All of the kids would ride their snow sleds down a hill on a neighbours farm on the way to school and jump off just before the barbed wire fence at the bottom. Well, I didn't know that. I slammed face-first into the barbed wire and the pain was instant and intense. The wire left three tremendously deep gashes on my hairline, my face, and my chin. It missed my left eyeball by mere centimetres. The entire right side of my face was swollen, and my eye was big, purple, and swollen shut, though nothing was broken. None of the other kids helped me. They were all stood there laughing as I pulled myself out of the sharp, rusted wire, with the blood gushing from my face turning the pure white snow a deep crimson red. When I got to hospital the doctor told me, Wow, you are extremely lucky, but being a kid I didn't understand why. Look at me, how am I lucky? I asked. You still have both of your eyeballs, he said, You could easily have lost them, the wire could have pulled them out of your head. I spent a few hours getting scans and had butterfly stitches put on the wounds to push them together, then the doctor told my mother to ice down my face every fifteen minutes to keep the swelling down, and to continuously rub Neosporin antibacterial moisturising cream on the gashes to help the skin heal. The first time Heyman asked Ian and I to do a barbed wire bat match I made the bat myself. I went to the hardware store and bought a spool of wire, but the moment I picked it up and one of the barbs nicked my finger I had a panic attack and started having flashbacks to the incident when I was a child. I thought, Screw this. I dont want this. I dont want to mess with this s**t. I called Ian and said, Bro, this stuff is no joke. This is real and it hurts. Ian convinced me we needed to steal the show that night so I had to do it, so I did. I had a staple gun, unwinding this steel and barbs in my backyard, cutting my hands up even though I had gloves on. We didn't clip the wire at all. A lot of people thought it was fake or clipped, but it wasn't, we used 100% cowboy grade keep-the-cows-in-their-pens wire. We didn't do anything to make it safer. When I got finished making it I was holding it in my hands, shaking at the prospect of using it. I was thinking, Do a I really wanna f**k with this stuff again? For that match I wore a pair of jeans under my long tights because I was so scared of cutting my femoral artery or something like that. Once I got through the match I was fine. After that one time it was like riding a bike from thereon in, it was no big deal at all.
The author of the highly acclaimed 'Titan' book series, James Dixon has been involved in the wrestling business for 25 years as a fan, wrestler, promoter, agent, and writer. James spent several years wrestling on the British independent circuit, but now prefers to write about the bumps and bruises rather than take any of them. His past in-ring experience does however give a uniquely more "insider" perspective on things, though he readily admits to still being a "mark" at heart.
James is the Chief Editor and writer at historyofwrestling.co.uk and is responsible for the best-selling titles Titan Sinking, Titan Shattered, and Titan Screwed, as well as the Complete WWF Video Guide series, and the Raw Files series.