I'm Next: The Strange Journey of America's Most Unlikely Superhero

Flashback The world was a blur. All I could make out was the glare of the lights above the ring. As my senses were returning, Kevin Nash's leathery crotch came into focus. Using a real cattle prod was my idea. If I was going to lose, it was going to look as realistic as possible, but when I ate the voltage I knew why those big beasts were so cooperative. As the crowd started to chant "Goldberg. Goldberg. Goldberg," I lay there wondering what the hell I was doing flopping around the ring like a fish in a Speedo. I wasn't even really hearing the crowd for the first time in my professional wrestling career, their rallying chant was wasted breath. The mighty Goldberg's 175-match streak was about to end. Something else was filtering into my brain, and I distinctly remember the words. "Whatever you do, do not become a professional wrestler." You're Going to Be a What? "Don't worry," I said to my girlfriend, Lisa, "becoming a wrestler is the last thing I'd ever do." As one of the original Diamond Dolls (the precursors to the Nitro Girls) of World Championship Wrestling, Lisa had escorted such luminaries as Ric Flair, Diamond Dallas Page, and Arn Anderson into the ring. She knew the ropes of professional wrestling, and she wanted to keep me out of the ring and away from the soap-opera-like atmosphere. Two years later, I was recovering from surgery and trying to figure out my life when I figured a trip hack to my college town of Athens, Georgia, would do me good. I hooked up with the boys, my former Bulldog teammates Scott Adams, Mack Burroughs, and Larry Brown, and resident redneck-turned-yuppie Blake Mitchel. We were sitting around Scott's house drinking beer and shooting the shit. Scott was flipping the channels, and somehow the TV wound up on professional wrestling. I said to them, "Wouldn't it be a trip if that was me up there in the ring?" "Yeah, right," said Scott, "I can see it now: G.I. Jew to the rescue. You could tie up your opponent in the figure four--skin'." The longer I was away from football, the less confidence I had in myself And without one vote of approval from someone I trusted, I wasn't going to become a professional wrestler. I picked up the phone and called my mom. "You're going to be a WHAAAAT?" She sounded like Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor. "I'm going to be a wrestler, Mom, you know, like the guys on TV" She thought I was kidding, and I didn't really blame her. When I explained that I was serious, she asked me if I really thought that being a wrestler was an honest living. I couldn't give her a straight answer then, and I don't know if I could now. I was really reluctant to call my dad to tell him that I was seriously considering becoming a professional wrestler. Not because I was nervous... I was embarrassed. Nervous is when you're sixteen and you ask to borrow your dad's Jaguar. Embarrassed is having him see you driving down Main Street in a clownmobile. As you can imagine, his mood was less than enthusiastic. "Does someone have a gun to your head? Why can't you go back and finish college?" was about all I remember from that conversation. The next call was to my oldest brother, Mike, "the Machine." Mike and I have different agendas in life, to put it mildly. We want to end up in the same place but we've taken very different routes to get there. He's made a lot of money in the aircraft business, and throughout my life I've turned to him whenever I needed help. I was always trying to prove myself to Mike, but I seemed to come up a little short. Like the time I borrowed his four-door Jaguar and brought back a three-door. He was not at all amused with my new career choice; in fact, he was speechless. Mike used to pay me a hundred bucks every time I sacked the quarterback in college, which wasn't much of a bonus, given my limitedGoldberg, Steve is the author of 'I'm Next: The Strange Journey of America's Most Unlikely Superhero' with ISBN 9780609607800 and ISBN 0609607804.