By Dory Funk, Jr
If only a clairvoyant would have told me how it was going to be the day I asked my father if I could become a professional wrestler.
This clairvoyant would have told me that I was about to embark on a wild and crazy life. This life would earn me a good living, but for that good living, the following is what I was about to go through:
I would be slammed to the wrestling mat hard, 50,000 times. I would bleed and spill lots of blood more than a thousand times. (many transfusions worth) Time and again wrestling fans would come to me with handkerchiefs just to sop up a little of my blood and see if it was real.
To earn this good living, I would drive 2,500,000 miles and fly an additional 12,500,000 miles. I would receive 275 tickets for speeding.
I would have multiple near air accidents traveling to cities including engine failure, fuel exhaustion, fire and worst of all, on a private plane on final approach to San Angelo Texas, Dusty Rhodes would get air sick and vomit all over the windshield while I was flying the plane.
While on the road traveling I would drink 360,000 cans of beer. I would also drink innumerable shots of vodka, rum, whiskey, scotch, wine, gin, tequila, an anise flavored Greek liquor called ouzo and on occasion, pure grain alcohol. I would have 3,250 hangovers and take twenty-five years to figure out, "That was ridiculous."
I would argue, fight, talk, and demand respect for this business only to have it renamed "Sports Entertainment."
I would purchase the obligatory Halliburton bag, expensive watch, exotic skin cowboy boots, sports car and as is the case with many wrestlers, I would get a divorce.
I would get hit over the head with a chair thousands of times.
I would wrestle a barbed wire match with my brother and everyone at ringside would throw their chairs at Terry and I, filling the ring with chairs and we thought, "This is really fun."
Many dear friends in the wrestling business younger than me would die.
I would coach a class of young wrestlers and none of them would know the terms: carpenter, crow bar, Pat O'Connor Roll up, ring general, cement mixer, Broadway, or how to speak Carney. They thought Kay Fabe was a female wrestler on the card next week.
If this clairvoyant would have told me all this would happen to me, I would have turned tail and run and all my Daddy would have seen was my ass going in the opposite direction, fast!
NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The truth is I wish The Lord would give me just one more lifetime so I could do it all over again.