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DIARY OF A DREAM UNFULFILLED

As I sit at my desk in my office this morning my back is adorned with a thick red welt across it.  It’s the result of repeated attempts to regain 13 year stale footwork by running the ropes of a small training ring over and over again.  It’s raw and it stings and I’m glad it’s there.  This is my story, the story of a 38 year old father of four trying to fulfill a lifelong passion for something he left behind before it was time.

Yes, I’m 38 years old, but no I’m not having some early mid-life crisis trying to chase some silly fanciful dream that will somehow make my life seem meaningful.  I am also not foolish enough to think I’m attempting some kind of sensational, glory filled career, looking to find myself with obscene monetary rewards and awash in fame.  The truth of the matter is I’m not exactly starting from scratch here, but at the same time that may be exactly what I’m doing. But I’m getting ahead of myself.  To truly have an idea where I’m trying to go, I should probably tell you from where I came. 

I grew up a professional wrestling fan.  A big professional wrestling fan.  When I was a kid, like essentially, oh….every kid, I thought it would be the greatest possible thing in the world to be able to one day join the ranks of my heroes.  I watched in awe of men like Tony Garea, Ivan Putski, Bruno Sammartino, George “The Animal” Steele and my favorite of all, a certain young towering blonde heel under the guidance of the Hollywood Fashionplate, Classy Freddie Blassie.    I dreamt of it, but that didn’t mean I seriously thought it could happen.   Even as a lad I thought “sensibly” enough to realize that a real future lay in business or law or medicine, or any number of far more rational choices.  But deep down inside there was always some small part of me that thought, “You know, I really could do that”.  I really wanted to be a part of it too.  Even then I was drawn in by an intoxicating mixture of drama, fantasy, grace, athleticism and, of course, sheer brutality.   

I could list my long history of growing up a wrestling fan, but frankly I find it very similar to those of my peers who grew up during the same time in the Northeast.  I was fed a steady diet of Saturday morning WWWF squash matches, was introduced to the world of actual competitive matches through the national syndication of WCCW, and had the entire world of professional wrestling opened up to me by the birth of cable.  As my window to the wrestling world continued to grow, so too did my passion to get more and more of it.  

And so I went on, like most people, living my life with it always in the back of my young mind that under the right circumstances I really would like to get into the wrestling business someday.  I’m sure many, many fans keep that dream present in their lives with the actual reality of acting upon it being some not quite realistic possibility, kept just far enough out of reach from being able to be grabbed.    All the while vaguely keeping the idea open and never fully killing it.  There’s nothing really wrong with that, it’s healthy to have dreams that seem almost supernatural, just as long as the main parts of your life are based in reality.  But life is an interesting thing because you never quite know how things will unfold, or for that matter why they do.  For me on one particular day the idea of  “yeah someday I’m going to do something about  actually following through on that” and then getting quickly distracted by other things, actually gave way to “let’s do whatever we have to find out how to get into that”.  I really don’t know on that one particular day what motivated me more than a thousand other days just like, all I know is that something did. 

It was the very early part of the 1990’s and I had been married about a year, with a newborn son and a very young daughter whom I had adopted.  I  had gone off to Florida from my New England home looking at it as some kind of fabled land of opportunity, no doubt like many other starry eyed  Northeasterners before me.   I didn’t realistically have any knowledge of the opportunities that might be available to me, but I knew that the weather was a hell of a lot better than New England and hey….it was Florida!  Did I really need any other plan?  So there I was one Saturday morning, sitting in a room I had taken up occupancy in at a Red Roof Inn while I sought gainful enough employment to justify the transplanting of my young family.  It was a Saturday morning and I stumbled upon a local wrestling show on one of the area’s UHF stations.  Now what I say next I say knowing that at the time I didn’t have nearly the respect that I should have and would very soon gain.  I watched the small local indy show and thought arrogantly that there was absolutely no way I couldn’t do better than what I was seeing.  What followed was a rare show of focus to a task, the likes of which was admittedly not common in my life.  I really don’t know what motivated me that morning but I persistently made a series of phone calls, first to the UHF station wanting to know how to get in touch with the wrestling show, then to the owner of the promotion (who I believe was the owner of a small business, along the lines of comic books or something), then to some sort of scout, and on and on.  I kept on in my search and it ultimately paid off.  That very afternoon I found myself invited to the gym of and finally in the presence of The Great Malenko, or, Professor Boris Malenko, if you will.  Yep, Boris Malenko, bonafide mat legend of the ‘50’s, ‘60’s and ‘70’s, one of the most prolific trainers of successful wrestlers in the ‘80’s, and of course father to Joe and Dean, who is considered by many perhaps the greatest technical wrestler of the 1990’s.  There was just one problem.  Having grown up in the heart of the WWWF, during the heyday of the territory system, I had never heard of him in my entire life.   As I later settled into life in Florida many of the natives that I befriended would impress upon me the level of awe I should have at Malenko’s legend, but more so he himself would more than earn it from me almost from the first time I began my tutelage under his wing.  But just then I needed some convincing. 

I think even after this burst of initiative I still didn’t truly see being a professional wrestler as realistic for me.  At only 5’10” I didn’t really believe I was big enough for the mat wars.  Keep in mind this was a decade before the Chris Benoits, Chris Jerichos and Eddie Guerreros broke down the height barrier to the top of the card.   The industry was still fresh off of the superhero personalities and god like bodies of the ‘80s.  Everyone short of Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat seemed to be 8’ tall and possessing more musculature than a Greek god.  With that in mind I professed to Boris Malenko the idea of being trained as a “manager”, a personality in the mode of my true wrestling idol, the late, great Grand Wizard of Wrestling.  I had been heavily into acting throughout my short life and thought it a natural fit.  Malenko, however, had other ideas.  He considered my reservations about my size silly, and was apparently oblivious to the fact that I was in actually quite pitiful shape for a 22 year old.  Of course I could be a wrestler he told me.  With his training if I worked hard not only would I be able to do what my childhood heroes could do, but he would get me work doing it.  So here I was standing in a gym which was in reality an open storage facility with nothing more than two beat up practice rings set up back to back and a, shall we say less than sanitary, toilet and sink tucked into a closet.  I had this old time wrestler whom I had, admittedly ignorantly, never even heard of promising me the fulfillment of my whacked out, pie-in-the sky, childhood fantasy, despite my having presented myself out of nowhere, with no particularly high level of athletic prowess or even the bare minimum of physical conditioning.  Obviously, I used all of the rational logic at my disposal and thought better of the proposition and walked away in search of the fulfillment of realistic goals, right?  As if.  I shook the man’s hand and brokered a “deal” for payment.  Malenko told me he was going to give me a deal since I was a member of the “tribe”, assuming I was Jewish like himself.  In reality my father was Jewish, but my mother Catholic, and my life had been about as Jewish as that of say…..Mel Gibson.  But I somehow didn’t feel the necessity to tell him that.  Of course I later realized I was not only paying as much as everyone else, but actually more than some, so I’d say we were even.  I proceeded to retrieve my family from New England, found a day time job at a local furniture store, and ignored anyone who tried to “talk some sense into me” as I set out to live my dream.  To hell with what they thought. After all, they didn’t see what I did.  I was going to be a superhero!

You can write Paul at my4kidsdad2003@yahoo.com