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Whatever happened to... hard-luck pro wrestler, Magnum T.A.?

Posted: Mar 20th 2007 By: mikeiles

CHESAPEAKE - Terry Allen was back in a wrestling ring Saturday, not as Magnum T. A., but as Chesapeake's favorite son.

Friends and fellow wrestlers turned out for a tribute show and tournament in his honor at Khedive Temple in Chesapeake, where his parents still live.

Allen, 47, is in construction these days, not entertainment. His pro wrestling career essentially ended Oct. 14, 1986, when his Porsche 911 Turbo hydroplaned into a pole near Charlotte, N.C.

Doctors thought he would spend his life in a wheelchair. It took him five months, but he walked out of the rehab center.

Allen is still partly paralyzed but it doesn't stop him from working or living, he said.

He is in pain, but it's "only when my eyes are open," he joked. Allen knows he's fortunate.

Many of the people he met in the rehab centers would kill to have his mobility.

"Pain lets you know you're alive and still in the game," he said.

Allen was driving his Porsche one rainy night when it hit a wet patch and he lost control.

"I was 27," he recalled. "It's a bitter pill for anyone to swallow."

His decision to keep active and productive, he said, was "a no-brainer."

Allen has his own construction company that works on communications towers near Charlotte, where he lives with his third wife and her four children. He has a son from a previous marriage who lives nearby. That's what keeps him there, instead of back in Chesapeake, he said.

Wrestling wasn't always the glamorous life people assumed, he said. But he'd love to be back inside the ropes.

Still, Allen is glad that he got to live his dream, becoming a marquee wrestler poised to claim a national title.

Now his bouts are less glamorous. He has developed knee problems from wrestling injuries and compensating for his partial paralysis. There's arthritis in his joints, and he has only one good arm - and that is attached to a torn rotator cuff.

Allen can't find time to get it repaired, he said, because that would leave him helpless.

So he keeps his sense of humor and has learned to live with discomfort that is worst at the end of the day when there are no distractions.

Saturday night, he struggled with good humor to get into the ring, lifting his lame leg over one rope and ducking under the other with his good arm. He received a plaque and a citation from his hometown and watched a video tribute of his most famous matches.

Then he told the crowd how much it all had meant and that what he has missed most wasn't the accolades but the camaraderie and friendship of the wrestlers, some of whom turned out for the tribute.

"It was an honor to entertain you all," he said.

Allen's life now is focused on his three girls and two boys, ranging in age from 9 to 15 years old. Three of his stepchildren came with him for the tribute. His son had a skiing trip already planned, and a daughter had to stay behind to finish a school project.

None of the children was alive when he wrestled, but there are plenty of his matches on the Internet for them to check out, he said. It keeps the magic of Magnum T. A. alive.

"You can go to YouTube and watch more video of me than I have on me," he said.