Raw moods

She says she’s coming here “to beat them up for sure!” And, if necessary, she’ll cheat.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help out my boys,” Diva Rosa Mendes, aka The Freakin’ Costa Rican, who is part of a tag team with WWE Superstar cousins Primo and Epico, says through the phone line from Las Vegas.

Who needs the Academy Awards on Sunday (not to mention the Oregon-Oregon State men’s basketball game in Corvallis at 4:30 p.m.) when the WWE’s Raw World Tour is coming to town at 5 p.m. that day?

Well, probably only those folks who care more about the best work in film in the past 12 months than watching sweaty grown men — really grown men — slam each other around like old cartoon characters, while those pretty (and pretty muscular) Divas prance around the ring.

But you can always record the 84th Academy Awards. So maybe Lane County residents, and whoever else shows up at Matthew Knight Arena on Sunday, can have the best of best picture favorite “The Artist,” and also the best of The Miz.

Who’s The Miz, you ask?

He’s the 6-foot-2-inch, 220-pound WWE superstar and former WWE champion who says he’d like to watch the Oscars on Sunday, “but I’m always working.”

More like working on his signature move — the “skull-crushing finale.”

“E” is for Entertainment

Of course, this is all for show, you know.

The operators of pro wrestling’s biggest franchise — the acronym stands for World Wrestling Entertainment, with a strong emphasis on entertainment — long ago gave up the charade that pro wrestling is serious sport rather than a scripted one-ring circus.

Not that the wrestlers don’t consider themselves legitimate athletes who must stay in top shape, and who risk injuries as serious as those of, say, professional football players.

“We’re really in there and hitting each other. It’s really serious,” says the 5-foot-9 Mendes, who was born in Costa Rica in 1979 but grew up in Vancouver, B.C. She came to the WWE in 2006 after a modeling career.

Mendes says she has sustained a broken nose, a separated shoulder, a dislocated shoulder and dislocated jaw while wrestling other Divas.

“I don’t like it when people say it’s fake, because we’re really true athletes,” she says.

The Miz’s take on the fake?

“I always tell people that if you’ve never seen it, it’s basically a live event with a storyline and these characters,” says The Miz, 31, who hails from Cleveland and whose real name is Mike Mizanin. “You’ll just realize it’s this incredible event and a lot of fun.

“And we allow the audience to participate. As soon as I walk on the stage, I guarantee the people of Eugene will try and boo me out of the arena,” says the self-proclaimed “Awesome One,” who first found fame in 2001 as one of seven strangers on “The Real World: Back to New York,” the 10th season of the popular MTV reality show.

It will be the first stop ever in Eugene for the WWE, which has roots that can be traced back to the early 1950s, when it was known as the Capitol Wrestling Corporation. The company was begun by Roderick McMahon, a boxing promoter earlier in his life who died in 1954.

Roderick McMahon’s son, Vincent, took over. And today his son, Vince McMahon Jr., runs what is now a worldwide $1.2 billion traveling and televised empire that is part of American pop culture with universally known events such as the annual Wrestlemania, billed as “the Super Bowl of wrestling.”

The WWE has created such well-known personalties over the years as Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Although there have been professional female wrestlers before, the advent of the Divas is of more recent WWE vintage, within the past decade.

“I think they’re gorgeous,” The Miz says. “I think they’re incredibly athletic. They’re sexy, they’re beautiful and they’re powerful.”

Deaths expose dark side

Such a spectacle, not surprisingly, has come with a questionable dark side. Several WWE wrestlers have died young in recent years.

In 2007, wrestler Chris Benoit, 40, strangled his wife and son before committing suicide. Steroids were found in his body, and an autopsy showed severe brain damage, apparently from years of blows to the head, according to an August 2010 story in The New York Times.

Three WWE wrestlers died within eight months of each other two years ago: Edward Fatu, 36, had a heart attack in December 2009; Chris Klucsarits, 40, committed suicide in April 2010; and Lance McNaught, 29, died of heart failure in August 2010.

Abuse of steroids was suspected or confirmed in all four deaths.

In 2007, a congressional committee investigation into pro wrestling concluded that steroid use was “pervasive” among wrestlers, and that the industry refused to address the problem despite reinstating drug testing and creating a wellness program, according to The Times.

The risks aside, Mendes says pro wrestling is a heart-racing, adrenaline rush unlike anything else she could ever imagine, although the first time she tried it wasn’t a thrill.

“When I first tried it, I was like, ‘This hurts!’ ” she says.

But the first time she won a match, while training at the Ohio Valley Wrestling school in Louisville, Ky., in 2006, she was enthralled.

“It was the best feeling I’ve ever had,” says Mendes, who stays in shape by running 30 minutes a day, spending 20 minutes on a stationary bike, lifting weights and rock climbing in the Las Vegas area.

It’s wrestling’s playoffs

Ask why Lane County residents should show up on Sunday, Mendes says: “Because, obviously, I’m going to be wearing my famous corsets. I love wearing sexy outfits to distract my opponents.”

This, apparently, is not wrestling as the ancient Greeks knew it.

“This is the road to Wrestlemania, so the matches are going to be really exciting,” Mendes says. “It’s kind of like the playoffs. You can relate to that, can’t you?

“Everybody wants to win.”

Asked how long it will be before we see a Superstar wrestle a Diva one-on-one, The Miz says: “Don’t you wish!”

Mark Baker is The Register-Guard’s features editor. Reach him at 541-338-2374 or [email protected].