blair mone

FLEX FEATURE
DAY IN
THE LIFE
BLAIR MONE
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I
t
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a
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Hip tosses and bent-over rows, just part of a
Day in The Life with WWE hopeful Blair Mone
Ever wanted to know
what goes into becoming
a professional wrestler?
Join us for a trip into
the life of a former
bodybuilder trying to
make his way up the
ladder into the WWE.
BY
ALLAN DONNELLY
photography BY
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FLEX | JUNE ’08
Senior EDITOr
terry goodlad
FLEXonline.com
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FLEX Day in the Life
E
arning a spot on the roster of a professional sports franchise is unquestionably one of the hardest things an athlete can do. The competition
is, to say the least, fierce. Last year, there were 1,696 players listed on
the active rosters of 32 teams in the National Football League; approximately 1,350 for the 30 Major League Baseball franchises; and, for the
30 National Basketball Association franchises, about 500.
In comparison, the number of wrestlers currently employed by World Wrestling
Entertainment holds steady at around 180, making the WWE — strictly in terms
of numbers — the most difficult to break into. But every day, hopefuls try.
On October 7, 2007, FLEX sent a team — photographer Terry Goodlad and
writer Allan Donnelly — to Louisville, Kentucky, to spend two days with one of
those hopefuls as he attempts to make his way in the world of professional wrestling and earn a developmental contract with the WWE. (Read the June issue of
FLEX for Donnelly’s account of day one; day two begins here.)
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Mone meeting up with owner Greg Colombo in the waiting room of Colombo Chiropractic; laughing with Jenny Lynn;
and getting one of his weekly adjustments from Colombo
MONDAY, OCTOBER 8
NOON We meet up with Blair Mone
and then-girlfriend Jenny Lynn at a
strip mall where Colombo Chiropractic and the Louisville Athletic
Club, Mone’s two destinations for
the afternoon, are located. This
morning, Mone trained three clients
at their homes. Now it’s his turn. On
average, Mone trains six days a week,
hitting one bodypart a day. “I go by
how I feel,” Mone says. “I have five
different workouts. But some days, I
look at Jen after practice or after a
match and I’m like, ‘Not today.’”
Mone’s first stop is to see chiropractor Greg Colombo, whom he
visits once or twice a week. “It only
took him a week,” Lynn says, “before
he started hurting really bad. Then
he was like, ‘Who do I see?’”
12:30 PM Mone’s at the gym, about to
train, but first he stops at the smoothie bar to talk to a fellow wrestler
working behind the counter. “Blair is
the chattiest man I know,” Lynn says.
I ask Lynn if she and Mone usually train at the same time. She says
yes, “but not today.” Lynn still isn’t
feeling well, so she won’t be training.
Regardless, she deserves the break.
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FLEX | JUNE ’08
When she’s not at the gym, Lynn is
at home, training clients online and
organizing her 12-week transformation contest that 73 women entered
last year. “Right now, I have 25 clients around the world,” she says,
“and three people that I’m training
in person. It’s great — I can sit in my
pajamas and work from home.”
1 PM Mone is doing cable rows when
we are introduced to Tank Toland, a
fellow wrestler — and Mone’s
instructor when he first came to
Kentucky — who spent six months
on WWE SmackDown!, at the same
time as WWE superstars Bobby
Lashley and Randy Orton, before
coming back to Kentucky and OVW.
The message is clear — even when
you’re up, there’s no guarantee
you’re going to stay there.
“Tank is really, really good,”
Mone says, “except he’s not 6’5”.”
Toland laughs. “Yeah,” he says,
“Vince [McMahon] likes his monsters. But that’s all right. I got a lot
farther than people said I would.”
I ask Toland how tall he is. “I’m
(left) meeting
with former
teacher and
fellow wrestler
Tank Toland
“Wrestling has a lot to do with being in the
right place at the right time,” Tank Toland says,
“sometimes it comes down to what they’re
looking for. But he’s got the potential.”
5’6” or 5’7”,” he says. “It depends on
how high the lifts in my boots are.
Of course, they listed me at 5’9”. On
TV, no one can tell.”
Despite his size, Toland was called
up to the WWE after only three
months at OVW. I ask him how long,
on average, it takes someone to get
that call. “It depends. Wrestling has
a lot to do with being in the right
place at the right time — sometimes
it comes down to what they’re look-
ing for,” he says, looking over at
Mone. “But he’s got the look, and, as
you know, that’s what they’re looking
for — aesthetic potential. He’s got
the potential.”
1:15 PM Mone is done training, and
now it’s time for sushi. We head over
to Shogun, a Japanese restaurant
Mone and Lynn visit at least twice a
week. At lunch, we find out that Mone
went to Springfield College at the
same time as current WWE Champi-
FLEX Day in the Life
The scene from
above at DCW
practice
on John Cena, and knew Cena while
the two were there.
“No kidding,” I say. “You still talk
to him?”
Mone shakes his head. “No,” he
says. “Plus, I don’t really like to talk
about it — you know, like ‘Oh yeah,
I know the champ.’ So I don’t really
bring it up.”
5:30 PM Back at DCW headquarters,
we talk to RipRogers. Once again, he
tells me about his abstinence from
solid food. I ask him if he remembers
Put your back into it - close-grip cable rows and wide-grip pulldowns as part of Mone’s back routine; Leaving the gym
with Lynn and writer Allan Donnelly and feeding the machine with a healthy plate of sushi
...all under the
watchful eye of
Rip Rogers.
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FLEX | JUNE ’08
the exact date he last ate something
he had to chew. He thinks about it for
a second. “June 17,” he says, noticing
my smirk. “I ain’t all there.”
With that, he’s on a roll, bouncing
from the time he went 531⁄2 hours without sleep (“I should have been dead”),
to his first match with the then-WWF
31 years ago, to the two times he’s
been stabbed after matches (once in
Austria, once in Puerto Rico), to the
mother-daughter team he became
intimate with on the same night in a
random European city, and then back
to the time he was run over by a car
and left for dead five years ago.
“I’m permanently partially disabled,” Rogers says with a smile and
a nod. “I look a whole lot better than
I am.”
6:15 PM We’re in the video room,
watching a tape of 1985’s WrestleMania, and, more specifically, Big John
Studd. Wrestler Ali Akbar opens his
bag and pulls out a product made by
Mone’s sponsor, a container of MuscleTech’s naNO Vapor. “I love this
stuff,” he says. “I felt it on the first
set of declines.”
“Declines?” Mone asks. “Why are
you doing declines?”
“For the lower pecs,” Akbar says.
Mone shakes his head. “Weighted
dips are better for developing your
lower pecs,” he says. “When I was
training with Charles Glass . . . ”
“The trainer of champions,” Akbar
interrupts.
Mone practices
headlocks ...
... and transitions
into finger locks ...
FLEX Day in the Life
There’s always
time for a laugh
with Rogers.
Kicking, punching, biting, screaming and laughing - or just another night for the hopefuls at Derby City Wrestling School practice
Mone on the receiving end for a change.
Mone dishes out some punishment; the action in the ring during DCW
practice is fast and furious, even for the spectators
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FLEX | JUNE ’08
Mone nods and continues. “The
trainer of champions. He always had
me do weighted dips.”
On the screen now, there’s a
match between The Junkyard Dog
and Greg “The Hammer” Valentine.
The two intertwine their hands in a
game of mercy — a test of strength
similar to what Akbar and Mone did
in their match last night — which The
Hammer wins by dropping his shoulder into The Junkyard Dog’s chest.
“See, he was nice — he didn’t hit
the guy in the throat after the test of
strength,” Mone says, referencing
Akbar’s underhanded tactics in their
match.
Akbar looks over. “Yeah,” he
says, “but that’s because he didn’t
outweigh him by 100 pounds.”
6:58 PM As the DCW wrestlers put
mats on the floor around the ring,
Rogers blows a whistle. Time to start
practice. “Eight in the ring,” he says.
“Don’t play f—ing games with it,
now.”
Tonight, there are 36 wrestlers —
including four women — in the group.
“Sometimes I have over 50,” Rogers
says. “They’ll get more wrestling in
here than they will in seven matches.
Everything is fundamental.”
They start by pairing up, inside
and outside the ring, with Rogers
blowing the whistle and calling out
different instructions every few minutes. Periodically, Rogers leans over
to me and points something out,
ranging from the good (“That one
was the best of ’em all, there.”) to the
bad (“He don’t have an athletic molecule in his body.”) to the hilarious
(“He’s getting winded. What’s plural
for winded?”).
After about half an hour of changing partners and running through
different drills, and another halfhour of takedown practice — where
one person stands in the ring and the
other wrestlers run at him, one by
one — the wrestlers line up around
the ring. Rogers calls out two people, and has them get between the
ropes to run through various moves
— chest slaps, punches, takedowns,
pins — all the while keeping a running commentary on what they’re
doing right and what they’re doing
wrong. For the climax, the wrestlers
sit in the stands while Rogers calls
out names two at a time, until eventually, they are all in the ring at the
same time — a DCW Battle Royal.
“Everybody starts out rotten,”
Rogers says to me during the melee.
“Some of ’em come in and think
they’re good, and they find out
they’re rotten. But if they’re not here
because they love it, we’ll weed them
out fast.”
10:17 PM They’re done for the night,
finally, after each wrestler practices
in-the-ring promos in front of the
group, a way of finding and bringing
out their characters. For Mone,
Anthony Bravado is still a work in
progress. There is much he still has
to learn, but then, that’s always the
case. Hopefully, he is in the right
place at the right time.
Still, making it in the WWE is a
long shot, and for every John Cena,
there are likely thousands of Tank
Tolands. And for every Tank Toland,
there are thousands who never even
get to sniff the big time. Still, they
will try.
“Everybody shakes their heads
when you walk away from a six-figure job to beat yourself up for
nothing — I mean, I’m paying to be
here,” Akbar says as we get ready to
walk out the door. “But I can’t put
into words the passion some of these
guys and I have for this business. If I
don’t make it, I’ll be as good as I can
be here.”
NOTE: Since our visit, Blair Mone
and Jenny Lynn have parted ways.
Lynn was preparing to go after her
third Figure Olympia title. Mone was
still wrestling with DCW in the hopes of
earning a developmental contract with
the WWE. FLEX
FLEXonline.com
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