In 1979, I was nine years old, and I had this goal to stay up past the 11 o/clock news, past Saturday Night Live, and watch the local horror movie, a guy named Dr. Madblood. This is a goal I never reached, but what did happen changed my life and gave my Dad one of the larger headaches he ever had to put up with. I got jarred awake by the TV set by a man screaming at the camera. Dressed in a suit, sunglasses on, screaming at the camera. There was some stuff about kiss stealing and jet flying, but then he let loose with the thing we all know that man for. WHOOOO! The we cut to a heavy synth beat that I’d heard before on the radio, and went to commercial.
That was the longest commercial break of my life. What I had just found at the early hour of 2am Sunday Morning was Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, and that was my introduction to professional wrestling. I’ve been a fan ever since. I never had the luxury of believing it was ever real, that was made abundantly clear to me by the Chief because he couldn’t believe his son was a fan of that garbage. To be fair, in my defense, I wasn’t THAT stupid to believe that bouncing someone’s head off the concrete floor wouldn’t hurt someone, and frankly, some wrestlers were better than others at making things look real. The same can be said for folks behind the camera. Of course, back then, none of that mattered. What did matter—what has ALWAYS mattered—was the characters. Some good, some absolutely horrible.
Of course, the first person I ever laid eyes on was Ric Flair. After a while, I wasn’t so interested in him anymore. There were other interesting characters like Sweet Ebony Diamond, Sgt Slaughter, Blackjack Mulligan, but no one ever grabbed me like that first great bad guy. Piper. Piper hooked on the bad guys for life. I’ve never liked the good guys. Bad guys were WAY more interesting. Piper. Savage. Snake. Goldust. Austin. Foley. Taker. Punk.
And then we come to the news from the past couple days. Terry Funk, of course, although I never saw him wrestle but once in a dumpster match with Foley at a WrestleMania against the New Age Outlaws, but I want to talk about Windham Rotunda, the wrestler known as Bray Wyatt. The first time I laid eyes on Bray it wasn’t as the Husky Harris character from his early days, but as the head of the Wyatt Family, this Apocalyptic charismatic cult leader. There was a theater to what he was doing that I was instantly taken by. Also, and this is not something that you could credit a lot of performers with, there was a method to his madness. If you listened to him, he let you know WHY his character was doing what he was doing. He was a true storyteller, in the same sense that you understood why a Marvel villain like Magneto was doing what he was doing. I need y’all to not take that for granted. In an age where a lot of what you see on wrestling TV is the equivalent of a strip and bang, or spot monkeys doing flippy shit, Windham Rotunda gave you a fully fleshed out character with motivation, reason, and movement. And why not? He grew up in the business. His father was Mike Rotunda, his grandfather was Blackjack Mulligan, Barry Windham—one of the Four Horsemen-was his Uncle. He had a front row seat to some of the most memorable people and events in the history of the business, and he must have just soaked that right up.
The people that were closest to him have long said that he was a never ending font of creativity. A stream of consciousness that threw out story upon story upon story, and I believe that. I can also relate to that. I guess that might be a reason why this particular death has hit different for me, but it’s also a reminder that like so many creative geniuses that left us so early, he burned so very brightly that it seemed almost inevitable that it would only burn half as long. One of his last bits of merchandise, from a vignette marking his return after being laid off during the pandemic told us to revel in what you are. That hit me so powerfully, that it’s how I choose to remember him. I’ve wanted to get a 2nd tattoo for a long time, I think that’s what it’s going to be.