bthomas
League Member
- Charlotte Observer -
<img src="http://www.charlotte.com/images/charlotte/charlotte/6042/36511641866.jpg" align="left" vspace="2" hspace="2">Terry Allen is almost 44 now. The man who introduced the Atomic Knee to professional wrestling drags his right leg as he walks. The right arm that used to spin opponents in the air hangs useless. The blonde mane is dark, free from the chemicals that helped maintain his golden boy image.
All things considered, Terry Allen is doing just fine.
Sixteen years ago, after the accident, he could only turn his head. He had no feeling in the rest of his body. Doctors told him he would never walk again. Allen never accepted the diagnosis.
In five months he was on his feet. Feeling slowly returned to most of his body. Two operations and therapy helped. The psychological wounds took longer.
The hulking 240-pounder had grown frail. His confidence atrophied along with his muscles. Fan recognition, the fruit of celebrity, suddenly made him uneasy.
"I wasn't real comfortable in my own skin there for a while," Allen says.
He focused on recovery with the tenacity that had made a scrawny kid from Tidewater, Va., into a state wrestling champion and later a professional star. With no six-figure salary anymore, he also had to find a way to make a living.
For a while he did color commentary on wrestling broadcasts. Then he began building and maintaining cell phone towers. His Magnum Cellular Service now has projects from Richmond, Va., to Tampa, Fla.
Physically and emotionally, the man who patented the Belly to Belly Suplex had to learn new moves.
"The physical effort I have to exert today, just to do the menial things I have to do, are on a par with the effort I used to exert performing in the ring," he says.
With the same resilience he once showed against Nikita Koloff, Allen counts his blessings, not the what-might-have-beens.
"I miss two things," he says. "The actual performing in the ring because that was the greatest high I ever had in my life."
The other is the lost connection to fans who showered him with nearly 100,000 letters and cards after his accident.
He says he wants "those who cared about me and supported me to know that I overcame the odds and found my way back to a path in life that wasn't the one I had chosen but the one I found myself on. And that I was making a success of the new hand I'd been dealt."
<img src="http://www.charlotte.com/images/charlotte/charlotte/6042/36511641866.jpg" align="left" vspace="2" hspace="2">Terry Allen is almost 44 now. The man who introduced the Atomic Knee to professional wrestling drags his right leg as he walks. The right arm that used to spin opponents in the air hangs useless. The blonde mane is dark, free from the chemicals that helped maintain his golden boy image.
All things considered, Terry Allen is doing just fine.
Sixteen years ago, after the accident, he could only turn his head. He had no feeling in the rest of his body. Doctors told him he would never walk again. Allen never accepted the diagnosis.
In five months he was on his feet. Feeling slowly returned to most of his body. Two operations and therapy helped. The psychological wounds took longer.
The hulking 240-pounder had grown frail. His confidence atrophied along with his muscles. Fan recognition, the fruit of celebrity, suddenly made him uneasy.
"I wasn't real comfortable in my own skin there for a while," Allen says.
He focused on recovery with the tenacity that had made a scrawny kid from Tidewater, Va., into a state wrestling champion and later a professional star. With no six-figure salary anymore, he also had to find a way to make a living.
For a while he did color commentary on wrestling broadcasts. Then he began building and maintaining cell phone towers. His Magnum Cellular Service now has projects from Richmond, Va., to Tampa, Fla.
Physically and emotionally, the man who patented the Belly to Belly Suplex had to learn new moves.
"The physical effort I have to exert today, just to do the menial things I have to do, are on a par with the effort I used to exert performing in the ring," he says.
With the same resilience he once showed against Nikita Koloff, Allen counts his blessings, not the what-might-have-beens.
"I miss two things," he says. "The actual performing in the ring because that was the greatest high I ever had in my life."
The other is the lost connection to fans who showered him with nearly 100,000 letters and cards after his accident.
He says he wants "those who cared about me and supported me to know that I overcame the odds and found my way back to a path in life that wasn't the one I had chosen but the one I found myself on. And that I was making a success of the new hand I'd been dealt."
