Nothing could wipe the smile off of six-year-old Max Calhoun's face.
He was ecstatic as he watched grown men and women slam each other into the ring 50 times during Olde Wrestling's "A Bonanza of Bodyslams," but every now and then Max would jump out of his seat and sprint out the door.
He had to make sure his four-year-old sister Reese knew what was going on.
"Guys, he just did a bodyslam!" Max would say before sprinting back to his ringside seat.
Reese's little ears couldn't quite handle the loud banging when bodies hit the floor of the ring or when the crowd erupted into old-fashioned chants of "hogwash" or "huzzah," so their parents, Rob and Ashley, took turns watching with her from the much quieter hallway of Cornerstone Center for the Arts.
"The system is I give my husband the evil eye, and he comes and switches me out," Ashley said.
Justin Nottke put the show together, and when he saw Reese crying he grabbed a pennant and gave it to her — all while staying in character as Marion Fontaine, a charismatic bare-knuckle boxer with a thick, furry mustache.
"I try to blend professional wrestling with live theater as much as possible," Justin said. "Like telling a story in the wrestling ring so it's not just the athletic aspect of it, but you feel like you're in a three-act play."
The setting of "A Bonanza of Bodyslams" was the 1920s, featuring characters like The Lobbying Legislators of Anti-Saloon Land, mobsters and moonshiners — though there was an awkward moment when the "drunk" moonshiners came on stage and Max asked his parents what they were drinking.
Physical comedy abounded, though, like when the moonshiners would accidentally dodge punches by stumbling. Max and Reese's dad described it as being similar to the shows he watched as a kid.
"Definitely 'Bugs Bunny,' 'Three Stooges' — old-school fun," Rob said.
His son, however, doesn't watch many cartoons or comedy sketches. Max is a budding history buff who loves watching World War II documentaries, so the art deco look of the Heritage Room — complete with arches, balconies and circular chandeliers with exposed bulbs — made the show feel more realistic.
"I like this room because they didn't make it look like it's old," Max said. "It actually really is old-fashioned so that's why I like being in this room."
Justin would be happy to hear that, because the building is one of the reasons why he takes his traveling show through Delaware County.
"We really stopped in Muncie on a chance," Justin said. "We saw this really cool building and this is perfect for our time period. Old buildings now are either demolished or updated, so finding this is like a diamond in the rough."
The small room also amplified the crowd noise, which was great for the wrestlers, if not Reese. Many fans dressed up in suits, dresses and fedoras to match the '20s motif, and Justin said the wrestlers embrace the intimate setting.
For example, Gavin Quinn, as he's known in the wrestling world, switched up his stage name to Gavin Q. Volstead for the themed event.
"We feed off [the crowd] and they feed off us," Gavin said. "So if I come out there with a real negative energy, then they're going to feed off that and feel my energy and give me negative response, which is what I want, and visa versa with the positive. So when they're in on it, and they're reacting the way we have been trained to teach them how to react, that's what makes this show the best."
But Quinn's energy wasn't all negative. As he delivered a 10-bodyslam punishment to a "criminal" on stage, he saw Max raising a finger with each slam. So Quinn turned and started counting with Max.
"Give me a seven!" Gavin, rather, Volstead, shouted. "Give me an eight!"
Justin said that interaction and randomness is one of the strengths of telling a story through wrestling as opposed to an outright play.
"So you just have to learn to adapt in that quick moment to capture that interactivity, and I think a lot of other forms of entertainment can't really do that," Justin said. "So a lot of the times, when we're working on the fly, that gives the best result sometimes."
By the end of the show, Reese had seen enough to be hooked too. For the final bout, she was sitting ringside with the rest of the Calhoun family — Max, Rob and her mother Ashley, who was covering Reese's ears.
"[Reese] was still a little far back, but she realized nothing bad was going to happen to her," Ashley said. "Plus we bribed her with some M&Ms and then she was really into it. She actually said, 'Can I come back again?'"
Ashley wasn't even afraid of Max's newfound enthusiasm for wrestling. She's confident that he won't try to use his sister as a tool for practicing his own bodyslams.
"I'm more worried that my husband will try it on him," Ashley said with a laugh.
Still, when that last bodyslam fell and the champion was announced, Max's smile flickered.
"I wanted the guy who won to win," Max said. "I was just getting sad that it was ready to end."
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