INTRODUCTION

Every child needs a hero.

Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood in suburban Manchester, New Hampshire, in the late 1970s, my friends all idolized someone whose poster could be found taped up over their beds. For my athletic friends, these heroes were the Boston sports legends of the time: Orr and Bird; Grogan and Yastrzemski. For others, who tempered the awkwardness of those years by taking up an instrument and starring in a neighborhood garage band, it was Daltrey and Townshend, or Jim Morrison, or Mick Jagger, or Geddy, Alex, and Neil.

My hero, though, was someone totally different.

I first discovered him while flipping channels after swim practice on one nondescript, drizzly Saturday morning late in the autumn of 1980. There, at age nine, somewhere on the dial between the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Candlepins for Cash, I got my first introduction to the “sport” in which he had the starring role.

Initially confused by what this spectacle was all about, I watched as this guy used a dazzling array of athletic moves to deftly pin the shoulders of a much bigger and scarier-looking opponent to the mat for a count of three, delighting the people who had jammed into the dingy fairgrounds arena to cheer him on. A guy who had the lean, strong body and chiseled but kind young face that plainly came not from a bottle or a syringe as they often do now, but from years of dedication and hard work in the gym and on the mat.

With the battle behind him, I watched as this man approached the microphone held by a very young Vince McMahon Jr., and calmly described his plan for beating someone named Sergeant Slaughter. This Slaughter, he said, was a Marine Drill Instructor who would do anything to win the championship belt. Furthermore, Slaughter was the master of an unbreakable submission hold, known as the “Cobra Clutch,” which, when applied, would render its victim unconscious … But with hard work and dedication, and with all of us behind him, said the man being interviewed, he would do everything in his power to avoid the Cobra Clutch, and find a way to win and keep the championship belt for all the fans that deserved a proper role model … a champion they could be proud of. He hoped we’d all show up to watch the battle at the Boston Garden that night and cheer him on to victory.

I was totally hooked.

At the time, I was a serious young athlete—a swimmer competing on the same team with people who would go on to win gold medals at the Olympics and the Goodwill Games. I believed in training hard, playing fair, and “saying my prayers and eating my vitamins,” long before Hulk Hogan would go on to popularize that phrase. My new hero spoke to me because he was all about those things, albeit on a much bigger stage.

He was known as the “All-American Boy” because of his clean-cut, youthful good looks, humility, and plainspoken manner. As I would soon learn, he was also drawing overflow crowds into the East Coast’s largest hockey arenas and civic centers. From Bangor to Baltimore, Madison Square Garden to the Tokyo Dome, crowds of men, women, and children, young and old, were coming out in droves to cheer him on to victory.

Somehow, this straight-shooting guy was finding a way to hang in there for twenty or thirty minutes nearly every night with challenger after challenger, one more imposing, nefarious, and downright scary than the next. There were Russian strongmen and Samurai warriors; Wild Samoans and tough-talking cowboys; street fighters, masked men, and giants. Through it all, each night, this All-American Boy would dazzle the crowds with elaborate displays of wrestling holds, bursts of quickness, and jaw-dropping feats of strength. He would also withstand unspeakable beatings until he found the moment when he could capitalize on his opponent’s one passing mistake. Then, with a single dazzling move, he’d pin his opponent’s shoulders to the mat for the fatal three-count that would allow him, once again, to retain his title.

In these matches against these formidable foes, he was forever the underdog—and I identified with him, because I suppose I saw myself that way too.

In 1980, I was a nine-year-old boy growing up in the anonymity of middle-class suburbia, and my hero was Bob Backlund—the Heavyweight Champion of the World Wrestling Federation.

For the next several years, I didn’t miss a week of wrestling on television, as I closely followed the career and exploits of my new hero. Wherever I went in competition, Bob Backlund came with me. As I sat quietly in the locker rooms of aquatic centers around New England, mentally preparing for my big races, I would think about Bob doing the same in the bowels of a nearby arena before a title defense. Whenever an older kid tried to bully me on the playground or in the neighborhood, I would think about Bob standing up to any one of the scary, bigger guys (“heels” in wrestling parlance) he was forced to wrestle in defense of his world championship. With that in mind, no playground bully ever seemed to be quite as tough.

When I first tuned in to all of this as a happy-go-lucky nine-year-old, I didn’t know that the outcomes of these professional wrestling matches were prearranged, and the fact is, it wouldn’t have mattered much if I had known. Nor does that fact matter much in the telling of Bob Backlund’s story, because the meaning of Backlund’s life isn’t as much about the outcomes of his wrestling matches as it is about the man and his journey and the defining choices he made along the way. Choices that left an indelible mark on him, on all of those he touched with his remarkable acts of generosity and kindness, and on the entire wrestling industry.

Of course, the stories Bob Backlund was “telling” in the ring mattered mightily to the fiscal bottom line of the World Wrestling Federation, to the livelihoods of his opponents in the ring with whom he split a percentage of the gates each night, and as such, to his own viability as the champion. For in professional wrestling, the world championship match was always the main event of the evening, and because of that, the champion was heavily relied upon to draw the house. Knowing this, Vince McMahon Sr., the majority owner and Chairman of the Capitol Wrestling Corporation or what was then known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation, had searched the world for an iconic “All-American Boy” to replace the wildly successful but aging Italian superman and “Living Legend” Bruno Sammartino as his champion—and McMahon had gambled big on the relatively unknown Backlund to be that man.

There were smoky backroom machinations that led to McMahon finding Backlund, and inside politics that nearly derailed McMahon’s carefully scripted plan. There were colorful opponents that Backlund faced as he criss-crossed the globe in defense of his world championship belt looking to deviate from the promoters’ booking strategies and “go into business for themselves.” There were unsavory promoters that Backlund was forced to deal with in all corners of the world, road stories from the infamous pro wrestling fraternity, temptations visited upon him, and a remarkable degree of worldwide fame and recognition that made it nearly impossible for him to go anywhere without being mobbed by fans. All of these stories are a huge part of Backlund’s life story. But of equal importance were the positive messages of personal courage, confidence, and hope that Bob Backlund was delivering, by his own example, to me and to hundreds of thousands of young kids my age across the country and around the world.

I managed to coax my father to take me to a couple of the seasonal wrestling cards held locally every six weeks during the summer at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Coliseum in my home town of Manchester, New Hampshire. The decrepit 2,500-seat half-moon community hockey rink served as the venue. There, we sat ringside, cheering my hero Bob Backlund on to victory and successful title defenses against the likes of George “The Animal” Steele, “Golden Boy” Adrian Adonis, and “The Russian Bear” Ivan Koloff.

As we grew older, my friends and I anxiously awaited the turn of the season and the announcement of the spring’s first wrestling card, which would inevitably turn into a bicycle-driven pilgrimage to Fred’s Tackle Shop on the Saturday morning when tickets went on sale. Fred had fewer teeth than he had fingers (and he was missing several of both), but his odd-smelling Army-Navy surplus supply shop, crammed to the gills with survival supplies, was the exclusive presale location for wrestling tickets in those days. Fred was always waiting with a jagged smile for us to fork over the twelve dollars that each of us had carefully saved up from our paper routes or allowances in order to secure a cherished ringside seat to the matches.

Eventually, though, as it does for all sports heroes, Bob Backlund’s championship reign and his time in the spotlight came to an end. On the day after Christmas in 1983, back in Madison Square Garden where it had all begun, the “All-American Boy” entered the Garden ring with a “neck injury” suffered in a just-televised attack at the hands of his hated archrival, The Iron Sheik of Tehran. Backlund’s injury had just been broadcast to the millions of viewers of the WWF’s television programming that very morning. The Sheik had challenged Backlund to attempt to swing his Persian clubs over his head—a feat which, the Sheik claimed, no American was tough enough to pull off. Backlund, of course, answered the call in defense of his country to the delight of the fans who chanted “USA! USA!” in unison and urged Backlund to put the Sheik in his place. Backlund succeeded in swinging the clubs, only to have the Sheik attack him while he was performing the exercise, causing one of the legitimately 50-pound wooden clubs to (not legitimately) fall on the back of Backlund’s neck.

With that as the setup, the badly “injured” Backlund valiantly battled the Sheik in the main event that night at the Garden, but was eventually trapped in the Sheik’s dreaded “camel clutch”—an unbreakable submission hold wherein the Sheik sat on Backlund’s back and pulled upward on his chin, bending his neck and back nearly into a right angle. Backlund refused to submit and relinquish the title, and instead hung there limply, on the edge of consciousness, with the TV announcers screaming into their microphones that Backlund had to submit or risk permanent injury.

Then, suddenly and without warning, a white towel came flying into the ring—thrown reluctantly by Backlund’s longtime manager, “Golden Boy” Arnold Skaaland, signaling Backlund’s submission and relinquishment of the championship to The Iron Sheik. “I had to save Bobby’s career,” Skaaland later maintained in the televised post-match interviews. “He would never have given up. Sheik woulda had to kill him.”

Bob Backlund’s reign as champion was over. After nearly six years, the “All-American Boy” had lost the world championship to an Iranian madman on the night after Christmas. The wrestling world and, indeed, “all of America” was left in a state of shock and turmoil.

One month later, Hulk Hogan substituted for an “injured” Backlund, pinned the Sheik at Madison Square Garden, and “Hulkamania” was born. This swept into being a new era of sports entertainment complete with a “rock and wrestling connection,” MTV, Cyndi Lauper, dancing girls and Wrestlemania, where TV-star Mr. T donned the tights as Hogan’s partner. Pursuant to Vince McMahon Jr.’s master plan, rasslin’ had gone mainstream.

Amid all of this new glitz and glamour, the people just seemed to forget about their plainspoken hero, Bob Backlund. And that, of course, is when the true measure of a man is taken.

When the lights go out and the crowds have moved on, too many heroes fall.

But not mine.

With Hogan catching fire nationwide, Vince Jr. offered Backlund a lucrative contract to stay with the company provided that Backlund would turn his back on the fans, dye his hair, become a “jealous heel,” and spend the rest of his days attempting to vanquish Hulkamania.

Backlund, however, knew that the “All-American Boy” he had portrayed in the ring for so many years was less a character in the McMahons’ passion play than it was his authentic self. He also knew that the credibility and influence that he built up in the real world in the previous six years was far more important to him than money. During those six years, Bob Backlund the professional wrestling character and Bob Backlund the man had become one and the same. To “turn heel” and destroy that character, as Vince Jr. was asking him to do, would be to repudiate the very essence of the person he had become in real life. And once done, there would be no going back.

Faced with this choice, Bob Backlund opted to walk away. Backlund returned home to Glastonbury, Connecticut, to raise his young daughter with the wife who had been his college sweetheart.

From there, Backlund watched as professional wrestling exploded into a billion-dollar worldwide industry. But with that new cross-cultural exposure and evolution into a pop culture phenomenon, the once passable “sport” evolved into farce, and the ever-increasing physical demands on its characters led to rampant steroid and drug abuse and premature deaths too numerous to count.

For most of the next decade, during pro wrestling’s pop culture heyday, Bob Backlund absented himself from the international stage. And in those intervening years, while Bob Backlund was home raising his family, my interest in professional wrestling likewise faded. I moved on to other things, and admittedly, I lost track of the man who had once been my childhood hero.

Fast-forward to the spring of 1993—my junior year of college. One night, upon hearing that the WWF was in town, a group of my roommates and friends made plans to head over to the New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum to see the show. As I had discovered, even at a rarified place like Yale, there were professional wrestling fans among the ranks. Professors of American Studies, psychology, and sociology studied it as a cultural phenomenon. My friends, roommates, and fellow students—doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and political leaders-to-be—readily admitted a previous (and in some cases, ongoing) fascination with “the sport.”

Word of our planned adventure got out, and by the time the evening rolled around, our posse was a dozen strong. I had no idea what the matches were that night, or even who was scheduled to appear, but was just happy to recapture a moment from my earlier childhood: to feel the excitement of that first glimpse of the three-roped wrestling ring standing empty in the middle of the arena, with the smell of stale popcorn and cheap beer in the air. A haze of cigarette smoke hung low over the crowd as we walked into the arena, and there was a buzz in the air as the 12,000-seat New Haven Coliseum filled to capacity.

It was good to be back.

Later that evening, the “Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels, then the federation’s Intercontinental Champion, came to the ring for a title defense. The challenger, who came running out of the locker room in his old red, white, and blue American Flag ring jacket, to an oddly tepid response from the crowd, was none other than my childhood hero.

Bob Backlund was back!

Bob and Shawn put on a true wrestling clinic for the fans—a twenty-some-minute match (rare for the “cartoon era” of wrestling) which Bob won after Shawn Michaels could not answer the ten-count and was counted out of the ring. This, of course, allowed hometown hero Backlund to win the match, but allowed Michaels to hang on to the championship—which could still only change hands via a pin or submission—just like in the old days.

As the crew dismantled the ring after the matches, I recognized Tony Garea, a babyface from the past now serving as a road agent for the company, standing by the exit. I walked over and struck up a conversation, and mentioned to Tony how Bob’s match with Shawn had been a wonderful reminder of the old days—and wondered aloud whether Bob would be able to “get over” with the people and recapture that old magic again.

“The fans don’t appreciate the same things anymore,” Garea lamented.

Turns out, he was right. In 1993’s postmodern, dawn of the Internet world, Bob Backlund’s wholesome, play by the rules, All-American hero persona wasn’t selling anymore. In many cases, the crowds were now cheering for the immoral heels to beat the good guys. Vince McMahon Sr. was gone, and so too his reliable old model of good always triumphing over evil in the end. In fact, in the WWF of 1993, good and evil were, in many cases, no longer even distinguishable.

That night, however, I began what was to become an eighteen-year odyssey to recapture the magic of my childhood. Seeing Bob Backlund again made me want to relive the matches and interviews that had so entranced me when I was young. To hear the dramatic ring announcements from the old carny Joe McHugh, young upstart Gary Michael Cappetta, or Madison Square Garden’s Howard Finkel. To listen again to Vince McMahon Jr. and Gorilla Monsoon’s compelling play-by-play on the live wrestling cards then-broadcast through the miracle of early cable television on HBO, Madison Square Garden Cablevision, the PRISM Network in Philadelphia, and, later, on the USA Network.

In the years since then, and with the help of many others, I reached back across time and pieced together one of the most complete videotaped collections of Bob Backlund’s matches. Watching those live wrestling cards and their supporting TV shows again, it is remarkable how well the stories stand up, both the “angles” drawn up by the “bookers,” and the stories told by Bob and his opponents in the ring.

I followed Bob’s return to wrestling with renewed interest, but noted with sadness as Tony Garea’s comment that night in New Haven proved correct. Try though he did, my then-forty-two-year-old hero couldn’t sell his story of hard work, clean living, and perseverance to the kids growing up in Generation X. Instead, this generation of wrestling fans cheered a group of “heels” like Michaels that broke the rules, defied authority, objectified women, and referred to themselves, appropriately, as “Degeneration X.” Backlund’s George Foreman–like resurgence upon the wrestling scene he had once captivated for more than six years was, in this new era, sadly failing to catch fire.

By then, however, Backlund’s daughter Carrie and his legions of young fans had grown up into adulthood, and Backlund had been privately pondering how he could get his message across to this new generation of wrestling fans. One night, on cable television’s leading show, the WWF’s Monday Night RAW television program, it all came together. I watched in amazement as Backlund “snapped,” locked his deadly Chickenwing Crossface submission hold on his towel-throwing former manager Arnold Skaaland, and began to rant and rave about the moral depravity of the modern wrestling fan. I watched with a smile of appreciation in subsequent weeks as my old childhood hero “got heat” with this new generation of fans by becoming an “out-of-touch,” eccentric, and highly volatile force, donning a red bow tie and suspenders reminiscent of your former high school principal, and lecturing everyone about their vices and failings.

As Bob put it, “I just decided to be bad by being good.”

I must admit that I was never a fan either of Hulkamania, or of the crazed, bow-tie-wearing, lunatic heel “Mr. Backlund” character that Bob invented and assumed in the 1990s. For me, as a fan, the magic spell that pro wrestling had cast on me was broken that night in December 1983 when Arnold Skaaland threw the towel ending Bob’s reign as the champion.

My childhood hero was, and always will be, the soft-talking, clean cut, sportsmanlike Bob Backlund—the underdog World Champion entering the ring with his loyal manager Arnold Skaaland and vanquishing challenger after challenger. That is the Bob Backlund that I will always choose to remember. And in Bob’s heart, that is the authentic Bob Backlund that he hopes we will never forget.

But to his peers on the inside of the business, the “Mr. Backlund” character that Bob created is revered to this day as one of the most remarkable strokes of creative genius the industry has ever seen. It was, of course, at its essence, a social commentary on the changed and blurry mores of the fans and society at the time.

Vince Jr. had wanted to turn Bob Backlund into a jealous heel back in 1984 and have him try to stop the spread of Hulkamania. Although Backlund could have made millions doing so, Backlund turned Vince Jr. down because he had a young daughter who wouldn’t have understood why her friends suddenly hated her father, and because, he believed, the legion of children who idolized him wouldn’t have been able to understand and process why their hero suddenly turned his back on them, became “evil,” and started cheating, breaking rules, and acting without principle. Cynics will say that Backlund cost himself a fortune by becoming a “mark” for his own character. Others, this author among them, would say that Backlund understood that his wrestling persona had grown to transcend the world of professional wrestling—and his place as a role model for young people became bigger and more important to him than his role in the World Wrestling Federation.

So Backlund had waited, bided his time, and stayed in peak physical condition until his daughter was older and his young fans had grown up. Then, in his forties, Backlund re-emerged, defied all odds by returning to a wrestling world that hadn’t seen him for nearly a decade, and became the most hated heel in the sport by becoming its conscience.

It was a story that took the wrestling world by storm and once again, “put butts in the seats” all over the world—culminating in Backlund’s world title victory over then-champion Bret “The Hitman” Hart at the 1994 Survivor Series. Backlund’s second title run would prove to be brief—but it introduced him to a whole new generation of fans, and a whole new generation of professional wrestlers who grew to admire him, for his remarkable physical conditioning, his knowledge of the business, and for his ability to read a crowd and induce passion—the three old-school hallmarks of what a professional wrestler was supposed to be.

Fast-forward again to 2009. I am now back in New Hampshire as a partner in a prominent, old-line New England law firm where I have once again discovered unlikely wrestling cohorts—old wrestling fans who will gladly put down their pens to reminisce about seeing Bruno and Backlund and Andre and Pedro at the old Boston Garden. I am now a dad to two young boys, and married to a woman who views all of this “wrestling stuff” with a sort-of bemused fascination—wondering how her otherwise serious-minded litigator husband could possibly be drawn into this fantasy world of men in tights playing out a battle of good versus evil.

“It is a soap opera for men,” I try to explain to her—“a microcosm of the world’s problems and ills played out in a wrestling match.” I have to smile when I realize how ridiculous this sounds when you say it out loud.

In reality, though, it is really much more than even that.

For me, and I suspect for a great many others out there, remembering the glory years of the “All-American Boy” Bob Backlund evokes memories of a far simpler time, before computers, and the Internet, and smartphones—and before the world got itself in such a hurry. A time before “playdates,” and before every minute of every day of a child’s life was scheduled. A time when kids would still gather in the streets and neighborhoods on lazy summer days to play stickball or kick the can, collect and trade baseball cards, play Atari in each others’ basements, and then congregate on a neighbor’s front porch to discuss how Bob Backlund was going to get past the new challenge of “King Kong” Mosca, “The Magnificent” Muraco, or whatever seemingly insurmountable new heel had been groomed on Vince Sr.’s “Storyboard” for a run at the underdog “All-American Boy” and his championship belt.

For me, and for many others like me, Bob Backlund was, like Star Wars, Atari. and MTV, an iconic emblem of a place in time that we now look back on with more than a little nostalgia. Surely I am not the only one who drives past the dilapidated half-moon ice rink in town with my kids in tow and, looking back over my shoulder, sees myself as a still-idealistic child, chattering in a group of friends outside the arena’s back door on a muggy summer night, waiting for that first glimpse of the ring set up in the center of the building. Waiting and wondering how Bob Backlund would even survive his match this time against the 315-pound insane cowboy Stan “The Lariat” Hansen, never mind find a way to actually pin him.

You see, for me at least, remembering Bob Backlund is like remembering our childhood—recalling old friends, and coming of age, and a simpler life that seemed much more black and white than the myriad shades of gray we now know life to be. Bob Backlund was someone to cheer for. A true to life hero. Someone who was unambiguously good, and just, and right. Always the underdog, and yet, somehow, someway, ultimately, always the winner.

There was just something right and comforting and reassuring about that.

And of course, that was precisely the way Vince McMahon Sr. wanted it: his vision of what the story of the All-American Boy should be. That is exactly the way he drew it up in his “Storyboard”—and that is what he searched the world to find, and what he ultimately found in Bob Backlund—the boy he hand-picked to play the role. And Bob Backlund was, of course, the last great story in Vince McMahon Sr.’s long and wildly successful life of storytelling—the hero he created for us at a time in history at the height of the Cold War when America, and particularly America’s kids, needed one most.

And so, it was against this backdrop that one day, in the fall of 2009, I found myself up very late one night re-watching the wonderful baseball movie Field of Dreams. Near the end, there are two moments in that film that always bring me to tears. The first is the moment when Moonlight Graham pauses for a moment on the baseline before making the choice to step across it in order to save Ray Kinsella’s daughter from choking, knowing full well that the choice would mean that he could never go back to being a ballplayer. And the second is the moment where the haunting line “if you build it, he will come” finally pays off, and Ray gets to have the catch with his father that he never got to have as a kid.

Of course, the entire movie is really about bringing a hero back to life by telling his story. Watching Field of Dreams that night got me thinking, once again, about Bob Backlund. I wondered where he was, and if he was getting old, and whether he was living somewhere in obscurity, in a place where no one remembered him. My own father had recently passed on, and as I watched that night, I found myself in the middle of something of a midlife crisis, longing to find my childhood hero, and to relive some of those old times again.

So I did what everyone does today. I Googled him.

I learned that Bob Backlund had staged a respectable but unsuccessful run for Congress in 2000 as a Republican in Connecticut, that he was running a heating oil company (Backlund Energy) in Glastonbury, that he was still married to his college sweetheart, and that his daughter had grown up to be a marine biologist. I saw that he looked very much as I remembered him, perhaps with a few more laugh lines and crow’s feet—but still in fantastic physical condition. Most importantly, as I Googled further, I learned that no one had ever written a book about the story of his remarkable life.

And that was the moment when the strands of a new dream started to come together.

It started with a simple letter—written from the heart of an old fan who was missing his dad and wanting to recapture a bit of his childhood. In that letter, I explained to Bob what an impact he’d had on my life, what an inspiration he had been to me, and to so many of my friends, and I asked him if he’d be interested in telling his story. I dropped the letter in the mailbox, smiled, shook my head at the goofiness of it all, and never expected to hear anything back. It was cathartic, though, and that, I told myself, would have to be enough.

About three weeks later, I took a call on my cell phone, appropriately, as I was driving home from the gym.

“Mr. Miller, this is Bob Backlund calling,” the caller said. I pulled the car over into the breakdown lane to avoid running off the road.

He’d been waiting twenty-five years for a letter like the one I sent him, he said … but it had never come. Although many different sportswriters had approached him to do a book—none of them seemed to really “get” who he was or what his life had really been about. My letter, he said, had reached into his heart, justified the difficult choices he had made, and confirmed for him that he had done the right thing. We had a great first talk, and agreed to meet up in a few days at the Glastonbury Town Library to discuss the project.

That meeting was supposed to last an hour. We ended up talking all day.

When I first met Bob, he gave me a big hug, thanked me for finding him and affirming the life choices he had made, and hoped aloud that the man he actually was and the life he had actually led would live up to the expectations of someone who had once called him his hero.

It wouldn’t take very long to determine the answer to that question.

It is true that every child needs a hero. But sometimes, adults need them too.

At the time I met Bob Backlund again, what I needed most was a return to basics and fundamentals—someone with standing in my life to look me in the eye, and remind me about choices and responsibilities and the importance of making good decisions. The message Bob Backlund delivered to me in 2009 wasn’t much different from the message he delivered to me in 1982, but the second time around, it proved to be far more meaningful. And it is humbling indeed to know that I arrived in Bob’s life at a time when he, too, needed something: one of his oldest fans to emerge from the mists of time to remind him of the reason why he had made the choices he did, and that those choices were, indeed, the right ones.

Writing this book has been a dream come true for me in many ways. It has allowed me to relive my childhood one more time. It has allowed me to meet and get to know great people like Bruno Sammartino and Harley Race and Terry Funk and Roddy Piper, and to talk to them about their experiences as pro wrestlers and in life. It has been a chance to learn about the history and inner-workings of the always-fascinating pro wrestling industry.

But best of all, it has been a chance to say thank you to my childhood hero. Thank you for making the choices you did. Thank you for staying true to your principles. Thank you for not selling out when nearly everyone else did. And thank you for being a role model so worthy of the many years of work that have led to this day.

—Robert H. Miller

Hopkinton, New Hampshire

June 2015