A suggestion: Don't argue with Tom Gyarmati. He whomps people over the head with chairs.

        Or does a back flip from 10 feet in the air into the middle of human chests.

Tom Gyarmati, 53, (center), the owner of Intense Wrestling in Price Hill, works with students Catle Bond (left) and Vic Vega. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

        Mr. Gyarmati, see, is a 53-year-old wrestler specializing in Intense Wrestling. Meaning the kind where he gets to whack opponents with chairs.

        That is, if he doesn't throw a trash can at them. Or a spotlight, VCR, telephone, stop sign or anything else near by. Which is why he wrestles as The Unpredictable Jomott.

        Right now, though, he's not tossing, whomping or whacking. He's conducting a 90-minute class for five students at Intense Wrestling, the 4-year-old school he owns and operates in a drafty old Price Hill building that used to be a bowling alley.

        Mike, your timing's off. People get hurt that way.

        “Anyone can enter the school because it doesn't have to do with size and strength so much as it does with leverage and learning how to fall.

        “We require three things when students start. They must be 18, they need a physical and they must accept the fact that they will get hurt — I've broken ribs, toes, fingers. Knee and back injuries are common too.”

        But you make a good living, right? “Depends on how far you want to go. For some of these guys, it's a hobby, like Wednesday night softball. Others will make a promo tape, send it around and go in full-time.

        “My son did that. He gets $200 per match and wrestles four times a week. That's $800 and he's just starting.”

        Point your feet at the ceiling. You're having a balance problem.

        That's aimed at two students practicing the side suplex: One guy plants feet, grabs the opponent from the side and, using his hip as a brace, lifts him overhead and slams him to the mat. The slamee helps the slammer by jumping into the hold and pushing off the floor.

        There are lots of slams today. Whomp after whomp punctuate the air, their sound magnified by the ceramic wall tiles. “It's how you learn. Repetition. Then more repetition.”

        Students in the intermediate class are about midway through the 8-month, $1,500 program and still don't know if they'll be heels or babyfaces.

        Heels, in the wrestling world, are bad guys. The ones who break rules and “exist only to beat the hell out of somebody,” Mr. Gyarmati says. Babyfaces are the good guys who follow the rules, take a beating but still win. Sometimes.

        Kick your legs out for him. Give him some help but don't let the audience see it.

        “Like Brett (Rutter, wrestling as Vic Vega). He wants to be a heel real bad. But look at the face. No menace. A good heel has to be able to look at you and scare you.

        “Like me,” he growls, his long gray braid snaking out of a bandana that got mighty dirty at his day job as an iron worker. “I growl at the audience, they jump. That's a heel.”

        His son is a heel, too. Using the name Justin Sane, he's a graduate of the program and a heel in Puerto Rico, using the 100 or so moves, slams, holds and tosses he learned at the school.

        “We teach the moves, but we also teach ring psychology and showmanship and help students develop characters and names. Because you could know every move in the world but without the showmanship, you're not a wrestler.”

        Then he's gone, bounding into the ring, grabbing wrestler Castle Bond and holding him high in the air. Upside down, ready to slam him into the mat.

        Like this. See how Castle jumps up to help me get him overhead? Don't tell me you can't. Just do it.

        Mr. Gyarmati, married and the father of two, has all the right moves, a remarkable feat, since he didn't even start wrestling until he was 47.

        “I'm self taught, but I started young. As a kid, I took the bus to Music Hall and Parkway Arena to see the matches. It's all I ever wanted to do. So I watched, studied and learned.”

        Now he's back in the ring, this time demonstrating a clothesline: One guy grabs the other by the wrist and hurls him into the ropes. As the slamee bounces off, the slammer holds his arm out and whacks him in the Adams apple.

        Ouch.

        “What you do is crook your arm,” Mr. Gyarmati explains, so it makes a lot of noise but doesn't catch the Adams apple.

        “Other moves are so dangerous we don't practice them in class. I have one where I do a back flip off the top turnbuckle and land on top of a guy. The floor's concrete, so I don't practice, I just do it in the shows.”

        Stan, you came down wrong. You can get hurt like that.

        The “shows” are 7 p.m. the first and third Saturday of every month, usually before a full house of 400 packing the wooden bleachers that climb three of the schools walls. People come from Indiana, Kentucky, even Michigan and Pennsylvania. For their $7, adults get six 35-minute matches.

        By now, his advanced class of seven is wandering in and the noise intensifies as students practice slapping each other in the chest with a flat hand.

        “They're wearing shirts now. Imagine the noise without shirts on a sweaty chest. It's as loud as a good landing,” he says.

        A good landing, meaning one where you don't hurt yourself, is a two-point landing: Feet break the fall by slamming — loudly — flat onto the mat; the upper back follows a split second later, just as loud but not with the same force.

        Feet flat. You land on your heels and you're going bruise them and not walk for two days.

        “Wrestling is so different today from when I grew up. Back then it was grab a hold, grunt, groan and break the hold. Now, it's more athletic and much more theatrical.

        “It's like a dance where you know the moves but depend on timing and balance to pull them off. Without timing, someone gets hurt. There are always going to be sore bodies, but serious injury is something we try to avoid.

        “Still, I tell them all: You have to want this bad. Because you will get hurt. Get used to it.”

       Intense Wrestling shows are at the school, 3509 Warsaw, Ave., Price Hill; 251-1905.

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