Quotes by People Way Smarter Than Me #4 - Freya Manfield

Imagine This

 

When you’re young, and in good health,
you can imagine living in New York City,
or Nepal, or in a tree beyond the moon,
and who knows who you’ll marry: a millionaire,
a monkey, a sea captain, a clown.

But the best imaginers are the old and wounded,
who swim through ever narrowing choices,
dedicating their hearts to peace, a stray cat,
a bowl of homemade vegetable soup,
or red Mountain Ash berries in the snow.

Imagine this: only one leg and lucky to have it,
a jig-jagged jaunt with a cane along the shore,
leaning on a walker to get from grocery to car,
smoothing down the sidewalk on a magic moving chair,
teaching every child you meet the true story

of this sad, sweet, tragic, Fourth of July world.

Running Thoughts #7 - Benevolent Protector

As I sit down to begin writing this, the dust is settling on yet another Mother’s Day and it inevitably gets me to thinking of its slightly less celebrated counterpart, Father’s Day, coming up soon.  The pressures of Mother’s Day sluice off as I begin to settle in in expectation of the holiday celebrating me and my role in the family.  Father’s Day has become more-or-less obligation free for me, which presents its own bittersweet tang since this is due largely to the passing of my own father back in October of 2006.  As such, that means that this will be the eighth fatherless Father’s Day I’ve had to face.  Hardly a milestone anniversary, but it seems to me that enough time has passed where I can look back and think a little more objectively, a little more clearly, about what my Dad was all about, what his presence truly meant to me, and what I’ve truly lost in his subsequent absence.  Seems to me that should be a fitting enough tip-of-the-hat to Father’s Day for me this year.

Dad was large.  And by large, I don’t necessarily mean he was a physically large man (we both fall a wee bit short of average in terms of height, and a wee bit more than average in terms of girth).  But he had a large presence.  No doubt he was a Type-A personality, and, at least within the context of a family, his personality had a tendency to dominate and overpower those of anyone around him.  I don’t mean to couch this as if it were a bad thing – rather, it’s just how it was.  For example, I have to truly say that I never really fully knew my mother, her true personality, the full extent of her likes and dislikes, until the years following Dad’s passing.  She quite simply put much of that on the shelf while Dad was alive, and the fact that she did so, was willing and able to do so, is probably what made her such a good match for him.  One could easily read a negative connotation into this arrangement, and I really don’t mean it that way.  It’s simply how it was, and I figure Mom had her own reasons for acquiescing, however consciously or unconsciously, to such an emotional arrangement.  This is not to say that Dad deliberately dominated her or marginalized her likes or preferences, his personality simply took up a lot of “space”, and Mom was willing to move aside and allow his personality to occupy that space it needed.  As a result, Dad’s personality and temperament was more or less the personality and temperament of our entire family, with a few exceptions.

I won’t deign to speak for how this worked for my siblings, but for me, it kind of fit my own personality rather comfortably.  I was never one to dominate a room.  Personality-wise, I was always one to “pick my spots”.  I preferred playing off of the larger, more dominant personalities of those around me, chiming in with a well-timed (hopefully) quip here, a cleverly-stated (again, hopefully) opinion there, ever content to be a complimentary counter-melody as opposed to being the main theme of the music.  As a result, I, for the most part, got along very well with Dad.  Don’t get me wrong, we had our moments.  I had the same rebellious conflicts with him that most teenagers have with their parents.  The only difference with me is that when I disagreed with Dad, or when he was laying down an edict that wasn’t to my liking, I would give due deference to him to his face, and then go about doing what I was going to do anyway.  I just found it easier that way.  I wasn’t much for open conflict and I didn’t see what good it did anyway.  For the most part, I could largely get away with doing whatever I wanted to do (provided it wasn’t anything too scandalous – which was hardly ever the case), as long as I paid my due respects to Dad to his face.  Deceptive?  Sure.  But it worked, and kept us from constantly being at each other’s throats which I saw as being destructive and unnecessary.  And I really don’t think it was a matter of Dad being too stupid to see what I was doing.  I think his ability or willingness to condone my duplicity was partly his appreciation of my willingness to show him proper respect, and partly due to his understanding, on some level, that half of growing up is being a fuck-up, and he was willing to let me have some space and learn from my own mistakes.  It had to be one of the most gratifying experiences of his life to hear me, in my early twenties, admit to him on several occasions that he had been right about something he had tried to explain to me in my teens.  I just didn’t have the necessary experience at the time he was telling me to fully realize that truth of what he was saying.

Anyhow, that was the basic dynamic between myself and Dad while growing up, and the basic gist of the role he played in our larger family.  Now what follows is going to largely focus on the many virtues Dad had and the incredibly positive things he brought to my life and to our family.  Before I dive into that end of the pool though, I have to give a necessary disclaimer.  Dad was no saint, and he was not without some very deep and problematic flaws.  However, I’m not going to spend any time airing the details of that kind of dirty laundry.  Every single one of us carries around our own set of flaws, some of them significant, and it is not the part of somebody else to expose them for others to see.  If Dad were here now, I believe he would be the first to admit to how deeply flawed a person he really was, and then it would be up to him to decide how many details he wanted to share.  Unfortunately, we don’t have the benefit of his presence to allow such a conversation to occur.  And, in my mind, that’s kind of immaterial to the point I want to make anyway.  I want to convey a general sense of how I remember him, and to be honest, I almost always remember him for his virtues and so rarely remember him for his flaws.  I don’t know if that’s more a testament to the power of his virtues than it is the overall redeeming power of love in general, and love’s general ability to minimize the flaws in everyone.  So while I’m more than willing to readily admit that Dad was a flawed man, I will always remember him as a man that brought so many positives to my life.

So what were some of these positives?  In many ways, Dad was an anachronism, even for the time period in which he lived and worked.  Dad did not believe in buying anything on credit.  His philosophy on that, which he inherited from his own father, was that if you didn’t have the money for it, you didn’t need it, and if you did need it you would put forth the necessary effort, time and discipline to save for it.  By today’s standards, such a philosophy sounds Pollyanna-ish in its naiveté.  Who in this day and age has the time to save enough money for a house until they can buy it outright?  Not many people, unless you’re willing rent into your fifties before you buy your first home.  But for him and the time period he grew up in, it worked.  My Dad paid cash for everything and the closest thing he ever came to taking out a major loan was when he borrowed a couple thousand dollars from his own father so he could build a house, and then he ended up paying him back in cash within a few years.  But my father (and his father before him) could do that.  They could build their own houses.  They could fix their own cars and make their own household repairs.  There was so very little that they actually had to hire someone to do on their behalf.  As a result, they could do things much more cheaply than most other folks, and their penchant for avoiding credit on everything else (my parents didn’t even have a credit card until the late 80s), meant that by the time he was in his late thirties, he owned the full worth of every house he had ever lived in (at appreciated values) and possessed virtually zero debt.  So while he didn’t possess levels of wealth that would necessarily be considered “rich”, he had an obscenely high spending ability compared with what he owned.  And for a man with humble tastes and virtually no expensive habits, this means he might as well have been rich.  Want a new metal roof for the house?  Pay cash.  Want that new digital satellite service you’ve been hearing about?  He could easily afford it.  By this point in his life, with little in the way of expenses beyond groceries and utilities, this meant that if he want or needed something, he could pretty much buy it outright.  

Having just typed out the above, I can easily see how my Dad could be the object of envy and jealousy.  Hell, I’m jealous and I’m his son.  I have nowhere near the buying power my Dad had at the same age (unfortunately I didn’t share his natural aversion to credit).  But you would never know it by looking at him.  He kept humble, but nice, tastes.  Our home was very nice and in good repair, but modest in terms of size and design.  And while he liked nice vehicles, they were hardly of the luxury class.  A practical sedan like a Honda and a dependable pick-up truck were all he needed.  In his dress, at least during his later years, he would probably be considered slovenly by most standards, though he was known to dress nicely in his younger days when social engagements were a larger part of his everyday life.

So that was my Dad.  A “rich little poor man”, so to speak.  And this meant a lot to me, not because of the accessible “wealth”, but because of the sense of security this enabled him to give us.  Never once in my life do I remember a bill collector or creditor making a call or visit to our house.  Bills were paid within a day of hitting our mailbox.  If a new TV or appliance showed up at our house, it wasn’t bought on a whim but because we genuinely needed it, and I knew it was paid in full by the time it came through the door.  And when the inevitable “disasters” in life hit – either one of us kids fucking up and wrecking a car or a furnace breaking or a storm damaging the house, I knew that the insurance was paid and would take care of it, or that we had the money stored away to cover the expense (what he took out of our hides in way of punishment was another story).  Never once did I have to fear for food being on the table or a roof being over our head or wheels being in the driveway because some unforeseen expense had been visited upon the family.  The financial security he brought to the family was so complete that I took it completely for granted growing up.  I couldn’t demand a Camaro for my sixteenth birthday like some kids I knew, but I knew when I got my license that there would be a vehicle available for my exclusive use, and that was a whole lot more than most kids I knew could expect.

But the security my Dad provided was so much more than financial.  My Dad also provided us with a great deal of physical and emotional security, and was decidedly old school in those areas as well.  My Dad had grown up fighting on the industry-lined streets of Delaware County, PA, and was a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.  So he knew how to handle himself in a scrape and had actual, bona fide experience in life-or-death situations involving deadly weapons.  I never feared for someone coming through our front door in the middle of the night or approaching us in the streets with diabolical intentions when Dad was around.  And while Dad was not one for overly expressive displays of his love and affection for us as we got older (hugs for my sisters was about as emotive as he got), he lavished so much of it upon us when we were small children that there was never, ever really any doubt about where we stood with him in that regard.  Plus, as I indicated somewhat above, his love really showed through in his actions.  He was a provider and a protector.  Even though my older years were not replete with, “I love you’s”, in every other sense of the phrase, he “walked the walk”, and that more than made up for it for me.

One positive trait he had that didn’t become clear to me until rather late in my own life is the fact that he never allowed himself to look worried or scared in front of us children.  Whatever tense discussions he may have had with Mom, whatever handwringing he may have indulged in as he dealt with the latest life-crisis visited upon us, occurred behind closed doors - out of sight and out of ear-shot.  Having finally dealt with a few life-crises myself as the father of a small child, I only now truly appreciate what a gift that was to us.  Nothing instills fear in a child’s heart more than to see their father and/or mother, the very foundations of their world, scared, upset or hesitant in dealing with problems that threaten family security.  Dad’s ability to screen that from us was so complete that I honestly thought the man never panicked or worried about anything.  It’s only now that I realize how scared or unsure of himself he had to have been at several junctures, and how thoroughly difficult it must have been for him to hide those emotions from us.  But he did, and as a result of that sacrifice, I had a childhood as free from stress and anxiety (at least about monumental things) as was probably possible.  To this day I get angry and upset when I see adults crying and carrying on in front of their children.  

Shortly before my own daughter was born my wife and I indulged in the usual ritual of researching baby names, their meanings and variation.  Of course, a normal part of that process is looking up the meaning of your own name which, in my case, was a name I shared with my father – Edward.

If I remember the details correctly, the name “Edward” in Latin means “benevolent protector”, or, “a kindly presence who guards others from harm”.  While I know that my dad’s own father wouldn’t have bothered looking up the meaning of the name he affixed it to Dad, he couldn’t have chosen a better moniker.  Dad truly was, in every way, shape and form, a protective presence in my life.

So where does that leave me all this time later and eight years beyond my last goodbye to him?

I haven’t slept in late since he passed.

Those who knew me from my younger days knew I loved to sleep, and would sleep straight through until Noon when I could get away with it.

Nowadays, my eyes begin to blink open as soon as the barest hint of sunlight begins creeping in the window.  By the time the sun is up, if I’m still in bed, I’m faking it.  I simply cannot sleep any later than sunrise.  

Why?

The security is gone.

Once I became an adult and struck out on my own with a wife and, eventually, a daughter, I made a point of being as self-sufficient as I could be.  I didn’t rely on Dad and his ready access to cash to supplement my life or defray the cost of making it in this harsh and sometimes very expensive world. 

But I knew it was there.  And I knew he would let me have it if the shit hit the fan hard enough and the need warranted it.

I also knew I could count on him emotionally, though, as I said above, we were hardly emotive with each other.  While I never really struck out to be this way, I found that, as I got older and outgrew the youthful exuberance of my twenties, my friends (at least the type I see on a regular basis), dwindled dramatically.  I became much more family-focused, not only on my own burgeoning family, but my relationship with my parents.  In addition to being my father, Dad became a wise, experienced and trusted friend I could share things with and pick his brain about how to address problems in my own life.

That’s gone as well.  And I haven’t opened up to anyone else near as much since.

There is, and continues to be, a big void in my life that my father used to occupy, and nothing has ever really come close to taking up that space again.

I love my mother and know she loves me.  And, further, I knew that if I ever really needed her support, financially or otherwise, she would be there for me as much as possible.

But she’s just a different type of presence.  I guess it’s natural for a son to look at his mother, especially as she gets older and is now without her own husband, as something to be protected as opposed to being a supporting presence in her own right.  

In the meantime, I love my own wife and child, and share things with them I would never share with another human being on this planet.  But, again, it’s a different kind of relationship.  While I can draw energy from their love and their emotional support (which is significant), I am now the “benevolent protector” for them.  I’m the one who needs to appear confident and non-plussed in a crisis.  I’m the one who needs to find the strength and wherewithal, whether it be physically, emotionally or financially, to steer our way through the inevitable crises that life brings.

And it’s an honor to do so.  If there’s one thing I can do to honor Dad’s memory, it’s to take as seriously as possible that sacred duty he performed so well for us, to be a steadying presence, a bulwark against the storm and the guy who knows how to sail through it to safety.

And that’s the reason I can’t sleep in late.  When I was young, it was Dad doing all that, so I could sleep in and let daylight burn.  Nothing urgent required my attention and I could bask in the security he provided.

Now, the daylight creeps in under my eyelids and within seconds of hitting the window, and I’m immediately hyperaware of the problems, extant and potential, probable or merely hypothetical, that threaten and stir along that distant horizon.  

And so, in Dad’s memory, and in honor of his example, I get up and meet them, casting a shadow for my family to hopefully sleep in and remain blissfully unaware of the thunder in the distance.

It’s funny, I always thought Dad got up so early simply because he liked it.  And I think he did on some level, though I know now that a big part of it was to simply be up and be aware.  What’s coming over that horizon along with the sun?  What do I have to plan for?  What do I have to be ready for?  Do I have enough to address it or do I have more work to do?  Is there more preparation to be done?

For the sun is not the only thing that comes over that horizon.  And that’s the secret he knew and that I now know.  The secret he kept from us when I was young.  It’s a secret handed from father to son as a secret to be kept from their own families.  Not as an act of deception, but as an act of love.

As an act of grace.

I still miss you Dad.

 

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there – and a special shout out to those who have lost their fathers recently – I know of at least a few personally.  I share your pain.

 

 

Quotes By People Way Smarter Than Me #3 - Eckhart Tolle

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one.  But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.  And that's a revelation for some people:  to relaize that your life is only ever now.

Inexplicable Things on the Internet I Find to Be Funny #4

Running Thoughts #6 – Chasing Barry Windham (or, “What the Hell is Up with All That Wrestling Crap on Your Facebook Page?”) Part 3

Part 3 of 3

Against all odds, I had the singular joy of finding my old hero, Barry Windham, waiting for me after arriving in Pennsylvania from Florida.  Then, cruelly, I had that joy wrested away from me when Barry pulled a disappearing act at the height of the U.S. Express’s popularity.  With no cable TV, no access to wrestling publications and the internet over a decade away, I was left in the dark on what had happened and, without Barry to command my attention, my interest in the glitzy, gimmicky style of wrestling offered by the WWF faded away.

I quit watching wrestling shortly after, and, at the tender age of 13, wrote it off as just another thing I was growing out of.

And it’s funny, because I realize now that if I had hung on for year or two longer, I would have seen Barry back in the WWF, this time repackaged as a badass cowboy character named The Widowmaker (my father, the source of much disdain for my early fascination with wrestling, ironically developed into the family’s only true wrestling fan and was the person who advised me of this development).  

However, assuming I managed to care at all by that point, my heart would have been broken by two things:  1.)  this Widowmaker character was portrayed as a “heel” (i.e. – a “bad guy”), and for someone who grew up idolizing Barry as a hero in Florida, this would have been very tough for me to swallow; and 2.) Barry was due to pull another inexplicable disappearing act just a few short months into this new “angle” (i.e. – another wrestling term used to denote a wrestling storyline).

I didn’t learn the real story until decades later, when, in the mid-2000s, married for a few years and trying to negotiate the shocking transition into parenthood, I had my mid-life crisis a few years earlier than most people.  Like many folks, I sought to deal with it by revisiting many of the things that I had inexplicably abandoned during the course of my life that had given me joy in my youth.  I started with Hard Rock/Heavy Metal, and was pleased to discover that many of the old bands I had given up for dead had found new life all these years later (specifically I’m talking about Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and, of course, my all-time favorite, Rush).  When the glow of that particular rediscovery began to fade, I moved on to comic books.  And while I was pleased to find that the quality of comics had rebounded somewhat since the moribund mess of the 90s, the industry was a shell of its former self and its product, starved of ad revenue, had gotten prohibitively high in cost for the relative amount of entertainment it offered.  I soon wrote comics off as simply not being worth the money I was required to put out in order to follow the ongoing exploits of my favorite characters.

That pretty much left wrestling, and when I turned my attention back to it all these years later, I was staggered to find that where there was an absolute dearth of resources available to me in the mid-to-late 80s, there was almost an embarrassment of riches in this present age.  The miracle of the internet provided a wealth of information and, specifically, YouTube gave me access to years and years of matches that were simply beyond my reach when they were current.  Additionally, there were all these wonderful books published by, and about, the wrestlers of that bygone age.  These books, in addition to being a source of distinctly insider information, were wildly entertaining and remain a guilty pleasure of mine to this very day.  

I did not find all the details of Barry’s career laid out conveniently in a single book like I was able to find on most wrestlers, and I will not attempt to reproduce that here.  But truth be told, I would love to be tapped to be the one to write that book someday if the right people and the right resources were put at my disposal (a pipe dream, I know, but I figured I’d put it out there in case the right set of eyes happened to land on this article).  But I was able to find enough information from diverse sources to piece together what seems, to me, to be a fairly credible overall picture.

Barry went on to have a strangely quixotic career.  One cannot say that he was unsuccessful (he was World Heavyweight Champion for a time).  One could not say he that he wasn’t a star.

But somehow, looking at the length and breadth of his career all these years later, it seems strangely unsatisfactory.  

Perhaps “unsatisfying” is a better word.

What did I find?

First thing’s first, what the hell happened to Barry when he disappeared from the WWF at the height of the U.S. Express’s success in the mid-80s?

Apparently, tired and burnt out from a travel schedule that was a bit more punitive than what he was used to from Florida, and laboring under a style of wrestling that really didn’t suit him, Barry took the plane ticket that was intended to get him to his next show and instead, with no notice to McMahon or the powers-that-be in the WWF, traded it in for a ticket to Florida. 

In a nutshell, he took his red bandana and those cool-ass wrestling boots and went home.  

The WWF moved on without him, and the British Bulldogs replaced the U.S. Express as the top “face” tag team in the promotion.

It was only natural that Barry, back in the familiar confines of the sunshine state, began wrestling for the CWF again.  But whereas he had always kind of been a big fish in a small pond there before, this was like an Academy Award winning actor dropping out of his latest movie so he could be featured in his hometown production of King Lear.

That being said, what was my loss was Florida’s gain, and Barry went on to perform some of the best wrestling of his career during his post-WWF time in CWF.  He engaged in a brutal and bloody feud with Cowboy Ron Bass, and not only held the Florida Heavyweight Title on a few occasions, but went against Ric Flair for the World Heavyweight Title in a few of those legendary (and hour-long) matches that I mentioned earlier.  He looked great.  His wrestling was superb.  And it was during this time period, in my opinion, that Barry was at his physical peak and really became an absolute force as a wrestler and a performer.
 

Barry Back in Florida at His Physical Peak, circa 1985 - 86

I think that a part of what made that series of matches with Flair during this era so popular and so successful (they are held up to this very day as being some of the best matches of either wrestler’s career and some of the best examples of wrestling in the 80s) was not only the talent of the two athletes in the ring, but the way the two characters played so well off of each other.  You see Flair was a seasoned, multi-time champion by this point in his career, and perfectly fit the profile of a savvy, seasoned veteran plying his trade.  Barry, meanwhile, despite being more than a decade into his career, came across so well as the young, up-and-coming challenger who chased the title and gave the veteran champion everything he could handle, but, through inexperience or over-eagerness, could never quite catch him. 

 

“Maybe someday”, the announcer would expound as Flair found yet another way to escape his match with Barry, championship still intact, “But not quite yet.”  

 

The prevailing mindset, at least from the fans’ perspective, was that Barry would be the champion one day.  He was just too damned talented not to.  And for this reason, whenever Flair rode into town and Barry, as CWF’s #1 contender, climbed into the ring to meet him, the fans gladly handed over their money in the hopes that this would be the time Barry took it to the Nature Boy.  That this would be the time the promise would be fulfilled and Florida’s hometown hero would be crowned the king.

 

Without fail, those fans always got their money’s worth.  Without fail, Flair and Barry would spend 45 minutes to an hour hitting each other with everything but the ring post, much to the fans’ delight.  Barry would give Flair everything he could handle, and that World Heavyweight Championship belt always seemed poised to find its way around Barry’s waste.

 

Just not yet.

 

Flair always found a way to last until time ran out, or get himself disqualified (titles normally didn’t change hands for a disqualification) or grab a handful of Barry’s shorts (quite illegally) to get the winning pin.

 

This pattern played itself out over the better part of year and was always successful.  It was great theater, and a proven money maker to boot.  The fans loved it.  The formula worked.

 

And that was the problem.  Barry was so damned good at playing the “young up and comer”, at “chasing” the title, that he never really “caught” it.  He never really “arrived”.

 

As I said before, wrestling is, first and foremost, a business.  A money-making enterprise.

 

Some wrestlers draw their money by being the Champion - by being the one everybody else chases.

 

And some wrestlers draw their money by being the ones who chase.

 

Unfortunately, it seemed that Barry, at least in the eyes of the powers-that-be who booked the matches, saw Barry more as a “chaser” than a “champion”.

 

This was where the money was.  And as a result, he never really “caught” the champion.  Not during his physical peak anyway.

 

Meanwhile, CWF, like all of the surviving regional territories by that time, was in stark decline and really couldn’t offer Barry a viable means of long-term success.  The fact that Barry, who ranked among the top 3 – 4 wrestlers in the world at that point, wrestled for CWF in the promotion’s dying days was probably one of the few bright spots for Florida wrestling during those dark days.

 

And as CWF slowly died in the remaining days of that decade, the remaining NWA territories (including CWF) began to consolidate under the banner of Jim Crockett Promotions, the outfit that historically owned and operated NWA’s Mid-Atlantic territory.  And, via the national reach of their cable TV show (World Championship Wrestling, which aired weekly on Ted Turner’s TBS Superstation), this consolidated brand of NWA wrestling began competing with McMahon and the WWF on a national level. 

 

Having signed on with the Crocketts in late 1986, it was hard for Barry, with his boat-load of talent and world-class looks, to be anything but a fan favorite for World Championship Wrestling (WCW).  As such, it would only have been natural for him to be positioned and promoted as a realistic “face” challenger for Flair’s title upon his arrival at that promotion.  The problem was, his decision to go to work for McMahon’s WWF two years prior had consequences.  The powers-that-be in what was rapidly becoming the last bastion for the NWA in an increasingly WWF-dominated wrestling universe held that prior decision against Barry.  As a result, instead of embracing him upon his arrival as a star and a worthy standard-bearer for their product, Barry was kept in mid-card status (i.e. – popular, but not a headliner) by WCW during his early employment there in favor of other “face” contenders.  Don’t get me wrong, Barry wasn’t “jobbing” necessarily (i.e. – losing one-sided matches to make other wrestlers look better), but he was decidedly kept out of the World Championship picture in favor of other stars,   – wrestlers like Magnum TA (the new persona of the aforementioned ex-CWF wrestler Terry Allen), Lex Luger, the soon-to-be-legendary Sting, and even the recently-turned-“face” Nikita Koloff, who replaced Magnum TA as Dusty Rhodes’ main ally after Magnum’s in-ring career was cut short due to injuries incurred in a tragic auto accident.  

 

However, Barry just had too much talent and was too “over” (i.e. popular with the fans) to be marginalized forever, and before he long, he was back to wrestling those 45 minute to hour-long “broadways” (i.e. – draws) with Ric Flair.  Unfortunately, just when it seemed like Barry had out-lasted the hard feelings held against him for jumping to the WWF in 1984, he had the misfortune of becoming collateral damage in a contract dispute between Flair and WCW.  When WCW was unable to resolve this dispute with their long-time Champion, Flair jump ship himself to the WWF, and WCW opted to go with Lex Luger as their new champion instead of Barry (who was Flair’s preference at the time).  And who did WCW book to lose to Lex Luger in the match held to fill that vacated World Championship title?  You guessed it.  Barry Windham.

 

It also didn’t help that on the other side of the fence, Barry had pissed McMahon off for a second time in the early 90s when he backed out of his Widowmaker role and ruined McMahon’s plans to cast Barry as a meaningful challenger to Hogan.  The explanation for Barry’s sudden departure from the WWF that time around was beyond bizarre – namely, that he had to temporarily give up wrestling so he could focus on helping his father and brother (fellow wrestlers Blackjack Mulligan and Kendall Windham) out of a legal nightmare stemming from their involvement in a criminal counterfeiting scheme.  While Barry ultimately convinced McMahon to release him from his contract (arguing that his family’s legal troubles could only bring bad publicity to a promotion already catching heat from a their own burgeoning steroid scandal), the move hardly ingratiated himself to McMahon, who was likely still fuming from Barry going AWOL during the height of the U.S. Express’s popularity in the middle of the last decade.

 

So during a time period when the wrestling world was all but dominated by two promotions (WCW and WWF), Barry couldn’t overcome his “chaser” role in the one, and couldn’t seem to keep from pissing off the man with the checkbook in the other.

 

So where did that leave my hero?

 

Well, he did get his moment of glory in WCW when they finally did put the World Heavyweight Championship around his waist during the first half of 1993.  However, it seems to me that he was given the belt for little reason more than to give Flair, freshly returned from to WCW, a meaningful person to win the title off of (which promptly happened about four months down the road).   In addition, Barry was already sadly past his physical peak at the ripe old age of 33.  He really wasn’t the same wrestler that had wowed me and many other wrestling fans throughout the 80s.  And all the “promise” he showed earlier in his career received a death blow in the very match where he dropped the title back to Flair.  Coming off of the ring ropes in the middle of the match, he managed to tear out all of the ligaments in one of his knees.  One would never know this from watching the match.  While Barry was one of the best at “selling” his opponent’s moves (i.e. – acting like he was hurt to enhance the realism of the match), he rarely showed any reaction when he was hurt for real (which, yes, does happen quite frequently in “fake” professional wrestling).  So the fans were pretty much clueless that Barry wrestled half of that match with a shot knee.  Performing in what must have been considerable pain, Barry did the “job”, laid on the match for Flair, dropped the belt back to him, and was really never the same wrestler again. 

 

Because you see, the other thing about Barry was that, despite how skinny he looked early in his career, he really was a “big man”.  At 6’ 7” and often wrestling at weights anywhere between 225 – 280 lbs., he couldn’t be considered anything but “big”.  However, his move set was more akin to those quicker, smaller wrestlers (often known as “fliers”) who would wow the audience with moves that were more “aerial” in nature.  Big wrestlers were known more for “power moves” and brawling, and while Barry could do those kinds of moves (like I said, there was virtually nothing he was incapable of in the ring), many of his moves were also “aerial”, involving jumping and leaping and, inevitably, crashing back into the mat.

 

Quite frankly, I think it was that particular combination of qualities (i.e. - a “big man” who could wrestle “aerially”), that originally made him such a compelling performer to watch.

 

However, that combination of qualities poses a problem too.  Big men don’t last long performing an “aerial” style of wrestling.  It’s too hard on their joints.  They carry too much weight to go crashing into the mat or the ring post from those kinds of heights night after night after night (the workloads of wrestlers back in the 80s were legendary, especially by today’s standards).  It wasn’t unusual for wrestlers back then to perform well over 300 shows a year, and you can imagine what that workload would do to a regular body, let alone a 6’ 7” man who typically wrestled above 250 lbs. and who could leap and fly with the best of him. 

 

I figure that by the time the 90s dawned, Barry was already past his physical peak, and by the time 92 – 93 rolled around (along with his world title run), he was already a shell of his former self.  Don’t get me wrong, he still wrestled, and wrestled consistently well into the 2000s.  However, to anyone who saw him wrestle in the 80s, it was hardly the same guy.  And to anyone who saw him for the first time in the 90s, they were probably considerably unimpressed.  Barry could still “work”.  He could still “perform”.  But that specialness was gone.  He wasn’t getting quite so high with that Flying Lariat anymore.  And while he tried to adapt his move set to fit his increasing physical limitations (i.e. – he started specializing more in suplexes as opposed to aerial moves like the Flying Lariat), there was only so far he could go.  Where he had started out as a physically amazing wunderkind, he aged into a technically acceptable but visually mediocre big man in seemingly no time flat.

 

The rest of his career from there is a laundry list of bizarre angles and mediocre performances.  When he was done with his moribund title run in the mid-90s, Barry did wrestle for McMahon again in the WWF, and McMahon had a series of stupid gimmicks and humiliations waiting for him.  First, Barry was cast as “The Stalker”, a crazed ex-special ops guy who would wrestle in camouflage and battle fatigues.  Then he was repackaged with a new tag team partner as “The New Blackjacks”, where, complete with freshly re-dyed dark hair and mustache, he got to revisit the failure he had experienced as “Blackjack Mulligan, Jr.” so many years earlier (except this time he was fifty to seventy pounds heavier with bad knees).  

 

Barry (Left) with Justin Bradshaw as "The New Blackjacks"

The very last match of his that I could find on YouTube had him back in his regular old “Barry Windham” persona, though heavier than I had ever seen him and looking none-to-good.  He was wrestling, of all people, The Undertaker, a fabulous wrestler who is a multi-time WWF Champion with impeccable Hall of Fame credentials.  From everything I’ve heard and from everything I’ve been able to read, the wrestler who plays The Undertaker (Mark Calaway) is a straight-up good guy, so I have trouble holding him responsible for what happened in this match.  

 

It was a straight-up “squash match”.

 

Barry was quickly dominated by The Undertaker, and made to submit to his finishing move, the “Tombstone Piledriver”, after which, lying seemingly unconscious on the mat, The Undertaker gently crossed Barry’s arms across his chest and pinned him for the win.

 

It lasted all of about 45 seconds.

Barry (Left) About to Square Off Against The Undertaker in One of His Last Matches for WWF/WWE

I never heard the full story behind this match, but I can’t help but wonder if Barry, wanting one more match in the WWF under his old, regular persona as “Barry Windham”, didn’t approach the Undertaker for this match before taking his leave from the WWF a final time.  If so, then I suppose I owe a tip-of-the-hat to Calaway for agreeing to send Barry off in this manner, but I just wish it hadn’t come across as being so one-sided. 

 

I don’t even know if McMahon had anything to do with it.

 

Regardless, that match effectively ended my research into Barry Windham’s career, and probably, for all intents and purposes, signals Barry’s last appearance in a major wrestling promotion.  I know he wrestled a bit more for a dying WCW (seemingly just long enough to reinjure his knee), and even returned to what was now an independent wrestling scene in Florida before calling it quits for good.  However, in my mind, that horrible match with The Undertaker serves as a meaningful (if not entirely accurate) milestone marking the symbolic end of his career.

 

I know that there will probably be some true, dyed-in-the-wool wrestling fans reading this article who will be quick to point out that I completely failed to cover the one era for which Barry is probably most known for in wider wrestling circles – his late 80s/early 90s stint as a “heel” in the legendary Four Horseman (probably the single most successful wrestling “stable” in the history of the business).  And they’ll be right – that is a glaring omission and one I should probably be taken to task for.  The reason I didn’t spend any time on it is because, first off, this article is really about what Barry’s career has meant to me.  It is not meant to be a detailed and painstakingly accurate timeline of Barry’s career.  And to me, Barry always was, first and foremost a “face” character.  A good guy.  Willing to stand up for what’s right (and sometimes taking a phenomenal beating for it).  And secondly, I feel that his Horseman phase, however spectacular, to me was just another part of his being kept out of the World Title picture and being considered by WCW to be more of a “chaser” than a “champion” (after all, it was during this period that he was known as the “hungry young lion” of the Horsemen).  So while I can’t necessarily let that phase of his career go completely unmentioned, I also can’t justify (to myself, at least) as treating it as anything more than a part of his “chaser” career in WCW.

Barry (Center) as the "Hungry Young Lion" of the Four Horsemen, with Tully Blanchard (Left) and Arn Anderson (Right)

So where does this rundown of the mercurial, beguiling and confounding career of Barry Windham leave us?

 

To me, it kind of brings me back full circle to the reason I began searching for my “lost” childhood hero to begin with.  As I explained, one of my main motivators for looking into this was a mid-life crisis – a sudden realization that a good part of my life, perhaps even the best part, was behind me.  

 

How the hell had that happened?

 

Much like my characterization of Barry’s career, I spent so much of my early years “chasing” – chasing a good education, chasing a good job, a good career, a good wife, a good house, a good family.  I spent so much time “chasing” that after a while, it seemed that all of life was “the chase”.  The “catching” was forgotten.  

 

I had gotten very good at “chasing”.  Most of my accomplishments and worldly wealth (such as it is) were obtained by “chasing”.  Quite frankly, I was having a whole lot of fun “chasing” these things.

 

And then something happened that made me feel like I had caught a Flying Lariat right in the gut.  It took my breath away.

 

In my chosen field, in my particular line of work, I worked quite a bit around, and for, older and more experienced people.  These people had, more or less, created the field I worked in and taught me everything I know about it.  This was great, but as a result, I got so used to feeling like, and being treated as, the young “up and coming” guy who had all the promise, all the potential, and all these great years ahead of him.  I was the youth that was going to inject some new life into things and carry these endeavors into the new century.

 

And then one day I, along with a female colleague of mine who had also been considered “young and promising”, were talking with an attorney we hadn’t worked with for about a year or so.  This attorney was recounting a conversation he had had with some people from our office a year prior.  He indicated that he couldn’t remember who those people were, but that they were very young and seemed very new and eager to learn.

 

Without hesitating, I indicated that it was probably me and my colleague he had been talking to.

 

He looked at me bluntly and disdainfully for about a full second before stating in his simple and deadpan way:  “No.”

 

It hit me right between the eyes.   

 

I was done “chasing”.  Apparently, I had “arrived”.  

 

And having arrived, I had the sudden realization that things didn’t look that much different than they did when I was chasing them.

 

Was this is then?  I mean, it’s not that “this” is all that bad.  In many ways, “this” is pretty damned good.  But, is “this” all there is?  Is “this” what the “chasing” was all about.  Was this what all the “promise” was about?

 

I go back to that word “promise”.  The word “promise” practically defined Barry for the better part of his career – at least the best part of it.  The part worth remembering.  And, again, Barry’s career was far from unsuccessful.  But did he achieve his “promise”?

 

Do any of us?

 

I don’t know.  And I suspect the answer to that question, if there is one, is a little bit different for each of us.

 

But one thing I do know, both from my own experience and from watching the career of my childhood hero – the “chase” is the best part.

 

Sometimes I think that my memories of Barry would have been better if, having left Florida, I had never come across Barry Windham again.  That he just would’ve stayed down south, out of my sight and out of my attention.  That he wouldn’t have been waiting for me up north in the WWF where I witnessed first-hand the beginning of his transformation from promising young talent to fully mature wrestler who never seemed to quite get over his own image of being the young “up and comer”.

 

That way, he would have stayed, in my mind’s eye anyway, that young skinny kid who dared to climb into the ring and mix it up with giants.  That way, he would’ve stayed perpetually young and promising, outside the stream of time, just like my other childhood hero – Spider-Man.  

 

What is it about what Barry became that messes it all up for me?

 

There’s nothing more beautiful than “promise”.  And, at least as a wrestler, nobody seemed to embody the idea of “promise” more than a young Barry Windham.  

 

But with every year he spent in the business, with every year he aged, every match he wrestled, every “bump” he took, every line in his face and pound added to his frame, the promise seemed to diminish, to fade before our very eyes.

 

How can one ever achieve one’s “promise” when “promise” alone is one’s greatest virtue?  How can the very embodiment of “promise” ever achieve what it “promises”?  The answer is:  you can’t.  In such a situation, every step taken towards that goal is inevitably and simultaneously a step away from it.  In the act of “achievement”, you take a decided and irrevocable step away from your “promise”.  There are a few, a relative few, who seem to be able to obtain an “achievement” that is at least as good, but often greater, than their “promise”.  And these rare people are the ones who go on to be considered “giants” in their fields of endeavor and in our wider culture as a whole.  People like Albert Einstein.  Mahatma Gandhi.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  Muhammad Ali.  And, if I can be forgiven for applying this concept to the world of professional wrestling, Ric Flair.  But not everybody can be an Einstein, a Gandhi, a King.  Not everyone can be a Ric Flair.

 

And Barry, much like myself, was one of those people who fell short of gaining admittance to that land of giants.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s the lot that falls to most of us.

 

But man, was he something special back in the day.

 

There’s a picture that I love that made the rounds on Instagram recently, showing a pair of young, promising, up-and-coming wrestlers who seemed to be on the very brink of achieving greatness.  They were so brimming with promise and future success that they were practically glowing with it.  The wrestlers in that photo were a young Terry Allen (the aforementioned Magnum T.A., himself a wrestler of great promise cut tragically short) and my hero, Barry Windham.  But I think what I love the most about it is that it captures them in an intimate moment, posing with fans back stage at some wrestling venue, Barry still in his jeans and t-shirt with his arms around the shoulders of the fans and his fellow wrestler alike.  It just seems like a snapshot taken of a bygone era, a magical time before anyone got old, before decision were made, promoters pissed off, bodies worn down and championships lost.  It was from a time when the territories were still thriving, all wrestling was “local”, and before I had ever heard the term “sports entertainment”.  I don’t think anyone was thinking about their career in that photo, of moving on to other promotions or changing their image or anything other than being happy and hanging together and being who they were.  The fans who got to pose with the wrestlers in that photo (the lucky bastards) are kind of our proxies.  The stand for all of us before those greats as if to say, “These are our heroes, and say what you will, they’re precious to us”.

 

I’ll always remember the simple, but heartfelt comment Terry Allen tagged the photo with when he sent it around the internet – “Barry Windham and I many moons ago. I miss my old friends.”

 

That’s how I want to remember Barry Windham.  The epitome and embodiment of the beauty of youth and the taste of future success so assured that it just doesn’t matter if it ever happens or not.

 

But, of course, I’m not a moron, and I’m old enough at this point to know that time doesn’t halt for the wishing of it, that the years trudge by and, above all, things don’t always work out like you think they should.  Despite however much “promise” you may have.

 

And so went my youth. 

 

And so went Barry’s career.

 

All in all though, I don’t think either went too badly.  I’m happy with where I’m at, and while I can’t speak for Barry, you can’t argue with a 30+ year career that included multiple titles (including the World Heavyweight Championship) and an eventual induction into the WWE Hall of Fame (even if it was as a member of the Four Horsemen and not as a “singles” competitor).

Barry, Being Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as a Member of the Four Horsemen, 2012

I’m sure we both miss the “chase” (I know I do), but that’s what the memories are for.

 

And as for Barry, whatever you may say about his wrestling career, he made it out alive, which is something we unfortunately cannot say about a lot of wrestlers.  While I know he liked to put away the alcohol back in the day (how could you be in a stable with Ric Flair and not?), he seemed to avoid falling prey to the specters of drug addiction, alcoholism and mental illness which claimed so many of his peers.  By my quick and unofficial count, Barry had no less than three tag team partners who are no longer among us today due to those very demons, so avoiding them on his part was no small feat.  Additionally, while his joints are shot and his body beaten down, it doesn’t sound like he suffers from any debilitating or ultimately life threatening conditions at this stage of his life.  After getting through a very real heart attack scare back in 2011, it sounds like he is in relatively good health, which is a blessing not to be taken lightly.  If anything, he seems to have successfully defied the odds in that area.

Barry (Left) with Terry Allen (Magnum TA) at a Roundtable Discussion in 2014

From what I can gather on the internet, Barry stays involved on the periphery of the wrestling industry, working occasionally as a road agent for one of the remaining promotions, and making appearances at the major conventions and the annual high holy days of wrestling that is the build-up to WrestleMania every year.  He looks a lot different (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone change his look so consistently throughout his life), but above all he seems healthy, content, and dare I say happy?

I hope he’s happy.

Barry at This Year's Wrestlemania with his Niece and Daughter of his Old U.S. Express Tag Team Partner, Micah Rotundo

And in the meantime, I’ve seemed to have weathered my midlife crisis and am settling down into a comfortable middle-agedness.  I still listen to those old heavy metal bands, and keep my ears peeled for the new bands that are going to come and put danger and excitement back into music again (I’m holding out hope).  Every now and then, usually around Christmas, I pick up a comic book to see what exploits my old hero Spider-Man may be up to.  And when I get the itch to remember what a young, 6’ 7” inch kid from Sweetwater, Texas, looks like flying through the air and landing maneuvers he has no business even trying, I navigate the old interwebs and see if any new clips of Barry wrestling have showed up on YouTube.  Not surprisingly, I prefer the clips from his pre-blonde days in good old CWF.  In some ways, I still feel like I’m chasing those earliest days of his career, clips of which are hard to come by inasmuch as they precede the days of his wider notoriety in the WWF and WCW.

 

But, hey, we always need something to chase.

 

Oh, and, yes, that’s why I have all that wrestling crap on my Facebook page.

 

“Barry Windham and I many moons ago. I miss my old friends.” - Terry Allen

 As always, thanks again to FatKidCool for oh-so-many of the pictures used in the three Barry Windham articles.

Anyone who is interested in Barry Windham, or the wrestling industry as a whole, would do well to check out the Facebook page she administers on behalf of Barry Windham at:

https://www.facebook.com/#!/BarryCWindham/timeline

 

Running Thoughts #5 – Chasing Barry Windham (or, “What the Hell is Up with All That Wrestling Crap on Your Facebook Page?”) - Part 2

Part 2 of 3

So who would’ve guessed?  While the pieces of my world were being turned upside-down with my move from Florida, by the time the pieces had largely rearranged themselves, I found that my childhood hero had been waiting for me in Pennsylvania all along.  And I found him doing well when I got there - he had largely transformed himself physically, and was way “over” (i.e. – popular) with the fans as one-half of the tag team champions in this glitzy new (to me) wrestling promotion called the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).  It was more than I could have ever hoped for.

 

Except for one thing.

Was that really Barry Windham?

CWF Barry Windham (Circa 1982)

WWF Barry Windham (right) with Mike Rotundo circa 1984

I mean, he looked so damned different. 

For one thing, when did he get so freaking blonde?  I later learned that even during his waning days in Florida, Barry had started to go blonde with his hair.  But, my Lord, he was really, really blonde now.  Like, Goldilocks blonde.  And he was wearing it longer to boot. 

Had he looked like that in Florida?  I didn’t think so. 

While that seems like a strange question to ask now, you have to remember that it had been a good 6 – 8 months since I had last lain eyes upon Barry Windham, and we didn’t have an internet back then where I could look up his photo and remind myself what he looked like.  I also hadn’t yet wrapped my head around the fact that it wasn’t uncommon for wrestlers to change their looks from time-to-time, especially when they were making the switch to a different promotion (and changing hair color was one of the less-extravagant things that a wrestler could do with his image).  But, man, he really looked different to me, more than a simple change in hair styles could account for.

I realize now that one of the reasons that Barry’s blonde hair looked so strange to me was that, for the vast majority of the time period I was watching him in Florida, Barry’s hair was unnaturally dark (for him).  As I learned many years later, the period during which I was watching Barry wrestle in Florida was actually his second stint with the local promotion down there (Championship Wrestling from Florida – or CWF).  In the months before he came to my attention, he was finishing up an aborted stint working with his father, Blackjack Mulligan (a wildly popular wrestler himself who later ended up in the Hall of Fame), in another territory where he had dyed his hair black (like his father’s) so he could wrestle as “Blackjack Mulligan, Jr.”.  

Barry (left) as Blackjack Mulligan, Jr. with Father the Original Blackjack Mulligan

For a variety of reasons, that gimmick hadn’t worked for Barry, and before long he ended up back in CWF as good old Barry Windham, where he was discovered and idolized by a wide-eyed young boy in need of a hero (myself).  Problem was, all that black hair dye hadn’t washed out too well and his normally light, sandy-brown colored hair ended up replete with dark streaks through it.  I didn’t know any better – I assumed that that was his natural hair color.  This dark-streaked look became the look I was familiar with and it rendered his new blonde image, all these years later, that much more jarring for me.

"Dark Streaked" Barry in Florida circa 1982

Hair aside, by the time he showed up in the WWF, Barry had also started putting some weight on that 6’ 7” frame of his.  Good weight.  While he was never what one would call “muscle bound” (even at his physical peak), by the time he left Florida for parts North in the mid-80s, he was well on his way to having that lean musculature he became well known for throughout the rest of that decade.  This was no longer a skinny, somewhat gawky kid daring to tread in a land of muscle-bound thugs.  This was a man to be reckoned with in his own right, and was yet another difference for my young mind to try and wrap itself around.

 

Also, where the hell was the Flying Lariat?  

 

Among the handful of things that became apparent to me while watching my very first WWF show that long-ago Sunday was the fact that Barry had a new finishing move – the Bulldog.  Now the Bulldog was a fine enough move in its own right.  It consisted largely of putting your opponent in a side-headlock, maintaining him in that hold while you ran across the ring with him, then jumping and landing on your rear-end while pushing your opponent’s head/face into the ring mat.  The idea was to use your own weight, combined with that of your opponent’s, to deliver a “knock-out blow” to your opponent’s head.  Problem was, it was a fairly standard move that had been used by a lot of wrestlers before (and not necessarily as a finishing move).  The Flying Lariat, meanwhile, was unique to Barry (as far as I know, he invented it).  And while the Bulldog did have the advantage, much like his former finishing move, of showcasing Barry’s grace and fluidity in the ring, it lacked that devastating, “holy shit did you see that?!” quality inherent in the Flying Lariat’s ability to dazzle the crowd and bring them to their feet.

 

To this day I’m not sure whose bright idea it was to take such a unique and amazing-looking finishing move and put it on the shelf during Barry’s U.S. Express days.  My theory is that the Flying Lariat looked too much like the “Mexican Hammer”, which was a less impressive looking but mechanically similar finishing move being used by the then very popular WWF Intercontinental Champion – Tito Santana.  Whatever the reason, it had effectively robbed my favorite wrestler of my favorite move.  While I was tremendously grateful that, despite the odds, I still had Barry Windham to watch on TV in my new hometown, it was a Flying Lariat-less Barry Windham, and contributed to my confusion as to whether I really was watching the same wrestler I thought I had left behind in Florida.

 

Despite these stark (in my mind) differences between the CWF Barry Windham and the WWF Barry Windham, there were just too many similarities for it to be anybody other than the same guy.  I saw that, for the most part, he wore the same ring attire.  He still came to the ring wearing what was then his trademark red bandana around his neck, which he would un-cinch and remove once he got into the ring.  He wore pretty much the same colored trunks and those cool black and white western-style wrestling boots that I’ve only ever seen worn by himself, his brother Kendall Windham, and the Magnum T.A.-incarnation of Terry Allen (another CWF wrestler who went on to larger fame and fortune in another promotion).  

 

But what really cinched it was the fact that, c’mon, how many 6’ 7” wrestlers are there out there who can move with the grace and agility of a young Barry Windham?  Of course it turned out to be the same guy.  It’s just that, much like me, he had done a little growing up during the year or so he was off my radar, and with that physical maturation, he was really turning into something special as a wrestler.  Something special that couldn’t continue to be overlooked by wrestling promoters and the broader wrestling audience for much longer.  

 

The problem was, he was wrestling for the WWF at that point.  

 

Now, many people would look at that and think that it was the absolute perfect place for a young superstar-in-the-making to be.  For starters, the geographical area that was historically covered by the WWF was only the largest media market in the country.  It was based in New York City (the WWF’s Madison Square Garden shows were legendary even back in those days), and its reach covered the majority of Pennsylvania (with the lucrative Philadelphia market) and New England (with Boston, Providence and other NE cities).  If a young, up-and-coming wrestler wanted to situate himself to receive maximum exposure, the WWF was the place to be.  Additionally, the WWF’s production values and marketing ability were simply unmatched by any other wrestling promotion in the country.  The man who ran WWF, Vince McMahon, Jr., was and is known for many things both positive and negative.  But one thing even his detractors would have to admit is that he knew how to put out a slick-looking product and market it effectively.  

 

And the final consideration, apparent now only in hindsight, is that the WWF was on the brink of its first “Golden Age”, when it went from being a regional (though wildly successful) Northeastern U.S. promotion to being a hugely popular nationwide phenomenon.  Within the next year, the WWF would make its presence felt in the music industry (through alliances formed with Cindy Lauper and MTV), Saturday morning cartoons (which were actually a big deal back in those times), movies, an expanded TV presence and even a hot-selling album of songs either performed by, or about, some of their more famous wrestlers (including the U.S. Express).  The WWF, and its mega-star Champion Hulk Hogan, were about to become household names, and Vince McMahon, Jr., not content to be simply #1 among regional promotions, used that popularity to compete with the NWA and all of the other promotions on a national level.  The wrestling industry had never seen anything like it.

 

And Barry was there at the start of it, well-positioned as one-half of the WWF tag-team champions, and still seen as having the majority of his best wrestling years ahead of him.  I truly believe that if Barry had stuck with the WWF and bought into McMahon’s way of doing things, he would have eventually either been “turned heel” (when “good guys” are repackaged as “bad guys”) and been pushed as being a major contender for Hulk Hogan’s title, or kept as a “face” and been groomed as Hogan’s “heir apparent”.  For starters, he had the size (the WWF liked their star wrestlers to be big), though McMahon probably would have insisted that he work at becoming more muscular-looking.  Secondly, he had the pedigree, as his father (the aforementioned Blackjack Mulligan) had formerly worked for McMahon’s father to great success back when the promotion was known as the WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation).  Thirdly, he had the striking good looks that would have worked hand-in-hand with McMahon’s world class marketing machine to package and sell him as a star.  And, finally, unlike Hulk Hogan, he was an excellent “worker” (i.e. – a wrestler adept at performing the “fake” maneuvers that make a match look real and compelling) and had loads of physical talent.  Unlike Hogan, there wasn’t a move in the “book” that Barry couldn’t perform, whereas Hogan, despite his incredible look, charisma and magnetism, was more or less an immobile brawler with a great gimmick.  An argument could be made that during the mid-to-late 80s and into the early 90s (throughout much of Hogan’s reign), Barry was the single biggest talent in any wrestling promotion, and that talent could have been tapped to make Hogan look like a star (had Barry been turned “heel” to challenge Hogan), or turn Barry into a superstar “face” champion himself.

 

Looking at Barry’s circumstances at this point in time, it was almost like the stars were aligning to turn him into a nationwide wrestling superstar.

 

Barry (Right) Being Marketed as a "Stud" by the WWF Marketing Machine (His Shirt Was Purportedly Ripped by Over-Eager Fans)

But it didn’t happen.  And as I learned many years later, in the wrestling business, having loads of talent does not necessarily increase your likelihood of becoming a star.

 

As it turned out, Barry didn’t stay with the WWF for very much longer, and when he disappeared from their roster, so did my ability to follow his career.

 

You see, as I mentioned earlier, our new home in that rural part of central Pennsylvania where we settled didn’t yet have cable, and wouldn’t have it for many years to come.  As such, if I was going to watch Barry wrestle at this juncture, by necessity he was going to have to be wrestling for the WWF (less than ideal circumstances given what was about to happen).  And to be honest with you, the period of time I was able to watch him wrestle for the WWF (which turned out to be only about 6 – 8 months) didn’t constitute great television, so it was inevitable that my attention to Barry’s career (and wrestling as a whole) would begin to flag anyway.

 

You see, the wrestling product being turned out by WWF at the time was much different than the product I had become a fan of down south.  For one, you didn’t get much on their weekly television show other than “squash matches” (another piece of wrestling jargon – referring this time to those one-sided matches where a star wrestler spends the vast majority of the match beating up on a “jobber”).  While the weekly CWF program always had 1 – 3 “squash matches” on its card, it was also rounded out with a healthy amount of competitive matches where you actually got to watch more formidable wrestlers go up against each other.  Watching a solid hour of nothing but “squash matches” was hardly compelling in my opinion, especially when so much time was spent between matches hyping up the more competitive matches which, sadly, were not televised.  My guess is that McMahon didn’t like the idea of giving away the more competitive matches on “free” television.  If you wanted to watch a wrestling match between bona fide wrestlers that was actually competitive in the WWF, well, you were going to have to drive to an arena and pay money to see it.  This was exacerbated by the fact that even on the rare occasion when the WWF put a competitive match on its TV program (usually older matches that they had already made their money on), I discovered that those matches usually only went about fifteen minutes or so - twenty tops.  

 

I later learned that McMahon was of the philosophy that your average wrestling fan didn’t have the attention span to stay interested in a match for more than twenty minutes or so, which is why his matches rarely went beyond the fifteen-minute mark.  Of course, given the nature of the product he produced in the WWF, I can’t say I disagree with him, at least in regards to those mid-80s WWF-style matches.  However, I had seen CWF once dedicate the entirety its weekly TV program to a single match between Barry and Cowboy Ron Bass which not only kept my eyes glued to the screen for the entire 60 minutes, but left me wanting more at the end.  (Of course, Barry later went on to become famous for a series of legendary matches with the then World Heavyweight Champion, Ric Flair, which were consistently 45 minutes to an hour in length).  As such, McMahon’s philosophy that a good wrestling match should never be more than 20 minutes in length was an outright fallacy in my book.  

 

So it goes.

 

Barry’s remaining months in the WWF, however, were not uneventful.  If anything, they were wildly successful from a business standpoint (and, as I later learned, wrestling is, first and foremost, a money-making enterprise).  The U.S. Express were riding high as tag team champions when they rolled into the very first WrestleMania – an historic event that changed the industry and pretty much set the template for those pay-per-view “super shows” that the industry is known for today.  

 

At WrestleMania 1, the U.S. Express went up against the former champions, the aforementioned diabolic team of the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff.  Our young, patriotic heroes had the match well in hand when, right on cue (about 16 minutes into the match), the Iron Sheik borrowed a cane from his manager (Classy Freddie Blassy) and “caned” Barry in the back of the head.  Inexplicably, the ref missed dastardly act, and instead of disqualifying the challengers, counted out a comatose Barry for a heartbreaking and tragic loss.  The heroes had been vanquished by the villains, and their championship belts were taken away to adorn to torsos of a Middle-Eastern madman and a godless, freedom-hating commie.

 

The match had its intended affect.  The fans were outraged (in the wrestling business, they refer to this as generating “heat”), and McMahon made a boat-load of money from a series of subsequent rematches where the U.S. Express sought justice by chasing the Sheik/Volkoff in an attempt to regain both their honor and their lost belts.  Inexplicably, McMahon allowed that very thing to happen a couple of months later on, of all things, free TV.  In a very strange match that last all of about five minutes (Barry was in the ring for maybe all of two minutes), Rotundo (with some slightly illegal help from Barry) reversed a move called a “tight cradle” and pinned the Iron Sheik for the win.  The crowd went nuts.  Justice had been restored.  America’s favorite sons were champions once again.

 

However, this turned out to simply be a means of allowing the U.S. Express to quickly move on to a new feud against another “heel” tag team, this time the pairing of Greg “The Hammer” Valentine (who, like Barry, was a second-generation wrestler, his father being the legendary Johnny Valentine) and Brutus Beefcake (another ex-Florida wrestler named Ed Leslie who was being repackaged as a new character in the WWF).  This pairing was known as, “The Dream Team”, and the pattern began to repeat itself.  The good guys feuded with the bad guys over the course of several shows before the “heels” emerged victorious at a match in Philadelphia, again due to illegal tactics (this time, Beefcake rubbed what was purported to be a lit cigar into Barry’s eyes before Valentine pinned him).  I distinctly remember watching the WWF marketing machine hype a series of upcoming rematches where the U.S. Express would again seek justice by chasing the bad guys.  And, again, the WWF was poised to make a whole lot of money.

 

Then, with no explanation, the hype stopped.

 

That series of rematches never occurred.

 

The Dream Team kept the titles and embarked on a whole new feud with a new “face” team from England known as the British Bulldogs.

 

And Barry was nowhere to be seen.

 

Rotundo stayed with the WWF for a while, and a reconstituted version of the U.S. Express was rolled out to a less than a warm reception by the fans (with a tall, blonde but less athletically-gifted wrestler named Dan Spivey taking Barry’s place).  However, as this new tag team failed to catch on, Rotundo too disappeared from view.

 

What the hell was going on?  The WWF hype machine began to hype other wrestlers, the British Bulldogs won the tag team titles to much fanfare, and I was going nuts.

 

Where the hell was Barry Windham?  Why hadn’t the rematches taken place?  Why were the British Bulldogs the ones who were allowed to compete for those belts and not the U.S. Express?

 

It was as if Barry had fallen off the face of the earth.  And in my limited circumstances, with no cable TV, no place within a fifty-mile radius that sold any type of wrestling publication and the internet at least another decade down the road, I was left in complete ignorance.

 

Languishing in this vacuum where I could find no information on what had happened there were simply no other options I could pursue.  I tried to stick with the WWF in the hopes that Barry would show up at some point.  But as the months passed and Barry failed to reappear, my interest in their strange brand of wrestling quickly waned.  After about a year or so, I gave up on wrestling entirely, figuring I was growing out of it the same way I was growing out of comic books and Saturday morning cartoons.

 

As a result, I didn’t see Barry wrestle again for twenty years.

 

End Part 2 of 3

Part 3:  http://epp101.blogspot.com/2015/06/running-thoughts-chasing-barry-windham_7.html
 

Special Shout Out to FatKidCool for The Pictures Used in This Article.

 

Be sure to check out the Facebook page she administers for Barry Windham at:   https://www.facebook.com/#!/BarryCWindham?fref=pb&hc_location=profile_browser