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Next Week April 3 Special Charter Issue!
March 27, 2015 • Volume 2, No. 23
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Raytown XWC Bringing Pro-Wrestling Back To Its Roots By Brian Lee So you’ve just finished watching Nacho Libre and got a wild hair to become a pro-wrestler. You made a mask for yourself, it’s fiercelooking but not ghoulish scary like Halloween. You know a tailor who can have the matching tights fitted to your dimensions and an embroiderer who can put the finishing
martial arts. It’s more like MMAA training. MMAA: mixed martial arts acting. That’s right, pro-wrestlers are thespians who have actually had to hone their craft through hours and hours of training, it’s just that their performing art always involves fake-fighting. Not even the best MMA trained fighters could just walk off the street and enter the ring
combat vet Jordan Rogers, who, by the way, barely escaped Iraq alive. Jordan, co-owner and General Manager of XWC, explained that pro-wrestling actually has over a 100 year recorded history, with some of the earliest matches staged as early as 1906 right here in Kansas City, a championship match between Frank Gotch and Fred Beell. The pro-wrestling art form was first
gressively evolved into a high-flying acrobatic act. What kept show gazers bewitched was the ever pervading mystique as to whether the matches were real or not. In the late 1990’s WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) came out of the closet so to speak, divulging that all performances are choreographed and fights are predetermined. Regardless of the rehearsing, the match performances come with serious dangers. Flying through the air and close-lining somebody, flipping a person upside down and pile-driving their head into the ground, though extremely mesmerizing, could put somebody out of commission permanently. And that is what has happened on many occasions. For instance just days ago, pro-wrestler Pedro Aguayo Ramirez, suffered a fatal neck injury in Tijuana. This is where it gets dicey. Jordan proceeded to introduce me to Head Trainer David Cattin who could explain more about the training program. “Our first priority is safety. Before anyone can participate, they first have to be screened to determine if they have the necessary
Early 1900’s pro-wrestler Frank Gotch strength.” The students are then taught real competition wrestling techniques. This came as a surprise because I assumed pro-wrestling is a completely different animal now. David explains further, “Teaching real wrestling enables the stu-
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Wrestlers in training touches on the ensemble. You’ve even came up with the perfect stage name. But you’re still not ready to enter the ring of a pro-wrestling match. “How can that be!? Isn’t it just a bunch of steroid swelled meatheads that can’t get a job doing anything else?” you ask in defiant disbelief. There is actually more to it than one might expect. You see… you need training. What kind of training you ask? Well…it’s not quite like MMA training, mixed
of pro-wrestling. “Why not?” you ask with a look of bewilderment. That look was the same that I had until I learned about XWC, Xtreme Wrestling Center, a pro-wrestling training academy and the only one of its kind in our region, conveniently located right here in Raytown at 11513 E 63rd St in Woodson Village. So I went to the experts to see what pro-wrestling entails. My initial introduction to the world of wrestling was given by
initiated by Olympic wrestlers who after finishing their Olympic career needed a way to make a living. Olympic wrestlers found out quickly they couldn’t just use regular wrestling techniques as the matches were often over too quickly and there was little ‘wow factor’. In order to make the match more entertaining they had to adapt new ways and techniques to lengthen the match and spice up the show. This newfound form of wrestling pro-
The mat consists of 16 feet long 2x10 that bow, 3 inch thick foam pad
The Business Of “Not City Business” By Diane Krizek Editor The Charter Commission has been told time and again by Mayor Bower and City Administrator Mahesh Sharma that the City Charter is “not city business”. From the very start of the Charter process, this administration has discouraged people from forming a Charter Commission claiming it would cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars and diminished their effort by labeling them “anti-Wal-Mart people”. Since then, a laundry list of roadblocks has been thrown in its path. The City clerk would not accept citizen petitions until the election board required it. The Capital and Transportation sales tax renewal election results in April 2014 were posted on the City’s website but not the results of the charter ballot question and commissioners. The Commission had to fight for funding which the City was obligated to provide by law. The City never posted Charter Commission meetings on the City’s calendar like other city events and meetings. The Commission was initially not allowed to use the dais in the council chambers and could not use the City’s video equipment for recording meetings as done for BOA meetings. The mayor would not allow updates about the charter process during Board of Aldermen (BOA) meetings even though four Aldermen were elected to the Charter Commission. The BOA, urged by
the mayor, would not allow the city logo to be printed on the proposed Charter documents, claiming “it’s not city business”. Neither the mayor nor City Administrator attended one Charter Meeting. The Commission was never allowed to make a presentation to the BOA to clarify questions and explain the reasoning for its decisions. Interestingly, Mayor David Bower chairs the Municipal Administration and Intergovernmental Relations committee of the Missouri Municipal League (MML). City Administrator Mahesh Sharma is also a member of that committee. The MML’s mission is to strengthen cities through unity and cooperation by policy-making and being a resource for elected officials, which includes assistance in writing a Home Rule Charter. The MML was invited by the Charter Commission to provided training at its first meeting. The purpose of the committee chaired by Mayor Bower is to develop policy within the scope of the committee which was published in the 2014-2015 Municipal League Policy publication. Bower’s committee wrote this introduction to the section on the Municipal Administration and Intergovernmental Relations: “While the state and federal governments have an obligation to encourage and assist sound municipal management, they should adhere to the principle of home rule and maximize opportunities for local self determination to the fullest
extent possible.” The Self-Governance section reads, “The MML continues its strong support for self-governance for all municipalities and the right contained therein of municipal selfdetermination. Additionally, MML supports the elimination of the minimum population requirement to achieve constitutional charter city status.” www.mocities.com Municipal policy 2014-2015 policy page 1819. Regardless of whether a proposed Charter is suitable or not, or whether it gains the mutual consensus of citizens, the right to freely and uninhibitedly develop a Charter should be a priority of city government. To chair and serve on a statewide committee extolling the virtues of a home rule charter and to then work so hard to obstruct the process in your own hometown defies logic. Why was city leadership not engaged to assist in crafting a Charter that they could accept and support? Why fight a charter process? Writing a charter to emulate current government requires digging into city business. In writing the section on the City Administrator, the Commission discovered the current City Admin had an employment contract without an expiration date. It’s a lifetime contract that guarantees automatic pay raises and does not provide a performance review process. The City Admin’s salary is nearly that of our Missouri governor.
The BOA, led by the mayor, crafted and ratified this contract by waiving Ordinance 2-126 that requires the City Admin to reside in the city but the ordinance does not give the BOA waiver authority. This ordinance was re-codified last year. Instead of changing the residency requirement of the ordinance, the governing body of our city chose to violate that ordinance which now leaves the City Admin contract on shaky legal ground. The BOA has done nothing to repeal the ordinance during the past nine months of the charter making process. Instead, the mayor and aldermen who created this “situation” would have us believe that the Charter Commission has waged a vendetta against the City Admin even though the proposed Charter states that all ordinances and contracts would remain in force. The Raytown Times and some city officials have claimed that the Charter is only a continuation of the public’s fight against a Walmart Neighborhood Market in our downtown in 2013. Citizens packed city council chambers during two Planning & Zoning meetings and two BOA meeting sometimes spilling out into the lobby. The meetings lasted well past midnight due to the number of folks who stepped up to make public comments of which only three voiced support for the Walmart grocery. Some were antiWalmart but many others did not want a big box store in our downtown. The Planning & Zoning de-
nied Wal-Mart’s request for a special zoning district, a recommendation passed onto the BOA who not only ignored Planning & Zoning but more importantly ignored the will of the people who showed up in numbers unprecedented in Raytown’s history and provided of petition of 1200 signatures. The people were told they did not have the right to petition their government as a fourth class city. And so the people delivered the only petition allowed for by the Missouri Constitution, a petition to form a charter commission. The Walmart development had already been stopped by a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the zoning district. Despite the odds against the Charter Commission, 13 people with divergent views came together and wrote a good basic charter that looks into the future, not to the past. It emulates the way our government now operates with the addition of balance of power objectives that were praised by the charter attorney who was referred by the MML. Unfortunately, the Pro-Walmart mayor, city administrator and members of the BOA are committed to inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation against the charter. Why this administration has fought its own constituents denying them the respect of elected officials through the charter process may never be clearly known but each will have to draw their own conclusions.