By Les Honig
 

            If art mirrors reality, then nowhere is that fact clearer than in the case of Shannon Ballard and his brother Shane, a long time fixture as 6-time tag team champs here in UPW.  But while hockey actually has played a huge role in their lives so far, including their gimmick definition, when you talk to the oldest of the pair, (by three minutes!), you find that what they have actually experienced has been so much more; so much richer and full of truly amazing moments.

            Tracing his earliest roots back to his home in Hawthorne, California; Shannon recalls his first exposure to pro wrestling when his dad, (a professional motorcycle racer by trade but a street fighter by preference), brought home a huge 6’7” buddy named Harry Pearl, known to the mat world as The Destroyer.  “We’d get so scared because he’d completely fill the doorway,” muses the freckled redhead. “He’d chase us around the house and we’d run away and once we even hid in a suitcase just to be safe from him.”

            Yet, while they followed the sport as they got older, eventually becoming standouts on their high school amateur grappling team, (both repeatedly taking first or second place in the state finals at their respective weights), the sport of hockey would lead to equal or greater youthful success, with the pair being drafted by a Junior A team, The Estevan Bruins, and relocating to Saskatchewan Canada to compete. (“That’s why we also consider Canada our home because we spent so much time there after that.”)

            At first fiercely competitive as youngsters, by this point the two had grown very close and shared their mutual successes with great pleasure; Shannon now playing defense and Shane, goalie.  While doing well at their first real pro competitions, severe injuries befell both and they were forced to head back home; with their healing not resulting in successful dealings up North again. “By that time we were 19 and the League didn’t really want people that old,” so instead they once again returned to California where that same sport once again dominated much of their time.  Playing for the Southern California Hockey league, where they won the championship five seasons in a row till complaints from other teams prevented them from competing for a sixth, “I was through with the politics,” and it seemed like the Ballard name and the sport would forever become separate if it wasn’t for Shannon being tapped for a hockey lover’s dream job; mascot for the L.A. Kings.  Dressed as a 7-foot snow leopard named Kingston who would run around courtside each game, when out of costume he would instead be seen hanging out with many noted show-biz celebrities and during one strike period, he was even allowed to compete for several months on Gretzky’s line while his bro got to play goalie.

            And as if all this hockey activity wasn’t completely consuming this premium athlete’s time, Shannon reentered college as an English major while he also pursued still another longtime interest, music. Taking up guitar he soon formed a rock band with a high school buddy and before long Synthetic Mary had landed a recording contract with a small independent company which hoped to eventually sell their new CD to a larger recording label.  “Shane wasn’t musically inclined so he acted as our stage manager,” chuckles Shannon. (While the company eventually folded and the recording never mass- produced, he reports that the group now has reformed and is in the studio once again working on another album).

            Creative differences, however, resulted in Shannon leaving his role as the Kings’ mascot, and soon both Ballards were employed in a machine shop and looking for something more to do with their lives.

            Still, their long-felt interest in pro wrestling was to surface big-time as a friend made a suggestion that they try and bring their skills to a larger audience than their home scene where they had performed wrestling matches at their family’s  Fourth of July backyard parties each year.  “He was watching some public access TV wrestling and it was just awful so he suggested to us that if we tried the same thing there it would be like a pay per view for these guys.”

            Making a phone call to the cable company actually resulted in far more, as promoter Alex Knight, one of the famed Medics of Mexico, believed in Shannon and Shane’s potential immediately and began training them and letting them perform at small shows he’d put on. Working soon also for the lucha-libre oriented WPW fed it first was to be bro versus bro, with a masked Shannon playing a heel named Rhino and his brother, a good guy named Ravage; but eventually the pair joined forces as a tag team, Los Rojos Locos; leading to some admittedly “crazy times” as super heels in Mexico.

            Joining next a hardcore league in Santa Clarita the brothers were to become known professionally as the Ballards for the first time and when a friend suggested that they further incorporate their real-life experiences into their own gimmick everything fell into place as they began appearing with full-on hockey player looks.  “We had hockey jerseys from Canada and so we decided to come out like the Hanson Brothers from our favorite movie, Slapshot, with the glasses and the tin foil. It all just clicked from there.”

            Working the indy scene actively from there it was Hardkore Kidd who first led Shannon and Shane to Ultimate University, (then Extreme U), and before long they began to appear in the fed’s earliest supershows leading them eventually to their current elite position as its most successful tag team tandem ever.

            Further adding to their Ultimate Pro plaudits has been their recent addition as popular and respected teachers at UU; being cited by new and entrenched trainees as among the finest instructors that the respected school has to offer. 

            “We try to make our sessions fun but educational at the same time, and most importantly we treat everyone as individuals and respect them,” explains Shannon.. “We like to make each person excel even beyond their preconceived limits; as we did recently with one of our best talents, James Lukash, who always wanted to master a Frankensteiner off the top rope but never thought he could. We worked with him on it for awhile and when he did it, it was so gratifying to see how much it added to his professional self-esteem. Now he has incorporated that move into his regular repertoire. That’s the kind of thing that makes teaching here so worthwhile.”

            Openly admitting he is shooting towards a career in WWE with his brother and is working now to “get my body into the great condition needed to make it there,” Shannon Ballard hopes to parlay his many exciting life experiences into one more new one that will surpass even the most fabulous so far. And with such successes already behind him in and out of the squared circle, who can doubt that one more seemingly unattainable winning goal may be scored before too much more of his life’s time-clock ticks by?

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