not hard enough

The premise of the new show immediately caught my attention and I knew I had to give it a try. This was something I had been fantasizing about all my life. The company wanted you to audition for three minutes explaining and showing why you should be a professional wrestler. Then he had to send it in with a forty-page application, a photo of himself, and a stack of signed waivers.

I put together a decent video that captured a variety of my skills. I did somersaults, splits and various gymnastics. I demonstrated some Kung-Fu weapons and broke a stack of five boards with the palm of my hand. I went through a posing routine to show off my physique and then addressed the camera with the deepest sincerity. They loved my tape and quickly called me back, but… I almost hung up on them.

My wife (at the time), Paula, and I were having dinner when the phone rang. Paula answered, but then she handed me the phone. “I think he’s a telemarketer…you should hang him up.” she said.

Normally, that’s exactly what I would have done, but as my wife suggested… I decided to take the call instead, and spite served me well this time.

“Hello?”

“Hello, are you Nathan Daniels?” the voice asked me.

“Yes.” I responded, getting angry and preparing to explain why I didn’t need whatever the voice was selling.

“Hello Nathan, this is Christina from the World Wrestling Federation. How are you tonight?”

I almost pretended.

The World Wrestling Federation was calling me to say that they loved my audition tape and that they would send me an official invitation package to go to New York City as a semifinalist! More than 4,000 people sent in ribbons and fewer than 400 received invitations. I was one of them, and my dream seemed to be hanging in my grasp.

When the time came, I hopped on a bus and made the four-hour drive from Rhode Island to the Big Apple. I checked into my hotel room and braced myself for a long sleepless night of intense anticipation. In the morning I looked in the mirror and said to myself… “This is it!”

After waiting outside for two hours on a frigid New York morning, the other semi-finalists and I entered the building designated for the audition process. I was number forty-two and had to wait in a waiting area at the entertainment complex. I waited nervously with a hundred other applicants for six hours before it was my turn to continue. Someone from the production staff finally called my number and took me to a holding area closer to the ring. I was able to see and hear the crowd of over five hundred people enjoying the auditions.

I bounced up and down shaking my limbs and head feverishly. I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was about to walk into a WWF ring, speak into a WWF microphone, and put my fate in the hands of live WWF Superstars. It was all too much to bear.

Colored light bulbs flickered, video cameras on the cranes floated in the air, and busy crew members babbled insistently into their headsets. I began to wonder if I could really move on. I did, but my confidence was slipping fast and it wasn’t exactly pleasant.

“Are you awake.” Said the random staff member with the headset and clipboard. He gestured towards the ring.

I had planned to make a good impression, so I jumped over the ropes instead of climbing them like everyone else did. It was harder than it looks on TV. The ropes gave way more than I thought, and for a split second, I thought I was going to trip and fall flat on my face. It really scared me, but I made it.

My heart was pounding as I took the microphone and introduced myself. I guess my entrance looked better than it felt, a fighter known as Tazz asked me where I spent my training. I assured him that he had no previous experience, but that he was hoping for a chance to win something. Then it got weird, and Tazz started getting mad and calling me a liar. He said that he clearly knew exactly how to grab the ropes and jump into the ring, and obviously he had done it many times before.

I didn’t know what to say and I could feel my heartbeat speed up even more as I started to feel very self-conscious.

I told him about visiting a wrestling school when I was a teenager, but insisted that I had no formal training. He called me a liar again, said he was done with me, threw his pen on the table and looked away…disgusted. That killed any hope I had left of making my dream come true, but they kept questioning me anyway.

I had provided extensive information about my entire life in the monstrous forty-page application I had filled out. For whatever reason, another fighter on the judging panel chose my mother’s death as the starting point for my conversation with him. The personal and awkward nature of his question took me by surprise and I stammered out an unintelligible response. He was becoming painfully clear to me that he lacked the charisma and confidence to live my life in front of cameras like this.

When the verbal part of my audition was over, I was excited and just wanted to go home, but it was time to do something physical. I had to take my shirt off and move around the ring so they could see me.

I jumped rope and went through a series of exercises, which I executed quite accurately. Unfortunately I forgot to breathe most of the time and by the time I was done I was out of breath.

Tazz couldn’t resist one more chance to make me feel terrible and proceeded to yell at me for my poor cardiovascular condition. To this day, I have no idea what his problem was. I guess something about me bothered him. I did my best to answer him, but I don’t remember what came out of my mouth, and then it was all over.

Once I was free to go, I returned to my hotel room for another night of sleepless waiting. They would post the results on the door outside the audition complex the next morning. He knew there was no way he was going to be on that list of twenty-five, and he was right.

I returned to Rhode Island the next day in a very different frame of mind than when I arrived. I had as memories a shirt, a story to tell and an unforgettable experience.

Today, I don’t regret my audition for Tough Enough at all. I’m happy for the fact that I was good enough to be looked at, and I’m proud of the fact that I carried my quest to the end even when there was no more hope of winning. I even remained a huge fan of Tazz.

I know there is no way I can handle the lifestyle of a professional wrestler, with all the psychological issues that plague me today. Agoraphobia and severe social anxiety disorders are not the best ingredients for being an artist.

I won’t live that dream, and that’s okay. I tried, and in the end that’s all that matters to me. The memory will last a lifetime, and I will always have a story to tell.