The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling by Joe Laurinaitis

Author:Joe Laurinaitis [Laurinaitis, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781605421643
Publisher: Medallion Press
Published: 2011-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

HAWK AND I ALWAYS KEPT OUR GAME FACES ON, EVEN WHEN OUR WAR PAINT WORE OFF. 1986.

11

SCALING DIZZYING HEIGHTS

When Thanksgiving finally arrived on November 27, 1986, I was as ready as I’d ever be. As for Hawk’s leg? Well, let’s say that when we arrived at the Omni in Atlanta earlier in the day, Hawk decided to perform a little cast removal. With a pair of scissors and a knife, he cut into that thing until he had a perfect line sliced from top to bottom. He grabbed both sides of the cast and tore it off, revealing one hell of a pale and atrophied calf muscle. He started laughing. “Damn, Joe, as if my legs weren’t skinny enough already!” He got up and lightly walked on it, and although he winced in pain a little, he said he could manage it.

Since I’d taken a class on athletic injuries in college, Hawk asked me to tape his ankle and leg for him. Back in those days, the boys didn’t have the luxury of trainers in the locker room, so anytime someone hurt an ankle, it was always, “Animal, we need a tape job.” I should’ve charged money.

So after Hawk’s cast came off, I looked at it and proceeded to go to work taping the old basket weave formation with a heel lock for total stability. I’m telling you, by the time I was finished taping Hawk up, it may as well have been a cast on his leg. I was proud of my work, and it was no wonder I’d passed the college class (though few others).

When we were both done, we decided to go out to the arena floor and check out the scaffold. As we walked out from behind the curtain into the Omni and saw the scaffolding structure, I wondered if we’d made a big mistake. The thing looked ominous. When we arrived at the very bottom of the base where the side ladder rungs were, I looked straight up at the catwalk suspended over the ring and then straight down to the mat. Then I did it again. Holy shit, was it a long way down! We were told the distance to the bottom was 25 feet, but I’m telling you it made me dizzy the second I looked at it.

To get a better feel for it, Hawk and I climbed up to the top. As I grabbed each rung and pulled myself up, I saw the arena seats get smaller and smaller until I was finally at the top. Hawk didn’t seem to be having any problem on his way up, so all was well. When we were both standing on the top of the structure, I started to get a little vertigo and held on to the railing. I swear I could feel the scaffold swaying a little.

The only thing keeping the entire thing steady were a couple of safety cables attached to each side and bolted in the flooring. I also noticed how narrow the catwalk to the other side was.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.