@Art Barr
this dude sounded like the truth how Meltzer wrote about him in this biography/obituary piece in "94, but 
at him being a rapist tho, no wonder he never was a star in America
this dude sounded like the truth how Meltzer wrote about him in this biography/obituary piece in "94, but at him being a rapist tho, no wonder he never was a star in AmericaSometimes life isn't exactly how it seems. In the case of Love Machine, to the very end, life never turned out to be the way it seemed.
Machine, who came into his own as the best heel in pro wrestling over the past few months, passed away, apparently in his sleep, on 11/23, the day before Thanksgiving, at his home in the Eugene, OR suburb of Springfield. Results of the autopsy couldn't determine a cause of death. In 28 years, his life took many unpredictable twists and turns. He was like a top spinning around with endless energy and enthusiasm. But like a top, he was never in control of his own destiny. Some outside force always took over and made the direction of his life exactly what it didn't appear to be.
Art Barr, after getting his Monday paycheck, flew back from Mexico City on Tuesday to pick up his five-year-old son Dexter who spent the weekend with his mother, Gloria Abston. The next day his mother tried to call him throughout the day. When there was continually no answer, she drove to the house. Between 4 and 5 p.m. she knocked on the door and again there was no answer. She went over to the bedroom window and saw Art and Dexter both asleep on his waterbed. She pounded on the window, waking Dexter up, who let her in. She noticed he was cold and clammy, and there was blood coming out of his nose. When she couldn't get Art awaken, she went next door to the neighbors and called 9-1-1. When medical help arrived, they pronounced him dead, believing he had been dead anywhere from six to 24 hours.
Lane County coroner Frank Ratty couldn't determine a cause of death after an autopsy that wasn't completed until the following Monday. Although it was heavily reported in the Mexican and Spanish language media the day after his death that the cause was a brain aneurism, one of several first-day theories, the autopsy ruled that out. Also ruled out was any foul play, a ring injury or lingering effects from an injury, as there was no trauma to the body or internal organs. There was no heart attack, no organ damage or problems, no internal bleeding, no stroke, no cancer and nothing else visually obvious. He had taken sleeping pills the night before to get to sleep, Halcyons, perhaps Valium, although Ratty wasn't even hinting at an overdose.
Coverage of the death symbolized in many ways the cultural barriers not only between the United States and Mexico, but between Americans who speak spanish and english as their primary language. The death received prominent coverage throughout Mexico on the country's 24-hour news station, with a feature running regularly throughout the day. It was a major story on the network evening news and on every 10 p.m. newscast in Mexico City and was covered on page 10 of the front section of the Mexico City equivalent of the New York Times. Within the United States, it received a surprising amount of coverage on many spanish language newscasts within California and on spanish cable, including a four minute feature on the Galavision news with Arturo Rivera. There was no English language coverage, except in his home town of Portland, OR where he had achieved some infamy for a criminal past. Even to his death, he remained a political hot potato at The Oregonian, the local newspaper, to the point where it would be impossible to write anything positive about him in the newspaper, even about his wrestling career, and even in death. Indeed, in his obit, his entire career, details of which were known, was summed up in two sentences, "Following the (sexual assault) incident, Barr signed on with Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling in Atlanta. Arthur Barr's father is Sandy Barr, a widely known Portland professional wrestler and promoter."
"He was very high on life," said Carlos "Konnan" Espada, who met him in WCW in late 1990 and opened the door for him to come to Mexico with EMLL the next year, and had come to refer to him in recent months as "our Ric Flair." . . "He had been given a second opportunity in wrestling and had made the most of it. He just came off a five-star match on a pay-per-view and hadn't even hit his potential."
"The loss is immeasurable, on both a personal and professional level," said Ron Skoler, who heads IWC, which promoted AAA events in the United States. "I could only give him the highest praise. He had taken great strides to get his personal life in order and had his professional life in order.
I think he was going to be the Roddy Piper of the 90s. A Roddy Piper who was a great worker."
His father, not surprisingly, canceled his Thanksgiving night show. In Mexico City, at the AAA office, the tears didn't stop flowing all day. Two nights later, in Compton, CA, a distraught Rey Misterio and Rey Misterio Jr. led a moving prayer and a ten bell salute in the middle of a wrestling ring. Later that night, Stan Stasiak and Tito Carreon hosted the local wrestling show in Portland, devoting the entire hour to him, talking about his death, the early part of his career, and aired the incident where Roddy Piper gave him his first gimmick and three of his matches.
Art Barr, in his all-too-short life, started as the son of a wrestler and became a too-small prelim wrestler, a top local cartoon character babyface, a prelim wrestler with a national promotion, a guy who disappeared in his country only to become a headliner and set attendance records for two of the biggest and best drawing promotions in the world, the best heel in the business and a person who changed the style of wrestling, blending the best the styles from Mexico, the United States and Japan all have to offer into almost a futuristic international melting pot of a style. In what turned out to be the last match and quite possibly the best match of his life, he appeared on the biggest wrestling event ever in his home country produced by a foreign-based promotion. But not only was he "Love Machine" and "The Juicer," he became known as something else. He was called the rapist, and names even worse. He became the cause celebrity in his hometown for too-lenient sentencing. Others close to the situation believed he became a political pawn in a feud involving a local athletic commissioner, a newspaper and with two wrestling promotions who just didn't comprehend the situation.
Love Machine was the son of former prelim wrestler Ferrin "Dandy Sandy" Barr, who actually became a better-known figure around his home town of Portland, OR for his two decades of service as the striped-shirted expressionless referee every Saturday night on "Portland Wrestling" a local institution on Ch. 12. Art practically grew up in the Portland Sports Arena, the 2,000-seat converted bowling alley that ran wrestling every Saturday night, once a month for "Tuesday specials," which his father helped Don Owen promote, and where his father ran the weekly Sunday afternoon flea market. From the age of eight, the Sports Arena was practically his playground. He grew up amidst the wrestling fans, the arena rats, and the local television wrestlers, the most famous of which was his hero, Roddy Piper. Piper, the local drawing card unparalleled spent several years in Oregon, where he ended up making his home, at the time when it was thought by narrow-minded promoters in larger and more lucrative territories he, at 210 pounds, was too small to ever make it big.
There were countless others he met as a teenager from future national superstars like Adrian Adonis, Curt Hennig and Jimmy Snuka; to local legends who never really made it outside Oregon like "Playboy" Buddy Rose and Rip "The Crippler" Oliver, to "can't miss" prospects who never quite got there like Ron Starr, Billy Jack Haynes and Tom Zenk to those whom tragedy struck at an early age, like Lonnie "Moondog" Mayne and a wrestler whose incredible wrestling talents were no match for his even more incredible propensity for self destruction, "Mad Dog" Buzz Sawyer. There were others that Barr saw at the Sports Arena who achieved the same early end but whose exploits had been all but forgotten like Steve Schumann.
He was taught to wrestle by his father and, like his older brother Ferrin Jr. (Jesse Barr) and Matt Osborne, started wrestling as a babyface among the fans who had seen him grow up every Saturday night. He was not only taught wrestling, but the ways of wrestling, its psychology, the constant conning, or working as it was known in the trade, the drugs and the easy and available sex. Before even starting as a wrestler, as an 18-year-old, he had a cocaine possession conviction on his record.
Just a few years out of high school, Art, despite his limited size, got his start in his father and brother's profession on April 2, 1987 in Salem, OR. At 175 pounds, he was a good worker almost from the start but was too small to be taken as a serious wrestler even in a territory that didn't revolve around steroids and humongous size as did most of the profession at that time. He seemed destined to be a good worker who probably would become a preliminary fixture on the local circuit, like his father was in the 60s and early 70s, only faster and more agile, but never go anywhere else. He'd work the 20 and 30 minute preliminary matches against other young men breaking in or past their prime veterans either looking to go somewhere or to hang on. Perhaps he'd on occasion become the foil of an angle either to bring his big brother, who at the time was thought to have potential to make it as a national star, into the mix as a big brother/little brother tag team, or even for the annual angle to lure his father out of retirement.
no problems I can see why you use him as your posting name
