Even Eastern Iowa comedy clubs have wrestling on the brain this weekend

Is this a big amateur wrestling weekend in Iowa City-Cedar Rapids?

Let's put it this way: A stand-up comic working in those two cities this week has a cauliflower ear.

Greg Warren arranged his tour schedule so he could attend the U.S. Olympic Trials in Iowa City's Carver-Hawkeye Arena Saturday morning and all day Sunday. Warren will perform at Dubuque's Diamond Jo Casino tonight (Wednesday), Iowa City's First Avenue Club Thursday at 8:30 p.m., and at Penguins in Cedar Rapids Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Warren has made his bones in the comedy game. He makes frequent appearances on radio's Bob & Tom Show. He has had his own half-hour Comedy Central special, and has appeared on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson three times.

Warren is a wrestling fan, to say the least. He is friends with a half-dozen of the wrestlers who will compete this weekend, many with Missouri ties. Warren wrestled at Missouri himself, and he was pretty good.

"I wasn't Iowa-good," he said. "I was an All-American my senior year in 1991. I finished seventh at 158."

Coincidentally, the NCAAs were held at Carver-Hawkeye that year.

"I've worked for (Penguins owner) Jeff Johnson over the years," Warren said. "It might have been the first club I worked at when I quit my day job.

"A year ago he told me the Olympic Trials were coming to Iowa City. I said 'Let's make sure I work that weekend in Cedar Rapids.' "

He's likely to make more than passing references to wrestling in his shows here.

"It's a personal act," Warren said. "I talk about my life a lot. Wrestling deals out humiliation, which makes for a good comic. It's the genesis of some of the biggest bits I've done. You have to come at (stand-up) from more of a humble place, and all of us in that sport have been humbled."

Wrestling still humbles him, in fact.

"My dad was my high school wrestling coach (in St. Louis)," he said. "I was home recently, and he said 'Hey, come here.'  He was watching a tape of me wrestling in high school and critiquing it. I was laying on the bottom like a dead animal.

"He said 'What the hell were you doing in this match?' I said 'I don't remember. I quit wrestling 19 years ago.'

"He said 'You quit wrestling in the middle of this match, that's when you quit wrestling.' "

It isn't part of his stand-up act, but Warren portrays a wrestling character named Wesley "Wes" Wesley in videos for flowrestling.com.