Didn’t you used to be?
Yeah, I was a pro-wrestler briefly…
I grew up in our little farm house in Montana with my grandpa hollering at the tv, telling all of his heroes of the squared circle what he thought they should be doing in there…I used to sit and watch mesmerized as the guys he was screaming instructions to worked each other over mercilessly in the ring…
The superstars of the 80’s, wow, those were high times in wrestling…
Then my grandma would walk by the tv and say, “Oh, look at the great pretenders” and keep walking…This didn’t sit too well with grandpa…
I would have never thought that I would get in the ring someday…But I did…
I watched wrestling from that point on, hopping around the living room and jumping off the couch…This didn’t sit too well with grandma…
Then one of my best friends in high school, Big Tim Bartlett (RIP buddy), seemed to constantly have wrestling on his tube and for a short time, he had considered going to a ‘wrestling camp’ himself…
No doubt in my mind he would have done well…He was such a muscular giant of a guy, long hair, full of attitude, and came stock with all the charisma and intangibles that the camera loves…Too bad he never had the chance to shine in that arena…
I miss that guy all the time…
So, I kept up with WWF and WCW through the ‘hot era’ of wrestling when one day in Pharmaceutics class I saw an ad for a wrestling camp in WOW magazine…
Most likely I should have been listening to what our professor was on about, but I couldn’t tear my peepers away from that damn ad…
I saved the cash to go to the camp for a week and loved the business from day one of being in the ring…There was something about the whole drama and rough physicality of it that I really liked…
About a year passed from that first fateful experience, but I was hooked on the idea of being a wrestler and I left my temp. Indian Health Service pharmacy job in Tuba City, AZ to move to Ocala, Florida…
When I showed up in town, I didn’t have a Florida pharmacy license so I had no potential of working in my actual field, I didn’t know where I was going to live, and I didn’t have a chunk of money saved to try this adventure out…
But I didn’t care…I was chasing a dream that no one would have ever thought I could catch…
So, for that brief time in Florida, I wrestled as Aric Dylan “The Assassin” in various tag matches and some singles matches as well, all on the indy level…
The only time I ever appeared on WWE television was to carry Kenzo Suzuki out on his throne, with 3 other guys, all of us dressed as his ninja-type assistants complete w/kendo masks covering our faces…A few ppl told me they could recognize me on tv through the mask by my pointy broken nose and my goatee…LOL…
What a load of stories I have about those days…
I would run out of money and have to leave to do more temp. work in different Indian Health Service hospital pharmacies until I could come back to Florida and wrestle again…
You see, I can work in the gov’t system (IHS, VA, Bureau of Prisons) on any state pharmacy license, but to do private hospital, retail, or any other pharmacy, I have to be in possession of that state’s pharmacy license…
Not a very wise plan, huh??…The adult in me realizes that I should have never moved until I had my Florida pharmacy license in hand so that I wouldn’t have to go through all that nonsense of flying out to work for a few weeks or so, then coming back to Florida…
But life isn’t guaranteed to be long, nor productive…You take your chances by rushing after things, sometimes it pans out and sometimes it doesn’t…
But at least ya did it…
I’ve made some lifelong friends in the wrestling business…What I miss the most about wrestling is the ‘pack of boys’ hanging out after shows, usually partying and carrying on like a bunch of monkeys on crack…
Some of the characters, and I do mean absolute characters, you meet in the wrestling business would amaze you…You couldn’t make these ppl up in a cartoon, let alone real life…
My buddy Neil Faith is one of the guys I would consider a true life-long friend and a helluva worker in the ring..Another couple of ‘good fellas’ are my other wrestling buddies Jay “Showtime”, “Bad Ass” Kurt Bauer, and Yako Romero…
One of my favorite pics is of Neil and I squaring off at his wedding in Michigan…hahaha…
And here’s a pic of “Showtime” and I recently, laughing away at some of the old stories from those days…
Another unforgettable dude in wrestling is Bo Lee “The Funky White Boy”…
Somewhere I’ve got a ton of pics that I’ll have to post on here from wrestling…I know I have some of Yako and Kurt around…
I’ll never regret the time I spent in wrestling though…I started becoming more and more interested in pursuing MMA and I needed to go away to work for a much longer time to catch up on bills since I really didn’t work much while I was wrestling, so lo and behold, here I am 2 years later in AZ as an MMA fighter…
I learned a touch about the workings of promotions, the talent, athleticism, marketing, and charisma you need to succeed, and the fact that although most ppl think, “I can do that fake wrestling stuff”, they sure as hell never could…
It’s way harder and much more ‘real’ than outsiders could ever imagine…
These guys are literally putting their bodies and lives on the line, numerous nights a week, just to entertain the crowd…And you’d be amazed how little money they really make doing it…
I give those guys credit for taking all that punishment nightly, I know I wouldn’t want to have an MMA fight any more often than I have to…
Pro-wrestling and MMA are 2 different sides of the same coin…I take a lot of heat for saying that, but it’s completely true…
November 8th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Hey little brother…..I still say (like I did when you left for Fla) as long as you COULD chase your dream, it’s worth doing. You’d always wonder about the “what could have been” factor if you hadn’t at least tried. For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you for having the stones to go out there and TRY.
XOXOXO
S