Just like every other boy that lived in the Mid-Atlantic States, l loved watching the N. W. A. Every Saturday at noon, I would be in front of the TV to watch N. W. A. Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. And every Saturday night at 11 pm, I was in front of the TV watching N. W. A. World Wide Wrestling. It was routine for me every Saturday.
These people I saw on TV were like gods to me. Legends such as Wahoo McDaniels, Ernie "THE CAT" Ladd, Thunderbolt Patterson, Paul Jones, Johnny Weaver, Masked Superstar, Mighty Igor, Mil Mascaras, Dusty Rhodes, Johnny and Greg Valentine, Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk, The Briscoe Brothers, Thunderfoot 1 & 2, Mr. Wrestling 1 & 2, Andre The Giant (Pre-WWF days). And of course, this new young upstart that was making a lot of noise and gave the best interviews I had ever seen, I am talking about "Nature Boy" Ric Flair.
I was like only 5 years old and I knew that I wanted to do what they did. I wanted to be on TV and wrestle. I wanted to hear the cheers of the crowd. And I continued to watch for years to come. Saw people like Ivan Koloff, Nikita Koloff, Sgt. Slaughter, Don Kernodle, Private Jim Nelson (who later turned out to be Boris Zukov in the WWF and actually went to the same High School I did.) And another Roanoke native, “Mr. USA” Tony Atlas, BlackJack Mulligan, and the Iron Sheik.
There are so many others that I could be here all day trying to name them all.
My father took me every time the N. W. A. would show up to the Roanoke Civic Center. Back then I had never heard of the WWF, or as it was called back then, WWWF, The WORLD WIDE WRESTLING FEDERATION. Seeing the wrestlers perform live just made me more assured that
I wanted to get into the ring that much more.
Fast forward to 1987. The NWA was on a role, and a new group had just started to be on TV in my area. It was the UWF ran by Bill Watts. They had some incredible talent such as the late Eddie Gilbert, Jon Tatum, Rick Steiner and Sting, Jack Victory and several other great talents.
The NWA had Rick Rude, Lex Luger, Rock & Roll Express, Midnight Express, Manny Fernandez, Legion of Doom (Road Warriors), The Spoiler, King Kong Bundy, and Jake Roberts and the all mighty Four Horsemen. Plus many more.
The NWA bought out the UWF and absorbed most of their talent. I had just graduated High School when I found out that I had a cousin that was wrestling for a local independent group. I did my best to find his phone number and eventually contacted him. He told me he was working under a hood as the Masked Avenger for a group called the IWF. Yea I know, that named couldn’t suck any worse. And he was a below average worker. But he did introduce me to the promoters, Bob and Paul Poff, who also worked as Handsome Hollywood and Mr. Marvelous. They had a 3rd partner who worked as the Enforcer. All three of them liked my size. Back then I was 6’3 and 260 pounds. I was in excellent shape.
They started my training right away. Their ring was set up in the basement of a Salvation Army building where another wrestler worked. He went by the name of the Bounty Hunter. He was in on some of my training too.
My training went on almost every night for about 4 months. I loved training. I wanted to learn as much and I could and practice all the time. I would call Bob and Paul and asked, “HEY, CAN WE TRAIN TONIGHT, PLEASE”. They had never seen someone that wanted to train as much as I did. My body was all sore and bruised up from training, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to train some more.
As my training went along, I had to pay my dues; I set up the ring and tore down the ring every time they had a show. I ran and got the wrestlers whatever they needed. I even took their bags to the locker room for them and back to their cars.
Finally "THE" day would come when I had my first "PRO" match. It was Saturday night, October 24th, 1987. It was in Riner, VA and was against the evil STEVE WARLOCK. I was the second match on the card. I was so excited. And I was nervous as shit.
The match started and WHAM, I was hit with an armdrag, a hip toss and a clothesline. And then I got pinned. Yep, my match lasted a WHOLE 22 SECONDS! That’s it. 22 seconds. And you know what? I loved it. Each and every minute, well each and every second that is. But my matches did get longer and months went on. But I was still paying my dues. I drove the promoters around to possible show locations for them to set up the shows. I went over to the promoter's house and hung out. I was the one to run to the grocery store for them. I was the one that paid for the pizza. I was treated like a rookie. This was part of paying my dues. I even drove to Seneca, SC for a chance to be on a show that they were on that was being run by Johnny Angel. I helped that promoter set up his ring and ran and got their food that day too. All part of paying my dues. But I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to be on the show. So I sat in the stands and helped get the crowd going. I would be the one that started the boos for the heels and the cheers for the faces.
In the first part of 1989, I was in the middle of my second year as a professional wrestler. Things were going great for me. I was winning matches and I was a loved face. Then in March of 1989, I had turned 20. I felt like I was invincible. I was doing something I loved. Then April came. I noticed a small lump on the left side of my neck. I figured it would just go away. It didn’t hurt or anything so it was no big deal to me. Then it started to get bigger and my father noticed it. He wanted me to go see the doctor. That it just might be a cyst. So I did. On Thursday, April 6th, 1989, Dr. Malpass looked at it and sent me downstairs to a Dr. Bono. He said that it was too big to remove in his office. Dr. Bono scheduled a same day surgery for me on that following Monday, April 10th 1989. But I told him that I had a show to do in Roanoke at the Lancerlot Sports Complex. He said that I needed to be careful and take care of it and not let it get hit.
So I told the promoters what all was happening. They didn’t want me to work. But I told them I really wanted to since it was in my hometown and I had sold a lot of tickets to my friends and family. I convinced them to let me do it. But they changed the person I was working. They had me work The Enforcer. They knew that he would take care of me in the ring and wouldn’t stiff me. Plus, he is one of the people that had a hand in my training. We went 25 minutes of a 30-minute time limit and I went over with a belly- to- belly suplex. I was excited. I had a great match.
That Monday, April 10th in 1989, I had same day surgery and they took out the mass that was in my neck. They sent it for test results and it came back and CANCER! I had cancer. How could this be? I didn’t smoke. I didn’t use drugs. I was too young to drink. I never did anything like that. How in the hell could I have cancer? The doctor explained to me and my family that I had Hodgkin’s disease. That what they had removed was a swollen lymph node. The node’s normal size is that of a lima bean. But this one infected with cancer was bigger than a golf ball, but it’s true size was hidden behind one of the major neck muscles. And that it hit young, athletic males. My world was shattered. Here I had just turned 20 a month earlier and I felt like every other 20-year-old boy. I felt invincible. And I just found out I had cancer.
I met with my oncologist, Dr. Inhorn and he wanted to do some test on me to see where all the cancer had spread in my body. So after a bone marrow test, a lymphangio gram test, and several other tests, I had to have another surgery, a staging laporatomy. This one they cut me open from the middle of my chest to just below my belly button. They had to see where all the cancer had infected. They removed my spleen that had been infected and found out that the cancer infected my neck down to the entire left lung and 90% of my heart. I was borderline between stage 2 and stage 3. The 4th stage is death.
I started out with radiation treatment, which had no effect on the cancer at all. And the doctors decided to stop for fear of causing any more damage to my heart. Then they tried a regiment of chemotherapy that consisted of one dosage of I.V. drugs and the rest to be taken in pill form. That had no effect either. All the while I was still trying to be involved with wrestling by just hanging around in the locker room and even doing some ring announcing and guest commentary.
Then one day I was reading a Pro Wrestling Illustrated issue where there was an article about how Nikita Koloff’s wife just died of Hodgkin’s disease. She was in the 3rd stage and suddenly died. That sent me into a deep depression.
Meanwhile, the doctor started me in a very dangerous regiment of chemotherapy drugs. This one required that I be in the treatment center for 8 hours at a time for the drugs to be given to me in I.V. form. This is the one that caused me to be sick for days after the treatment and kept me in the bed for days at a time. It caused me to lose just about all my hair. And this is where the weight loss began. I dropped from 280 lbs. to 160 lbs. I looked like death warmed over. Just my appearance alone made my close friends cry. They were sure I was going to die. And so was I.
I was always weak, sick and could barely lift myself out of the bed. My white blood count had dropped dramatically to the point that just being around someone that had the sniffles could cause me to end up in the hospital. One time during the summer of 1989, I had gotten a small scratch on my foot. No big deal right? WRONG! The cut got infected and caused my temperature to rise to a dangerous 104.9 degrees. I was starting to go into a seizure. I was rushed to the Cancer Rehab Center where they put me in isolation. My white blood count had dropped to a 0.01. A normal white blood count is 1.0. As you can see I almost had NO way to fight off the smallest infection. I was in isolation for 2 weeks. No one could come and see me and the nurses and doctors had to be covered from head to toe when they examined me.
As time went by and I got my white blood count back to normal or as close as it could be with me taking chemo, the doctors were still concerned on how the cancer was still growing. Things were getting desperate. Dr. Inhorn consulted with 2 of the worlds top Hodgkin’s specialists who agreed with him that the only way to see what was happening was to have another surgery. There was a small chance I might have TWO different types of cancer. The chances were like 1 in 30 million. Knowing my luck I would be that one. And if it was 2 different types then they had been treating it wrong all this time. And if it was the same cancer and still growing, then the last chance at survival was a bone marrow transplant. At that time there were only two places that were equipped to do bone marrow transplants. One I think was in Oklahoma and the other was in Italy. And the saying, "I hear Italy is nice this time of year" came to mind. I figured, hell if I was going to die, let me see a foreign country first. And if the bone marrow transplant doesn’t work, well, that was going to be all she wrote for me.
It was the first of December of 1989 when the doctors went back in. This time they went in through my left side and through my ribs. When they did open me up, they could tell right away that the cancer was gone. What the hell? But they took sample of the some my organs and sent them off for testing to make sure. A day later, I got the good news. Yep, the cancer had gone into remission. The x-rays that the doctors had taken over the course of my treatment cannot discern between cancer and the scar tissue that it leaves behind. Plus, fluid had been building up in the pericardium (sack around the heart), Which gave the impression that the cancer was growing. But the one bad news that they had given was that I would not be able to have any children. The type of chemo they gave me killed any chances of that. That there was 99.9% that I would never be a father. (Of course they were wrong, but read on)
The doctors had no way of knowing when the cancer had indeed gone into remission. To this day Dr. Inhorn still studies my case and it is one of the cases that is always brought up when they do ceremonies on cancer research and how far they have come.
Meanwhile, my body was healing. It took about six months for me to get back up to 200 lbs. But my body was still sore and feeling the effects of the chemo. I was still involved in wrestling, but was not doing any actual wrestling. I was just doing announcing and play by play. And in late 1990, I had built my strength back up where I could take a bump, but was still getting weak rather quickly. Then in 1991, I had my return match. It was at the last place I had actually done any ring work, The Lancerlot Sports Complex. I worked the same guy, The Enforcer. And I won. It marked my return to the ring and I was happy again.
At about this same time, my cousin had quit the IWF and was working for ACW. A rival promotion that was also based in Roanoke Va. My cousin gave me the promoter’s number and wanted me to call him. I called Mike Weddle and we talked. He said that he wasn’t trying to steal me away from IWF. But just wanted to touch base with me since my cousin keep talking about me to him. He said that he would love to have me but if I was happy where I was then I should stay there. I told him that I had felt loyal to the IWF since they had trained me and welcomed me back after my ordeal with cancer. And he said that he understood that and wished me luck. He showed a lot of class and I gained some respect from this person that I had heard horror stories about from the promoters of the IWF. What I found out later was that both the IWF and ACW were at one time together under the banner of ACW. And then the Poff brothers decided that they could do better than ACW and started the IWF. And the Poff brothers were telling me things that they wanted me to hear. Even so, I did feel loyal to them. I didn’t know at the time that wrestlers usually worked for more than one promotion. I thought the IWF is where I had to stay. I was young and naive and didn’t know better.
Time went by and IWF folded. They were only running about a handful of shows a year. I contacted Mike Weddle in late 1995 and he told me that he had a couple of shows coming up in Floyd, VA and that he could use me. I said ok. And then there I was in ACW. I was put in a tag team match with Lady-Killer against Rolling Thunder and another person’s name I have forgot. We put them over.
The next month we had the 2nd show in Floyd and I was booked against Big Jim Stud. This person made me look small. We had a great match and I went over in a screw job finish. I played the cowardly heel.
I then moved to Richmond for about a year and even did some shows there are around that area. But they were nothing too spectacular to talk about.
When I moved back to Roanoke, I saw Mike Weddle online and contacted him to see if Jimmy Valiant still had his school going in Shawsville. I had wanted to get back up there and train some more. He informed me that it was still going, but he had a training center going right here in Roanoke. I said, well, hell it is closer and it was at night too. So, I started going there and started training some more and started doing shows for ACW again.
ACW really had things going great for them. They had a live TV show in Brosville, VA, which is outside of Danville. They were running shows just about every weekend and sometimes twice a weekend. This was a dramatic difference than I was used to with the IWF.
I even ventured out into other promotions in Va and even in NC, and West Va. I even did some shows in Tenn. as well.
At one time, I had 22 shows in a span of 30 days in 4 different states for 3 different promoters. I was happy as hell when I was doing this much wrestling.
In 1998, I started dating Miss Kimberly. She was a manager in ACW. We started to travel together and even got booked on shows together in other promotions. Eventually, we married in April of 1999. And later that year on November 6th of 1999, our son was born. Yep, the doctors were wrong. I was able to have kids. Well, they weren’t really wrong. They just told me that there was 99.9% that I would never be able to do that. So, I guess I beat the odds.
During this time, I had also started working for a group in West Va. The promotion was called APPALACHIAN WRESTLING ALLIANCE. Joe Brody ran it. When he first saw me work, he said that he was impressed with someone of my size that could bump like I do. I did a lot of work with AWA. Then when things were going good, it folded. AWA had ran out of money and had to shut its doors. But not for long.
Ward Wilson, who was a fan that came to all of the AWA shows along with his wife and another fan, Leonard Simms (who took pictures for the AWA), got together and offered Joe Brody a deal. They would buy his ring and open Appalachia Professional Wrestling and he would be the booker. They were just the owners and would be the financial backing for APW.
They would go onto making APW a top wrestling promotion in West Virginia and was booking shows all over the place. They even got a weekly show going strong every Tuesday night. It got so big that the APW outgrew the Bradley Fire Department building and had to move down the road to the Oak Hill Armory. They were getting talent such as Ricky Morton, Frank Parker and Chris Hamrick, even before he got his stint with ECW.
Then Joe Brody was let go by the APW management. I was contacted by Ward and Leonard to inquire if I was interested in taking over the booking for APW. But I had to decline. One, I lived too far away from Oak Hill to do the job the way I thought it needed to be done. I felt like I would be cheating the workers and the fans if I couldn’t give 100% to it. And two, my son was just born and it wouldn’t be fair to my wife to leave her with all the duties of raising our son.
I told them I was still interested in working for them though. They said thanks for being honest with them and that probably I was right. They ended up getting a GREAT booking team that has taken APW to new heights. The weekly show has grown in attendance and I feel honored to be one of their major stars. They have some great homegrown talent and they also bring in some great indy talent from outside the promotion as well.
I have recently changed schedule at my "REAL" job and soon I will be doing more shows for other promotions on the weekends, as well as some weekend shows that APW is doing too. I know I don’t have a lot of years left as an active wrestler in this business and I am going to make the best of the remaining time I do have. I will soon be working for another promotion in Va and have started doing some work for the NAWA. A promotion that is based out of Lynchburg. The past 3 shows I have done for them have been excellent shows. I also hope to do some more shows for ACW. The promotion that at one time I called home. That is the place that I feel I really started developing my talent. They took me to the next level after the IWF had folded. I consider APW as one of my homes too. They have also taken my talent and raised it to the next level.
