chris and I did go and visit Vince, met his beautiful wife and family over dinner. We became friends. I think that the KM message board is the BEST, hands down. It is clean of vulgarity and any personal slander. I am not afraid of what a child might read. I recommend it to everyone young and old.  If you want to talk wrestling and only wrestling during the kayfabe days, Kayfabe Memories is the place to be,” Kelly said.

Through the ever-shrinking world due to the nature of the internet, these friendships continued, and led Fahey to attaending his first CAC reunion.  “Guys like Bob Kelly and Ed Moretti kept telling me ‘You should come’… and with it being so close to me in Vegas, I could do it.  I am amazed at the distances some people travel to attend each year,”  Fahey said.  “As for the website, I never expected it to still be going; next year it will be the 10th anniversary.  I’m amazed that it gets so much traffic, and that I’ve made great friendships through it.  Overall, I’m very proud of it”

Mick Karch, Twin Cities area commentator, has forged a bond with Fahey at the reunions, which began as Karch penned some columns for the AWA region.  “Vince likes hearing stories from me and others, he soaks it all in. There are very few outlets for thoseof us who go back beyond the Hogan/Sports Entertainment era. The site provides old school fans with an opportunity to relive the memories….and the newer fans to get a much needed history lesson!  He works to preserve the history of the business… devotes so much time to the website along with his full time job and his family. He is a great friend to CAC and the wrestling business in general,” Karch said.

During the CAC Presidency of Red Bastien, the club’s proverbial doors were opened wider than ever to accommodate the growing number of non-participants who had an appreciation for the generation of superstars that led the sport of wrestling to its present.   As Vince Fahey’s desire to showcase this history manifested itself through his CAC volunteer efforts, and the growth of his web page, so grew CAC’s mission to recognize the unseen faces from the crowd.   Fahey’s selection for the Friendship Award mirrors the unselfish nature of Red Bastien; that desire to make the other guy shine, in and out of the ring.