Roanoke Times and World-News
July 24, 1982
Boooo!
Success story of Pvt. Jim Nelson goes from shoulder pads at
Northside High School to turnbuckles along the East Coast
by Randy King, Sportswriter
Since graduating from high school in
1977, the life of James Kirk Harrell has been a metamorphosis.
No longer is he the 160 pound guy who used to play wide receiver and
defensive halfback for Northside High. No longer is he the guy who’d
never been to Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens or Atlanta’s Omni. And no
longer is his name James Kirk Harrell.
Thank you, professional wrestling.
Harrell, a 23 year old Roanoke native, is known more prominently on
the eastern seaboard as pro wrestler Pvt. Jim Nelson. You can’t kick
sand in this guy’s face anymore because he weighs 240 pounds and,
with Pvt. Don Kernodle, is the Mid-Atlantic tag team champion.
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Unbelievable?
“It sure is,” Nelson repeated several
times from his apartment in Charlotte, NC. “This past June when I
had a match at the Roanoke Civic Center, I got to thinking about
things. It was only five years ago when we had our high school
graduation there. It’s hard to believe what’s happened in my life
since.”
Nelson’s life is centered around wrestling rings from Toronto to
Atlanta. It’s a vagabond life consisting of thousands of miles of
travel, countless motel rooms, good money, and – oh, yes – hard
work.
“But I don’t have to worry about
leaving a wife and kid at home,” he said. “I’ve been able to go a
lot of places that I’ve never been before. I had never been to
Atlanta. Shoot, I had never been to places in Virginia like Richmond
and Norfolk before I started wrestling. But this is what I’ve always
wanted to do.”
Nelson
knew he wanted to be a pro wrestler at age 14. He used to attend the
cards at the Roanoke Civic Center every week.
“I was so small then that I didn’t have any idea that I’d get into
it,” Nelson said. “My final year at Northside, I got interested in
the weight program that Coach (Jim) Hickam started. I started going
to the Y and started putting on a lot of weight.”
One day while pumping iron at the YMCA, Nelson met pro wrestler Rick
McCord. It was his chance to get a foot in the door.
“McCord introduced me to a couple of wrestlers from Salem, Don Hogan
and Steve Savage. I started wrestling in small places in Virginia
with a semipro group. I spent all of my time watching matches and
tapes. After a year, I went to Atlanta. I was in the right place at
the right time and got lucky.” |
In his first big-time match, Nelson and
Mike Stallings went up against Ole Anderson and Ivan Koloff.
“I only weighed 210 and I had been watching those guys for years,”
Nelson said. “To say the least, I got pitched around pretty good.
They stayed on me like bees on honey. they about beat me half to
death.”
Since that night, things have gotten better. Nelson, Sgt. Slaughter
and Kernodle are among the top “bad guys” in the area. Despite his
and the team’s success, there is one criticism of the sport that
Nelson despises to hear – the charge that the matches are rigged or
fake.
“I hear that all the time from some of my high school friends when I
see them,” Nelson said. “And I’m sure I’ll hear plenty when I go to
our reunion at the end of this month. But I’ve gone home sore or had
times when I couldn’t even get out of bed the next morning. It’s
those times when I say to myself I wish it was fake.”
Nelson said wrestlers’ biggest worries concern rowdy fans.
“You have to watch yourself,” he said. “You’ve got to watch fans
that are in large groups. They might pull a knife on you or
something. At first, my mother was worried about me getting hurt.
But like I told her, you can get hurt in any sport.”
Looking back at his climb to wrestling prominence, Nelson still
remembers people who made fun of his ambitions.
“You can do whatever you set your mind to do. My advice to anyone,
whether it be sports or whatever, is go get it. The movie ‘Rocky’
inspired me. When I mentioned something about going into pro
wrestling, I had some schoolmates who told me I couldn’t do it. I
was 160 pounds and people laughed at me.”
Now the only one laughing is Pvt. Jim Nelson. |
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