Chapter 1: How to Make Sound Career Decisions
The Sheik terrified me.

I grew up in Ohio, halfway between Dayton and Toledo. That was part of the Original Sheik’s territory, which covered Michigan, all of Ohio and parts of Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky and Indiana. There was a weekly show on local TV, and that’s where I was introduced to wrestling — and the Sheik. I liked it enough that when I found out that a wrestling event was coming to our local ice arena, I begged my parents to take me to see it. After they grew tired of hearing an eight-year-old’s constant pleading and finally bought tickets, I realized the Sheik was going to be there. He wasn’t a physically big guy, but he believed in his character so completely that I believed too. He was one of the first wrestlers to throw fire in the ring, using flash paper to create fireballs, and his matches would invariably be gory. It’s no wonder I was terrified. At the last minute, I decided that I didn’t want to go.

My friend Victor Lewis wasn’t intimidated. He got to go to the show because his dad was a deputy sheriff who worked security at the arena. Victor didn’t mention it the next day, but years later, when we were in high school, he told me how, that night, a wrestler named Mickey Doyle had ripped his arm open on the ring post. When Victor said “ripped,” he meant it — the meat inside Mickey’s arm had been visible. If even being in the same arena as the Sheik was too much for me, it’s probably best that I hadn’t seen Mickey’s mutilation in person.

By the mid-1970s, the Sheik’s promotion was starting to struggle and went off the air. That was before cable, so it was the end of wrestling on TV in my area for a few years. When we finally did get cable, one of the 13 channels we got featured Georgia Championship Wrestling.

I’d enjoyed the wrestling I’d seen when I was younger, but none of it had struck a chord with me emotionally. Everything on TV had been short matches to promote the stars and sell live event tickets (apparently to kids who would get scared and not show up). Now, with Georgia Championship Wrestling, I had access to something totally different. I’ll never forget flipping the channel and seeing footage from the Atlanta Omni. A man with a ripped white shirt and white hair was stumbling through the crowd — and he was bleeding. He was gushing like a stuck pig, hair and shirt turning red, but he was determined to get to the ring. The fans around him were going absolutely insane. I was hooked. I’d find out that the hero with the white hair was Dusty Rhodes, and the bad guys who had bloodied him in the parking lot were Ole Anderson and Ivan Koloff. The more I watched, the more I loved it. I’d go on to become a huge fan of Tony Atlas, Austin Idol and Mr. Wrestling II as well as coming to hate Ole Anderson and Buzz Sawyer. They were just so believable as heels — in-ring bad guys — that you couldn’t help but hate them.

I was obsessed. I couldn’t get enough wrestling and, by the age of 14, I’d decided it was the career for me. I remember telling my Grandmother that I was going to be a wrestler, and she said, “Why do you want to do that? Don’t you know it’s all fake?” I wasn’t accepting that. I bought it all, and no one could smarten me up. I started “training” with Victor. We would put mattresses in the yard, then wrestle for real, putting each other in holds and executing moves that invariably ended in one of us getting hurt.

More and more wrestling started appearing on TV, other territories like Dick the Bruiser’s group from Indiana, and Memphis Wrestling. During my teenage years, wrestling started getting so popular that you’d see signs of it in day-to-day life. A long time before Austin 3:16 and nWo shirts were everywhere, you’d see everyday guys wearing sweatpants with their names down the side like Junkyard Dog was doing in Mid-South Wrestling. I don’t remember any of these guys having “THUMP” on the ass like JYD, but, then again, I don’t remember looking.

Even though wrestling was taking off nationwide, there wasn’t a lot of activity in my part of Ohio after the Sheik’s territory dried up. Because of this, I didn’t get to go to a live event until I was 16, when the Fullers ran a show at the UAW Hall in Lima, with names like Al Perez and Ric McCord in action. For me, going to that show was like homework. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was going to be a wrestler, so I was watching from a different viewpoint than the rest of the audience. I was there to learn, to pick the show apart. Even then, I still believed — I still wasn’t smartened up.

School was boring. I didn’t care about making any effort because I was going to be a wrestler. I took an electronics class for two years in high school and couldn’t have told you much about resistance, amperage and ohms, but I could have told you about every single wrestler from the 1920s onwards: their height, weight, win-loss record, where they wrestled, what their greatest match was . . . I started working out at the local YMCA to put on weight because the belief back then was that you had to be over 200 pounds, and I was maybe a buck sixty. Working out was the only physical activity I was involved in because it had a clear link to wrestling. I didn’t participate in any organized sports at school. I’d been doing martial arts since I was 11, but I’d lost interest in that just because it wasn’t wrestling.

Wrestling was my sole reason for existing. I knew it was what I was meant to do with my life. I just needed to find a way in. I didn’t realize just how many hurdles I would have to jump to get started — but even if I had, they wouldn’t have stopped me. There was no plan B. It was wrestling or nothing.