Four Lethal Weapon movies… four times Danny Glover (aka Detective Roger Murtagh) said it… four times I laughed my ass off.

 “I’m too old for this s**t!”

No you’re not Danny. Diffuse that bomb. Finish spray painting that porcelain mate. Wipe your booty. Stand your old jello pudding-eating ass up, pull up your tweeds and go and whup some bad guy buttinski. Because that’s what tough guys do regardless of their age!

John Wayne did it. Clint Eastwood did it. Lee Marvin, Sly Stallone, Arnie, Chuck. Hell… even The Hulkster managed to quash an alien attack, face Zeus “No Holds Barred” and still give The Three Ninjas and those Mr Nanny brats all a run for their money.

But that is Hollywood kiddies. Like Eddie Murphy once said: “I’m not much of a fighter… but put me in a movie where I’m a star and I’ll kick your ass!”

Lately I’ve been thinking perhaps “I’m too old for this wrestling s**t!”

Y’see Sunday mornings are getting a little sorer and sorer. It takes more and more beers to take the edge off the aches and pains following the most basic match. I can’t leap as high. I can’t wrestle as long. I’m out of shape, but it doesn’t worry me because I know, if need be, I can coast through a match. I’m happy to sit mid card and push guys up and down the ladder, but I’m not interested in championship belts any more. Ring rats don’t amuse me, my attention span with helping stubborn rookies is shorter and shorter, and I have fewer guys in the locker room to talk about “the good old times” with.

The worst thing is I’m afraid to take risks in the ring! It’s like something has clicked inside me and told me maybe “I’m too old for this s**t!” And that’s bad!

Ten years ago I had no sense of self preservation when it came to entertaining wrestling folk. I bled pints of blood, was hit in the head with everything from steel chairs and fire extinguishers to kendo sticks and car reversal lights, was put through numerous tables, jumped off ladders, and even threw myself through the back windscreen of a car for the sheer thrill of it. But now? Leap off ladders? I got hit accidentally by a falling ladder months ago and my arm is still a bit ouchy!

It must have happened to Terry Funk in his 30s? Ric Flair too? Mick Foley retired at 34? Austin knew when it was time. The Rock went Disney rather than sticking it out. Perhaps they got the same message from their bodies I’m getting. That their wrestling clocks were ticking. The toll on their bodies was growing. The old timers were getting older. The “kicking the soccer ball” with their kids less and less likely. Then again some are still at it?

The reason I am even broaching the subject, is that the fear which once kept me relatively safe in the ring is now a looming impediment to my safety in the ring.
 
On October 30, 2010 on a no doubt balmy Gold Coast night, I will walk into the Gold Coast Parklands Juiters Pavilion for arguably the biggest show in the history of IPW Australia (Wild and Wreckless 2010), and back into the match which almost ended my career five years ago… The Junk Yard Bash (Australia’s most dangerous match).

And I’m scared boys and girls!

Get this straight… I’m a little crazy when it comes to pain. I get off on it. I have sat in a hospital on numerous occasions and worn my wounds like a badge of honour, almost like some sort of payment to the wrestling gods for having allowed me to live my dream all these years. Fourteen stitches in the head. Anaesthetic wearing off while a nurse rips through my calf with a scapel in search of glass. Broken bones. Bruises. Bleeding. Like some sick serial killer keeping momentos of the damage he has done, I have a scrapbook with photos of them all.

And there are few things on this planet that scare me. There’s hedgehogs of course, with their nasty little spines and their snuffling TB carrying ways. A bonus of living in Australia is there are none so I’m pretty much free of my phobia (I’ll take a snake or Redback spider over a hedgehog any day!). Not a big fan of rats either after having one line me up and leap over my head in order to make its escape from a shipping container one time. And I hate to see my son ride his bike without a helmet. But generally that’s it. Until recently…

Let me lay it down? The Junkyard Bash incorporates four cars, fresh from the junkyard, placed on all sides of the ring. The object is for one of eight wrestlers to climb a ladder and grab a belt hanging amongst the cars. On the way to doing so, the cars and their parts are fair game for use as weapons. Eight wrestlers, four cars, one ring, no prisoners!

The first Bash I was in I dived off car roofs, was slammed on bonnets, and managed to “bomb” my way through the back windscreen of a Nissan Sunny without as much as a scratch. The second Bash I felt I let my fellow wrestlers down by cowering in the backseat of a car while windows were punched in, but still managed to be bulldogged off a roof onto a bonnet, have my head slammed beneath the bonnet and cop a lashing from a ripped off windscreen wiper. Match three I went to hospital after a super kick through a side window went wrong, spent an interesting night in observation, contracted Golden Staph and still have phantom pains and cramps in my scarred calf.

The prospect of going through it again in a month’s time makes my mind race when it hits the pillow at night. Am I too “old for this s**t”? Should I put someone younger over to qualify for the match? Will I go to hospital again? Will someone else? (The first time I wrestled The Bash, my friend Dallas Mead severed tendons in both wrists slamming someone through a windscreen, and I “Alabama Slammed” another good friend's head through a windscreen as well). Will I be busy enough to warrant my entry (I don’t want to be a passenger?). Should I feel the fear and do it anyway? Should I do the match then retire? Will the match retire me?

I take back every time I have said that a mainstream wrestler is over the hill. Those guys faced such decisions on a daily basis in WWE/WCW/ECW/TNA. If they are faced with a Hell In The Cell or Elimination Chamber, they seem to suck it up and get on with the job (granted with help from better painkillers than I could ever afford!). No play no pay I guess? But I don’t get paid to play? And I have to go to work the next day?

I hear they’re thinking of making Lethal Weapon 5?

Perhaps you’re never too old??