Learning the Ropes

Masked Wrestlers have been around since the days of Strangler Lewis and Jim Londos. It is still a good gimmick to have wrestlers come into an area or a TV market 'terrorize' the whole group of wrestlers and then have one finally beat the masked bad guy, unmask him and then he leaves in disgrace.

This short lived series starred Lyle Alzado of pro football fame who by day teaches in a private school but by night when there's a show goes to the arena as the Masked Maniac. Of course with that title he's a villain. But he's also the father to Yannick Bisson and Nicole Stoffman and therein you have the usual parent teen problems.

For reasons I couldn't fathom Alzado kept his secret life a secret from his kids. I guess he didn't trust them. They must have been blabbermouths.

Yannick Bisson has had a long career in Canada on the big and small screen. Sad to say Alzado passed on a couple of years after the series was cancelled. It did run on Saturday morning on NBC in the USA.

Wonder what Yannick Bisson thinks of this now?

This show lasted about a season on Canadian TV. It featured ex-football pro Lyle Alzado trying to raise two teenage kids while balancing his career as an educator and moonlighting as a pro-wrestler. It seemed determined to be as zany as many of the sitcoms on American TV but the comedy of Learning the Ropes was almost always sub-par and it failed to attract much of an audience. One of the teenage kids was played by "Stephanie McKay" from Degrassi Junior High, who left Degrassi for this. It was not a great career decision. Alzado looked to be in good shape when on camera. Sad to say, he would die of cancer just a few years later, which he said was due to his steroid use.

This show was so awesome. I know it's incredibly lame with Lyle Alzado starring as a guy who kept his double life secret from his kids and went out as a masked wrestler to fight for what's right and teach us kids valuable lessons about life every week. The acting was weak and the stories were ridiculous but who cares? How can you not love this show? Totally fun and oddball.

OK, so I guess it was a lame concept and had bad acting, but there was something about this show that I just absolutely loved. Seeing pro wrestlers talk about life lessons is just so incredibly entertaining. I assume I'm one of about 45 people who have ever even seen this show, but hopefully someday they will bring the few episodes that exist back on the air so that people can see this show first hand. As far as I'm concerned, "Learning the Ropes" should have been a staple in American culture.

I also would like to say that its a shame that Lyle Alzado is no longer with us. His acting may not have been up to par, but he did have a certain charm that made him fun to watch. I believe that his acting career may have gotten bigger had it not been for his untimely death.