I'm starting to sound like Roddy Piper........

I was bored, I was depressed and I desperately needed something fun and exciting to happen in my life.   My life was dull, boring and uneventful.   I didn’t know what to do.   I had tried dipping into the waters of a few different activities but nothing seemed to simulate me.  I was at a point in my life when I seriously thought that perhaps all of the excitement and fun that I was to have in my life had already passed me by.   I had just turned 22 years old and it seemed to me that other than the four day vacation I take every year for the NCAA tournament, the rest of my life was to be mundane.

               Then one morning my phone rang.   It was Austin Bayliss.   A guy I had met about three years prior through my friend Seth Beinhart at a Sigourney-Keota football game.   Austin, like me was a huge professional wrestling fan and one night we talked all about how we both loved pro wrestling and how we dreamed of one day stepping into the ring and entertaining people ourselves.    He told me he was going to do it one day and my response was that I would like to one day as well. 

               “You still wanna be a pro wrestler?” He asked me. 

               I had to think about it for a while, but once I made up my mind and said yes, it turned out to be one of the greatest decisions I ever made in my 20’s.      The first three and a half years of Central Empire Wrestling and then eventually also becoming a part of Midwest Xtreme Wrestling Alliance and Midwest Championship Wrestling were some of the most exhilarating, exciting and fun moments of my life.    I don’t know if I was any good or if I wasn’t, but what I do know is that I had a lot of fun.  I loved being a professional wrestler.  

               I suppose that’s why I sometimes get as bitter as I do when I think of a guy who I feel was the origin of why it has come to an end for me.   I made some very poor decisions myself, decisions that I regret but the water wasn’t poisoned until he came in.     When I think back through the years and ask myself, “When did things start to turn sour?” it was right when he showed up.    He outright did a series of things to make one of my best pro wrestling friends hate the business and quit and he did things to me that have since made me never want to work with him again.    It’s not that I can’t or I don’t forgive him for what he did.   I forgive him for what he did.   I just don’t want to go through it again and I don’t trust that the two of us could shake hands, and I could trust him on his word to never stab me in the back or try and sabotage my career again.    The thoughts crossed my mind a time or two, to let the past be in the past, shake hands and move on but it’s also crossed my mind that he’d pull something on me again and I have been through enough crap.   I can’t deal with him again.   

               History doesn’t occur in a vacuum though.  I tried to hold on for far longer than I should have.  The magic was over, I had ran out of pixy dust.   I wasn’t going to fly again.    I had made some idiotic and foolish decisions based on miscommunications and misunderstandings and left CEW.    MXWA had folded after Muscatine proved to be too difficult of a community to work in and Iowa City didn’t pan out the way we had initially hoped and MCW went through similar misfortunes as well.   

               I got really fat and really out of shape for a while.   I’m still fat and out of shape, not as bad as I was, but I’m still fat and out of shape.   Women seem to treat me about the same regardless of what I look like,  lean and muscular or fat and ugly, so I had a hard time motivating myself to work out.    I still worked out, but not near as much or near as intense as what I had.   After ballooning up to nearly 230 pounds, and finding myself winded just walking up the stairs to my home, I figured that maybe if I got back into professional wrestling it would help.

               I got back in, hoping that I would find the same magic that I had before.    I got caught up with a guy that I was told by nearly everyone to stay the hell away from.   I was told that he was a liar, a back stabber and that one day I would regret socializing with him.    I suppose I knew they were right from the beginning, but desperate times call for desperate measures.   I missed pro wrestling so much and wanted it back in my life so bad, that I decided to take a chance.   Besides,  I’m the type of person that likes to make up his own mind about someone, rather than go based off of what other people say.  In a business like pro wrestling, where lies and rumors run rampant, that’s not bad advice.

               I was able to get along with and actually enjoy my time quite a bit with this guy for  a little over two years.   We’d travel to shows in North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Kansas together.    It wasn’t anywhere near as fun as CEW, MXWA or MCW had been though.   The locker rooms weren’t near as friendly and it was much more of a contest to see who could outshine who than it was a collaborative effort to put on a good show.    Nevertheless I kept going to these shows, often using my own car, paying for ¾’s of the gas, because I thought somewhere along the line I’d find the magic again.

               Then one night while over at his place,  I accidentally asked him about his girlfriend in front of his other girlfriend, who he had told me was just his friend and just his roommate, and as a result that not only ended our friendship, but caused former WWE wrestler Mantaur to threaten my life.    I tried to explain to him that I didn’t do it on purpose and I didn’t realize that he had been cheating on one girl with the other.   If I had known, I sure as hell wouldn’t have exposed him on purpose.   Nevertheless it didn’t matter.    Our business relationship and our “Friendship” if you want to call it that were over.     Many people, including myself thought, “Good Riddance.”     I’d rather have not had that happen, and not been called up on the phone by Mantaur threatening to break my arms, my legs and my neck “like a chicken bone” but when you associate with such people,  those types of incidents are inevitable.

               I am very thankful that I was brought back for CEW’s final show.    I wanted to have at least one more magical night in the ring and I’m very thankful that I got to have that. 

               I also want to put in a good word for My good friend Mercer Sage, pro wrestler and professional wrestling promoter who offered me a home up in North Dakota working for his company Elite Wrestling Initiative and I’m very appreciative of the opportunity that he has given me.    Working for him has been a privilege and 90% of his locker room are great guys that are a lot of fun to be around and work with.    It’s also 750 miles…one way or sometimes even longer to get to a majority of his shows.    1,500 miles between a Friday night and a Sunday night is just too much time on the road for me. It’s too much wear and tear on my car and it’s just too far away.   Recently coming into other commitments and opportunities, I gave my notice to Mercer yesterday that my EWI days were most likely over.   He’s been very good to me over the years, going above and beyond trying to help me find the magic and passion that professional wrestling once was for me.   I cannot thank him enough for that.  

               All things good and bad come to an end.   My career in professional wrestling came to an end on August 19^th, 2011 but I tried like Hell to keep it alive for the past nearly four years.   I guess when you love something so much, you don’t easily let go of it.  

               As I sit here and type this I keep hoping that something will happen where professional wrestling makes its way back into my life just as strong and magical as it was during my first few years with CEW, MXWA and MCW but after nearly four years of searching, I’m pretty sure that it won’t.      I caused some of it myself, and I take responsibility for that.   

               I will continue to do odd shows here and there for Scott Dolquist in the Quad City area whenever he asked me to, as Scott has always been a good friend of mine and someone I’ve enjoyed working for.   I hope to start training a couple of times a week with Austin Bayliss and maybe even with 3XW trainers and trainees if that works out for me.   It’s more of a way staying in shape than it is anything else.   Break up the monotony.   Throwing someone around the ring and doing acrobatic flips is just as tiring and a lot more fun than just running in a circle around a track.   

               Pro wrestling was very good to my life and I won’t lie, if I have an opportunity to get back into it, the way it was during the golden years of CEW, MXWA and MCW I will.    I don’t know if it ever will again though and if it doesn’t,  I just want to say thank you.    Thank you to everyone that made this business fun, enjoyable and special to me.    Thank you for letting me be a part of it.   It is some of the best memories of my life and seeing that I’m turning 30 in 21 days,  I have to mark it as one of the two best things to happen to me in my 20’s.