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