PW Draft 2013 - Draft Picks Thread

Twenty thousand screaming fans, $500,000 a year salary, $53,000 Porsche and then it ended.

On October 14, 1986, Magnum T.A., who always heard thousands cheer his name, sat for over an hour alone waiting for someone to save his life. When he needed one of those fans, they were not there.

Magnum T.A. whose real name is Terry Wayne Allen, was one of the most popular wrestlers of the early '80s. He was a young shining star for the National Wrestling Association when a car accident ended his career. He was a certain future World champion, and quite possibly the man who was to help the NWA compete against the WWF's Hulk Hogan.

When news got out, thousands headed to the hospital where Allen occupied. Flowers, letters, cards were sent to the hospital during his stay. A man who was known for his belly-to-belly suplex could not even move his arms.

The man, for whom thousands once screamed for, could not talk to thank them.

The man, who had it all, now struggled to survive.

...

Thousands of calls, letters and flowers were sent to the hospital where Allen would stay clinging to possibilities. In the end, some 75,000 letters were sent in support of Allen. They did not want to face a wrestling card without the face of Magnum T.A., in the ring.

AFTER WRESTLING

The NWA tried to go on. The following Saturday, Nikita Koloff made a shocking face turn to join Dusty Rhodes in Dusty's battles with the Four Horsemen. It was not the same. The crowd was half the size it was just weeks before.

Allen lied in the hospital slowly recovering. A body that had lied days without movement on the right side was now beginning movement all around.

His mother said during his recovery, "He seems so encouraged."

And he was. Allen did not want to be known this way, though. He wanted to be known for making $500,000 a year, a world champion, the top of the world.

Dusty Rhodes was there to help, saying he would "carry him back (to the ring) if I had to."

Magnum T.A. walked into a ring again, but it was not the same vision that many saw it. He had a cane, was not in his regular red trunks and was there for support, not action.

Wrestling journalist Bill Apter remembered the return of Magnum T.A. "When he came back for several waving appearances, it was nice, it was applauded that he was back, but it wasn't the same thing. It's almost like people didn't want that Magnum T.A., they wanted the other guy."

Magnum T.A. was used on a few occasions as an announcer, and stayed behind the scenes as a booker into the early 1990s, but has since disappeared from the wrestling world. It was hard when all he wanted to do is wrestle.

"That's still my ultimate goal," Allen told reporters a year following the accident. He was still walking with a cane at the time, and being inside the ropes is all he wanted to do.

Mick Foley, in his book Have a Nice Day, remembered Allen's days before the accident, calling Magnum T.A. "a definite, future world champion."

It just did not work out that way although Allen can now walk without the use of a cane or crutch.