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The little person wrestling show and the Atlanta fly fishing show were like the conjoined twin towers of my indepth reporting into the land of imagined communities, or leisure time competing nations as these two clearly are. I did both, all in one weekend. There’s really no contest between the two; for one I was working the Atlanta show for SCOF, and other than bringing a photographer to Extreme Dwarfanator Wrestling, I was really there to relax and see what all the diminutive fuss was about. I call these competing nations because both hobbies are about an audience engaging with a leisure time product. Dwarfanator specializes in showcasing little people performances of acrobatic leaping, enduring blows of trash cans, and the yellow cautionary “watch your step” plastic signs. They absorb a lot of bullshit, I have to say. Like when the Sand Mountain fans would scream: “You suck, Little Pecker.” That was his actual stage name and he was dressed as a bright yellow rooster. I was not surprised by the banality of Lil Pecker’s reply, “Well, you swallow.” The Sand Mountain young children looked around for context clues about what the audience member was supposed to swallow. When no clues surfaced they ceased to look around and a chorus of adult snickering followed.

I had excitedly driven past Gadsden, Alabama’s Venue a few hours before the show, and I recognized the champ— Lil Poppa Pump. I rolled by the building a little early to see if I could get a little person to cast a 9-foot rod, but when I thought about their casting arc I realized this may be not only awkward but possibly impossible. I thought better of conforming Lil Poppa to a fly fisherman. I rolled up and said, “Hey Big Poppa, we are looking forward to the show.” He said, “Alright, man.”

It was like the wrestlers were a touch too big for little person wrestling fans. Before Lil Poppa grappled with Lil Pecker he announced that he had been wrestling in a league for 19 years, further solidifying his fan base by explaining that he grew up in Gadsden. Small world. So did I. I had spent the last 20 years enmeshed in the hobby of fly fishing. Pump had been serious about his sport for just as long as I had been interested in fly fishing. We were both dedicated to craft. For me I thought about the mechanics of the double haul. For Lil Poppa he thought about landing on his feet then bringing his legs down after his feet touch to create the illusion of jumping on an adversary from the top turnbuckle to make his audience cheer. We at SCOF print delightfully clever tees and hats to please our audience. Just like the swag we sold at the Atlanta show, the t-shirts sold by the little people were just as creative. I bought one with a Lil Durango wrestler cartooned on its front, and “Extreme Midget” arced across the back. I bought a shirt, then made it my party shirt. I had mad respect for the little travelers. They wrestled before a crowd 270 times a year according to Effren, their tour manager.

There were a lot of moving parts for this contained- little- show being exported all over the country. They had just arrived in Gadsden, AL, from Miami Beach. They were surely fatigued from their travels, so the more I wanted to see a little person spey on the Coosa River, the more I realized that wrestling was their nation, it was their imagined community and I shouldn’t try to manipulate a picture by putting a rod in their hands. How would I have liked it if one of them came up to me at the ATL fly fishing show and asked me to wrestle? I might have body slammed one out of general frustration. Their fans were generally horrid. It felt as if we were in a Jerry Springer episode, or perhaps a Roman Coliseum where the fans were out for blood. They were yelling, “Get him!” and “Hit him with the trash can again!” The carnival-like nature of the event did showcase a certain athleticism in the little people’s moves, but I could not get