From WWE.com
The gentle man who dispensed hard time
by Keith Elliot Greenberg
Ray Traylor wanted a tattoo devoted to his wife, Angela, but was too superstitious to get one.
He told me that if he officially inscribed Angela?s name on his flesh, he might put a jinx on their marriage. And Traylor ? the hulking, billy club swinging Big Boss Man of World Wrestling Entertainment ? was afraid to tinker with fate.
I thought about that conversation earlier this week when I learned that the Boss Man had died of a massive heart attack. It was Angela who found his body in their home.
At 42, he was three years younger than I am. And, despite his fame in the ring, I always viewed him as kind of a kid. Maybe it was his quiet way of speaking when he wasn?t waving his nightstick at the TV camera, and threatening to mete out ?hard time? to an opponent. Or his ability to maintain an innocent countenance while describing some deviant act he?d witnessed as a prison guard. Or how he?d open his eyes wide and wondrously while we were joking around.
I?m not going to lie and pretend that we were intimate friends. But I liked Ray, and I always felt that he liked me. When I?d call his home for a story, he always thanked me for including him in WWE?s magazines. If he was talking to other people backstage, he?d raise his chin and smile in my direction. On the few occasions I bumped into him in the airport, he?d make it a point to hug me.
We both grew up as wrestling fans ? the Boss Man in Georgia, myself in New York. And ? although his career took him from the old National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) to WWE to All-Japan Pro Wrestling to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) to WWE again, among other points -- he never seemed to become jaded to the business.
When I was co-writing the late Freddie Blassie?s autobiography, Ray told me something I?d never heard about the ?Hollywood Fashion Plate.? In the 1950s - before he began scorning WWE fans as ?pencil neck geeks? - Blassie regularly mocked Traylor?s fellow Georgians as ?pencil neck grit-eaters.? In fact, Boss Man knew of at least one instance when a fan snuck up behind the self-professed ?Toast of the West Coast? and cracked him over the head with a chair.
The story was legend in the Traylor household because the assailant was his grandfather.
It was around 1986 when I first spotted the former correction?s officer on television. He wasn?t called the Big Boss Man yet.
.
The gentle man who dispensed hard time
by Keith Elliot Greenberg
Ray Traylor wanted a tattoo devoted to his wife, Angela, but was too superstitious to get one.
He told me that if he officially inscribed Angela?s name on his flesh, he might put a jinx on their marriage. And Traylor ? the hulking, billy club swinging Big Boss Man of World Wrestling Entertainment ? was afraid to tinker with fate.
I thought about that conversation earlier this week when I learned that the Boss Man had died of a massive heart attack. It was Angela who found his body in their home.
At 42, he was three years younger than I am. And, despite his fame in the ring, I always viewed him as kind of a kid. Maybe it was his quiet way of speaking when he wasn?t waving his nightstick at the TV camera, and threatening to mete out ?hard time? to an opponent. Or his ability to maintain an innocent countenance while describing some deviant act he?d witnessed as a prison guard. Or how he?d open his eyes wide and wondrously while we were joking around.
I?m not going to lie and pretend that we were intimate friends. But I liked Ray, and I always felt that he liked me. When I?d call his home for a story, he always thanked me for including him in WWE?s magazines. If he was talking to other people backstage, he?d raise his chin and smile in my direction. On the few occasions I bumped into him in the airport, he?d make it a point to hug me.
We both grew up as wrestling fans ? the Boss Man in Georgia, myself in New York. And ? although his career took him from the old National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) to WWE to All-Japan Pro Wrestling to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) to WWE again, among other points -- he never seemed to become jaded to the business.
When I was co-writing the late Freddie Blassie?s autobiography, Ray told me something I?d never heard about the ?Hollywood Fashion Plate.? In the 1950s - before he began scorning WWE fans as ?pencil neck geeks? - Blassie regularly mocked Traylor?s fellow Georgians as ?pencil neck grit-eaters.? In fact, Boss Man knew of at least one instance when a fan snuck up behind the self-professed ?Toast of the West Coast? and cracked him over the head with a chair.
The story was legend in the Traylor household because the assailant was his grandfather.
It was around 1986 when I first spotted the former correction?s officer on television. He wasn?t called the Big Boss Man yet.
.
