Even after all these years, and all my travels, I never thought I would find myself writing a book. It’s my life — and it felt pretty normal to me. People who know me, however, have always said, “Pat, you ought to write a goddamn book. The life that you have had is amazing.”
As time went on, they got me seriously thinking about this project. And you know what? When I look back at my life, it is amazing that I’m still here doing what I love. After all, my friend Louie and I were almost killed in a car wreck before the whole thing even got rolling.
Still, I didn’t want to write a book to “put myself over,” to tell you how many championships I’ve won, or how great my wrestling matches were. I know some fans like that stuff, not that there is anything wrong with that, but most of it can be found with the simple click of a button. Why write a book about that? Most fans I meet today know more about my career than I do. Yet Vince McMahon himself kept telling me I should do it. “It’s a great story, Patrick,” he said.
Though wrestling will always be a part of my life, I always felt that my life was a lot more than just that. In fact, it was something entirely different from my career. Wrestling has never been the be-all and end-all of my life, even when I was headlining Madison Square Garden four times in a row against Bob Backlund for the WWE Championship. But people ask me, “How did you get here?” and when I seriously thought about my life and what I have accomplished, I realized that there might just be a story worth telling. I’ve laughed, loved, experienced sadness, and lived incredible adventures with wonderful people along the way.
How did I get here? How did a poor French Canadian kid, who didn’t speak English (some people say I still don’t, by the way) become what I’ve become? I didn’t have a master plan when I left home to wrestle in Boston; I didn’t know then that I was an artist trying to find a way to express himself. My life has been a never-ending story — I understand that now — and I love telling stories. But where to start, when there have been enough shenanigans for two lifetimes?
I even stopped being a wrestler at Vince McMahon’s request and became a senior vice president who worked in an office — and I had quit school so I would never have to work in an office. Funny, how life throws you curve balls. I still have no idea what a senior vice president does, but I know wrestling. That’s still what I do today.
Here I am again, talking about wrestling, no closer to figuring out how to start my book . . .
But if you’re still with me after all this rambling, then I think you and I will have some fun. I, for one, cannot wait to go on this trip down memory lane, as I try to figure out how I went from sharing a bed with my brother to staying in the fanciest hotel suites in the world while working for WWE.
Wait a minute, that’s it. I know where I need to go to tell my story.
It all started in Montréal, more than fifty-eight years ago . . .