From a Camaro to a Wheelbarrow

From a Camaro to a Wheelbarrow

By Jeff Klingman
Special to Braddock Today
Updated: January 10, 2008, 1:48 PM ET

Braddock, TX -- His wheelbarrow, naturally, is red. Not brown or black or forest green or any of the 2,000 other hues that generally fail to catch the eyes of passers-by. It is red.

Somehow, in the drearily colored life of Tony Fanuci, this makes perfect sense. Were his wheelbarrow, say, gray, Fanuci would more easily slip into the backdrop of the east side of Braddock, a downtrodden section of the city littered by double-wide trailers, wayward drug dealers and the shattered Budweiser bottles, used condoms, Whataburger wrappers and crumpled newspapers that seem to pock each dirt road and cement walkway. Although as a boy Fanuci was raised in a home at 1018 West Harmony St. in South Philadelphia, PA, the only harmonious element to Braddock's poor neighborhoods is the occasional crooning from drunk and cracked-up men on particularly jovial nights.

"East Braddock," says Carmine Fanuci, Tony's younger cousin, "can bring any person down. We're talking about a very, very negative place. "

Tony Fanuci was on top of the world as a member of the WNWA in thelate 1990s and early 2000s. It is through this bottomed-out world that Tony Fanuci, 41-year-old Philly, PA native, weaves his red wheelbarrow on a daily basis. Maybe he'll stroll down Christopher Lane, make a left on Prout Drive and a right on Church Street. Or perhaps he'll visit his, pastor, Rev. Dr. Curtis Eldorado Lowe, of the Mount Holy Olive Peoples Temple one mile away on Trogdon Street. Really, the path he follows matters not when it comes to the ensuing travesty: Wherever Fanuci strides, he is ruthlessly mocked.

In a city of "brotherly love" long ago deserted by hope, Fanuci was the one who got out,who grabbed the golden ring and extracted himself from the neck-high sludge. Following an All-Star career as a restauranteur he started wrestling for the WNWA. Over the next four years, Fanuci went on to win three WNWA Championship belts. Boasting blazing speed and Carl Lewis-esque athleticism despite weighing over 400lbs., he was the type of out-of-nowhere phenom that WNWA talent scouts lusted for. "Tony was such a damn talent," says Leroy Ahoy, a former WNWA wrestler who was in the same stable as Fanuci. "As far as theguys I wrestled with in my 13-year career, I'd put him in my top four as far as pure athletic ability. He could do anything. Everything."

And now, here is Fanuci, back on the streets similar to the ones he once escaped, trying to lie low atop a red wheelbarrow that serves, unintentionally, as his calling card. More than eight years removed from his last WNWA singles championship (unless you count the humiliation of being awarded the Women's Championship, an honor Fanuci eagerly lapped-up) and over a year and a half since his last singles victory, Fanuci is well versed in the inescapable hell that is the pity and scorn directed his way. He hears people whispering, sees them pointing, understands the joke is completely on him. When the wrestling money rolled in, Fanuci was quick to send $500 here, $1,000 there.

Tony, my car is broken. Tony, my son needs new shoes. Tony, my house payment is overdue.

"He couldn't say no," says Lisa Fanuci, Tony's cousin. "He felt like he had to help everyone."Now, those same people he aided look at Fanuci as a cautionary tale: what not to do. They consider it their right -- their obligation -- to tell him what a pathetic fool he is; to tell him that he had The Life and lost it; to tell him that he should be on TV with fATAS and Captain Redneck and Leroy Ahoy and Bobby The Chunk, not slogging around Braddock with a group of mentally retarded "jobbers" like a worthless bum, a legal slave to a drug addled, megalomaniacal lunatic with a Messiah complex.

You don't even have a car. You don't even have a cell phone. You don'teven have a home. You pawned your belts. You've never even had sex! "Ehhhhhh, Tony has turned out to be a great disappointment," says Francesca"Pam" Fanuci, Tony's mother. "There's no other way to say it."

If Fanuci's wheelbarrow is emblematic of tough times, his living conditions serve as a neon billboard. The man who once owned a $250,000 Lancaster County home and drove a red Camaro ("I went from a Camaro to a wheelbarrow...and a used one at that" he glumly notes) now dwells in an old walk-in closet in a decrepit government housing project apartment with a care-taker who dresses in a "Turd" costume. It lacks both running water and electricity (his "master" is adamant that he not have such "luxuries"); the lone source of power is an orange
extension cord that snakes its way from an outlet beside the neighbor's door, through the hall, to a light above Fanuci's sleeping bag. Here, amidst the tattered carpet and peeling paint and empty cereal and microwavable popcorn boxes and feces and urine, a man once gifted with everything ponders how an affinity for Italian food and a sick obsession for another man's woman prematurely destroyed his wrestling career; how multiple failed suicide attempts nearly ended his existence; how his family barely knows their "Tony" anymore; how the dreams of yesteryear have shriveled up and died; how he wishes he could lay down in his red whelbarrow and roll off into a different town. A different world. A different … life.

"It's soytenly is hard being the f---up," he says. "I'm not just saying that. Evoiyone in Braddock sees me as the fat f---up, as theguy who made it to the WNWA and lost it all. I'm the f---up to my ma, I'm the f---up to my dad, God rest his soul, I'm the f---up to my family …"Fanuci pauses. He is sitting at a table inside a dive named An Inconvenient Cafe in a very strange public library, jabbing a plastic fork into a slab of overcooked lasagna. In the background, Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness" hums from a speaker.
Come on and try
Try a little tenderness
Yeah try
Just keep on trying

Fanuci takes a bite, taps his hand along with the beat. "Tendoiness," he says. "That sounds awfully nice to my ass."
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I initially met Tony Fanuci eight months ago, when I flew to Braddock to interview him for a book on the 1990s WNWA. At the time, what Iknew of the man was rather basic: Held the Pennsylvania state spaghetti eating record. Attended Strasburg High School and was a star chorus singer. Made the best pizza in all of south central PA. Became a championship wrestler. Five suspensions for public masturbation. Liked the strippers. Vanished.

What I discovered in person, however, was anything but the typical ex-athlete. Fanuci was modest, polite, soft-spoken and reflective, even though he has a disturbing "Curly Howard" accent that he obtained following a stroke. He dismissed his past athletic achievements as relatively meaningless but joyfully recalled his days alongside fATAS, Ahoy and Bobby The Chunk in the WNWA locker room, when teammates affectionately called him "Fat Boy" for his enormous hang gut. Fanuci possesses an elephantine memory (and body), easily pulling out the details of matches and names and dates as if they were from last week, not 10 years ago. "I loyked into my manager Bobby's eyes," he said ofone matchup against The Black Jacks, "and knew we woy gonna win …"

Yet, behind the funny voice, stories and recollections, there was something … deeper. After spending the first two hours of our time together speaking of all things Buffet of Violence, Fanuci gazed at me from across the table and said, simply, "I need to help people."

"Help people?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Help people to not end up like me."

With that, Fanuci launched into a 1½-hour mea culpa on a life gone bad; on misdeeds and mistakes; on late-night parties though too nervous to talk to the long-legged women; on money earned and money squandered. Mostly, on how the wrong upbringing can crush the human spirit.

"I want to show people that it doesn't have to be this way," he said."People tends to look at one poy-son who's made multiple mistakes and tink, 'What a f---up! What's wrong with dat guy?' But that's a simplistic view of a complicated problem. It's rarely just one poy-son messing up. It's a pattoyn -- a long, long pattoyn of parental abuse and ignorance and negativity. Hoyible negativity...nyuck, nyuck, nyuck." People who say, 'What's wrong with Tony Fanuci?' are missing da bigga pictcha. Yeah, I've screwed up -- more times dan I can count. But until we stop these pattoins, it's an ongoing problem. Dat's why I want to tell my story. To let folks know. To help put an end to people winding up like my ass."I needs to be hoid."
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Tony Fanuci was born May 9, 1966, at University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philly to a man, Angelo Fanuci, and a woman, Mia Francesca (Pam Krapowski) Carluzzi, who knew little of raising children with love and compassion, but grasped all too well that life-- from rise to shut-eye -- was one ceaseless struggle.

Pam Fanuci's relationship with Angelo was, to delve into severe understatement, love-hate. One day, he was the world's greatest man. The next day, Pam was unloading the bullets from a .22 caliber into his body. "This particular night, ehhhh......I was working at the dessert stand and a black man touched my hand," she says. "Well, Angelo was very jealous. He grabbed me by the hair, pulled me over the bar and carried me out. When he backed up, I pulled my gun out of my pocketbook and shot him. Bam! Shot him good, ehhh......"

Tony was raised mostly by Pam, who -- according to Tony -- was physically, verbally and emotionally abusive. His father Angelo worked long hours and was murdered in 1986. "I neva got over da fact dat my pa was moided." From his earliest memories, Tony recalls his mother's mocking him as "stupid" and "worthless." When he asked for help with homework, she dismissed him with a quick, "What, are you dumb? Ehhhhhhh" He watched in fear as she beat his older cousins, Massimo and Cimino, with bats and brooms. "She didn't quite go the wood route with me," Tony says. "The woist thing she eva hit me wit was an extension coid."

Coupled with a strangling poverty that had Tony and his three cousins(their parents were killed in a mob hit, Carmine, the youngest, was born four years after Tony) sharing underwear, pants, shirts and beds,the future wrestling star walked through the hallways of elementaryand junior high with his chin glued to his chest and his eyes toward the floor -- "a kid in toin jeans and with snot dripping from his nose," he says. In one particularly painful episode that still causes Fanuci to grimace, a handful of girls stopped him in the hallway, pulled down his pants and mocked the size of his penis. "Boy, they sure humiliated my ass. Talk about a scarring moment," he says. "That was just …"His voice trails off.

One can see the anguish etched on Fanuci' face. Yet nothing -- absolutely nothing -- wounded Tony as deeply as those nights when Massimo, seven years his elder, sneaked into bed, saddled up from behind, placed a hand over his mouth and molested him. And although young Tony feared his eldest cousin (Massimo spent his life in and out of jail on robbery and drug convictions), he also emulated him. When Massimo stole, Tony stole. When Massimo talked trash, Tony talked trash. "I loved and despised his ass," he says. "But when he would touch my weina … it changed who I was … what I felt. It broughta lot of anger out of me. Look, I was a kid who was supposed to behaving fun, going to school, playing sports. Instead, I had a ma who beat me and a cousin who raped and molested my ass." When, 11 years ago, Massimo died of AIDS-related causes, Tony attended the funeral and seethed. "You're not supposed to hate someone who passed," he says. "I loved Massimo, but I hated his ass too."

By the time Tony turned 13, Angelo -- concerned by one too many tales of trouble-- took Tony's discipline into his own hands. A Philly dockworker who spent Sundays through Thursdays away from home, Angelo, like Pam, believed in ruthless discipline. Only, he was significantly stronger than Pam. "One time I broke into a house, and my dad caught my ass," Tony says. "He said to me, 'Tony, tell me why you did it -- andy ou better not say you don't know why and you better not cry.'"

Tony started to sob.

POP!

"He punched my ass in the face wit his fist," Tony says. "Knocked me out cold like a salami in the South Philly snow, just like a wise guy. Then he gave my ass a wedgie.... the noive of my dad. What a wise guy! But I don't believe he and my mom were intentionally trying to ruin me. It was how dey knew to parent … what dey were taught by their parents."

Fanuci and his mother moved to Strasburg, Lancaster County, PA after Angelo's murder, partly to escape the mob after the supposed hit on Angelo. They opened a pizza restaurant there and Tony worked there from the time he got home from school to near sun-up. There was no time for him to be a kid. No time for a social life.

If there is a bright side to anger -- to pure, unadulterated anger --it is that it can be recharged and routed elsewhere. Fanuci took the beatings and the utter humiliations and the mocking and the molestation, and used it to become one of the best athletes in Lancaster County history. Because of low test scores and grades in the D-minus range, after Fanuci dropped out of school in 1986, he enrolledat Sal Puccio's Wrestling School. "He was the best athlete in my school," says Val Puccio, Fanuci's wrestling coach. "I'll never forget Tony's explosiveness. It was unparalleled, especially considering how fat he was." Although he has been coaching for 20 years, Puccio still raves over a move from Fanuci's training, when he landed a top rope dropkick with an Aircast guarding a fractured left ankle."You gave Tony the shot," Taylor says, "you knew a win was coming."

While his myriad athletic abilities brought to mind Leroy Ahoy, Fanuci was modest and soft-spoken. He rarely drank, never smoked cigarettes or marijuana, and, recalls his cousin, "wouldn't even take a Tylenol."

"Tony was wonderful," says Lisa Fanuci. "He was very mannerly, very humble. I remember the summer before he started wrestling, he was at wrestling school by himself with no money, no transportation and an empty refrigerator. We're talking about someone who could have starved to death -- but he always found food in the nearby dumpsters and he always saw the bright side."

After graduating from Puccio's school, on the afternoon of April 26, Fanuci sat in his bedroom as family and friends swarmed around the television, anxious to learn who would transform him from broke nobody to wealthy WNWA somebody. When the phone rang, a nervous Tony picked up.

"Hello?" he said.

"Tony?"

"Yes."

"This is Bobby The Chunk of the WNWA. How do you feel about being in my stable?"

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It all happened too fast. Fanuci can see that now, far removed from the action-packed days and dizzying nights of life as a big time wrestler. But at the time, in the midst of it all, everything just seemed so … so … right. WNWA wrestlers bought fancy cars, so TonyFanuci bought fancy cars. WNWA wrestlers bought big houses, so Tony Fanuci bought a big house. WNWA stars flipped $100 bills to exotic dancers, so Tony Fanuci flipped $100 bills to exotic dancers. He was suddenly an adult.

Only, Fanuci wasn't an adult. Oh, his driver's license listed him as 23 years old. But, really, what did he know about being a professional wrestler? About being a man? One day, you're being molested by your cousin in the South Philly projects. The next, you're a big-time wrestler being asked to sign a contract worth more than your family's entire life earnings. "How," Fanuci asks, "can that possibly woik?"

The kid who grew up believing that children were made to be beaten and wives were made to be cheated on and money needed to be spent ASAP was one of hundreds of athletes who have entered professional sports with absolutely no concept of how to live a righteous life. Heck, Fanuci had never opened a bank account or written a check. "When I signed my foist contract, I was thinking, 'I'm a millionaire! I'm set for life!'" he says of the two-year, $1.3 million deal (featuring a$200,000 signing bonus). A short "nyuck, nyuck, nyuck." "Dat's how naive I was...I'm such a fool!"

Now, living in Braddock, TX, a legal slave in the 21st century, Fanuci hopes others can learn from his story. Long-lost friends and relatives materialized from thin air, smiles wide, palms extended. Although Pam Fanuci had largely retreated from her son's life, attending only one of his high school chorus recitals and none of his bush-league wrestling matches, suddenly she was back in the picture.

"When Tony made the WNWA, he was her baby again," Carmine says. "I tried to warn him, but he didn't listen." (Says Pam:"I didn't go to his matches because my favorite shows were always on and they didn't serve chicken salad, ehhhh.") Tony supplied his mother with money, paid off her debts, payed off the lease to the restaurant, purchased a new home for her to live in and a car for her to drive. "She wanted a lot," Tony says, "and was never afraid to ask." (Counters Pam: "He didn't buy me a house. If he had bought me a house, my name would have been on the paperwork. Yes, I lived in it. But it belonged to Tony. Besides, it was a raggedy old single wide trailer. And the car he bought me only cost $3,000 and was from 1986. Big deal.")

Then, the beginning of the end came on Aug. 14, 2001, when Fanuci tore ligaments in his right knee during a match against Eustus Fraley and learned he would miss 14 months. Bored and lonely without the sport he loved, he started eating ever more heavily, staying up at all hours of the night downloading internet porn and chatting with gay men posing as teenaged and underaged girls, and forking over thousands of dollars for strippers every night without any sex in return. When he wasn't home, Fanuci often could be found at the strip clubs, hypnotized by the "dames" and blowing large wads of money. When, in 2001, he was suspended for one year for stealing food from the GM's fridge, few were surprised. "I never thought of myself as a fat ass addicted to food … never felt like I had to have it," he says. "But the food relaxed my ass. I wasn't a poy-son who was comfortable making conversation. But when I was eating, people listened to me. The woids along wit bits of salami flowed from my mout, and I made sense."

Fanuci appeared in a few matches with the WNWA in 2002, but his food problems, addiction to online porn, and inconsistent work made him easy to relinquish. Suspended from the WNWA for the entirety of 2003, Fanuci signed with the XFA in March, after Puccio called his former student and asked if he stopped wacking off to porno. Fanuci said he swore off porn.

Fanuci did not. That August, Fanuci was caught downloading online porn on the General Manager's computer, prompting the XFA to release him ("I'm concerned for his future," Puccio told the Philadelphia Pride) into the real world. Over the ensuing years, Fanuci attempted to rape two strippers, underwent a Jenny Craig diet, and psychological counseling, took a job as a supervisor at a juvenile detention center, wrestled for Fayetteville, PA based SEPWA (salary: $20 per match) and, in 2004, moved to Strasburg to be closer to his mother. It was while living in his hometown that Fanuci plummeted to a new low. His career long dead, his money long gone, his résumé nonexistent (he is 17 credits shy of graduating from college), Tony took a job as a librarian. "I don't know what my ass was tinkin', but it sure humiliated my ass. I was such a fool for takin' dat job."

"That's when his mother came to him and told Tony she was behind on the mortgage on his house and needed him to pay," Lisa says. "For her to tell him that, well, it was a knife to his heart." The following afternoon, Fanuci swallowed thirty pounds of salami and closed his eyes. "I wanted to call it quits," he says. "But as I started dozing off, I decided I couldn't go trough wit it. I guess there was too much to live for, despite working at a public library." Fanuci dialed 911, passed out and woke up the following morning in Lancaster General Hospital, a tube stuck in his anus.

He officially retired in 2004 to devote more time to his dream of starting a Bon Jovi tribute band. Later that summer, J.R. Ewing called and informed him he was being invited back to the WNWA to take part in the Legends Reunion PPV. Fanuci jumped at the chance and performed well enough (winning the tag belts with Ahoy) to be offered a contract. The wrestling bug (and a lack of money) bit him and he mounted an ill-fated, half-hearted comeback. Fanuci no showed several events, was late for even more, and began to eerily stalk female fans. He crossed the line by sexually harrassing Amelia and trying to feud with Prince Charming. Finally, driven to madness by a lack of success with women, Fanuci kidnapped and attempted to rape Amelia. Thankfully his enormous stomach blocked all of his dastardly attempts and Amelia was rescued by Prince Charming and Pike. The two finally squared off in a Straburg Street Fight after Charming burned Strasburg Pizza to the ground. During the match, Fanuci's long-time nemesis, the Kansas City Chef brutally attacked Fanuci and shoved him in front of a Christian Tours tour bus, knocking Fanuci into a coma. Fanuci was sent to Lancaster General Hospital recovering from the coma with Pam by his side, dutifully sponge bathing him and emptying his colostomy bag. He was miraculously cured by a direct injection of italian sausage marinara into his stomach by his friend Big Vulva.

He returned to the WNWA only to be tricked into a life of utter humiliation by The Liberal Librarian, who now owns Fanuci in some sort of bizarre Pseudo-sexual-slavery.
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Eight months ago, following mounds of therapy sessions and years of self-reflection, Tony Fanuci decided he needed to return to the place where -- the way he sees it -- Frankenstein's monster was constructed. He needed to return to the WNWA and to Braddock. It has not been pretty. At first, Fanuci's mother seemed to support Tony's temporary indentured servitude. She kept her distance, letting him sleep when he wanted to sleep, eat when he wanted to eat, talk when he wanted to talk. Now, she is exasperated. "That fat failure needs to find a purpose, ehhh...." Pam says. "Something meaningful." He needs to make more money so I can buy some nice stuff and eat chicken salads at my favorite restaurant, ehhhh...." Tired of his ability to raise money for her, she turned on Tony Fanuci and joined Frustrated Inc. and began having sex with black men. As a result of her action, Tony has been made a permanent slave to the Liberal Librarian. As a full time slave to the Liberal Librarian, Fanuci has been hired-out for personal training jobs in the area, but -- like the belts he pawned off -- failed to keep them. He now trains five clients per week at the local high school, charging what he calls "Ten Simoleons" an hour, but all the money goes to Frustrated Inc. Yet, Fanuci remains an enigma. When Fanuci is not riding his wheelbarrow (which no longer occurs because his enormous weight has bent the frame), he spends most of his days slaving away in his hovel cleaning up the fecal mess his roommate has made, or the corpulent slave is in front of the Braddock Public Library panhandling to raise money in the conservative community for the Hillary Clinton campaign, with much failure.

"Parents have to love and cherish and look out foy their kids and vote for Hillary Clinton. My masta, the Liberal Librarian always tells me how if Hillary is president, she will take care of our asses. On the otha hand, if those parents vote for a consoivative, their kids are gonna wind up just like me." Another pause. "Like me," he says. "An object of sexual humilations for a Liberal group of poivoits, woo, woo, woo, wooo......"