Back for a second blog today, since business is soooo overwhelming....Thanks to Mike "Battlin' Bob" McKain for a plug on his hysterical "Grumblings & Rumblings" blog. Mike has been a friend for about 20 years; he was the best man at my first wedding ( aka "The First Big Mistake") & is truly one of the funniest people I've ever met. Check out his stuff, you won't regret it.....
A week before Thanksgiving, in front of about 125 people in Keyser,WV, I had the opportunity to wrestle one last time with one of the greats in pro wrestling, when WWE Hall of Famer "Boogie Woogie Man" Handsome Jimmy Valiant laced up his boots "one last time" & showed the enthusiastic fans of West Virginia what an old pro can really do.
It was a very special occasion: Valiant retired in 2004 after a 40 year career, which,beginning in 1964, included over 10,000 matches; multiple championships,awards,& accolades,both as a solo & as part of the 1970s most villanous tag team, the Valiant Brothers; endured three marriages, 4 children (he & I are alot alike..lol) and 4 million miles, by his estimation, driving on US highways getting to those matches.
Jim told me last year that he was going to "come out of retirement" in 2010, to celebrate 6 decades in wrestling (60s,70s,80s,90s,2000s,2010) and, due to our long association & friendship, wanted to make CPW one of his tour stops-one of only 6 matches he would do as part of this celebration. To say I was honored would be an understatement.
They say that the best wrestlers are the guys who take their real personality traits and amp them up several notches; in most cases, that is true, but Jim is the exception to that old proven rule: when hes not in the ring or on camera, he is low key,soft spoken,& extremely mellow. But when the lights come on , BOOM, the BOOGIE MAN FEELS GOOD! MERCY DADDY! lol
I have shared the ring with him on well on over a dozen occasions since we met & became friends back in 1997, and his work never gets old for me; sometimes,I laugh out loud standing on the apron watching him,and I look at the faces of little kids, mine in particular, who never experienced him in his day & would otherwise have no idea who he was, light up when he does his stuff.
One of my favorite bouts was a tag team bout we did together in that very building in Keyser back in 2004, when he and I faced The dreaded Masked Assassin & Luscious Johnny Graham. Sometimes, your memories of a match are rosier than what was real; everyone wants to think everything they did was perfect & the crowd was going nuts, etc. So, about a week before this last match together, I popped in a DVD of this match, and my memory was pretty correct: this was an exciting match that provided the Keyser crowd with what they want to see, based on their reactions, and a surprising finish that brought the crowd to their feet! And isn't that what its really all about?
First and foremost, I'm a wrestling fan at heart, and to have had the chance to work with, and subsequently, become friends with, someone whom I admired & rooted for as a kid is no small thrill, and being the emotional guy that I CAN be, I had a special surprise I told no one about.
At the end of out tag team bout a few weeks back, which also featured my close friends Gino Samartino & Bobby Keller as Boogie & I's partners in an 8 man tag team bout, I told Jimmy that he had one more match to do, and it was against me! I then laid down flat on my back, for him to "pin" me, as a show of respect to someone I'm so fond of, and so that His last match with us was against yours truly.
But in true Valiant fashion, he went to lay on top of me, then pulled me on top of him, and ordered the ref to count him out.....afterwards, as I hugged him , I asked why he did that, and he replied, in that laid back mellow tone, "Cuz your the man,kid".
No Jimmy, YOUR the man, and you proved it to me,and everyone in Keyser that night, yet one more time....
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