LORDS OF THE RING; PRO WRESTLING IS WILD, WOOLLY AND A BIGGER DRAW THAN EVER.

Byline: David Bloom Daily News Staff Writer

Probably one of the first signs that the show had gotten out of hand came when a participant grabbed a folding chair and hit another guy upside the head.

The fight by then had spilled over into the crowd, sending the production crew scrambling for safety, and for a good camera angle. Onlookers hooted and jeered as the fight turned into a free-for-all that security couldn't control.

No, it's not a ``classic'' Jerry Springer episode. It's something better.

Pro wrestling.

Just like Springer, pro wrestling has vaulted up the ratings ladder in recent months, dominating cable programming with nine hours of highly rated shows on three leading networks.

Just like Springer, these grapplers have thrived on outrageous spectacle, with huge men in tight pants flying through the air, slamming into each other and anyone else who happens to be in the way, with names like the Undertaker and attitudes like the damned.

But unlike Springer, the stars are supposed to fight each other. Well, sort of.

In another big change, no one seems to care any more whether all those very big, very loud, very mean men are actually trying to hurt each other badly or not. This is pro wrestling. This is how we do it. Deal with it.

``I like to consider it a physical soap opera,'' said Dwayne Johnson, a third-generation wrestler who goes by the nom de ring of Rocky Maivia.

``Once again, it's cool,'' Johnson said. ``But it's a different kind of cool. It's not a question of whether it's real, the question is how entertaining it is. Without a doubt, it's a show.''

Mainstream entertainment

With the newfound popularity has come a certain respectability long reserved for the creators of B movies, soap operas and potboiler novels.

``This year, when I sit next to someone on a plane, I'm not embarrassed to say I run a pro wrestling company,'' said Eric Bischoff, the president of World Championship Wrestling, which runs on TNT and TBS. ``Three years ago, they'd ask what I do and I'd (mumble) and hope they'd ask me how the weather was when I left Atlanta.''

The newfound audiences have been attracted by punchier story lines, and characters with chips on their shoulders the size of an average Lesser Developed Country.

``I think what we're doing now is opening up the creative envelope, and availing ourselves of more creative techniques,'' said Vince McMahon, the third-generation wrestling promoter whose Titan Sports produces the other major circuit, the World Wrestling Federation, for USA Networks.

``We should be allowed the same techniques as any sitcom, as any talk show, as any soap opera,'' McMahon said. ``When you think about it, that's what the WWF is, really a hybrid of all those forms.''

McMahon says the characters portrayed by the wrestlers are ``more reality based, less cartoonlike'' and ``not just black and white. Everyone we deal with is various shades of gray. Then the public decides whether they like a certain arrogance.''

Long-time wrestler Jerry Lawler, at 48 now mostly a WWF ringside commentator, said the change in attitude is the most noticeable difference in wrestling's resurgence.

``The WWF I guess is targeting a different audience,'' Lawler said. ``It was a very family-oriented show aimed toward children. Now that they've gone to cable, it's more risque, more pushing the envelope, and without a doubt, it's caught on.''

Money sport

With the big, new ratings have come other things as well, like a phalanx of big-time advertisers, far beyond the Slim Jim and chewing tobacco crowd of wrestling's Southern roots.

Now, major corporate players like Sony, MCI and Coca-Cola are buying time, trying to grab the eyeballs of the young men who overwhelmingly watch wrestling.

The advertisers have figured out that pro wrestling dominates cable ratings - with an injection of me-against-the-world attitude that's caught on with teens and young adults who prefer ``extreme'' sports such as freestyle snowboarding and street luge. And wrestlers such as ``Stone Cold'' Steve Austin.

The phenomenon isn't restricted to prime-time cable either.

The two circuits have highly rated pay-per-view events, magazine publishing, huge merchandise-licensing operations, even sites on the Internet, where dozens of fan sites vie for attention with official sites for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF); World Championship Wrestling (WCW); WCW's in-house archrivals New World Order; even WCW's dancers, the Nitro Girls.

The WWF site on America Online is one of its busiest, while a CD of original WWF music themes has sold 250,000 copies, McMahon said.

On Monday Nights, TNT and USA Network go head to head with competing two-hour blocks of prime-time wrestling, while TBS shows another three hours on Thursday nights. USA shows two more hours on weekends.

Ratings have soared in the past six months, reaching as high as 5.9 for the USA networks recently when NBA playoffs pre-empted the Turner shows.

``It's becoming not so much of a secret,'' said Bonnie Hammer, USA's vice president of original productions and current programming. ``Ratings are high for both entities.''

For comparison, USA averaged a 2.6 in the first quarter of the year as cable's highest-rated network, Hammer said. A 5 was ``great, it's excellent.''

Wrestling's only real competition for ratings pre-eminence on cable these days seems to be ``South Park,'' featuring those potty-mouthed pre-pubescents who share a certain bad attitude with wrestling.

Even matched up against Monday Night Football in the fall, another male-dominated program, the wrestling shows do well. Hammer speculated that the shows have become something of a regular Monday evening ``date'' between fathers and sons.

Up and down

Story lines are carefully nurtured, building rivalries between wrestlers, groups, even with Bischoff and McMahon and their entire circuits.

The WWF hit a ratings spike last month when Austin, the embodiment of middle-finger-extended attitude, body-slammed McMahon before an arena of screaming fans. The action routinely spills out of the ring, with managers, announcers and others sent flying at one time or another.

``Everybody takes a suplex for the show sooner or later,'' said one WWF insider.

Wrestling has had previous periods of prominence on television, going back to the 1950s heyday of Gorgeous George, when it was one of the easiest forms of live programming to create, said James Kearney, a fan of wrestling who lectures on television and media for Loyola Marymount University's communication arts program.

Kearney credits McMahon with several pioneering changes in the 1980s, when he took over the WWF from his father, Vince Sr.

``He understood the language of TV better than his father's generation,'' Kearney said. ``McMahon just took what they had and made it more visual and compelling.''

McMahon also understood his target demographics, and tailored his shows appropriately, Kearney said. Children have always been fans of wrestling, and their interest has only grown in recent years as programmers have increasingly ignored them in early-evening hours, because ads are so hard to sell for their shows.

As other kinds of early-evening programming increasingly pitched for grown-ups, wrestling has thrived, Kearney said.

McMahon took his circuit nationwide, using the then-nascent cable, syndication and pay-per-view businesses to market the WWF nationwide at the expense of the regional wrestling circuits that had thrived in previous decades.

Those various outlets also allowed McMahon to cross-promote the WWF in ways other entertainment companies have only recently begun doing, Kearney said. ``Really what they did most successfully was integrate the marketing into the event,'' Kearney said. ``McMahon was doing this before anybody. It was really very smart.''

And McMahon built some big stars, hiring away Hulk Hogan from one of the lesser circuits, for instance and giving the charismatic former football player a bigger stage that vaulted him to stardom.

For a while in the 1980s, wrestling was omnipresent. Lawler talks about sitting down in his Memphis home and being able to watch wrestling 23 hours a day if he so chose.

But the glut led to a down cycle, before the next big push began a few years ago, when Turner - which had previously carried the WWF's syndicated programming - decided to get in the business themselves. They bought out an old regional circuit and hired away some of the WWF's bigger stars, including Hogan, to big contracts.

McMahon said the talent raid forced him to build a new stable of stars, and to rethink how to pitch his shows. The new rivalry kicked up in earnest in 1996, when Turner Networks decided to put wrestling in prime time, going head up against the USA Network's long-running WWF broadcast. Fans could then hop between the two broadcasts, surfing for the hotter action, the more titillating subplots, the more explosive confrontations.

``You can talk Coke vs. Pepsi, Ford vs. Chevrolet, but the rivalry between the WCW and WWF, it's like a life-or-death situation,'' said Lawler.

In-your-face attitudes, cliff-hanger plots, in-house rival groups such as the WCW's New World Order and the sexy sizzle of scantily clad female camp followers have inspired intense devotion from fans, as evidenced by their letters posted on various Web sites:

``I seriously question if the (New World Order) will stay together or how long they will,'' one fan wrote. ``In my opinion, my main men Scott Hall and Kevin Nash should leave and form a group of lonestars named after themselves - the Outsiders. That would rule.''

Kearney says the rivalries, real as they are, feed into their ongoing efforts to keep up with the times.

``They continue to update its theatricality,'' Kearney said. ``They do highlights that look like ESPN's `SportsCenter.' They're clever, you've got to hand it to them.''

McMahon writes new ``works'' or story lines constantly, tweaking the violence and rivalries and stunts to increase the interest while appeasing network concerns about excessive violence or sexuality.

``It's like going to the movies,'' Lawler said. ``I went to `Jurassic Park' and you didn't have Steven Spielberg popping up every 10 minutes saying, `Hey, those dinosaurs aren't real.' You don't have to take it as seriously as they did in the past.''

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) NO HOLDS BARRED

Like `Jerry Springer', pro wrestling tops the ratings

(2) Jerry Lawler, a longtime wrestler and ringside commentator, says the WWF's new attitude works.

(3) Vince McMahon is a third-generation wrestling promoter and the creative force behind the WWF.

(4) Tag team L.O.D.: The Road Warriors typifies the brawny image built on rivalries among wrestlers and the pro circuits.

(5) Outrageous characters such as Dude Love get the crowd worked up.