Time to Move on
My wife and I were at a hotel and needed more towels. The attractive young employee in the lobby said she would bring some up to our room. I told my wife that I would wait for the towels so she could go in a joking manner. My wife replied “You’re old enough to be her father.” This made my joke less funny and my graying head of hair even grayer. No longer was I the stud my wife married, (and you don’t know me so go along with it), I was a thirty something pot bellied father of three trying to be cool and having my wife deflate my ego with a single comment as wives can so easily do. I moped around about it, thinking about my younger days as a Rockyesque montage of me in my prime played in my head. There I was flirting with the girls, (which looking back, I realize I wasn’t as good as I led myself to believe), looking at my toes without leaning forward, (that was a long time ago), and combing my luscious dark brown mane, (which now is lighter brown with a generous serving of grays in it). Sure I could have been sad, maybe even distraught enough to go by a sports car and begin my freefall into a mid-life crisis, but no! I stood up and realized I had done everything I needed to do. I no longer needed to have men want to be me and younger women want me (once again go with this for the sake of my column). I would let the younger lions roam the fields and lead the pack. I would sit in the shade and simply enjoy the day waiting for the meal I no longer had to work so hard to get! I relaxed, sat down, and turned on wrestling. There was Ric Flair and Roddy Piper defending their World Tag Team titles against RKO and Edge and I thought to myself, “You’re old enough to be their fathers!”
Look, it’s not that I am being disrespectful to Flair and Piper, but come on. They used to come to the ring smelling like fine wine and ladies perfume, but now its prune juice and Bengay! Piper used to be a legendary partier and was wired on coke half the time. The only thing in his system now is Centrum Silver! I went out drinking with my father last summer and he kept talking trash about how he kicked all of these guys’ asses back in the day but I know that he wouldn’t honestly try it now. Forty may be the new thirty, but fifty is still fifty! Ric Flair is still out there night after night putting on a show for the people but he has lost a lot of his quickness, stamina, and strength. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up down South and Ric Flair is a legend. I’m not going out on a limb by saying he is the greatest ever! It is almost blasphemous for me to talk about a wrestling god! But do you remember Muhammad Ali? Towards the end of his career he boxed a few too many rounds and the legend we remembered came crashing down to the hard canvas of reality!
Flair is not the only aging star trying to hang on to that last bit of fame and adulation. Dusty Rhodes is back! Dusty Rhodes has been two Krispy Kremes away from a heart attack longer than I’ve been shaving! Sgt. Slaughter is making an appearance at the Survivor Series! Sgt. Slaughter was past his prime in the 80’s! He represents the armed forces of my Grandfather’s era! Sting for one of the briefest and least memorable title reigns was the NWA World Champion again! He barely wrestled! He would show up in the rafters or in video segments but he was not the man I grew up watching. I remember when he was “Hot Stuff” Eddie Gilbert’s protégée. I remember when everybody was complaining that he was being overlooked for a title shot, so take that to heart Samoa Joe. He can’t move TNA forward unless it is at a much slower pace. Sting is nostalgia. He should be wrestling at a Ratt concert at the state fair. He returned to the squared circle with much fanfare but no energy…and that’s alright.
There comes a time for every wrestler when they have to say it’s time to go. Def Leppard once sang, “It’s better to burn out than fade away” but it doesn’t seem that a lot of these legends have gotten that message. I hope that it’s not for financial reasons. I recently saw Jake “The Snake” Roberts on TNA and I was saddened. I didn’t get excited to see him. I was horrified. Here was one of the few wrestlers that typified that average man and you could see that a hard life and time had ravaged his body and mind. All of his money was smoked in a pipe along with his life. He has to wrestle at little venues across the country to sustain only a portion of what used to be his life. I know this is not the case for most of the wrestlers I have mentioned already. So for Sting, Ric Flair, Piper, Rhodes, Sgt. Slaughter, Duggan, and even Arn Anderson I say thank you for the years of entertainment you brought to the world but it’s time to go home. Many men wanted to be you and many women wanted you. You have done more than most and you should sit back in your rocking chairs on your porches and drink a cool glass of lemonade in the shade and think back on your wrestling days with fond memories and no regrets. And as for Triple H, Shawn Michaels, King Booker, and the Undertaker, take this lesson to heart before you end up appearing on the Legends of Wrestling circuit.
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