Wrestler pinned down opera career

In the 1960s in India, pro wrestling was as glamorous as bare-knuckle fighting. There was no television. There were no sellout crowds or high-tech special effects. It was a specialty sport, only for aficionados.

The wrestlers, in places like Bombay, were more like court jesters. The maharajahs owned stables of them and summoned the wrestlers to the palaces to compete in front of intimate gatherings of family and friends.

The fights and fighters were tough. Throwbacks to an era when there were no regulations, no governing bodies, no holds barred. Nothing was choreographed. Nothing was prearranged. These fights were real.

This world would have been a perfect setting for an opera. Grisly, villainous-looking wrestlers competing in front of India's rich and pampered. A culture clash as dramatic as "Carmen."

Forty years ago, this was David Smith-Larsen's world.

"We were there for the entertainment of the maharajah's family and friends," Smith-Larsen said, sitting in makeup this week before a performance of the opera, "Carmen." "It was a show for his people."

Growing up in England, he had tried boxing and was good enough to once have sparred with heavyweight Henry Cooper. But, like Cooper, Smith-Larsen was a bleeder. The skin around his eyes was as thin as tissue paper, and one hard jab turned his face into a red mosaic.

So Smith-Larsen became a wrestler and moved to Pakistan and India and wrestled for the very rich.

In the waning days of his stay in India, a maharajah offered him a fight, and Smith-Larsen agreed, expecting another usual intimate gathering.

"We drove into the hills, and there were thousands of people sitting in the hollows of the hills waiting for us," he said. "I looked down and there was this square of sand. I pointed to it and asked him, 'Is that the ring?' He nodded."

That day Smith-Larsen's opponent was a local Indian. Early in the fight, the opponent grabbed a fistful of sand, and some of it blew into Smith-Larsen's eyes.

"I had a bad temper back then. That was always a problem," Smith-Larsen said. "I thought he was throwing sand in my eyes, so I punched him in the mouth and was automatically disqualified. Everyone started booing and yelling, 'Dirty Englishman' and 'Go back to Britain.'

"What I didn't realize was that the guy just saw that I was a typical Englishman. We sweat like pigs, and he was rubbing sand on my arms to make them less slippery. After that was explained to me, everything was OK and we wrestled some more."

The bald, burly man, who is storming around the stage in the non-singing role of Lillas Pastia in the Seattle Opera's remarkable production of "Carmen" this month, was a professional wrestler for almost 30 years.

Before there was Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock, there was David Smith-Larsen wrestling under different names in different countries. He even started his own wrestling federation in England, like a prehistoric Vince McMahon.

He was the good guy in one country. The bad guy in another. He was the White Angel in England and France. The Red Devil in Spain. He wrestled in Thailand and Singapore and The Philippines.

In Japan, he wrestled with some of the biggest names in the sport — including Wahoo McDaniel, a former New York Jets linebacker.

"We started off small in the early '60s," he said. "And the demand for our sport often outdid the supply. So on some cards the same guy would wrestle two or three times a night and just wear different masks.

"When I was in England, wrestling as the White Angel, there were actually three of us White Angels. One guy couldn't cover the whole country, so I did the South. One friend did the London area, and another friend did the Midlands. People didn't get around like they do now, so you could get away with it."

In France, he helped train Andre the Giant. In Japan, he and his pal McDaniel pulled what Smith-Larsen calls "capers," including one time stealing the wrestling tour's bus so they could go to a bazaar outside of Tokyo.

"It was a lot of fun, but it's a hard business," said Smith-Larsen, 62. "You're taking those bumps and you're getting pulled around. A lot of travel. Not a lot of sleep. It's a hard life. But it was doing something I liked. The whole thing is to do something in life that you like doing, so it doesn't seem like work."

He broke every toe and every finger. He broke his nose 21 times. He broke his collarbone, and he broke his right arm so many times that he no longer can straighten it. And he loved every round, every country, every night.

After his retirement in the mid-1980s, Smith-Larsen grew restless. He missed the ring a lot. Missed the camaraderie. Missed the crowds and the drama. He didn't know what to do next.

One day he ran into a friend who asked him what he was doing.

"I told him, 'Nothing,' and saying that didn't feel too good," Smith-Larsen said. "I asked him what he was doing, and he told me he was in an opera. I said, 'I didn't know you sang.' He said, 'I don't.' I asked him how in the hell he could be in an opera and not sing. He told to come along and find out."

Smith-Larsen went to the opera that night and got hooked on the music and the costumes and the performance. It felt a lot like wrestling to him. And it became another opening, another show to do.

"Having an ugly, gertsy face, they always have a part for you," he said, "because in opera everybody is getting killed or terrorized or done in by some sort of treachery."

But there is no treachery in the opera of David Smith-Larsen's life. In this story, the wrestler from Portsmouth, England, does what even Don Jose couldn't do.

He wooed and won the affection of his real-life Carmen, wife Stephanie Blythe, who is a perfectly sultry Carmen in this Seattle Opera production.

"I'm a lucky guy," Smith-Larsen said, his crooked smile as bright as the footlights. "I'm having a great life."

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com