Bismarck, North Dakota - News

It could get bloody bad.

He's known to be such a bad, bad boy. Randy Orton, 23, who typically does whatever, whenever, uses dirty tricks, blindsides, uses furniture as weapons, and has no shame and no plans to get some. So, like normal, he plans to brute his way through Saturday's match in the center ring at the Bismarck Civic Center Saturday night.

"We do whatever we want," said Randy Orton, 23, a third-generation pro wrestler who is thought by those in the know to probably be the next World Wrestling Entertainment's superstar and champion. "We're the bad guys ... the bully type character."

He says he's a top athlete, this former high school wrestler. Matter of factly, he says it with a confidence so confident it probably has an ego of its own.

He's good, bad and unbelievably cute.

And the fans reportedly love it. It doesn't hurt that he has a baby face on top of a bod that's a hunk-a-hunk-of burning biceps and a racked and stacked inventory of every other chiseled muscle known to men who bow at the barbell altar.

Orton, who typically is teamed up with world champs Ric Flair and Triple H, will be in town with the rest of the wrestlers from the World Wrestling Entertainment's RAW show, televised on the Spike TV network Monday nights.The show starts at 7:30 p.m.

"He's just like his daddy," said Brandon Dickerson, 28, of Bismarck, a self-described fanatical wrestling fan who used to watch Orton's daddy, "Cowboy" Bob Orton Jr., wrestle. "Nothing is off limits."

He's not Dickerson's favorite, however. There are others. Like Trish.

When he heard Trish Stratus was going to be in town to fight, his authoritative wrestling-historian tone turned to a coo.

"Oh my gosh," he said.

The former fitness mag cover girl has worked her way, trained her way, from being just a hottie valet for the WWE's male wrestlers to being a main attraction for the women wrestlers' division.

She's popular in the ring and out. She just recently finished a stint in Cancun posing for this year's WWE's Diva Magazine's swimsuit issue. The last two years she was its covergirl. She hopes for three in a row.

In Bismarck, the 125-pound wrestler, known to enter the ring in a long coat and a little hat, will tag-team with Lita in their match against Victoria and Jacqueline.

Stratus was actually once a premed student in Toronto, earning straight As, ready to continue on to med school, when her college professors went on strike and a "weird series of events" began to unfold.

She was a receptionist at a gym when someone spotted her looks and arranged for her to model for Muscle Mag International magazine, which used her on its cover numerous times. Along this weird road, she ended up as a valet escorting WWE wrestlers into the ring. They started letting her have a bigger and bigger role and for six months, on her own, she trained in Toronto in hopes that she would soon hear that WWE wanted her for a full-fledged woman wrestler. It happened. A television debut in March 2000. Four world championships now under her belt.

And now Bismarck.

Dickerson and his wife, Kristina Dickerson, 26, have second-row seats. And a lot of hopes that they'll somehow be able to meet some of their heroes. Walk into Dickerson's living room and its walls are pasted with posters. About 10 wrestling magazines are there to read. They're saving for some of the $200 championship belt replicas now available. And he has about 20 CDs, three hours each of some of his favorite matches. When he has to work during televised matches, Kristina writes notes about matches -- who wins, just the basics. She used to write blow-by-blow notes. So-and-so did this and then so-and-so-wrestler did that. But it takes five pages of writing for one match. Too much paper.

Everybody admits that it's pre-arranged who wins. But the fans don't focus on that.

Dickerson said he gets laughed at when he tells people he's a pro wrestling fan. They ask him if he doesn't know it's rigged.

Yes, a thousand times, yes. But that's not the point.

"It's a soap opera with violence," said Dickerson, evening supervisor at Bismarck's homeless shelter.

It's rivalries, adulteries, backstabbing and sometimes blood. Sometimes, lots of blood.

He said he saw Shane McMahon, WWE owner and wrestler, who will wrestle here, once climb 30 feet to the top of the massive entrance that the wrestlers walk through. There was another wrestler lying on the runway. McMahon jumped off the entrance and landed on the guy, putting him through the runway.

But Dickerson said the craziest match he's ever seen was a mid-1990s fight when Mankind, now retired, was thrown off a steel cage. He fell about 20 feet onto the top of the announcer's table. But that wasn't the end.

Holding his ribs, he kept going. Climbed back up the cage. And so did his opponet, the Undertaker, who picked him up by the throat and threw him so that he fell 16 feet from the cage to the ring. Then a big pile of thumb tacks was dumped in the ring and the Undertaker slammed him on top of it. By the end of the match, Mankind had a hole in his bottom lip big enough to stick his tongue out of and a tooth that now had a new home in his nose.

"I thought they put on a one hell of a show," Dickerson said.

And by the looks and names of it on Saturday's card, he's guessing the Civic Center might be the scene of some of the same.

He has daughters, ages 2 and 3. The 3-year-old is a fan. A lot of televised matches are tamer, but he and Kristina have to cover the girls' eyes once in a while or tell them to leave the room for a while.

Kristina doesn't like them to watch the bra-and-panties matches that the women have sometimes.

Saturday, no.

They're leaving the kids at home.

Tickets, ranging in price from $15.75 to $40.75, are still available for the 7:30 p.m. show. Call Ticketmaster or the Civic Center box office.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com)