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Professional Wrestler Pins Success, Returns Home To Roanoke

Posted: Jun 17th 2009 By: CMBurnham

The woman seemed mad.

"Tony Atlas!" she called down a hallway at Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke.

Atlas, who was Tony White when he attended Patrick Henry in the early 1970s, turned and peered down the hall.

"How you know me?" he asked.

"How you don't know me?" the woman spat back.

Atlas looked at her, trying to remember, until Angela Noell gave her name. They grew up together in Hurt Park. That was before his career in professional wrestling.

"You look good," Noell told him, rubbing his ample pectoral muscles. "Oooh, they're jumping, too!" she squealed.

Everywhere Atlas went Monday, people knew him and wanted him to know it. It was a rare visit back to his hometown since he left in the 1970s, and his most triumphant return in decades.

In that time, Atlas reached the pinnacle of professional wrestling, only to crash into drug addiction and homelessness before climbing back to his feet.

Now, at 55, Atlas is back in the top echelon of pro wrestling, with World Wrestling Entertainment.

It's a bit part, but it's on the main stage.

He's on national television weekly, has his own toy action figure and is making a reliable living for the first time in years. He's buying his first home.

He returned to Roanoke to do a media tour in advance of Tuesday night's taping of WWE's "ECW" broadcast at the Roanoke Civic Center.

Radio disc jockeys fawned over him as he played up his rural Virginia roots.

"If heaven ain't a lot like Dixie, I don't want to go," he crooned into the microphone at WSLC.

Atlas, born in Clifton Forge, met two men from an Alleghany Highlands radio station and told them, "Y'all from my neck of the woods. Y'all hillbillies."

For lunch at Blues BBQ Co. with his older brother Charles and wrestling partner Mark Henry, Atlas ordered a full rack of ribs. Before the food arrived, he left to get a Roanoke Weiner Stand hot dog for an appetizer. On the way, he ran into Betty Trent.

"I used to massage his chest by stepping on it," she said.

"I love coming home," Atlas said.

That wasn't always so.

In 2000, The Roanoke Times published a story on Atlas and his life in Lewiston, Maine. He was 46 then, wrestling on the independent circuit in high school gyms for a few hundred dollars a match, and working part time as a personal trainer.

He had survived drug addiction and homelessness until a woman he didn't know took him in. They've been married nearly 20 years.

But he had no health insurance and no means of escaping the only place he could make a living: the ring.

His entire life, he's traded on his amazing physique -- he held the Mr. USA bodybuilding title once -- and the athletic ability that propelled him to the top of pro wrestling.

At one time, he held out hope of getting called back to the WWE. Maybe he could make enough money to retire.

By 2006 he'd given up that dream. But that's when he got a phone message at the gym in Lewiston where he worked. It was the WWE. They wanted to induct him into their wrestling hall of fame.

From there, he went to work from time to time at WWE wrestling schools.

And a year ago, the WWE offered him a talent contract that returned him to television.

He puts the tights on once in awhile, like on Tuesday's "ECW" broadcast. "I'm still sore," he said.

But mainly, he plays the manager to Henry, a former Olympic weight lifter and one of the ECW brand's big names.

Atlas comes to ringside in a business suit, only to remove his jacket and reveal a shirt with the sleeves cut off. That was WWE Chairman Vince McMahon's idea, Atlas said.

"I want the fans to see them arms," Atlas said McMahon told him. Atlas' massive biceps reportedly measure 21 inches.

"I grew up watching Tony," Henry said.

"I don't think I would be where I am without Tony," he said. "He's one of the pieces of the puzzle that made me want to be strong."

But wrestling today is nothing like in the old days, Atlas said.

"We was wild, we was loose, and we was pretty much on our own," Atlas said.

They wrestled hurt and doctored themselves. When he broke his hand, it was wrestler Wahoo McDaniel who set the fracture for him, Atlas recalled. When he damaged a knee, it was Gene Anderson, one half of the Minnesota Wrecking Crew, who gave him a cortisone shot.

Today, Atlas said, wrestlers are treated more as investments than something to be used up and discarded. The WWE has random drug testing with a three-strikes policy and teaches wrestlers how to invest their money for when they can't make their living in the ring anymore.

The wrestlers are independent contractors, so the WWE doesn't provide health insurance, but they are insured in the ring, Atlas said, and there are always doctors at ringside.

Not that Atlas is in much danger of needing a doctor in his current role.

Tuesday night, during Henry's match with Evan Bourne, Atlas carried off his usual routine, following Henry to the ring, holding the ropes so Henry could enter, and then slipping his jacket off to show off his arms while waiting for Bourne to come in.

He stalked around the floor while Henry and Bourne clashed, and did a dance after Henry scored the pin. It was all over in about six minutes.

This morning, Atlas will get on another plane to head to another town. It's a tough life for an aging athlete, but he figures if he can make this stint with the WWE last a few more years, he'll be able to retire from wrestling.

"I'm as happy as a peacock," he said. "I just hope that Tony Atlas don't screw it up."

Tags: Tony Atlas, WWE, ECW, Wahoo McDaniel