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I stood on the top rope, repeating “I think I can” like I was the Little Wrestler That Could. Summoning all my courage, I jumped out into the wild blue yonder. But once I did, I had no idea where I was in the air and ended up coming straight down on my head. Even though I was amazingly unharmed, it completely freaked me out. Since I’d started my career, I had a horrible phobia of breaking my neck and ending up paralyzed like my mom. Even though she never came out and said it, I could see in her eyes whenever we talked about wrestling that she harbored the same fear. God was with me that day and I should’ve learned my lesson. But I didn’t.

I couldn’t let it go and convinced myself that I’d be less of a wrestler if I didn’t do the Shooting Star. It had become my white whale and I was obsessed with mastering it.

On the day of the big show, I arrived at the Coliseum early to practice the Shooting Star as many times as it took to get it ready. I ran into Cornette backstage and when he asked why I was there early, I told him I wanted to practice a few things.

“Well for God’s sake, just don’t hurt yourself.”

I walked into the ring in the middle of the empty Coliseum and climbed to the top rope. Once again I brainwashed myself into believing that I had to perfect the move or else my career would mean nothing. All rational thought had gone out the window and with no spotter or practice mat, I leaped out into the air again.

To my surprise, this time I landed it almost perfectly. Almost. But I rotated too far to one side and landed with all my weight on the right side. I looked at my arm and something wasn’t quite right. There was a divot in the middle of my forearm, like a dip in a roller coaster, but strangely it didn’t hurt. I rolled out of the ring and walked to the back of the arena where Lance had turned up.

“I saw you land,” Lance said with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Look at my arm. Does this look right to you?”

When I moved my arm up and down it was bending like a rubber pencil. It still didn’t hurt but I thought it would be best to get it checked out before the match. Before I left the arena for the hospital, I asked Lance, “Did I at least nail the move?”

With a classic Lance response he said, “Not even close.”

At the hospital, the doctor messed with my arm a bit. When he was done, he assured me that if it was broken I’d be screaming in pain. However he still wanted to X-ray it. We were both astonished when he got the results and discovered that I had indeed fractured my radius bone.

“We have to get you into surgery tonight.”

“Can we do it tomorrow morning instead? I have to sit at ringside at a very important wrestling match tonight.”

I knew there was no way in hell he would let me out of his care if I told him I had to actually wrestle a match. He pondered a little and said as long as I was only going to watch, it was okay with him. Sucker...

He scheduled my surgery for the next morning, put my arm in a soft cast, and told me that under NO circumstances could I do anything physical. I had zero intention of listening to him and when I saw Cornette back at the arena, he went ballistic when I told him I’d broken my arm.

“I told you to be careful! You stupid idiot! You dumb—”

I cut him off and told him I still planned on wrestling that night. Broken arm or not, I wasn’t missing the match.

The redness fell out of his face like a thermometer as he asked me, “Are you sure? Well just be careful.”

That was it. It was the stupidest decision I ever made in my career. I had no business being in the ring that night and one false move could’ve ended my career forever. Jimmy knew how dangerous it was for me to be wrestling but he didn’t care at that point. Going through with the planned match was the most important thing to him and if my career ended as a result, it was my own damn fault.

Besides Corny, everyone else backstage thought that I was insane to wrestle with a broken arm. Road Warrior Hawk (the real one, not the Johnny South facsimile) told me that I was