The sports one thinks about when contemplating Kentucky are very traditional. The Commonwealth is known the world over for its Thoroughbred horseracing and college basketball. Yet one Louisville firm is helping the state make an impact in an athletic area that blends sports with showmanship – professional wrestling.

“If I had a choice between making $10 million a year selling real estate and being in professional wrestling, then I’d work in professional wrestling,” said Rip Rogers, a partner in Ohio Valley Wrestling. “This is what I love. I’m doing what I want to do. I’m like a little kid that never grew up and that’s the way it is.”

Founded by ex-wrestler Danny Davis in 1993, Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) has weekly television broadcasts in Louisville. The company also makes money by having professional wrestling matches throughout the region, often partnering with local schools and civic groups to raise funds.

“This weekend, we’re going to wrestle at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom,” Rogers said. “I’ve been promoting live wrestling shows for more than 20 years. I go to a principal of a school or the head of a local organization and tell them how we can be a fund raiser. Lots of times, they’re scared to death because they see what’s on TV and they’re afraid we’re going to be pretty crude. Well, we’re in the Bible Belt and you’ve got to do what people will like. I guarantee them that we will keep it clean, if they want that.

“We used to run a weekly wrestling show in a Catholic grade school as a fund raiser, so you can understand that we kept it clean there. We’re very flexible with a story line. It ranges from a PG to probably an R. We give the crowd what they want. If it’s a late show with no children attending and the audience is expecting a story line with more adult themes, we can do that too. You’ve got to give the audience what they want.

“You always work in the local celebrities in the shows. You have your champion arm-wrestle the football coach or you have the mayor work as the guest referee.”

Where Ohio Valley Wrestling has truly made a national impact in its industry is its relationship with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation, the WWE is an internationally known sports entertainment company based in New York City. Its two major wrestling broadcasts are “Raw” and “Smackdown,” broadcasted on Monday and Thursday evenings. The WWE made headlines three years ago when the company “went public,” making a billionaire out of its CEO, Vincent McMahon Jr.

Despite recent stock downturns (over a two-year period, WWE’s initial IPO price of $25 a share declined dramatically to the $9 to $10 range after the company’s venture into an alternative professional football league and an embezzlement case with a corporate officer), professional wrestling has become a multimillion-dollar business.

“We’re like the ‘Triple A affiliate’ of World Wrestling Entertainment,” Rogers said. “We’ve got eight guys here this morning who were on the air last Monday or Thursday on RAW or Smackdown. They’re here because, even if you’re a star, you might still not know what in the heck is going on all the time.”

The arrangement OVW has with WWE centers around the school the Louisville company maintains on two campuses. Beginners in the field of professional wrestling start going through their paces at an OVW building in Jeffersonville, Ind. The advanced classes are held at OVW corporate headquarters off of Shepherdsville Road in Louisville. Much of the school’s activities center around Rogers’ talents as an inspirational instructor.

“I’m an equal opportunity cusser-outer,” Rogers said. “I try to iron out all their kinks here at Ohio Valley. Here I try and teach them their presentation, their look, I want them, no matter what situation they’re thrown in, to be able to handle it. If you’re asked to be the janitor, you can handle it. If you’re asked to be the CEO, you can handle it. If you’re asked to be the business manager or to do the advertising, you can do that too. I want to teach them something about every aspect of this business.”

The philosophy Rogers has in teaching professional wrestling techniques is to give his students ample experience.

“When I go to a doctor, I don’t want some guy operating on me that’s just out of medical school,” Rogers said. “I want the experienced old guy who’s done 40,000 knee operations, so he’ll know what he’s doing when he gets to me. He’s already been there. It’s the same with wrestling. We want our guys to have things down cold.

“Ohio Valley Wrestling is the only WWE developmental program in the world. Today, one of the people we have working out is Mark Henry. He’s the world’s strongest man – he won that title last year. He had to gain a lot of weight in order to compete for the World’s Strongest Man title and now he’s got problems with an ankle. So, to get back into wrestling form, he’s got to get that weight off of him. He’s not wrestled in awhile and he’s got some ring rust we’re trying to work out.

“We also have about five people from the MTV “Tough Enough” show that are working on things here now. What we have at our Shepherdsville Road location is what I call a ‘one-room school house.’ Some of the wrestlers here are on the kindergarten level and some are on the college level. We’ve all got to get along together and help one another.”

Rogers compares the dominance of WWE over other companies to the dominance Wal-Mart has shown in the retail sector.

“The WWE is like Wal-Mart,” he said. “There used to be a lot of small market wrestling companies, but they’ve been either bought out or gone out of business in favor of the big national company.”

According to Rogers, some of the WWE star wrestlers, such as former NCAA champions Charlie Haas and Brock Lesnar, all had to start out at the bottom rung in professional wrestling training.

“They’re all great people,” Rogers said. “They’re all very hard-working and very dedicated. Brock, when he was down here, started out hauling the ring. That’s the lowest, dirtiest job we have – cleaning and disassembling the ring. So Brock hauled the ring – that’s as low as you can get here. A year later, he was the WWE champion. I tell our students that they can do it too. This guy wasn’t too proud to do the low down and dirty work.

“About 50 percent of the people you see on national television with the WWE got their start right here. They come through these doors right here. All that crap on television you see about how people prepare for work in professional wrestling, running through tables and that sort of stuff., that’ll get you killed.

“What I’m teaching them all is just old fashioned ‘rasslin’. They need to know what they’re doing or they’re going to get hurt. What you see with some of these big stars is one major neck surgery after another. Then their career is done. They’re dropping like flies. I want the people I train to have some longevity.”

Professionalism is very important to Rogers.

“Anybody can say they’re a pro wrestler,” he said. “There’s a lot of poor wrestling out there. You see these guys – goofball wrestlers – and they go to excesses in language, crudeness, or use a lot of fake blood or whatever to make up for their inability to put on a good show. Those guys give professional wrestling a really bad name and they hurt this industry. Really, they’re not professionals at all. ”

The television audience for OVW’s broadcast has been healthy and continues to increase. “We were on not just in Louisville, but in Indianapolis, too, for awhile,” Rogers said. “But that station changed hands and they changed their programming. Just a few weeks ago, we went on the air in London, Ky. We’re very proud of the audience that watches OVW wrestling.

“There used to be this thing called WCW – World Championship Wrestling – which was owned and run by AOL-Time Warner. They lost $70 million in one year on that enterprise. WCW would have about a million dollars in production costs for each broadcast. At this little Mickey Mouse outfit we call OVW, we go in and spend $30 to tape a show and do all the work ourselves. We use our own lights and our own sound and maybe Danny would have to work all night editing videotape after the matches are taped. Anyway, we’re a way smaller outfit than WCW was, but our ratings here in Louisville were better than theirs.”

Because of other business and family interests, Rogers lives in Indianapolis, but commutes to Louisville on most days, having to get up at 4:30 a.m. He describes his relationship with the professional wrestling business as a love affair.

“I got into the business as a performer in 1977,” he said. “I lived in Lexington for four years and was a part owner in the old ICW – Inter-Continental Wrestling — which had Lexington as part of its territory. We had 16 TV markets at that time. I was a partner in that business with Randy Savage, Rodney Garvin, Bob Orton Jr. and his son Randy Orton, who now wrestles with WWE. He was here working out yesterday. He is recovering from three broken bones in his foot. He’s rehabbing and trying to come back.

“We used to run wrestling shows in Pikeville and throughout Eastern Kentucky; Whitesburg, Hazard, Harlan, all over the place. Fans get crazy there. In Eastern Kentucky, I’ve been knifed twice by people upset over how a match has turned out. Used to have wrestling every Monday night at Marlowe’s in Pikeville.

“After my ICW days, I worked with the WCW as an event coordinator, which meant that I did anything from setting the ring up to running the company. I’ve done everything on every level of this business.

“When I graduated from high school in 1972, I wanted to do three things: Go to college, play football and be a championship wrestler. I’ve done all three things. I taught high school and was a football coach for a year. After that, I’ve been in the ‘rassling’ business. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.

“When I was a kid growing up in Seymour, Ind., I used to adjust the UHF antenna on our television so I could pick up wrestling shows. If I adjusted the antenna to the north, I could pick up the Indianapolis wrestling show. If I put it on south, I could pick up Louisville wrestling. If I put it on east, I could pick up the Cincinnati wrestling shows. If I put it on southwest, I could pick up Paducah on a good night and watch Phil Golden All Star Professional Wrestling at midnight on Saturday nights. I was a total wrestling nut.”

The OVW school has gained a solid reputation in the professional wrestling business. “Danny started the school about 10 years ago,” Rogers said. “At the time, he worked the USWA, which broadcast in the Louisville market. Their old building is in the quadrangle in Jeffersonville, Ind. It is a dump. It’s a dirty, stinky, great old building for wrestling. It’s where we start the beginners in our school right now.

“Anyone in the know, any wrestler trying to make it in this business relocates to Louisville. Just last night on Smackdown we had two former students: Danny Holley and Doug Basham. One’s from Seymour, Indiana, the other is from Henryville, Indiana. They started right here. Danny Holley is from Seymour, I went to high school with his dad. The biggest reward I get in this business is to see our people succeed in the big time.”

Claude Hammond (editorial@lanereport.com) is a staff writer and Timothy E. Hunt (editorial@lanereport.com) is editorial director of The Lane Report.