E-Mail This Article to a Friend Free falls Johnny Valiant wrestles with the past BY CARLY CARIOLI

Pro-wrestling hall-of-famer "Luscious" Johnny Valiant has grappled in each of the last five decades and performed in most of the major arenas in the country, but he still retains a Western Pennsylvania accent from his boyhood — even as he talks on a cell phone from the bus in New York City that’s carrying him to his next audition. Although the 58-year-old Valiant keeps his trunks handy (he was in a few matches just last year), he gave up the wrestling life about 10 years ago to pursue a career as an actor. He can switch on the thick Brooklynese or get all stentorian and hifalutin, but the roles for a journeyman ring rat — whose gimmick, as his nickname suggests, was to antagonize the audience with dandyism — have not been so robust. Still, he’s found at least one role for which he’s tailor-made — himself. This Sunday, he brings his one-man show, An Evening with "Luscious" Johnny Valiant, which has run Off Broadway and garnered praise from Slate, the Village Voice, and Time Out, to the Good Time Emporium in Somerville.

Valiant got his start in the entertainment business as a teenager by befriending the legendary wrestling champion Bruno Sammartino, who lived a few blocks away from him in Pittsburgh. Johnny cut Bruno’s grass, ran his errands, and picked him up at the airport. He worked his way up the ladder, starting by setting up the ring and winding up a World Tag-Team Champion. He was also helped by having had as a Virginia military-school classmate Vince McMahon Jr. — the current owner of World Wrestling Entertainment and the son of the legendary Vince McMahon Sr., founder of the World Wide Wrestling Federation and the father of modern professional wrestling.

"I don’t have anybody of that magnitude in my corner in the acting game," Valiant says, "which is why I’m taking a public bus down 14th Street." He maintains a cheap apartment on 51st Street between 8th and 9th and usually takes the subway to auditions. It hasn’t been easy. "But that’s how I know I belong here. I’ve always chosen the paths of most resistance."

Valiant’s one-man show is unscripted and changes each night depending on his mood, but it always includes tales from his years in wrestling — rooming with a lonely Andre the Giant, managing Hulk Hogan. "It’s kind of a journey," he explains as he steps off the bus and continues his journey on foot. Of the switch from wrestling to acting, he says, "You know, at first it was very bizarre. But as the years go on, I find I had a tremendous background — performing in front of a live audience every night without a rehearsal, no stand-in, no stunt man, and no script. I learned quite a lot more than what a lot of these people bring to the table."

Valiant plays down his two most significant roles, recurring characters on HBO’s Oz and The Sopranos. "That was something I just fell into because of the way I look," he says of the latter role (he plays Carmine’s bodyguard). "I don’t have any true magnitude in the acting world. It’s nice to have a peek behind the curtain, but to me it’s no big deal because for all those years in the Garden I was the main focal point. Now I’m a shmuck in a black suit. It’s all stereotypical."

Which explains a bit about the lure of his one-man show. "I can really exercise my wit and imagination," he says, warming to the topic. "It’s like being totally nude and performing a lobotomy.

"I get that same rush now as when I went into the Boston Garden or the Cow Palace in ’Frisco: you never know what’s going to happen. I guess I was an integral part of wrestling history. My brain casing is intact, the imagination is still full. I’m not afraid to fail, or to succeed, either. I’m proud of what I did and proud of myself as a human being, and I like to give the audience a sense of what I was all about and maybe what the business was all about."

An Evening with "Luscious" Johnny Valiant is presented this Sunday, March 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Good Time Emporium, 30 Assembly Square Drive in Somerville. Tickets are $15; call (617) 628-5559.