The Dale Jr. Download - How Magnum T.A. Turned Into Wrestling’s Biggest “What If”

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

If you’ve ever tuned in to watch Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the Download before, you might have noticed some professional wrestling action figures in the studio backdrop. On this week’s episode, Dale Jr. has the opportunity to sit down with the likeness of one of these figurines: the legendary Magnum T.A. Dale has often shared his love for professional wrestling while growing up, watching on Saturday mornings after cartoon matinees had concluded. It was through this programming that he took notice of Magnum and Dusty Rhodes, as well as the other icons of the 1980s independent scene.  Magnum, whose real name is Terry Wayne Alan, explains that although he was a semi-successful wrestler on the collegiate level, he never dreamed of being a professional. His path into the sport came through a bartending gig he had while attending school in the Chesapeake, Virginia area. His training took him to the Pacific Northwest, where he’d forge a friendship with the legendary Andre the Giant, who was responsible for creating the Magnum T.A. persona. Terry would be on a fast track to becoming the World Heavyweight Champion when a tragic 1986 car crash changed his life forever. He and Dale talk about the state of wrestling in the 80s, unlikely paths in life, and having to give up something you love before you’re ready. Arby’s Meat & 3 box is available for a limited time at participating locations while supplies last. Prices may vary. Get your Meat & 3 box at an Arby's near you today. Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia Check out our merch collection: https://shop.dirtymomedia.com/ Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. You're Dale Jr. Should I say it? It's Dale Jr. podcast. I got to say it. Hey, everybody. It's Dale Jr. back again for another episode of the Dale Jr. download here. It's the guest segment on Wednesday, and we've got a great guest coming in to the studio.

I posted on social media about how excited I was for this. But thanks for joining us here in the Arby Studio. Arby's has their new meat and three box, and you get more meal for your money at Arby's. So make sure you go over there and check it. out Arby's we have the meets and we also have the great guests here today. This is stepping outside of the racing industry for a minute. Terry Wayne Allen, also known as Magnum T.A. Was a wrestler and great friends with Dusty Road.

You see the figurines over my shoulder sometimes here on the show. But I was a huge fan of Dusty and Dusty was sort of bringing Magnum into the NWA and sort of helping coach him up to become eventually world champion. And he was right on the threshold of doing just that when he was involved in a car accident and his career as a wrestler ended. It affected me. I was really upset about that back when I was a child. I mean, I was 10, 12 years old when this went down.

I excitedly woke up every Saturday morning to watch these guys. They would come on after cartoons was over. And just some things that I remember about my childhood and that I miss. And Dusty was an incredible character. Magnum T.A. was an incredible character. I've never met Terry. I've always wanted to tell him at least that I was a huge fan of his. and, you know, how sad I was about how his career was cut short.

But never had the opportunity to do that, but he's going to come in here in the studio in just a few minutes, and we're going to talk to Terry and just see kind of how he does feel about his career and his impact on the sport and how he was able to sort of figure out what to do next when he realized that wrestling wasn't going to be part of his future. So I'm excited about this.

Let's bring Terry in the room and get started. All right, so Terry Wayne Allen, also known or better known maybe, is Magnum TA on the Dale Jr. Download. I am, I've never met you before, and I'm a big fan. Obviously, I got my little figurine back here with Dusty, and I've talked about it on my show before. but when I was a little boy every Saturday morning wrestling would come on after the cartoons would go off and we would watch you and Dusty and the four horsemen and Tully and all those guys,

Oli and Arne and everybody, that was a big part of my childhood and I was a big, big fan of the NWA and I had Hulk Hogan figurines. I had that wrestling, plastic wrestling ring, and I had the Roddy, Roddy Piper, and all the different ones, but we didn't watch that. We didn't see that on television, you know. What we saw and what was really local to us

and as being from the Charlotte area and so forth was Dust Rose, NWA, Magna T.A. and all that. And so I grew up and watching all you guys wrestle. I never got a chance to meet you. And I've always wanted to. I've always wanted to see you and talk to you and learn about you because as we're going to dive into this, you in my mind are, for lack of a better way to say it, one of the biggest what-ifs ever. And, you know, you had, and we're going to dive into this, and I want to learn more. but in my young eyes you were on your way

you were and you were the total package you had the you had the looks and you had the ability and you had the character and you were the man you know and everything was all the boxes were checked you know until you know you had that you had that terrible accident that would change your life but you know you had accomplished a ton and we're going to go through that as well in wrestling. And I had always just wanted to meet you because even though your career had been cut short in the ring, you left quite an impact on me and I'm sure many, many other people.

And so it's a pleasure having you here today. I've got to tell you, thank you, first of all, for giving us some time today. Well, it's my pleasure. And it's such a lot of parallels because I grew up. up in Chesapeake, Virginia, you know, not too far from here. And, you know, my earliest memories of television or wrestling, watching it with my dad. And, you know, wrestling was something that pulled families together. You may not have anything else in common that you shared or you, you know, that you enjoyed talking about or anything. But grandparents, you know, dads, aunts, uncles,

everybody got connected somehow through the wrestling. And I never imagined in a million years as a young person that, you know, I would ever enter that genre in that, that, you know, that square circle. Because to me, just like you growing up watching it, it was bigger than life. It was, you know, real life superheroes. 66 years old. The 67, if I make it to June. And, you know, and this year is 40 years since the accident.

Yeah. I'm 40 years. I was 27 years old. Really? When all that went down. 27. And, you know, I crammed a whole lot in about a six-year... You did.

And three-quarters of another year period. So you talked about growing up in Chesapeake area, you attended Norfolk Collegiate School, wrestled as a, in college, win the state championship in your division. So you grew up, you know, as a fan of wrestling, but also wrestling as an athlete. So I was a fan when I was real young. Yeah. And then when I tried to find myself in my niche because I wasn't a natural athlete of any sort, like the eighth grade, I couldn't do a push-up in my phys ed class. And I got introduced to wrestling during a phys ed class, and my school had just started a wrestling team.

So I started out in the ninth grade, and because there was no depth to our team, I ended up wrestling varsity from the ninth grade on. So I was just getting merged. I got beat every single match I had in my freshman year, except my last one. I won it. You thought I won the Olympics. I was so excited. But that was my thing.

And I became so focused on wanting to be a champion of that. And it was back during the Dan Gable era in the Olympics, when Dan Gable went and won the gold. And my mom had given me the Dan Gable story. And I'd read about his life. And he was just huge inspiration. to me. And so I just dug in and said, you know, I wanted to go to the Olympics in 80. That would have been the year if I had continued on that path. And of course, we boycotted that year. And so as I went into college, I tried to, I won the state championship at 167 pounds in

1977. And I tried to maintain that size. But when I graduated from school, I just turned 18, like two weeks after graduated. So if my body hadn't gone through that mature man thing happens to you between like 18, 19. And all of a sudden, I had quit, you know, like dieting year-round like I did for wrestling.

And I came back after my freshman year of college and I weighed like 210. They wanted me to go back down. And I said, well, you know, I kind of like being this bigger version of myself. But I wasn't really, truly big enough to be a college heavyweight because those guys were 250,

260. And when I was in college, I started working security in the nightclubs in Virginia Beach and a whole new part of my education, Street Smart and learning out of a guy that was my manager that was with SEAL Team 6. Sealed Team 6 was out of Norfolk. And so I got this whole other culture ingrained in me,

learned a lot of things that really gave me a whole other set of skills. And the wrestler started coming into the clubs that I was working. And I slowly started to lightbulk. goes off. I see like Black Jack Mulligan and Greg Valentine and Ricky Steamboat, Jay Youngblood. These guys are coming in and they wrote an article in the Norfolk paper about them and what a big business it was. And I saw the money that these top stars were making and they were making, you know, $150,000, $180,000. That was flipping huge for, you know, back in 1979. I thought they were all millionaires. So that's when the light bulb went off that maybe this is something ought to go after.

Well, how did you, so you're working security at a bar and you met Buzz Sawyer. Who is he? So Buzz Sawyer was a very talented, charismatic performer. He was also a former amateur wrestler. I don't think he graduated high school. I think he went right from wrestling in high school, right into professional wrestling. And he was really, uh, he was really, uh, just a real natural, gifted athlete.

But he saw me, and because it was such a tight-knit organization, it was no different than thinking, you know, you played football in high school and you were going to go walk on the NFL. I mean, breaking into the wrestling business was highly guarded. It was, if you didn't know somebody, you weren't getting in. And so he saw potential in me, but he also saw a financial potential. potential. And because no one would talk to you and there was no wrestling schools or anything like, you know, they have today like the WWE Performance Center, there was no path. You had to

know somebody. And he came and came into my mom and dad's home and really. And, you know, put on this great big talk about, you know, he could get me in. I had all this potential. But he said it costs 10 grand to get a wrestling license. So 10, grand, might as well have been a hundred grand grand to me back back then. But I had a granddaddy that believed in me that I'd worked on his farm and his property all growing up and been with him since I was young and spent a lot, a lot of time with him. And he believed him and he gave me the 10 grand and we gave it to Buzz. And then Buzz left the Carolinas and went all the way cross-country to Portland and said, hey, I'm going to get things set up for you. Don't worry.

I'm going to get it all set up. And to make a long story short, ended up going the long way around, but I ended up knocking on his doorstep and saying, hey, I'm here, I'm ready. And that's, I got in, I got into business with one day of training. And was he going to, do you think that if you hadn't a sought out buzz, that he would have, never, never said it again, the rest of your life. I would have never seen. Was there?

Yeah. I realize that, you know, reading through the notes, we, we understand that you, you know, you approach him, were you angry? Were you like, hey, man, what's... I was really serious, and he realized I was really serious. And he was either going to how to fight me or shoot me or do something, because I wasn't going away. I mean, I've never been outside the state of Virginia, and I've gone all the way across

the whole United States and showed up on his doorstep. How did you find him? So I ended up, he'd asked me to pick his little brother up and take him to what was called Mid-South. that was a territory. So he had opened a little door, and I thought, I think he was just trying to appease me.

Well, I never told anybody the story about what he told me and what was supposed to happen. And while I was in the Mid-South, I wasn't wrestling. I was just driving these guys around, listening, trying to...

Taking wrestlers around? Yeah, I was sleeping on these guys' couch, you know, and just trying to figure out, you know, what was going on. And I met a guy named Jimmy Garvin. Jimmy was out of Florida. A good guy, super guy.

We're like super close to this day. And I told him everything that happened. He said, look, if I were you, I would go find him. He helped me find out where he was. And, you know, I packed my car up after I'd been there about three weeks and just headed out. Yeah. When looking for him. And so he had, so he was working in this southeast, mid-Atlantic region, and he decided to go to Portland and do work out there.

Yeah. And back then, you know, there was territories all over the United States. So it wasn't unusual for someone to only stay in a territory maybe six months. I got you. Unless you were the mega star. People would come in, they'd circulate you around. You'd work the mid card, you know, around, and then you'd go somewhere else. So you go out there and he ends up giving you some lessons?

One. One lesson. One lesson. In Oregon. Two hours in a bowling alley where the ring set up. And so, what? And you left after that? No.

I wrestled the next day on TV against him. Oh. And he told them that I had been wrestling in Mid-South for like six months. And I never had a match. And I wrestled every night from that day forward for the next six months knowing nothing about what I was doing. And how did it go? Learning on the road, on the ropes as I went. How bad was the first match?

How good was the first match? I mean, it honestly, it was respectable. It really was for not knowing anything, but, you know, from working out in the ring and learning just how to run and hit the ropes. And there was a girl wrestler named Princess Victoria. She was working there. And it was her and I and Buzz in the ring. And he was just showing me, you know, all the basics, how to take a tackle, how to grab a headlock, how to do this. And I had a two-hour intense, intense session.

And then... How quick was the match? The first one. Probably six, seven minutes. And so what do you, you don't even have a character at that point. Oh, no. Yeah. So like, what were you, I mean, I'm trying to imagine.

So you're wrestling every single night for the next, how many weeks, months? Six months. Six months, right? And so you're just a grunt guy getting in there and getting his butt kicked and getting tossed around? I'll tell you the deal nobody knew because I didn't smarten anybody up that I hadn't

didn't have any experience and for instance like my second week in the business they put me out there with a fellow named Gene Caninsky who was a former world's champion and tremendous athlete Canadian guy

and he picked me up he dropped me behind him and he told me to roll him up well I didn't know what a roll up was I didn't know the terminology anything but I was a wrestler so I waste a lot of it. locked him and I bellyed the back suplexed him on his head. And we came back and he just loved it because he was just big old raw bone, tough son of a gun that was used to intimidating people.

And obviously I wasn't intimidated. I was just trying to do my thing. And, you know, the guys were really embraced me because they saw how hungry I was to want to learn it. What were the conditions like? What were the facilities like? What was small, small little arenas. Sometimes, I mean, I've dressed in a room that wasn't. much bigger than this table with the whole card full of, you know, the baby face guys,

the good guys, and the heels are on the other side. And, you know, little small places and you were making, you know, $50 a night and driving your own vehicle. And, you know, I bought a old 98 four-door car. I'd always had sports cars my whole life, but I bought a four-door car because I figured you needed a big car. What were you telling your, what were you telling everybody back home? I was telling them, and I was learning it.

And I was doing it. I was doing it. I was out there learning the ropes and, you know, getting my, you know, head around what it was all about. But from day one, I had that ambition. And it might have been just the way I was wired, but I wanted to be a world's champion from day one. I mean, I wasn't even remotely thinking about what I was doing right then and there. I was just intense from the word go.

and you never when you watched me you couldn't see through anything I did because it was I made contact I moved you around you knew I was there yeah so you become a hit with promoters

almost immediately you start you mean obviously you get a call to join championship wrestling in Florida well there's another step and there's one little important piece of this story so because I had that big car when I was in Portland.

I met this little fellow named Andre the Giant. Whoever had the biggest car drove the Giant around. And so the Giant rode with me for the two weeks he was there. Of course, I had some other guys in the car too. Who? Do you remember? It was probably Buzz's little brother, Brett, was with us, and I can't remember who else. But he and I became friends my first month in the business, which would go on to be important

later on, and you'll understand why. But I went from Portland to Southwest Championship Wrestling, which was owned by Joe Blanchard. Because, again, I'd been there six months, wasn't going anywhere, I needed more experience, and started calling people. And I actually had tried calling the folks in California first and didn't make any, get any movement there. But Joe Blanchard was also somebody that appreciated guys that were formerly amateur wrestlers and had the background.

And so he brought me there. And I did another, I did six months in, in that territory. But I'm, again, I'm, I'm learning like linear. I'm wrestling seven days a week. Yeah. And sometimes twice, you know, on Sundays, you know, doing a matinee or something. Wow. So what was, what was becoming friends with Andre like?

He was just, he was a gentle giant. and I've never seen anybody drink. I thought I'd seen people drink, but I mean, he would cycle between, he would go like part of the year and drink beer. And then another part of the year, he'd drink wine. And then another part of the year he drank hard liquor, and that was really bad.

But he would, he'd take a regular 12-ounce beer in it, like a little baby can in his hand. And he'd take three sips and throw it out the window. And it was gone. And he, you know, everybody else would have a couple beers, and he'd have a case. Yeah.

And he could drink a hundred of a sitting. So, you know, I've only been able to, you know, I've heard a lot of people say how a lot of people have very similar opinions of him. But from someone like myself who had never been in the room with him, right, and only seen him wrestle, right? It's hard to imagine having a conversation with him or sitting in a room with him or hanging out with him, right? give us an idea, I guess, of what kind of personality, what kind of, what were the conversations like? Heavy French accent, and he actually, he cared about the people around him, and he was very, very, very intelligent about the business and what it took to be successful.

And I say all that because the setup, all this was when I went from, when I went from Portland to San Antonio, then San Antonio to Florida. André had come in again, and he hadn't seen me in a year, a year and a half. He watched me evolve. And he'd seen him, he'd come from the green as grass kid that couldn't really lace his boots up to someone that put a lot of ring time in. And he's the one that came up with the name, the handle, Magnum T.A. So we were at a place called Fat Man's Barbecue, eating breakfast at 3 o'clock of the morning,

and he looked over at me, he said, you're ready. You're ready for something big. You just need a name. You need something catchy. You need something that people remember. And the Magnum P.I. series was big back then. And I had shorter hair and the mustache and deal. He said, you kind of remind me of that Magnum P.I.

You should be Magnum T.A. I didn't know what that meant. I thought it was a really catchy name. But he's the one that, you know, brainchilded that thing. Wow. And he was just always thinking about business and how he could help other people. So, you know, from that moment forward, did you, did you, when do you, when you're able to like implement that character?

When are you, when, how long from that moment to when you would become, or was it a process? It was, it was a process. And I didn't try to introduce that in Florida because I was wrestling in the middle of the card. Scott McGee, Barry, Barry, and I were there. You know, we were, I was wrestling a lot of tag matches. And as a matter of fact, Scott McGee and I were their, what they call their global tag team championship and we were going out there wrestling 30, 45 minutes every night. So I was getting this great experience and out there were veterans.

And I mean, people, you know, Kevin Sullivan was there. Jake the Snaker Roberts was there. Just, I mean, oh, goodness, I'm trying to think of some of the names that you would know. Black Jack Mulligan was there in Dusty Roads. But when I had the name, I knew that that would be an opening to be on top. So Andres was working for Vince Senior at the time. This was for Vince Jr. had, you know, taking sights on looking at, you know, taking over the world.

So he was going back to New York with the idea of talking to Vince Senior about bringing me to New York. Really? Simultaneously, while all that happens, Paul Orndorff, who's a big star in Mid-South, leaves. No notice, nothing, just leaves in the middle of the night, goes to New York. It leaves this big opening spot. Big Cat Ernie Ladd was the Booker. He was coming in and out of Florida doing guest shots. He had his eye on me.

He calls me in the middle of the night, says, hey, I got a smile on top. You know, and we talked about the name. So we're going to bring you in and, you know, we're going to give you a push. So that would have been my first opportunity to be on top. I'm going to be this new guy that I don't really know what that means. And then so I go. And they introduced me as Magnum T. and I'm still wearing lace-up boots,

and they're trying to figure out my character, my persona, and what they want me to push, and they don't know. They had me one week they got me dressing up like a Brooks Brothers suit. The next week, they're trying to get me wear punk rock clothes like the Rock and Roll Express. I mean, they were just on and on where they didn't get it, and I'd been there six months, and Ernie was just frustrated. He was ready to throw up his hands. He said, look, kid, the things this isn't working.

out, you know, maybe you should, you know, go get some more experience somewhere else and we'll figure this thing out. So, Dusty and I were, had become best friends when I was in Florida. And Dusty says, hey, he said, I got a, he said, I've got an idea, baby. He said, I want you to get a motorcycle. And he said, you were going to be the lone wolf magnum TA. And I'm going to have you ride that bike into towns. Even if we got to trailer it five miles outside the town, we're going to ride, ride up like

the lone wolf. and I said, I'm all cool with that. And I said, that sounds good. And I go down to Baton Rouge, Florida. I mean, Baton Rouge, Louisiana on my way to the town. I was going to wrestle that night. Jim Duggan and I were riding together and dropped me off and I'll buy. Yep, I saw the autograph up there.

And anyway, so I buy this motorcycle, buy a new leather jacket, and I ride it into the town. Well, I'm still working in Mid-South. And when I roll up in that town, even though I've been there six months, the whole energy changes. Even when I walk in the dressing room with the leather's on and the deal, the energy changes.

And then Bill Watts, he sees the energy change. He says, oh, you're not going anywhere. We've got big plans for you. And then I turned into this rough, rough baby face, kind of borderline what the forefront of what Stone Cold Steve Austin

went to be. And so I got to really, hone that character for a solid year. Working on top in Mid-South. Hey, this is Dellenhart Jr. And for all the latest Dale Jr. download gear, including the Imole drink some beer t-shirt that we've been talking about here around the office,

head over to shop.dirtymomedia.com for all the latest merch. What was it like to work with Dusty out of the gate? He was, we just struck up this really, really unique friendship. him and Barry had been very close since Barry was like a little kid because of blackjack. Blackjack and Dusty were friends. He had always watched Barry. Barry was one of the most naturally gifted wrestlers of all time to this day. And when I'd been there six months in Florida, Dory Funk Jr. had been the Booker.

Dory leaves, Dusty comes in. Dusty was going to like rearrange things. As a matter of fact, he didn't know me from Adams Housecat. he was going to have me send me to Kansas, not to Kansas City, to work in Tennessee, to Nashville. And Barry said, you know, you might want to take a second look at this guy and, you know, look at him from a different perspective. So Dusty and I make a road trip together, and we're coming back,

and he puts this eight track in Frank Sinatra, show tunes. Well, because I'd grown up in all kind of diversity of course, culture and expose all kinds of things. I do the words to every song, Frank Sinatra's singing. And we sang and we carried on and we come out of that trip. And we're like all of a sudden, best buds. And we just immediately have this bond. And so we'd established that bond in Florida.

And then, you know, he wanted to see me be successful in the Mid-South. And it had watched me, you know, really take my game up. And it's funny. He was like, he was like my best friend, but he never talked to me about the mechanics of what we did in the ring, but he talked to me about psychology and his dreams and visions of something bigger than just what the regional-type wrestling promotions had done.

And, you know, I was with him when he dreamed the Starcade up. That was just something that came out of his head. He was thinking about the mega show and, you know, bringing the Joe Frazier's in and, you know, bringing people from other sports and other forms of entertainment into wrestling. So he had a huge imagination and just he had a lot of faith in me. And he got the opportunity to come to work here for the Crockets.

They were just in dismal shape. They were not drawing. Really? They were not doing well. The guys on top were not making. Why would Dusty want to come do that? Because he had the vision of wanting to build it into something big. Well, he had brought Barry Windham with him.

Was it also geographically because of, you know, I don't know, was the mid-Atlantic region? It was just that the Crockets had been around a long, long time. They were an extension of all the southern promotion. What was the physical footprint of the territory? Back then it was just north and South Carolina, a little bit into North Georgia, and up to Virginia, up to, like, Richmond.

So it felt like in that time when I was, when I, of course, I didn't see all the other territories on my television, but it felt like that the NWA in Charlotte in general, the location, the physical location, was the hub, you know, of all things wrestling. And you knew the WWF was out there with Hogan and all that, McMahon, but I felt like, I mean, I wasn't around watching it in the late 70s,

but it's interesting to me to hear that it wasn't, doing all that great, that particular territory wasn't doing all that great, comparable to, you know, what you'd experienced in Florida and so forth. So do you remember when it showed up on TBS on the Super Station? So that was the turning point. Yeah. So the first six months I'd come here, it was on its rear end. And I remember looking at Dusty saying, man, we've got to do something because we're out there

killing it. We're giving them great matches, but it wasn't popping the place. And Jim Crockett went and made a deal with Vince McMahon because Vince had somehow secured the TBS Superstation, but he was also on the USA channel. Well, it was a conflict of interest. And nobody was real, real happy about it. So Jimmy gave him a check, rumored for like a million dollars to get that spot. The minute, almost simultaneously of us going on TBS, and then we had the Saturday morning show, the two hours at 605 at night. And the Sunday night show, that became the star maker.

And Dusty was like he was a kid in a candy store. Yeah. He had me, like, so when I came on the scene on TBS, it was like nobody had ever seen me before. Right. It was all of a sudden. I'm on national television. But I have five years of experience, nobody knows, you know, seven nights a week.

So I'm seasoned, ready, and locked in, and they put flare and I head to head. And we go all the way around the whole loop, an hour every night. Yes. And that's what established. is the credibility of our wrestling product as opposed to the WWE with sheer entertainment, Hogan coming in, you know, glitz and glamour, big promos, ripping the shirt, stomping around, and we're going out there depicting a real competition and a marketably different thing than they did. The matches were, the matches were incredible, but also what I enjoyed, particularly about the Saturday morning shows, was the promos.

So help me, you know, I think for a wrestler, I'm just, you know, imagining from the conversations I've had and watching it myself, you're not going to be a superstar unless you can do the promo. How was that process for you? What, how did you, you know, how did you learn, I guess, how to work the camera and to be charismatic and. So I learned it while I was in Mid-South. I got because we would do

we would do two, three hours of promos every week because they were for individual towns. So we'd go in and just nonstop, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And I had Bill Watts and the Booker was a fellow named Superstar Bill Dundee. And I had them in my ear telling me this, want me to tell me to bring the intensity up,

you know, finding my lane, find what I, because it's got to be a magnification of something you believe. You got to be dialed in. You can't, you know, make yourself, portray something that something isn't deep down inside you somewhere. Obviously, it's a, you know, monstrous turned up the knob all the way to the top version of it, but you've got to be comfortable in it. So I got all that under my belt there.

So when I came here and got the form and got the, you know, the green light, I was ready. And again, I got to, you know, by working with Flair, Russell and Flair all around, that elevated me to, you know, a whole different level. immediately, and I, you know, greats like Wahoo McDaniels and, you know, folks that had such history and credibility to be showcased and, and get victories over those people, just, you know, kept taking you right up that ladder. When you watched, um, when you watched Dusty and, you know, Flair as well do promos, um, two of the best ever, never missed.

Never missed. I don't know how, I mean, how, how much effort and work goes. into being able to go out there and nail it because they never made mistakes. I'm sure they did, but we never knew it. Yeah, they were totally improvisational too. Yes. You never knew what was going to come out. And being on live camera with Dusty and being his partner and not know what's going to come

out of his mouth. Right. I mean, he busted Baby Doll and I up so many times. I mean, because, you know, this before politically correct was even a thing, right? And he would say anything. They came across as mine. Me and my friends. Like, half the time when we're sending anything wrestling related,

it's just these old promos back and forth to each other. Like, man, you believe this? Look at this. Because they were just so good. Well, and, again, Dusty was great at finding people's strengths in ways to, you know, elevate them even up. He would have, he had a cameraman that would zoom it when I started doing a promo, particularly if it was just me.

He'd have him zoom in and capture me from here to here just to get the intensity of my eyes. And because you were like looking into people's homes, they're sitting there eating dinner, sitting on their couch, they're all talking about it. And when you look at that camera and just nail it, they feel like they're in it with you. Yeah.

Pretty incredible. So Dusty's kind of, in a sense, taking you under his wing, would you say, helping you? Oh, 100%. I would have never had the superstar. run working for the crocs had it not been for him. So you're working with them and you won the North American Heavyweight Championship in 84, defeating Mr. Wrestling 2.

You held that until October that year. But you would, you know, you were in tag team matches with Dusty. You were in title matches on your own. You had made it. You then began a feud with Tully Blanchard. the four horsemen. They were kind of pitted for folks who, you know, didn't watch this or wasn't, wasn't around back then.

It was you and Dusty and the four horseman, which was led by Rick Flair. And it was, you know, had Oli and Arne Anderson in there. And if I remember correctly, every now and then, Oli would sort of be in the, be in the middle. He was one of the nicer of the four, from what I remember. it might have been armed. But it was kind of odd because I remember his characters. I hated Tully, and he was easy to hate.

He wanted you to hate him. Rick was so great at promos. It was hard to hate him because he was so good at his promos. But he was the Anderson brothers, on the other hand, didn't look or seem or come across as bad guys to meet. And so every now and then you'd kind of be pulling for them. what was your personal relationship with those four guys? So we didn't travel together back in the early time

because we were all in cars. And this was back when we were just dead set at portraying this as a real feud and a real hatred. So we had never interacted in public. We were never seen together, any of those kind of things. not until, again, later on, when he started traveling in our private jets and all that stuff, you know, where we would be in the same little bubble. Telly and I had met when I was working for his father in San Antonio,

and Telly saw potential in me, even though I'd only been the business six months, and he told me about his vision for what he wanted to be, and he just wanted to be the best heel in the country. And he never had any ambitions of being liked. He wasn't any confusion about it. And that was a magnification of his personality because he could rub people the wrong way, just like that, inside and outside of the ring. Wow. And, but, but he was, he was one of the best professionals ever got in the ring with.

Really? I had an eight-month program with him that ended in that I quit match in the steel cage here in Greensboro. And he was just, just an absolute phenomenal performer when he had Baby Doll doing the distractions and all the things. that they did. So he was like, you know, the ever-ready bunny. He would go, I mean, you could be beating him and had to work so hard because you'd knock him down and he'd be back up coming for another punch just like that. I mean, he was like just killing it. And, you know, I often think, you know, we talk about what could have been this, that, and the other. He really would have been an amazing world's champion if he had been cast differently than he had. Because, you know, we'd, you know,

his only, his only one big one-on-one feud his entire career was with me. Outside of that, he's only known for the four horse tag tagging with, you know, with Arn and, you know, and he was, you know, I mean, just an incredible performer, you know, all the way around. How do you, how about the Anderson brothers? So I had met, it's funny, so somebody sent me a clip of Arn and I in Mid-South because Arn was one of like what we called enhancement guys that would just come to TV and, you know, bounce around for, you know, five minutes, ten minutes to get beat.

And I remember seeing him the first time and saying, you know, that guy's got some huge potential. And then when they brought him to the Carolinas and gave him the Anderson name and that whole deal, you know, he was just superior athlete, but he was also so good on the mic. I don't know. He's the one that came up with the Four Horseman deal. Really? And the writers of the apocalypse. I mean, he quoted something that he'd remember for his grandmother from scriptures.

And the next thing he knew, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse came out. And it just rolled. Wow. But he was a really gifted guy on the mic. Yeah. So was with Rick Flair being so successful in that moment, was that detrimental maybe to Tully a bit? Was he, was Tully sort of having a hard time coming out from underneath? how big of a deal Rick was growing into?

He didn't. It did if you tried to put him in a singles role because they really, the horseman really came about after he and I had finished our feud because I was into the feud with Nikita by that time. And it really did, I mean, it put him in a spotlight, certainly where he was in a lot of main event matches, but it kept that door, that lane was shut for him

because he couldn't. I mean, they put another, I think they had a national heavyweight title and then a world television title and he held both of those. But is that lane wider for baby face than heels? No, it's actually wider for heels. Reason being,

typically you want to see somebody chasing for the title. That's right. And you're not going to be cheering the heel chasing for the title. You want to see that baby face overcome all the things that, you know, he's getting cheated. He just can't get a fair shot. There's outside interference is this, does that. And that's what sells tickets.

Yeah. Yeah, that's what we watched Dusty do for so many times thinking, man, he just gets so close. And that's what kept you turning in every single week. Because maybe this is the week. Maybe this is the week. It's episodic soap opera. Yeah, it was so, so good.

So you and Rick had a rivalry, and you are, you know, around this time, time sort of being positioned as the guy to go, you know, you're kind of falling into that role that Dusty had played for so long trying to grab that championship belt from Rick. So back then, the World's Heavyweight belt was controlled by a group called the National Wrestling Alliance, and that was an actual alliance. That was promoters all over the country that had a vote, and they had a say and who represented you know, the country because that was really, it was an extreme honor because everybody

recognized your level of performance, felt like you could come to their area, you know, wrestled their top guy, elevate, you know, ticket sales and whatnot. So it was a lot to it. So you're telling me that the world heavyweight champion could be a member of any of the geographical regions. Could have. Right. But it was decided in this case to be Rick Flair, which was a member of this specific, you know, Mid-Atlantic geographical location. But that was decided on by all of the members.

They had to vote. Had to vote. And I remember vividly they brought me. So the convention was in Vegas. And Jimmy Crockett flew all of us out to Vegas for the convention. And they had me address the room. and to introduce that thought. What thought?

The thought of me being the guy. And so you had to get up there and speak and try to, you know, convince these guys. This might be a good idea for me to be in this role. And it wasn't that. It was just addressing the room and them seeing that in you. You're not trying to convince anybody your work and what you did on the mic and what you carried yourself and all those things were the deal. but it's like so flare was

Flair is 10 years older than I am and they wanted a youth they wanted more they wanted somebody in their 20s and they tried it with with different folks Tommy Wildfire Rich was a big star in Georgia

and I think he held the title a couple of weeks but to maintain that title you had to be able to go out there and wrestle and have a great match with pretty much anybody and Flair had that capability but the reason they call him the 60-minute man

when you attain that title and you go to those places, they don't want you to beat their champion because then you leave and they got to draw money with that guy. So they'd have, you do the hour. You do what they call the Broadway. Do the 60 minutes. And so you do have that six-minute

match and the last 15 minutes that everybody would think oh their guy almost had it, almost had it, but of course Flair would somehow maintain and get through the 60 minutes and time limit and the champion always maintains the title. Right.

So it was quite a task you had to be able to do, perform with literally whoever they threw at you. Right. Let's talk about the accident. 1986, October, you're on your way home from a match. Do you remember that day? October 14th. I was coming back. I wrestled Jimmy Garvin in a lumberjack match in Greenville, South Carolina.

And Dick Murdoch rode back with me when I had a. A 9-11 turbo Porsche, it was my dream car from when I was a kid. I'd bought it. I'd had it about four or five months. And it was pouring down rain. And it was just horrible out. And we get all the way back to Charlotte. And we stopped at a, the Beniggins was like the watering hole where we all hung out.

And when we got back to town and we got back before it closed. And I lived literally 10 minutes from there. Man. And I said good night to him. I was heading home. He was coming down Starst Road. And back then that was a two-lane road over there where Charlotte Christian School is. And there was a little dog-leg turn in the two-lane road.

And there was a dip in it. And it was raining so hard that the water had gathered really heavy. And so I'm running faster than I should. I'm running like 55 miles an hour and a 35. But in that car, it felt like you weren't moving, right? And I hit that water in a hydroplane. And I've hydroplane so many times I can't even tell you, you know, other times in my life, but I'd never done it in a rear engine car.

And when I let off the gas and went to turn into it to catch it, it didn't catch. And then I, then my, like in a millisecond, I said, you know, they told me you how to drive these things out of a problem when you got it. Well, when I got back in it, it spun the tires, a turbo kicked in, and I spun the other way. and I broadside of the telephone pole, you know, no telling with the whip that it made how hard I hit it. But, I mean, I hit it so hard and knocked the half shafts out of the motor. Damn. Motor never turns off.

I compression fracture, my head on the roof. My C-5 vertebra explodes. Can't move anything from my neck down. I'm driven down on the floor of the car. And, you know, there I lay for what seemed like forever. A young man who was a student on his way home found me and called 911 and called 911. and they used the jaws of life cut the top of the car off and take me to, they couldn't air lift me out

because it was raining so hard. And I got to get to the hospital and all of a sudden I got this, you know, this surgeon standing there with me telling me I've got a million in one shot of ever walking again. Damn it. You know, like you said, on the precipice of the biggest time in my life career-wise.

When do you start to realize, you know, what you got, right? I realized when he told me, because first of all, I didn't hurt, and I didn't have a cut on me. I had a little scratch on my head, but I just hit my head on the roof, and like so, the pressure drove me down. And so I wasn't in pain, but it was a horrible feeling. You know, I didn't know why I couldn't move. Yeah. You know, I always thought if you broke your neck, you were dead. I didn't know you could break your neck and survive.

And so I wasn't putting it all together, but I was five months in the hospital. I was 30 days in ICU and then another four months in the hospital in rehab in Charlotte and it was just the most brutal battle of my life just trying to get back where I could breathe off a respirator

and you know started getting some movement I had a decompression surgery done within eight hours of the accident so I had fragments in my cord my disc was pushing an L-shape up against the cord I mean they didn't know if I was going to make it overnight

much less anything else. So it was really touch and go. And, you know, they, I mean, they snuck Dusty got, Doug Dillinger, who did our security, was also a Charlotte police officer. And he, he made him a way to get Flair and Arne and Tully and them up to come see me because they didn't know if they was going to make it. Right. And they all came to see me in the ICU. Do you remember that? Do you remember them? Oh, yeah, I remember it well. And I couldn't talk because I had a trache and it was the most helpless feeling imaginable. Can't move, can't talk, you can blink.

And you see the pain on everybody's faces looking at you. The worry and concern, I'm sure. Golly. You know, you talked about how long it took you to start a rehab. What are some of the milestones or some of the breakthroughs, I guess, that you recall having where you're thinking. Well, immediately after the surgery, I could bend it. my left arm.

So that was, you know, that was, so I got some immediate return, you know, instantly. I think, and so moving my arm

and then the first time they set me up, oh, goodness, I felt like my whole body was full of, just made out of jello because all my, because all those,

once all those muscles are turned off, even if you have returned going back to them, you have to re-educate them and do all kinds of things to get things working. again. So, you know, it was that, it was being able to, you know, feed myself at first, then sit

up. And then I think two months in, I actually was able to take some steps in five foot of water. And that was a big thing. But my right side was much weaker than my left. I have what they call it as a brown support injury, meaning my motor nerves were damaged on my right side. But I can feel better on my right side that doesn't work as well. And the same thing vice versa.

This side works better. It's still not 100%, but it's all functional to a degree. And I just started to wrap my head around what it was I could actually do. Everybody kept saying, oh, you got to come back. I was trying to figure how to come back to life. I wasn't even thinking about it. I knew what it took to do what I did in the ring. I had no earthly thought in my head that I'd ever be able to do that again.

Right. I just wanted to see. You already made, you had self-awareness. Yeah, I had complete self-awareness. Was that? So those around me didn't. Right. So, yeah, I'm sure there's other people thinking, you know, maybe we can, maybe

there'll be an opportunity for me to come back, right? But you, was that emotional for you to have to, you know, you, I, so this is a different situation than what, you know, race car drivers, we, we, we have some similarities in the fact that we, you dream to making, you dream to doing this. I dreamed of driving race cars. You dreamed of becoming this guy you were in the ring, and you've got to do that. You've got to live that dream.

And I genuinely, mostly have racers on here, and I like to talk to some of the guys that have retired. And one of the things I really enjoy discussing with them is coming to terms with the end of that dream, right? Or coming, how do you, some guys struggle. Some guys really still, even years later, have a hard time seeing themselves, as anything but that guy that they were in that race car.

And it's still a journey for myself to really wonder when there'll be a day where it's completely shut off, right? I'll never drive another race car again in my life. And so I can't, you know, I kind of, I like having these conversations because it not only helps me, but how this is not, our situations are not similar. I did not, I was not necessarily in the same experience that you had with, with the accident, But how was that emotionally to realize, you know, that, man, I'm not going to get to continue that thing that I've worked on and worked hard for? It was a day-to-day thing.

I had to learn to celebrate victories that weren't something that others would measure as something spectacular. Realized having had lost everything, everything I got back was a blessing and a gift as it came along. and it, you know, I walked out of the hospital under my own power five months after I went in and they gave me the million and one shot I ever walking again. So, you know, I took great, great personal, you know, victory inside for, you know, pushing, pushing and not giving up and getting to that point. But to your point, see, I'm 27 years old at this point in time. And, you know, I mean, I had my, I didn't want to.

wrestle forever anyway. Right. I wanted to wrestle until I was like 30 years old because I didn't envision wanting to be that version of myself going past my prime. I want to be able to remember me being the best I could be, the best version of myself, and I actually had had an opportunity to drive a race car. And it was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever done. Benny Parsons took me out at Charlotte Motor Speedway and I got to drive this car. And, you know, and met Hal Needham that owned the car. And I played that all through my head. And again, just like wrestling, not knowing,

not knowing about, you know, guys coming up starting in go-carts and all the things they do to attain all those skills. Because just because you've got big balls and you don't mind going fast and they're going, going 200 miles an hour in a circle is one of the most grueling things I've ever physically experienced. Because I held on the roll cage while I drove the car myself. Then I sat in the other side, held on the roll cage, and he drove me around, you know, wide open.

Yeah. And I experienced those G's and what y'all did. So I had a great deal of respect for that. And, you know, I saw that as being a potential another path. I would have gone through the Buddy Baker driving school and tried to learn because this was before Tim Richmond and before these young guys. And it was a huge parallel with the audience from wrestling to Nashville. For sure. They were always looking for that next young guy, that thing, marketability.

and sales and bringing people out there in the stadiums. And so I understood that. But again, I felt I had unsettled business because I didn't ever achieve the world title. That was tough. And then I tried to throw myself back into what was familiar. So when I got back where I was ambulatory enough, I could go to and from and do things,

naturally I did what I could do within the wrestling circle. So I tried my hand at color commentating. and I did some interviewing, and then I ended up eventually working with Dusty as what they called the deputy chief talent director, which meant he was the booker, and I was his assistant. I made sure what he wanted to be done was being done with the guys. But it was really hard to try to communicate to people how to do something that I knew how to do with my eyes closed, and they're looking at you like, you know, they're making all this money and who am I. And it was just, it was a horrible place to be. And I did that up until like 1990, 91. And I got out because it just was not, it wasn't a path.

I could see myself continuing. It was a good mental headspace for me. And God opened up another door and introduced me to something else. And I got in a whole crazy another world that wasn't in the spotlight. but something that I couldn't even imagine how demanding it would be. But to say all that, I met a fellow here was from Canapolis. His name was J.R. Richardson. He'd been in the tower building business for his entire life.

And he was a wrestling fan. So he was all happy getting to know me and all this. And he introduced me to this thing called telecom. And I've been in it for over 30 years now. So you got out of, yeah, You got out of the wrestling business. And so, you know, for people like me, you know, we think, we think that it's just a spotlight. You know, no matter what role you're playing in the business, it's under this spotlight and it's got to be great, right?

But you just explain, like, how difficult some of the roles could be. If you're not the man, if you're not the star, being in that business can be challenging and choppy. how and you finally made this decision like I'm going to completely go an entirely new direction unrelated to anything of of notoriety or celebrity right um you and you had and you and you made that work and you did you succeeded and and the the keys to success the work principles same things you guys apply to, you know, apply to, you know, build championship teams and quality people. You know, those skill sets apply to whatever it is. It doesn't matter if you're in a factory making widgets or if you're in, you know, in some kind of, you know, health care, whatever.

The good work ethic, the people would drive are going to be a value add in whatever lane they end up if they stick with it. You can't be the jack of all trades and master of none. You've got to find something to lane and stay in it. But the wrestling legacy, the heritage thing

is something just like racing. You never get out of. You're in a brotherhood. You're in a fraternity that you'll always be in. And I have spent more hours with Tully in conventions and stuff talking about

that Blumen Series and that I quit match than anything you can imagine. And like the WWE put us in the 10 most violent cage matches in history and memorialized it. And, you know, we weren't even thinking anything about it at the time. It was just another day at work.

Oh, man. You know, and it's, you know, something people talk about all these years later. How much do you enjoy getting out to conventions and meeting fans and hearing about their experiences watching you wrestle all those years ago? Well, you know, I'll segue it and tell you a couple of things. One, in the hospital, we were going seven days a week. hard as we could go. And I knew we had a large audience, but I didn't really realize how large. And so the impact that we were having really hit me while I was laying flat on my back.

I had a lot of time to think and self-reflect. And I determined, it made it just my life, every moment thought that I was not going to let all these people down that had supported me playing this hero that were now supporting me in the fight of my life. and use this as an excuse to, oh, well, I don't blame him for, you know, spiraling out of control or ending up in a ditch or, you know, going down some bad path or whatever. I was determined that the only way I could give back now was probably more important than anything I'd ever done. So I'd had their attention, and I was going to persevere.

And I was going to let them see that this guy that they saw play this guy really was made of something. and give them a different kind of inspiration because we all have adversities in life, some large, some small, but everyone has something. And you're influencing somebody every day, whether you're going through a parking lot in a grocery store at work,

people are always measuring how you handle things. And it's just, if it becomes ingrained in you to be that persevering person that doesn't complain and doesn't sit around and get on their pity pot and finds a way to overcome that that's more of a legacy of anything you could ever leave. And that's what I kind of dug into and have applied that principle with my kids and everything I've touched for the last 40 years. You're Cody Rhodes' godfather.

You remember being presented with that idea? I do. And I watched y'all's interview. and you know I feel I feel bad in ways because Cody I was there the night he was born we had flown in on a flight and rushed to the hospital and it was dusty nine mani Fernandez I can remember it like it was yesterday and uh you know I was there and I was there when he was christened down in in Tampa Florida and held him while they you know they they did the whole ceremony and and you know shortly thereafter I have this

catastrophic thing happened. So, you know, certain things in your life, you just, like, I don't know whether your mind just doesn't wrap his head around all these things. But it wasn't really until he became a teenager that I remembered, oh, by the way, that's my godson. Yeah. Because it just, it was just during that very dramatic time of my life where certain things had shut down and, you know, I'd gone on into a new life.

And so, I mean, I watched him, and Dusty's wife, Michelle and I actually talked. a lot more in later years than Dustin and I did because she would always be home and answer the phone and tell me what was going on and everybody's life and what was happening. But as Cody's, you know, sat his sights on what he wanted to do in the business and his big brother, you know, Dustin had already, you know,

had been very heavily rooted in the things he'd done. Yeah. Cody was just like this hybrid of what his dad had been and what the business evolved into. He had vision like his dad because to have worked for the WWE as a young man like he did and have a huge contract and then realize that they're not seeing in you

what you see in yourself and having the courage to go out there and prove to the whole world what you really all about and look at him today. Now he's three times World's Heavyweight Champion in WWE. And arguably, you know, going to go down in history

is being one of the biggest stars of all time and has, you know, done things that his dad never even dreamed of as far as a performer. So, yeah, I mean, I'm so proud of them. I wish Dusty was, you know, here, you know, in the corners, you know, and we were sitting back smoking a cigar

laughing and watching him. But it makes me smile every time I see him out there. Well, I texted him the other day. we were going to sit down and have a talk because he had told me about how much you were a part of his life and such a great friend of his dad. So I'm hoping he'll be excited to listen to this conversation when it comes out. But it's interesting because I had gotten, you know, when he came in here and we got to sit down and talk, I was really kind of taken aback by how genuine and honest he is about how he feels.

And you can tell that he doesn't, he wears his feelings around his father and all of that and missing his dad and everything that he's experiencing and all the success that he's enjoying while knowing his dad's not here to see. He wears all that right on his sleeve. There's no question. and it is as tough as that he is, it's so good to see because he's real, you know what I'm saying? Which I really was impressed, I guess, by getting to talk to him for a couple hours in here. And that was before the big push and what he's done in the last year and a half.

Well, what you ought to do sometime is listen to Dustin's story. Yeah. And Dustin's story. because he, his relationship with his dad was from the outside looking in and only got to be, you know, engulfed in that when he was already 16, 17 years old. And moved here and lived with his dad. And Cody, you know, Dusty had so many regrets over not being able to be in his children's lives from his first marriage more than he was.

And he poured himself into Cody in his football and his rugby. and his wrestling and everything he did. I mean, Dusty took a partial, you know, coaching position, you know, and things that he did and just mentored that young man and gave him every last ounce of what he has left in him to, you know, help him believe in himself. Yeah. He could make, he could take a person like myself and see something in you that you didn't see in yourself.

And if I was a, so Dusty coincidentally enough, as a way on my birthday of all things, right? And I went to his funeral in Tampa, and all those now WWE superstars, like Seth Rollins and the Bella twins, and just on and on, these people that Dusty had done the same thing and that Performance Center touched their lives and brought something out of them that they didn't know they had.

He impacted so many people in this sport, be behind the scenes that he's responsible for so many superstars that are, you know, making millions today that I couldn't even tell you. Yeah. You mentioned earlier about driving a race car with Benny Parsons. Now, you know, you had a genuine interest in somehow transitioning out of the wrestling world and exploring the idea of being in the NASCAR world. I did because I'd grown up around that too,

or Ricky Rudd's from where I'm at, Chesapeake. And I have an uncle who's actually too much younger than me, my dad's youngest brother. And they race dirt bikes and rode go-carts together, and then, of course, Ricky went on and goes on to NASCAR. And so I'd always enjoyed it and watching it. But when I got behind the wheel of a car, I had a whole different perception. I realized that there was nothing simple about it, that it was a skill set.

It wasn't just driving in circles. And on the heels of that, I get on a plane and Hal Needham's on the dagon plane. And we end up talking for hours. And he's one that kind of laid the path out for me. He said, well, this is what you need to do. and I can help you do this. And Jimmy Crockett's on the plane, and he's about to have a cow.

No, I got plans for you. Yeah, you got all this invested. But I figured, you know, if I was 27, I'm going to be the world's champ. You know, I'm going to be the world's champ for three years. You know, I can start doing some driving school stuff on the side and learning and, you know, maybe. What a crossover.

Right? And it scared the crap out of everybody. But I saw that. and don't take this the wrong way, but I saw that as a less physical path than what I was doing every day, because I'm doing this seven days a week, and I am, you know,

I'm beating people up and I'm getting beat up seven days a week. And I didn't see, you know, I saw 30 to 40 is, hey, that car, I might be able to hang on to that stairwell for 10 years. Yeah. So speaking of the wearing tear, like what, what, you know, obviously the accident had a heavy toll on you physically. but what are some of the, I guess, what are some of the scars and things that you carry just from actually bouncing around the ring all those years?

Well, so I found out when I had the wreck that I had already broken my neck at C-7 sometime a year or so earlier and never knew it. It never missed a day of work. And I knew I'd hurt my neck real bad one time. I went to, I threw a guy into a corner and I jumped up to monkey flip him out and he held on and I catapulted myself all the way in the middle of the ring. and there was a board sticking up. And I landed right on that board

and it felt like it killed me. But, you know, we played hurt all the time so I didn't think about it. So, yeah, I broke my neck sometime, probably eight months, nine months prior to having the car wreck. And then I also found out in the last 12, 15 years, I had broken my back to, at the L4L5 level. I had broke the little wings off the back of my vertebrae.

They were gone. And so, I mean, there were things. things there were, you know, that would have come back to haunt me sooner rather than later had I kept that pace up. Take yourself back to, you know, 25, 26 years old. What were your favorite matches? Were they, I mean, I'm asking like what style of match was your favorite? What was the cage, what, is it a cage match?

Is it, what is your favorite ones to do? So I started out the scientific, drop kick, arm drag, Ricky Stimboat style, you know, scientific wrestling thing. But the character that I became is Magnum, particularly in the Mid-South days. You know, you mentioned

the deal with wrestling too, but before that, it'd been Butch Reed, who was a big, strong son-of-a-gun athlete. And I like the battles. I like the punch and kick and John Wayne-style brawls better than I liked anything. So Tully was

Taylor made for that Before Tully I'd had Wahu And Wahu had been like You know he was like a hero to me I'd watch Wahu and Johnny Valentine When I was a kid Beating each other to death over the Silver Dollar Challenge And you know

So to have him kind of passed the torch to me in Charlotte Which was the centerpiece for For the Crockets Inside of the Steel Cage The U.S. title You know that was the start of of the run. But then Tully and, you know,

Tully was such a season pro, the thing that really I hang my hat on and the reason I thought I was, I felt I was ready to have the World Title run. They put me in this program with Nikita. And Nakeda's 290 pounds, raw, green as grass, intense, fast, brutal,

everything you could think of in a monster. He's a big one. And we had a program that was absolutely stellar. And I was then the veteran. Then I was the lead. I was the guy that he'd to make sure that this thing, you know, lived up to everything else I wanted to do. And we had that what they called the Best of Seven series for the world title.

I'd gotten to beef. I had my mom at a match signing deal. And she didn't know anything was going to go on. And I, Nikita calls me a mama's boy or something. And I'd dive over the table, getting a fight with. him and my mom's, oh my God, over the corner's screaming. And so Bob Geigold, president of the NWA, is going to reprimand me because I'm becoming a challenge, you know, the U.S. champion, and I deck him.

So this is the precursor to the Steve Austin deal. And I knock out the president of the NWA. Then they stripped me of the title and we go into this best of seven series, which ended up, I think we actually had like 15 matches. or so before it was all over with. But, you know, I end up passing the title to him with interference from Ivan and Crusher-Cruchev in a deal and puts huge heat on him.

But it was the idea I was going on to the next thing. I was making him, you know, making him in the process and next time we would see each other, I'd have a different bill. Yeah. So when you were going to fight in a cage match, was there anything unique that you had to be aware of or prepared for or?

You know, back then the biggest difference difference. Because cage matches were. They were bloody and brutal. And, I mean, fans ate them up. They were different than they are today. Yeah, they're a lot cleaner. And, well, you know, back then it was just, you know, old daggone galvanized, you know, cage.

I remember with Wahoo, I hit the cage and I came back off the cage. And my whole eyebrow was hanging down over my head, my eye. And he said, well, kid, he said, you don't have worry about bleeding. you're bleeding. And I said, what do you mean? And I had ripped, I just ripped it like off.

And, you know, those things happened. You, you, there's barbs sticking out and things you'd run into. But people had a level of intensity to your point. I go back and watch some of the old matches

on YouTube and you listen to the sound effects. When we threw a punch, the whole places, you didn't have to have anybody that thing piped in. No. They're so with it. They're every move,

everything you do, they were right there. And they'll never have that again because it's a bigger show today. You can't cut the house lights down and have just everything featured on that center stage because they got 30,000 people in the building. They wouldn't be able to see. Yeah. Because they got to have a jumbotron so they can see what's going on. But we in a 10,000, 11,000 seat building with all that focus on you, it could be so loud you couldn't hear anything.

It would be so loud, it would be like quiet. And it has damaged my ears, probably just like racing, probably did to yours. But it was a different, it was a different magic. It wasn't the choreographed, you know, high-flying, all these, you know, exciting, you know, stutt-man-looking moves people do today. But people hung on everything you did. They did.

Yeah, man. Me and I had Steve Austin on the show years ago, and we talked about color a little bit. and how, because I'd always kind of wondered how that would come about and what was the conversation around that. It seemed like there was never a fight without color in your matches. Well, you think about it if you're damaging somebody. I mean, who hasn't, you know, as a kid, been in a scrap with somebody and, you know, got a bloody lip or bloody nose or, you know, something dinked? And if you can't bust a grape and, you know, you're throwing these haybalt,

maker punches and all this stuff and nobody's bleeding. Yeah. What credibility is there to that? Eventually one day they decided, I guess, through the networks and because of the size of the industry to do away with that. Now it's back again. It's back, but they're using it gingerly and making it mean something when they do like what they just did with Randy and Cody. That's right. You know, and it was perfect.

I texted him right after. That was an old school angle. It's done perfect, you know, fantastic. You know, kudos. And interesting, do you find it ironic too or just so coincidental that it's in Cody's peak that color would come back? A guy whose dad was known for color? You know, I see, you know, it won't ever be like we had. Sure.

Because it just couldn't. I mean, literally. I guess my feeling is, is that like the industry changed so much. and I don't know that anyone currently in today's roster would be willing to bring that back. But Cody would. Yeah, because he's an old school. He's an old school. Its roots are in that style of a match.

And so I just find that really interesting that it, I didn't think it'd ever come back, but it did. And it's come back. Well, the age thing was the first thing. Everybody was afraid of, you know, when that became a thing and blood mixing with blood. and all that stuff, they were terrified over that because of liability. But then as it became, you know, you know, sponsors and backers and commercial this and that and the other, you know, then all of a sudden that does a play role friendly with family entertainment. But we had the grandmas and everybody else on the front row, you know,

just swinging, hitting you with their cane if they were mad at you, you know. Had you ever had a fan, you know, maybe cross the line? I'm sure you have. Do you recall any? Not, you know, literally, I mean, because Tully and I, in some of the house shows, would go fight out two, three rows deep in ringside sometimes. But we were so physical, nobody really wanted to get close because they could, I mean, they could hear the shot.

I mean, I would hit him on the side of the neck. He would tell you this. He couldn't talk right for about eight months because I would hit him right. right inside the neck where it was soft tissue and I can make contact. And, you know, there was, it was thrown full speed. It wasn't thrown trying to take his head off. But even at 240 pounds throwing your hand that fast, you're going to, you're going to, you know, leave a little mark. Oh, yeah.

So, you brought your son along with you to the podcast today. Does he ask you about, you know, there's sort of this meme on the internet now. What were you like? you know, mom or dad, what were you like in the 90s or the 80s? Like, do you find him digging into your history? Oh, yeah. And he's been, and he's already been in the ring and done some training. Really?

The most surreal thing I've ever seen. So there's a guy named Lodi that wrestled in WCW. He has a ring in Matthews and school there. And Tucker had been a few times, just learned a thing. few things. And so I'm sitting there and Arn comes in. Arn sits down next to me. Arn's son,

Russell's. Arn's son looks almost just like Arn. I mean, they're like spitting images of each other. Well, he goes in there with Tucker. And all of a sudden, I'm watching Tucker and him. Mind blown, right?

I mean, just the most, most emotional moment, I think I can remember in the last 10 years because I was watching something evolving and I'm watching history. history and I'm thinking about all this stuff from 40 years ago. And here's my youngest son and his son. And I'm going, oh, my gosh, this is, you know, is this looking into the crystal ball

of what, you know, it could be? And, you know, so, yeah, yeah, unfortunately, I can't, nobody has to ask what I was doing back then because I'm captured all over for sure. For sure. The stinking internet. Yeah. You know, sometimes things I wish they hadn't captured. They didn't have cell phones back then.

Yeah, no kidding. Or we had really been in trouble. Yeah. I got a five and a seven-year-old daughter, and I'm curious, I guess, as I get older and they get older, they don't, they never saw my racing career when it was in its full swing. But I'm curious, I guess, as I get older, how much they might want to know about it and maybe how inquisitive they might get. But it's, it's got to be an incredible feeling for your son to not only want to understand who you were and what you did, but want to be a part of it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's, you know, it's something that's either in your DNA, it's not something you can force somebody to. Sure. I mean, I've got, my oldest son just turned 30, and he's a big, healthy, raw bone young man, and could have certainly, you know, chose that path, and I would have helped him if he wanted to, but it had no inclination for it whatsoever.

And then my stepdaughter, Tessa, Tessel Blanchard, Tully's, you know, daughter. You know, she's been out there in the business for 10 years. Yeah. So you either got that itch or you don't. Yeah. You married Tully's ex-wife. Yes.

How did that happen? So we all lived here in Charlotte. I had a rocky situation going on at home. She did too. And, you know, and we just, we ran in, I mean, I was there when her and Tully got married. and they were already all the rocks. They were going south. And here she had a one, three, five, and seven-year-old.

And I had my oldest son, young. And the moon and stars lined up, and we just had this undeniable chemistry. And I'd never imagine having more than two kids, much less I go from one to five. And, you know, raise all those kids. And tell each part of their lives, I mean, in and out, seeing him and out seeing him on the weekends and whatnot,

and him and I still work in events and stuff. Yeah. You know, so it was. It was. I didn't know that until. Yeah. Very strange, very, you know, just strange path of those things took. But, I mean, we've, you know, we've, we've all interacted with the trials and tribulations and

challenges of parenting and trying to solve things that those kids went through and him and I have kibitzing on, you know, how to best see them through something. And it's just been in a. crazy. I mean, I got about 10 books in my head and I don't want to write any of them. You mentioned Stone Cold a couple times during our conversation. You see a lot of parallels or

similarities with his story and his character. I guess the fact, first of all, that he became that kind of anti-hero kind of deal was what Dusty was really letting me lean into.

Like, I would have tag matches where I'd go help the Rock and Roll Express. us or we'd tag up with the road warriors or do something. But typically because I was chasing singles championships, I kind of stayed in my lane and wrestled a very rough style, yet I would be that baby face fighting from the bottom up, usually bloodied up, and just get people pulling for me. And Steve, the similar path was that Steve was a great athlete from the Gidgo and and very good in the ring from the Gidgo.

But he found that rattlesnake character, you know, kind of like after the same thing like me in Mid-South. You know, they brought him in as the professional or some goofy thing. They had him the WWE first. And usually, you know,

your first impression is, you know, your best impression. And if you're going to be successful, it either gets over or you go somewhere else. Well, he like me got a second chance with the same group. I got that second chance in Mid-South and it popped.

And, of course, he became arguably one of the biggest phenomenal, you know, personalities, you know, ever in wrestling and got to, you know, I could have, I would have never wanted to take it to the, follow the exact same path he did because, you know, but he was very comfortable in it and did a great job with it. Yes. Yeah. You know, I think there, I am a wrestling fan when there is a dusty roads, when there's a Magnum T. when there's a stone cold, when there's a person in that ring that looks like I might, you know, the kind of person I might see walking down the street. And, you know, not to, and I'm a fan of Cody's, so I watch, you know, what's going on with his career and his story. But what drew me in, I think, and was really common back in the 80s was a lot of the characters were regular people.

You know, even though you had a name and you wore, you know, maybe some unique clothes, it wasn't a stretch to imagine walking into a bar or a restaurant and seeing you sitting down, you know, having dinner. And it's transitioned, I think, particularly in the last handful of years, the characters are more extravagant, more elaborate, and less, they're not wearing, you know, regular clothes. They're not wearing, even, you know, Stone Cold was kind of the last of... Oh, yeah, they wouldn't let no more let you go out there

in your jeans and boots and a T-shirt today and cut a promo than a man on the moon. They should. Yeah. That guy's missing for me. Yeah, and the blue collar America, and I mean, my dad was, my dad and his dad were ironwork, steel construction for 30 years. And, you know, I come from that lifestyle. and that hardworking, all-American type deal.

And I worked in steel before I ended up, you know, I ended up in telecom and construction. My dad used to laugh because when I was in high school, he would try to get me interested in that stuff. And I had no interest in it whatsoever. And then I go have this catastrophic wreck. You know, I'm not 100% physical. And I end up owning my own boom truck and, you know,

hanging steel and building towers and doing all this stuff vicariously that, you know, I'd been around, you know, steal and I end up on a whole other channel, you know, after the fact. Yeah. Do you watch wrestling much outside of what Cody's doing? I do to a degree just because, first of all, TSA works for a company called TNA and I can see her on TV and she's also working for a company in Mexico. She lives down in Mexico.

And so I can watch her on a YouTube. channel and then I watch that and then you know basically what I'll do I cheat I'll go I'll watch YouTube just to see highlights of things that have happened and if something somebody says something was really good I'll go back and watch it you know but I can't I don't have the bandwidth and the time to spend the hours because the shows are so long now and I mean you could literally make make a career out of just watching wrestling between A.E.W and T&A and A and A and And the WWE, I don't have time for, I'm busy. I got stuff to do.

Well, man, it's been a lot of fun talking to you. I'm so thankful that you made time for us today to come in here and sit down. As I said, when we started this, you know, I put out a tweet the other day on social media about how excited I was about this guest. You, you know, you impacted my childhood. I got up every Saturday morning so excited that I was going to get to see you and Dusty and the Four Horsman and get to watch that continuation of what you guys had created. It was perfection.

And I mean, in that little, we didn't know, you know, as a fans, we did not know how good we had it in that particular time. But you guys were hitting home runs every single week. and it left quite an impact on me. And I, you know, I was a fan of yours. I always admired your style and the character that you'd created and the friend that you were to Dusty. And I love to know that that was a genuine thing that would carry on for years. I've loved to have, I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to sit down and talk to my heroes,

you know, and understand how that business worked and how you ground it out and where you went to find all this opportunity and create opportunity for yourself. So I think people are going to love to be able to hear it for the ones who haven't seen you out and about at some of the trade shows and whatnot. They're going to love to know what you've been up to. For people that are a little bit younger

and may not have been able to experience what you did in the 80s, a lot of people are going to hear your story for the first time. So thanks so much for being here today. Terry, it was a great honor. Well, it was a pleasure. you're right here in my backyard and it would have been a travesty not to have gotten together. I'm surprised.

I'm, you know, surprised that we haven't crossed past, honestly. And I guess responsibility is a little bit on me for that too. But I am thankful for today very much. My pleasure. That was Magnum T.A. on the Dale Jr. Downland. All right. So that was it, man, Magnum T.A. I know a lot of people, I put that post out on social media other day,

telling people that I was pretty excited. about my next guest, and I know a lot of people probably weren't thinking Magnum TA, but that's going way back in the early 80s, maybe the mid-80s. But, yeah, I mean, his story is a cool one. Also sad and tragic because his career was cut short, his opportunity, which I feel like that he was probably going to be world champion at some point. And, you know, just didn't get that opportunity, but to hear him. heck, I mean, he was in his mind, maybe just about three or four years away from transition

and out of the ring, which is interesting. I'd be hard to believe that, you know, if he had found his opportunity as a world champion, he would give up the chance to keep staying on top and working the industry in that role. But who knows what would have happened with Magnum T.A. You see him right over my shoulder here with Dusty Rose. they were a tag team. Man, they were so much fun. I want to go back right now and get on YouTube

and look at some of those old matches because honestly, I mean, I know today's wrestling, I'm a big fan of wrestling, and I know that it's a massive industry now, and there's fans all across the world, and there's so many incredibly talented and elaborate characters in the industry. now but I don't know you know how you know how our nostalgia works it does the same thing in

racing we think oh man the 70s and 80s it was so good um but I feel that way you know about the NWA and watching the full horsemen and ganging up on magnum TA and Dusty Roads every week and how that was just so much fun to watch and it wasn't even so much about what happened in the ring it was the promos and the talk and The acting and the storytelling was so, so good. Oh, man, you were not going to miss the next show. You had to tune in. It was going to continue, you know, and it was just like watching,

it was just like watching your favorite television show like Dallas or any of those things that were on TV at the time. You couldn't miss a week because things were changing and involving. But, yeah, I was heartbroken. when Terry had his automobile accident and I knew that his career was over, but I had no idea the significance of his injuries. And we're witnesses today to what that did to his body physically and also how it changed his life. And so I knew that even if you don't know who Magnum T was,

and even if you're not a wrestling fan, the story of a guy, who had the top of the world right there in sight and lost it all, but still found a way to not only survive, but to push forward and to make something out of his life. You know, he went on into a field totally unrelated to wrestling, totally unrelated to, you know, what athletic ability he possessed before his accident. I mean, he had to find something to work, you know, and he did. and he doesn't seem to have any emotional baggage around all that.

Oh, man. I don't know that many of us would have been able to come to terms and negotiate with ourselves the reality of that situation, right? And he talked about it. He's like, man, you know, people were telling me that I had this sort of opportunity to spiral out of control or, you know, throw my life away and throw a pity party or whatever. And he didn't do that, man.

He just buckled down and found something else to do with his life. And I don't know, man. Pretty cool to be able to say that I've actually had the chance to talk to him. And he was very good at, you know, describing everything that he went through. And I just, I got everything I needed out of this. So it was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed it. Every now and then, I'm very lucky to be able to bring somebody in that I truly can't wait to meet and talk to.

And this was one of those episodes. So I hope you all enjoyed the conversation with Terry, also known as Magnum T.A. Thanks for joining us here at the Arby Studio. Don't forget about Arby's new Meat and Three Box. You get more meal for your money at Arby's. Arby's, we have the meets. We'll see you next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media.

on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.