Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

In this corner ...

By Bob Keyes bkeyes@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

This article was originally published in the Maine Sunday Telegram on March 2, 2008

Introduced as the world's ''sexiest sexagenarian super stud, '' Robbie Ellis enters the auditorium of the Fairfield Community Center wearing black boots with gold stars and a shockingly revealing pair of gym shorts.

He high-fives fans closest to the wrestling ring and blows kisses to those in back.

The gymnasium is filled with fans who set aside their cheese balls and Mountain Dews to give it up for Robbie Ellis.

He places his hands on his hips, puffs out his chest and allows the cheers - ''Robbie! Robbie!'' - to grow in crescendos, before strutting like a satiated animal into the ring. His curly hair, died blond, glistens in the spotlight, along with a diamond-stud earring.

The ancient wrestler does not let them down.

Within 10 minutes, Ellis dispatches his sacrificial opponent, a scrawny young man from New Hampshire who mistakenly dismisses Ellis as an old and shriveled thing.

''This guy's so old, he's got an autographed copy of the Bible, '' taunts the kid, just before the 64-year-old tosses him from the ring like a sack of potatoes. For his denouement, Ellis climbs the ropes and launches himself like a madman, smothering his vanquished prey.

The crowd goes wild.

DOCUMENTARY IN THE WORKS

Robbie Ellis is the alter-ego of one of Portland's best-known businessmen, the self-styled Rob Elowitch.

By day, Elowitch and his wife, Annette, run Barridoff Galleries, a fine-art auction house. Together, they are known as savvy art dealers who routinely sell 300 paintings a year, collectively worth between $3 million and $5 million, at the Barridoff auction each August at Holiday Inn By the Bay.

They have clients all over the world, and there's not a major collector of American art who does not know the Barridoff name.

By night, Elowitch is among pro wrestling's most sought-after competitors, his legend growing as he ages. Although he's had a solid reputation in the ring for many years, he cemented his legacy in 2007 as a wrestling wonderboy when he appeared in Philadelphia with top wrestlers from Japan and Mexico for a tournament of three-man tag teams called King of Trios.

The tournament generated enough buzz on the Internet to keep him as busy in the ring as he has been in 25 years. These days, he wrestles almost every weekend, logging thousands of miles on his van as he drives across New England, the Canadian Maritimes and as far south as Philadelphia. He's even begun wrestling in Italy, where he and his wife own a vacation home.

Elowitch's story has been widely told since the 1980s, when Sports Illustrated picked up on it. He has since been featured in national publications and on TV many times, and he continues to garner publicity across Maine.

His story is about to get much bigger.

Portland filmmaker Gary Robinov of White Dog Arts has begun filming what he hopes will become a full-length documentary about Elowitch. Robinov plans to do most of the shooting in 2008, and then shop the movie at major film festivals next year.

''He is every little kid's dream. He is Superman. He is completely Clark Kent in 'Superman, ''' said Robinov, whose family has been friends with the Elowitches for many years.

''At his age and his place in life, to be in what most people consider socially as retirement age, here's this guy driving to Moncton in a blizzard to wrestle in front of 25 people.''

The most compelling aspect of the story may well be the intersection of Elowitch's two very different worlds.

The wrestling crowd, with its boisterous, fist-pumping passion, and the art crowd, known for its austere and quiet reserve, both play starring roles.

He toggles between phone calls from estate lawyers who are interested in selling family heirlooms and offers from wrestling promoters to appear in a match down some distant road.

Elowitch struggles to explain how he reconciles the two.

''I seem to want it both ways, '' he said. ''The two lives are different, and the two have become one. Both are true, and that's really the answer.''

As he ages, the dividing line becomes less distinct. Both worlds are completely valid to him, and both reward him in ways beyond his imagination.

''Just think how great it is for me to leave my house, gym bag in hand, joining close friends - to some of whom I have trusted my life - friends who are street-smarter and more creative than I am, leaving everything I was just the night before for a few hours or, more rarely, a few days, to be someone else, someone closer to what I wasn't during the formative years of my life.''

'PIN ME! PIN ME!'

As a youngster growing up in Portland, Elowitch wasn't very big - and still isn't, at 5-foot-7-inches and 160 pounds, give or take. He played sports, but never graduated from the nerdy class.

After finishing at Deering High School in 1961, Elowitch enrolled at Amherst College in western Massachusetts. He studied drama, and focused his education on the classics.

One day in Boston, he saw a sign advertising wrestling classes. Becoming a professional wrestler was a childhood dream, thanks to wrestling heroes such as Lou Thesz, Dan Hodge and Jack Briscoe.

Elowitch signed up, though not with much encouragement. The guy behind the desk taking registrations looked at his slight build and scoffed, ''Go away.''

But Elowitch persisted, and began taking lessons on Sunday mornings. He had a wife - he married Annette, his high-school sweetheart, while in college - but never told her why he went to Boston every Sunday for six months.

His first match was in Holyoke, Mass., against Pepe Perez. It was a disaster. Thirty seconds after the opening bell, Elowitch was gasping for air.

''Pepe didn't speak English, and I kept telling him, 'This has to stop. Pin me! Pin me!'''

After that auspicious beginning, Elowitch didn't wrestle much for many years. When he did, he kept it quiet.

All that changed in the 1980s. By then, he had established his art gallery in Portland, and the dramatic gulf between his work in the art world and his work in the wrestling ring made for great copy. Sports Illustrated published a minor spread about him, and that was it. Elowitch became a star.

He feared the publicity would doom his gallery business, because it might make him appear less serious. In fact, the opposite happened.

''My business went crazy. Everybody wanted to talk about it. Today, there isn't an art dealer who doesn't know about it.''

Similarly, there aren't too many wrestling promoters who do not know about Elowitch's interest in art.

Mike Quackenbush, who runs the Chikara wrestling company in Pennsylvania, has talked with Elowitch about art a few times. Those conversations can be a tad intimidating, Quackenbush said.

''Rob and I have chatted about art in the past, but his expertise dwarfs my casual interest. I had once remarked to him that I've always been a fan of the Surrealist work of Salvador Dali, and he responded, 'Maybe I'll loan you one of my Dalis to spruce up your place.' I'm still not sure if he was joking.''

Very likely not.

'NOBODY ELSE LIKE ROB'

Barridoff handles works by artists popular with collectors, from Marsden Hartley and Andrew Wyeth to Camille Pissaro and Pablo Picasso. Salvador Dali would fit right in with that crowd.

The Barridoff name is known in art circles worldwide, said Dan O'Leary, director of the Portland Museum of Art.

''The results of his auctions are known nationally. Other galleries and collectors see the results, and they are impressive. That has nurtured his reputation, '' O'Leary said.

''There is nobody else like Rob. Nobody. Intellectually, he is very astute. He knows a lot about American art. He cares about it. He lives with it. He's not in it just for financial reasons. He's passionate about it.''

The couple's stately brick home in Portland's West End reflects the Elowitch's cultured tastes. Paintings by old-world masters hang in the formal living room. Contemporary art brightens the kitchen. Sculptures line the hallway.

Art is where Elowitch has made his name and amassed his wealth since breaking away from the family's tire and rubber business in the early 1970s.

At the time, he was helping Temple Beth El coordinate its annual art show. The exhibition focused on artists and work from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Soon after, Elowitch asked the family to buy him out of the tire business so he could begin the gallery. What he knew about art, he learned on the job.

''Ignorance can be bliss, and it was, '' he said, looking back on those early years. ''What we learned, we learned the hard way.''

Long ago, Annette Elowitch vowed not to follow her husband's wrestling exploits. She knows what he tells her about his experiences in the ring, but she will not go see him wrestle.

''I went once years and years ago, and I will never go again. It was the most horrific thing, '' she said. ''The crowds, women screaming. It looked like he was getting killed.''

If ever he had to choose between art and wrestling, Elowitch would choose art, because art gives him a toe-hold in the larger world. He runs a multi-million art business. He makes some money wrestling, but it's mostly for fun and ego.

That said, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of wrestling in Elowitch's life.

It satisfies a part of him that the art world cannot. Selling a painting brings a rush of adrenaline. Handling work by a world-famous artist is thrilling.

But getting in the ring with the music and lights and the crowds? That's something else altogether, something physically tangible that brings a different kind of rush. He has no interest in giving it up any time soon, although he fully realizes that day will come.

''It's not that I've decided to keep doing it, it's just that it's never needed to stop, '' he said. ''I turned around one day, and I was 60. But my body didn't tell me to stop.''

Besides keeping him in terrific physical condition, wrestling gives him a mental edge and boosts his confidence.

Wrestling gives him a reason to strut.

Luke Robinson, a student at the University of Southern Maine, wrestled on the same bill as Elowitch in Fairfield a few weeks ago. Elowitch is ''revered in the locker room, '' he said. ''Everybody looks out for Robbie.''

The young guys might be stronger, but they're not necessarily in better shape, nor do they know as much about wrestling as Elowitch. He regales them with yarns from the old days.

His peers treat Elowitch with the respect of an elder, Robinson said, but they do not let up when he's in the ring with them. Elowitch wouldn't put up with that kind of treatment.

''He knows he's the world's sexiest sexagenarian. He's like, 'I'm 64, and I can still rock. I can hang with the best of them.'

''People tell him, 'You look good for your age, ' and he says, 'I look good for your age, kid.'''

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:

bkeyes@pressherald.com