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As a former football player who has carried a football more than 4,000 times, trust me, I did not go into ballroom dancing with my body being 100 percent, with no aches or pains or ailments coming with me. When you're dancing, you're doing stuff that your body's not used to, and so you start to aggravate those old injuries.
We penalize and suspend players for making contact with the head while checking, in an effort to reduce head injuries, yet we still allow fighting. We're stuck in the middle and need to decide what kind of sport do we want to be. Either anything goes and we accept the consequences, or take the next step and eliminate fighting.
A long iron rod rocketed straight through the very forefront of Phineas Gage's brain. It's kind of an unusual part of the brain: you can suffer pretty severe injuries to it and often walk away from the injury. It's not a part of the brain that's necessarily vital for your biological self. But it is very important for personality.
Eventually, competition and adventure wane, and I enter my ibuprofen phase. Tweaky hamstrings and achy knees restrict mileage, but I continue running for health, sanity, and the ritual of a Sunday trail run with like-minded buddies. We discuss the nagging injuries that bedevil us, and remember the good old days when we were kings.
After I hurt the knee, football wasn't nearly as much fun. I was limited. But you make do with what you have. I adjusted some. I was lucky to play as long as I did, with the different kinds of injuries I got. I played with two severed hamstring muscles in my leg late in my career. I could barely run, other than to drop back to pass.
I think I learned more than most rookies learned just because the stuff with injuries and everything like that. But I think I had great vets who taught me the system quick. Most stories I hear is, most rookies get left on their own because the vets have got their business to take care of, but with me, I felt like we were all connected.
As the fighter, you're the one getting in the ring, you're the one risking injuries, you're the one risking your life - not only on the day of the fight, but in training camp. You're getting punched, you're training, you're sparring. You have to make sure that it's worth the risk - the compensation, the terms, the fights that you want.
I had been wrestling with a fracture in my elbow and a slight tear in my triceps for quite some time, but it was continuing to get worse. As I worked through it, I ended up dislocating my shoulder and tearing my labrum. All of these injuries were on the same arm, so things like working out or even sleeping became increasingly difficult.
I was drafted by the New Orleans Saints and was tired of dealing with injuries. I just got tired of playing football, if you want to know the truth, and I was sitting on the floor at my father in-law's house and started to watch pro wrestling. I've watched it for a little bit before, so I thought to myself, 'You know what? I can do that!'
You know, I spent parts of six seasons in the minor leagues and I dealt with some injuries there, I saw a lot of things. I had the safety net of being a first-round pick, so I didn't maybe necessarily experience some of that hardship firsthand, but I watched it break a lot of guys. The strain that it puts on you and your family, it's really tough.