You're looking at the nastiest,
devious individual standing right here.
Terry was a beast. He was a perfect Goliath.
A prodigy who broke into the business
before he could drive...
Just drove him to the mat.
Terry Gordy's skill in the ring was matched only by
his legendary toughness.
Terry had the ability to make just about anybody look good
as long as they were willing to pay the price.
He was 300 pounds and when he picked you upside down and
dropped you on your head, you were pretty much done.
Gordy's career skyrocketed as part of
'The Fabulous Freebirds', a tag team trio that
revolutionized the business with their
in-ring theatrics and total commitment
to their rock and roll lifestyle.
Once the Jack started flowin',
the Birds were ready to party with anyone
or fight anyone.
You're with the big boys now!
They believed they are rock stars,
so they act like rock stars.
Gordy's no holds barred style would take him
around the world, but also accelerate
his self-destructive behaviour.
Terry was his own man. Terry did his own thing.
The lifestyle that he led...
he could have died a hundred different ways.
You can go from being on top of the world and
have it all taken from you in a moment.
Until a flight on a routine trip to Japan would
drastically alter his career, and the man himself.
Even though he came back, he didn't come back
as a wrestler, and he didn't come back as Terry.
He was never the same.
Never even remotely the same.
♪
Guys, first match, 5 minutes.
My name gets me noticed. Like, "Oh, another
second gen, Terry Gordy's daughter."
[Announcer] Miranda Gordy!
[Cheering]
I am Miranda Gordy,
and Terry 'Bam Bam' Gordy is my father.
[Indistinct chatter]
They expect me to be just as good as him,
and that's just not the case, so that's caused a little bit
of pressure on me that I have got to fill those boots.
♪ [Indistinct commentary] ♪
[Commentary] What a clothesline!
Those are some big shoes to fill.
Oh the boot comes off.
Gordy smashing on Bruiser Brody's head.
My name is Ray Gordy,
and I am son of Terry 'Bam Bam' Gordy.
People would remember me as one half of
Jesse and Festus, and Slam Master J.
The reason I didn't use my father's name
in WWE is simply because
I didn't feel that I could live up to it.
Terry Gordy is fixin' to bust loose.
He told me one time that
once you learn how this business works,
you'll never want to do anything else.
Here's Gordy from the ropes!
And that was his mindset.
He never seen himself doing anything else.
[Announcer] Terry Gordy!
[Cheering]
Born in Rossville, Georgia,
Terry Gordy is barely a teenager when
he gets his start in the wrestling business.
I have some early stuff of my dad.
That is a report card.
It looks like a couple of Fs.
Those days he was absent, he was on the road.
-This picture. -Yeah.
That is a very young Terry Gordy.
At 40 pounds, Terry Meeker!
Because of Terry's size and his eagerness,
by the time he was 14 years old,
he was wrestling on television.
I'm Jim Cornette.
I've been involved in a variety of ways in
professional wrestling over the last 40-something years.
I first met Terry, he was 16 years old.
He was already a professional wrestler and
had been for a couple of years at that point.
You could use the word 'prodigy',
you could use the word 'natural'.
Whatever it was, he had it.
He's getting a couple of licks here.
He was a prodigy, but that doesn't mean
he didn't work hard and study the game.
My name is Mick Foley. I'm a three time
WWE champion and I am sometimes
known as the 'Hardcore Legend'.
What he lacked in traditional schooling
he picked up with an education
on the road, second to none.
This young lad here is gonna, I think, become a superstar.
He has all of the makings.
When you started getting the full Terry Gordy,
not only the physical aspect, but the verbal...
he was an all -around performer.
There was almost nobody that could touch him.
Get your sister, get your daddy,
get em' all around the TV.
Because you fixin' to eyewitness something.
When Terry was in Mississippi,
he met a guy named Michael Hayes.
[Indistinct shouting]
And there it is, Michael Hayes.
Michael was a natural talker.
You hand Michael a microphone and he could go on forever.
When you wanna talk to a lady, you say, "Hey baby,
why don't you put on some put on some Teddy Pendergrass,
close the door, let me do what I want to do,
'cause all I want do is what you want me to."
[Sighing]
His mama must've had a hard time with him.
I am Jimmy Jam Garvin, and I am a member of
'The Fabulous Freebirds', WWE Hall of Famer,
and it's still not my fault.
It's not my fault!
Michael and Terry, I mean,
they were just both live wires.
Terry would almost know what Michael was thinking,
you know, before Michael even said it,
and vice versa, they were just tight.
You've got Michael Hayes who would come out,
and he would piss people off.
As always, a big conflict.
He would talk his self right into the corner.
But then behind his back,
you've got Terry Gordy.
-Here comes Gordy. -[Cheering]
As a team, they were just unmatched.
They just were like... soul mates,
as far as friends go.
Michael was a big fan, as every southerner
was in those days in the 70s,
of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Michael had the idea,
"What about if we call ourselves 'The Freebirds'?
Monday night in Memphis at the Mid-South Coliseum,
I was a photographer at ringside,
and all of a sudden over the P.A. system,
here comes 'Freebird."
♪ [Cheering] ♪
And then out comes Terry and Michael.
The silver robes flowing everywhere,
and they're doing a slow motion strut to
match the beat of Freebird.
You hear the music, and The Fabulous Freebirds-
Terry Gordy and Michael Hayes.
This was back in the day where if you went to
an arena event, the bell rang,
and the wrestlers walked to the ring,
and they got introduced. There was no music.
[Cheering]
And I said, "You know, I think this might catch on."
The Freebirds soon joined Mid-South Wrestling,
where promoter Bill Watts pairs them up with
Buddy Roberts, converting the tag team into a trio.
You've got the Freebirds' attention,
and that just might be your downfall!
Buddy was the veteran. Michael was the promo.
Terry was the physical enforcer.
Watch that head bite the dust!
And that three-man combination made one of the
most legendary tag teams in the history of wrestling.
Together, they were bigger than the sum of their parts.
And I think it's important to point out that this was
not a case of lightning striking once.
They got over everywhere they went.
[Chanting] Freebirds! Freebirds! Freebirds!
You can hear the crowd very quickly:
"Freebirds! Freebirds!"
The Fabulous Freebirds, our winners...
The Fabulous Freebirds got through with the victory.
Welcome back to the wild and wonderful Freebirds.
[Cheering]
Ah, and the moonwalk.
Then they had the natural three-on-three rivalry
with the Von Erich boys in Dallas.
Deep in the heart of Texas,
World Class Championship Wrestling
is dominated by the three eldest sons of
promoter Fritz Von Erich...
David, Kerry, and Kevin.
This is The Von Erichs!
The Von Erich boys were already popular,
but the Von Erich boys had never been tested.
We wanted bad asses,
and that's who the Freebirds were.
Back breaker across the knee of Michael Hayes.
I'm Kevin Von Erich,
and for years I battled the Freebirds.
They were legitimate rough guys, you know,
and they didn't have any apologies for anybody.
[Commentary] Oh, that fella hit the deck.
But we had a common goal.
We wanted to put the best wrestling match
we could in that ring.
And so it was just a marriage made in heaven.
-Here comes Kevin! -[Cheering]
Wrestling in the mid 80s in Dallas was
the top of the game.
We were selling out every venue,
everywhere, every night.
But the magic really hit when the Freebirds came.
I'm talking about them Von Erich's.
They don't stick their nose in the Freebirds' business.
My name is David Manning. I was the promoter,
booker, and referee for
World Class Championship Wrestling.
The Von Erichs were like the good cowboy,
and here was three guys that were
obnoxious, rude to the fans.
Let me tell you something, Texas...
there ain't no place that I would rather be
than in Georgia right now.
Kevin referred to him as filth.
Michael Hayes is bringing the flag.
Terry and Michael come to the ring,
they've got Dixie flyin', and they're talking
about Texas, and it just burned me up.
And so I grabbed the mic and I said,
"You got everyone in the world thinking this is a war
between Texas and Georgia, and this is not.
This is a war between decency and filth."
There was so much love for the Von Erichs,
but there was total hate
for Michael, Terry, and Buddy.
Go home Freebirds! Go home Freebirds!
They could get a ton of heat because of the way
they acted, the things they said, the things they did.
What about your friend right here, boy,
what you think about it?
I didn't want my dad to get beat up,
but I was still a fan of the Von Erichs.
And it looks like a bar room brawl.
Who didn't love the von Erichs?
[Cheering]
Some of the guys who didn't like the Von Erichs 'cause
their girlfriends liked them, and they're saying,
"Well look at the shit kickin', Jack Daniels drinkin',
flag wavin' Southern assholes."
So they started getting in the Freebird camp.
[Cheering] Freebirds! Freebirds! Freebirds!
I think the Freebirds were the original cool heels.
Far more often they were the cooler of
the two teams in the ring.
For the next two and a half years in every city in Texas,
it was the Freebirds against the Von Erichs.
I'm gonna kill him!
[Cheering]
I want Terry Gordy and I just don't want to just beat him,
I want to hurt him!
And he'll take Terry across the ring!
They main evented in Texas Stadium, for God's sake.
It was the most magic 3-on-3 combination.
Perfect time, perfect place,
perfect set up, perfect participants.
And they drew nothing but money for two years.
[Cheering]
What we had created in the ring was phenomenal,
anybody would want that.
But then when you got out of the ring,
you had all the other problems though
that came with the Birds.
They were trouble looking for trouble.
[Shattering]
You know, they just raised hell.
They'd drink all night,
and then they'd get in the ring,
and they'd sweat all that booze out.
They always told me that the best cure for
a hangover was wrestling. Yeah.
Terry's temperament was like, so even...
until he drank. [Laughing]
My parents were at a bar and
a man was hitting on my mom.
My dad became very enraged,
and there was a bar fight.
The cops went to restrain my dad,
to calm him down,
which I think did the opposite.
[Groaning]
He beat up a cop car
with his hands cuffed behind his back.
♪
It was like you had taken a hammer, about this
big around and hit the hood of the car,
and knocked dents in it where he had head butted it.
And he was kind of a big, old spoiled kid.
And you know, that's Terry, he did stuff like that.
Terry Gordy was not gonna back up from anybody,
nor was there anybody walking that was
really gonna make him back up.
[Glass shattering]
Jeez, I mean, if you look back at it today
from today's perspective, it got out of control
at the very beginning.
You know, having people throw different things at you,
like, "Here, take a shot, y'all are awesome."
Or, "Here", you know,
"take this for your pain so you can sleep."
Or, "Here, take this so you can stay up and
drive 8 hours to the next show."
I don't know exactly when the evolution happened from
smoking marijuana, drinking booze,
to more of a...
a pill problem.
♪
Despite their wild reputation, in 1984,
Terry Gordy and The Fabulous Freebirds
catch the attention of Vince McMahon and
the World Wrestling Federation.
Was it a week? Did they last a week?
They were in the meeting with Vince,
hung over, still partially inebriated.
Terry fell asleep...
[Exhaling sharply]
And that didn't get over with Vince too good.
That was the only time that The Freebirds
ever worked for the WWF.
After wrestling a handful of matches,
The Freebirds flame out at the WWF.
But Terry has a chance to take his career
in a new direction.
That is my dad and Bruiser Brody.
It's in Japan.
My dad got the opportunity to go work in Japan.
The Japanese wrestling is very different
from what it is over here.
When you get The Freebirds, and more glitz and glamor,
they see that, and they're really not interested.
They were more interested in Terry Gordy by himself.
Terry Gordy! [Japanese commentary]
The monster American.
The Abdullah the Butchers, or the Bruiser Brodys,
or the Stan Hansens, or Terry Gordy.
Suplex!
These giant guys that were just crazy,
and beat up everybody in their path.
They became the darlings of the Japanese wrestling fan.
And that's the kind of atmosphere that
Terry could flourish in.
[Japanese commentary]
He loved the hard...
[Japanese commentary]
Physical style associated with Japan,
and that's why he became one of the biggest and
best stars to ever cross the ocean.
[Japanese commentary]
And work there.
[Japanese commentary]
It takes a big toll physically, with the injuries.
Putting your body through that,
every bump is like a mild car wreck.
I knew that he was having knee problems.
One of my big concerns was
my dad wasn't gonna blow out his knees.
[Japanese commentary]
He tore both of his ACLs.
[Grunting]
He was going to Japan six months a year,
working as a main event star over there at a high level,
with no ACL in either knee.
He had to have double knee surgery,
but the doctor told him he had to
take the weight off.
So he contacted Richard Simmons.
Yeah!
[Laughing] Right?
This huge 6'5 man, just, you know,
jazzercise or whatever Richard Simmons did.
[Laughing] Come on, Terry, you got this!
Yeah. [Laughing]
Terry was like 300, 320...
and then he pared down to like, maybe 265,
something like that.
And you see the more athletic built up Terry Gordy.
You can absolutely blame that on Richard Simmons.
Now leaner and more powerful and working in
a physical style that plays to his strengths,
Terry's performance in the ring reaches new heights.
Oh.
Yeah. In my opinion, that's
one of the top five matches of all time.
The Japanese crowd...
traditionally, they will ooh and ah.
This match, they tore the house down.
[Japanese commentary]
Terry Gordy was a master of his craft.
People look at him and they see this
big monster doing all these power moves.
But if you really watch, you'll see
the little things that he done in the ring,
that people just don't do.
Even down to the chin lock in this match...
he's actually using his fingers to
try to pry fingers away.
And, this is a work.
But that little bit just adds so much more.
Terry was a guy who made
everything he did mean something.
And when he threw a punch, brother,
it was a thing of beauty.
It was so animated,
it connected, it looked great.
He was, he was just simply one of the best.
He was the first American ever to win the
Triple Crown Championship.
He was the top guy in Japan at that time.
-[Bell ringing] -[Crowd cheering]
It's great to be alive and
it's great to be number one in Japan.
In Japan, Terry starts working with 'Dr. Death'
Steve Williams in a tag team known for their brutality,
the 'Miracle Violence Connection'.
Double clothesline!
If the aliens landed tomorrow...
[Laughing]
And you had to pick two human beings to
represent Earth in a fight to the death.
[Groaning]
Pick Terry Gordy and 'Dr. Death' Steve Williams.
Look at the strength of Dr. Death.
They brought that Japanese style over to the U.S.
[Commentary] In my opinion...
They may be
the best tag team in the world today.
They're not resting up in between Japanese tours.
They're taking on these very physical matches
on a very regular basis.
[Cheering]
Terry and Doc did a lot of tours together,
so to keep that Freebird thing going,
they needed to replace Terry when he was gone.
And that's what I did.
We're not following no rules that we don't want to follow.
Terry, when he wasn't in Japan,
he would join us.
That's a very heavy schedule.
I honestly believe that it was too much.
I mean, really it was just part of life.
Like, he would just be gone for a long time,
and it was like a, a treat almost
when he would be home.
Miranda, smile!
Life at, at one point was really good.
We did normal family things.
He took us skating.
He taught me how to fish and ride a bike...
all the dad stuff.
He did that for us when he could,
but it just wasn't a lot, unfortunately.
Yeah, he hated to be separated from his family, man.
My name is Richard Aslinger.
I went under the ring name of Richard Slinger in Japan.
Trained and lived over there,
and I'm the nephew of Terry Gordy.
He would talk to me about being over there in Japan.
He said, "I would go into a state of deep,
dark and miserable depression."
I know it wore on him. He looked tired.
I know he missed being home, and he missed his own
mom and he missed his kids, and he missed his wife.
Being on the road 360 days a year,
that wears on you.
You live in hotels,
airplanes, rental cars.
It's just constant go.
Your mind never really has time to reset,
to relax, to say,
"Okay, where am I at in this life"?
A lot of times in those days, especially the
well-seasoned travellers to Japan,
they would take whatever pills that
they took so they could sleep,
and when they woke up, they'd be in Japan.
The drugs can be seen as a necessary evil.
When you're going from time zone to time zone,
when you're expected to be at your best on a nightly basis,
when you feel far from your best,
when you're worn down...
and it is a very short step from
use as needed to use as liked.
♪
While on a tour with Steve Williams,
Terry suffers his first serious overdose.
First time he dropped on me,
accumulated too many pills.
It was Halcion.
We went out that night and he just dropped,
and I did CPR,
and an ambulance took him.
He was in the hospital,
he didn't remember what happened.
When they brought me in
I had to refreshen his mind and
tell him what he'd done and this and that...
I tried to straighten him up from there,
but Terry Gordy had a problem with drugs.
There's gonna be a time where your body tells you,
or your mind tells you, that you need to stop.
And I really believe that during that time
my dad was at that point.
It's a tough business, you know,
it's a heartless business.
Set to return to Japan, Terry boards a flight
that will change his life forever.
Terry accumulated so many pills that
I'm having to push him with a wheelchair.
He's out, you know, he's out, so...
30 minutes before the plane lands,
I look at him and he's, he's dying on me.
Before a flight to Japan, Terry Gordy consumes
an excessive amount of muscle relaxers.
"Dr. Death" Steve Williams
notices Terry has stopped breathing.
He's dying on me.
I mean, he's turning blue and he- [gasping]
he's sucking barely any air.
Like he was about to swallow his tongue and...
I used to be able to knock him back loose
if I slapped him a couple of times in the face,
it would kick him out of it, you know,
just like if you put somebody in a sleeper
if you hit them in the back,
it'll knock them back out of it.
Well...
I did it and he wouldn't come back alive.
So right then I knew he was dying.
Stewardess got up, man,
and they was all freakin' out.
And, I was giving him CPR to keep him alive,
to keep that heart going.
As soon as we landed,
the ambulance was right there.
I had to get him off the plane,
get him in an ambulance and get him to the hospital.
They just started emergency procedures and...
what little bit of Japanese I spoke,
and what little bit of English they spoke,
we were able to communicate about Terry's condition.
Biggest fear is that I might be losing
my uncle Terry in there.
He was in a coma for a couple of days.
I remember being right there behind the...
pretty much the whole time,
camping out beside his bed.
When he woke up, he started calling my name,
"Richard! Richard"!
You know, and I'm like, "Yeah, I'm here.
I'm here, I'm here."
Eventually, he was able to be maneuvered with
between me and the nurse into a wheelchair
to go to the shower.
♪
You know, maybe a little bit of cold water...
he might show that he still has the feeling,
and he did.
His face grimaced a little bit
whenever I sprayed him with cold water.
And I was like, you know, we might have
some luck here getting him back to normal.
They called my stepmother,
and she flew over to be with him.
And she got him home and
my mother was there to greet him,
and she said that was a heartbreaker to see him
coming off the airplane in a wheelchair.
He couldn't really carry on that much of
a conversation, he was very quiet.
Um...
There was an obvious difference.
He had lost
a lot of his motor skills.
He was very slow to react.
He had to relearn a lot of things.
He had some permanent
physical and mental damage from that.
He wasn't the same person anymore.
Whatever happened...
oxygen to the brain,
he was unconscious too long,
whatever all that medical hoo-ha is,
it erased something in his brain.
There's this local promoter.
He was kind enough to give us the key,
and we was training within a couple of weeks of,
of me coming back from that tour.
Ironic, you know, somebody's training me...
here I am, I'm teaching my uncle, you know,
"This is how it goes, remember? Remember"?
There was progress and
we were all hoping that he would
just miraculously kick out at some point,
and it would all come back to him,
and he would be Terry Gordy again.
♪
During the last year of Smoky Mountain Wrestling,
we heard that he had started wrestling in
little independent shows, and I said,
"If Terry is anywhere back,
anywhere near what he needs to be, my god,
if we could get him up here that'd be great."
So I made the arrangements to have him come in.
I have added another member
to Cornette Militia! [Laughing]
Terry Gordy!
Everybody in the locker room in Smoky Mountain
had known him for years and liked him,
and was wanting to help...
but, there were-
he couldn't do a promo anymore.
And I'm coming to show you, boy,
that I'm gonna take that title and I'm gonna take it,
and ain't nothing you or your old lady
can do about it.
And we kept thinking it'll come back to him,
or he's taking steps,
but he'd just walk up to you,
and he'd just stand there. Then you'd look,
"Oh, oh Terry, do you need something"?
"Yeah, uh, Jim,
I was just wondering if you'd like me to
do the Powerbomb."
"Yes, Terry, if you'd like to, please."
And there is Gordy,
sets him up for that Powerbomb.
Because he had been such a great wrestler and
he could still do these moves...
[Bang!]
And it was the same frame.
But there wasn't any life in it.
There, he was going through the motions,
but the face, the expression, the intent...
everything that makes you a personality,
it just was gone.
Because he wasn't there anymore.
That was gone.
Despite a challenging rehabilitation,
Terry stages a comeback, culminating in a legendary
match against Cactus Jack at IWA's now infamous
King of the Death Match tournament.
You become the king of the test match by
kicking out of all the moves.
Terry and I were going to face in the first round of
what was known at the time as the
'Kawasaki Dream Match Tournament'.
It's gone down in lore as being the
'King of the Death Match Tournament.'
Three, two, one.
[Cheering]
One of the holes in his game since the accident on the
plane was the punches were no longer there.
And out of concern for his reputation I said,
"Terry," I said, "You're a legend here."
I said, "You got to really bring those punches."
[Grunting]
To his credit, I didn't have to tell him
that more than once.
[Grunting]
I've read letters that said Terry Gordy was the
King of the Death Match,
and all that happened after the accident.
So, I can only imagine
full Terry Gordy
having a death match.
♪
We did pretty good.
And it resulted in what may have been the
greatest post-match interview of Terry's career.
Shit, what the ----...
Mother ----er.
----!
I felt like maybe we pushed the hands of time back
just a little bit.
[Gasping] Oh!
But it was not meant to be.
Despite an impressive performance at
King of the Death Match, it's clear that
Terry Gordy's overdose has changed him.
I think that he continued
to wrestle after the accident
is because that's all he knew.
That's all he ever did.
He wasn't a cashier for a grocery store and then
started wrestling, like, he wrestled.
There were a lot of people rooting for my dad.
Terry 'Bamm Bamm' Gordy
who has been pronounced clinically
dead twice, is making a comeback!
He could work through a match...
it just wasn't the same.
I'm sure that was the hope that maybe if they just
kept at it, that he would eventually come to it.
But, it just, it was never there.
You can see it even in pictures, in his eyes,
he was full of life.
And then you look at pictures after the coma and
he looks like a deer in headlights.
Terry Gordy, probably one of the greatest tag team
wrestlers of all time, and of course, a legendary heel,
and the member of the 'Fabulous Freebird' group,
probably the greatest heel trio in the business.
In 1998, Terry agrees to film an interview
out of character.
And for the first time, fans at home
are able to see for themselves
the change in his cognitive capabilities.
I've seen parts of the shoot interview.
The emotions when I first saw that,
I was enraged, um,
a little embarrassed.
Yeah, man, there's a bunch...
[Laughing]
I don't know.
Seeing your dad like that,
he couldn't remember a lot of stuff from the past.
The coma took a lot of his memories away.
But in that they're just hounding him for
all these questions, and as his daughter,
you just want them to leave him alone.
Oh yeah. Yeah I think so.
♪
As Terry attempts to get back into the spotlight,
his long-time friend, 'Freebird' Michael Hayes
convinces the WWF to add Terry to their roster.
♪
Vince put him under a hood as The Executioner.
Of course, when I was a kid, I'm like
oh, why would they do that?
And really it was to protect him,
and I'm glad they did.
It was a good respect move
on the part of WWE.
They didn't want to
destroy Terry Gordy
by putting him on TV as Terry Gordy,
and him not being Terry Gordy.
Michael Hayes was able to get him in with Terry
as a menacing, foreboding Executioner
with me and Paul Bearer.
We became kind of like a faction.
As soon as Mankind, is buried alive,
the Undertaker.
His head will be raised by the official.
Then the Executioner came...
friend in need, a friend indeed.
-[Cheering] -Oh no!
Part of what made Terry's character so intriguing
is that he was like a man child.
He breaks in at age 14 years old.
He's a child among men, but at the same time,
he's a man among men.
When he gets to WWE,
there's still the ways of a child,
and that's not the way to succeed in a main event
with the Undertaker.
Off the ropes, scoops him up, what's he gonna do with him?
Slams him down.
It was pretty sad, man, pretty sad to watch.
My Uncle Terry, he was once at his prime,
and from doing that, to, you know,
not hitting on all cylinders,
you know, it was pretty sad.
And I'm sure all the people that looked up to him and
that he helped along the way in his career were just...
I don't know how else to describe it but heartbreaking.
Just looking at someone that
is like a superhero to you, and just seeing...
I don't want to say helpless, but,
he wasn't the same person.
[Cheering]
And Undertaker had to say, "It won't work."
And the Executioner has been executed.
Everybody loved him, but you know,
he wasn't there anymore.
It's also a bit sad to overhear a conversation
he had with a woman on an airplane,
where she goes to take some medication,
and he goes, "Got any extras"?
She gave him a couple pills.
So, he was at a point where he was taking anything,
regardless of whether...
he knew what it was.
We would be worried because he would go from being
completely coherent to obviously under the influence
of something seemingly within minutes.
♪
And so he had reached a pretty dangerous point.
I, it's hard for me to say because
I looked up to him and I will
always appreciate the kindness he showed me
when he was on top of the world,
and I was breaking in. But, you know, we're,
we gotta be adults out there on the road.
We look out for each other,
but you also have to look out for yourself.
We would have to, on a few occasions,
try to track him down when he was not in his hotel room.
I think it was about the third time that Paul Bearer and I
were searching the roads and making drives and
calling his name.
We realized that this,
this was not going to be a long-term team.
[Rain pattering]
When Terry's short-lived stint in the WWF
comes to an end,
he finds himself back on the indie circuit.
It's hard to grasp as a kid
what that was to see the downfall
of him being on top, to, to doing
little independent shows around
Tennessee and Georgia.
I was at those indie shows.
As a kid it was fun,
but looking back at that, um...
it's really sad.
I think the last time I saw Terry was at
an independent wrestling show.
During intermission, Terry's daughter was
taking polaroids of Terry and the fans in the ring,
and there were only about two people
who made that trip into the ring.
Seeing literal minutes go by with no one on that line,
no one getting into the ring,
just struck me as being extraordinarily sad.
And I'm over in a different part of the building
at a table, and I'm signing autographs, feeling guilty,
saying, "They should be on that line.
That's the line they should be.
There's the real superstar."
There was part of me that wanted to
get out there in the ring,
grab that microphone and
start yelling at people,
trying to knock some sense into them.
"Don't you understand this is a legend!
He's here in your midst and you can see him,
you can get a photo taken with him."
And times had changed.
♪
As his wrestling career winds down,
Terry redirects his focus and
embraces what matters to him most.
During this time,
he was home.
I got to see my dad
more than I had ever seen him
in my entire life.
I look back on that and
as rough of a time as that was
for him and our family,
it was the time of my life
where I got to know my dad and
become really great friends with him.
We would see each other every single weekend.
I'd go pick him up, I'd take him to the gym,
we'd work out, I'd take him home.
It was probably the best years of my life
getting to hang out with my dad and
really getting to talk to him
and getting to know the person that he really was.
I'm really thankful for that time that
he wasn't on the road, that he was at home,
because, yeah, we became best friends.
We really did.
Do you have anything you wanna say to your fans
out there that are watching this video?
I am just uh, I'm really, really sorry,
you know that, uh...
I, I don't know.
[Off-screen] Sorry about...?
I'm sorry about going to Japan, you know,
and OD-ing and stuff, you know.
He was actually doing a show and
he asked me to go do the show with him,
and we were actually going to tag that night,
and I couldn't go.
Next day I get a call from my cousin Richard.
♪
And his exact words were,
"Ray, get down on your knees and
start praying
because your dad is on this mountain
and he stopped breathing."
♪
After wrestling an indie match the previous night,
Terry is found unresponsive at his home
in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee.
I got in a car as soon as I could and
traveled to his home.
I was there before emergency services.
It was one of the boys that stayed with Terry
the night before, he was doing the CPR,
and while he was doing chest compressions,
I was, I still hate knowing this,
but Terry was already gone,
and I was trying to bring him back by, you know,
slapping him in the face because I remember
Doc telling me that's what he did to bring him back
and I thought, you know,
maybe this is one last thing I can resort to, to,
you know, bring Terry back.
There was a police officer standing in front of the door,
guarding the door and wouldn't let anybody in.
I put my hands on the police officer and told him
he was gonna let me in that door.
And that's when Richard grabbed me and
told me that he was gone.
My mom knew that there was an emergency and
they said to get to my granny's quickly,
and I just hear my mom scream, "No"!
She had to tell us that he had passed.
♪
On July 16th, 2001,
Terry Gordy dies of congestive
heart failure caused by a blood clot.
He is only 40 years old.
♪
Of all the stuff that my dad did,
and the lifestyle that he led,
and all the partying that he did,
it's amazing that it wasn't an OD.
It wasn't anything like that.
Maybe his legacy is,
you can't push yourself too hard.
You can't take shit you're not supposed to take.
You can't do shit you're not supposed to do,
over and over on a regular basis.
Woah, that's cold.
If you sat Terry down, if he was here right now, I said,
"Hey, Terry, do you think maybe if we tell this story,
it'll make some of the other guys stay away from it?"
He probably would say, "Yeah, go ahead and tell it."
He wouldn't be worried about whether he looked good
or not, but if he could help somebody else.
[Cheering]
You know, it's just such a tragedy.
I mean, the wrestling lost not only
one of the best workers ever.
Oh!
But he was a good guy.
Why did Terry Gordy touch so many people's lives?
Well, with the wrestling fans, it was easy,
'cause he was great.
He was great at what he did, he was exciting to watch.
[Cheering]
If you like wrestling, he did it better than
almost anybody else in it.
I'm not claiming to be
the best wrestler in the world,
but you know something, world champion?
This right here is about to-
-Agh! -[Screaming & cheering]
Terry Gordy is a surprise!
He will never be forgotten.
He contributed so much to this business.
More than people realize.
Gordy putting on a clinic here.
[Screaming & cheering]
One, two, three.
What I've gotten most out of wrestling is
how much people just really love my dad.
So if I walk away with just that,
it's been a very healing experience.
But his influence can be seen
almost every week on television.
Whether it's the hyper realistic but
theatrically enjoyable punches he threw.
This turned into a total brawl!
Or somebody winding up a clothesline
before throwing it hard.
[Thudding]
Any time you see any variation of a Powerbomb,
that's Terry Gordy.
Don't it feel good sitting up here?
I mean, up at top.
Looking down at everything? Don't it feel good?
♪