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I manage a fern bar on Independence Boulevard near downtown, called P.J. O'Mulligan's Goodtimes Emporium. The regulars call the place P.J.'s. When you have just moved to Charlotte from McAdenville or Cherryville or Lawndale, it makes you feel good to call somebody up and say, Hey let's meet after work at P.J.'s. It sounds like real life when you say it, and that is a sad thing. P.J.'s has fake Tiffany lampshades above the tables, with purple and teal hornets belligerent in the glass. It has fake antique Coca-Cola and Miller High Life and Piece-Arrow automobile and Winchester Repeating Rifle signs screwed into the walls, and imitation brass tiles glued to the ceiling. (The glue occasionally lets go and the tiles swoop down towards the tables, like bats.) The ferns are plastic because smoke and people dumping their drinks on the planters kill the real ones. The beer and mixed drinks are expensive, but the chairs and stools are cloth-upholstered and plush, and the ceiling lights in their smooth, round globes are low and pleasant enough, and the television set is huge and close to the bar and perpetually tuned to ESPN.
At 17, George responded to a newspaper ad looking for wrestlers. Most people would call it a scam. George wouldn't be making money; he had to pay the promoter to let him wrestle. It was the only way to get experience. For exposure, he mailed out fliers and pictures to bigger promotions around the country. One day, in 1980, Georgia Championship Wrestling in Atlanta called him up and gave him a shot. Then Jim Crockett found out George was living in Concord, and he gave him a shot, too.
George was a jobber. Among the boys in the business, the word is practically a slur. The jobber's role is to lose matches in order to make his opponent, usually a headliner, look better. They would put George in masks. One night he wrestled in royal blue as one of the Gladiators. The next night he'd be with the same tag-team partner, but this time wearing neon green and billed as the Cruel Connection. The night after, he was a Mexican Twin Devil. Other times George wrestled as himself. On a few occasions he wrestled two matches on the same card. Even the Crocketts couldn't keep it straight.
Unlike a headliner, George couldn't rely on regular bookings. He took side jobs -- mowing lawns, flipping burgers at McDonald's, doing any menial task you can think of -- but he tried to hide it from the other wrestlers. He got to the arenas early to shower and wash the stench of chicken grease off his body.
Still, George was thankful. It didn't matter if he had one match or ten, every week he called the Crockett office to thank him for the work. It got to the point where the secretary finally said, "George, he knows you're thankful. Leave us alone." Still, George would call.
Partying came along with the fame. Rats (wrestling's version of groupies) followed the wrestlers from town to town. In Ric Flair's autobiography, To Be the Man, he writes of wild parties in Charlotte. But George wouldn't participate in the revelry: "Why would I go get plastered when I can ask Gene Anderson what did Ole do the night an 80-year-old man opened him up?"
The big-name wrestlers took care of George. Flair and some of the others had contests to see who could tip George the most for running errands. He would get $20 for picking up a $3 sandwich.
At a TBS match in Atlanta, George fought against Devil Blue, a grouchy old-timer who wouldn't reveal his identity even in the locker room. He showered in his mask and drove away from the arena wearing it. Devil Blue lifted George, turned him upside down and slammed him into a belt buckle. George went numb. Some of the wrestlers carried him backstage, and while he waited for an ambulance, Flair walked by and slipped $50 into his hand. It was Flair's way of saying he cared.
Some old-timers saw George coming and would turn away, knowing he was about to attack them with an arsenal of questions. He lived for eating steak with Ricky Steamboat or splitting a motel with Flair, but George's favorite times were late at night on empty interstates, with the headlocks left behind in Portsmouth or Columbia, and when his heroes in the passenger seats dropped their macho gimmicks and became regular people.