thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

Next year, Blount County resident Jimmy Golden will turn 60, and chances are he'll still be climbing into the ring, ready to take -- and give -- a pounding.

The glory days of his wrestling career may have faded ... his time in the World Championship Wrestling league short-lived but memorable ... his physical peak more than 30 years peak. But Golden isn't a mirror image of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, the worn-out scrapper in last year's Oscar-nominated film "The Wrestler."

In the movie, "The Ram" was used up, worn out and desperate to recapture the glory of the past. Golden, on the other hand, is content with the memories of that glory, and the opportunities that keeping fit and living well afford him today.

"I did an interview with some guys in Oregon one time, and I think they were used to hearing most guys bitch and whine about things that happened to them, about how they didn't get this or that," Golden told The Daily Times this week, speaking from his home gym at his Louisville residence. "I ain't got nothing bad to say about the wrestling business. It ain't been a bed of roses, and it's had its ups and downs, but if I had it all to do over again, I would. I've been around the world at least twice and seen all kinds of places -- that's an education that a lot of people don't get to do. Heck, I got paid to do it."

Born in the small town of Bucksnort, 60 miles west of Nashville down Interstate 40, Golden grew up in the wrestling business. He can trace his wrestling pedigree back to his grandfather, Roy Welch. Welch and his partner, Nick Gulas, promoted the sport in West Tennessee, and Golden's father, Billy Golden, was a regular contender on the Southeastern wrestling circuit.

From the beginning, Golden said, watching the sport in the nearby town of Dyersburg and being around it throughout his childhood gave him the opportunity to take it up as he got older.

"I came up all my life watching it, and I had a little bit of size and people backing me up and showing me what to do, so it came to me easy," he said.

Starting in 1968, Golden began his own career, wrestling under a variety of ring monikers such as Roy Lee Welch and teaming with his cousins -- Robert and Ron Fuller -- as regulars in a number of independent leagues, most notably Southeastern Championship Wrestling and Continental Championship Wrestling. By the 1970s, he had married Patricia Ward, a native of Blount County, and in 1989, the couple moved to East Tennessee, which has been his home base ever since.

Bunkhouse Bunk

In the WCW he wrestled as Bunkhouse Buck, feuding with Dustin Rhodes -- known as Goldust -- and teaming with "Dirty" Dick Slater to win the WCW World Tag Team title. The five years he spent in the WCW, he said -- from 1994 to 1999 -- were memorable.

It was physical, depending on who you had a match with," he said. "Hulk Hogan, Big Daddy Diesel -- it was a house full of very tough guys. I had some knock-down, drag-out matches with the Nasty Boys. But that took a while to get all of it rolling, and I never wanted to move to New York. I'm an old Southern boy; I wouldn't know what to do up there. I'd freeze to death."

Since leaving the WCW in 1999, Golden has wrestled on the independent circuit, and Saturday night, he'll be at Alnwick Gym for a match organized by the local league Severe Attitude Wrestling. It's a young league, Golden said, but these days such leagues are a mainstay of the sport.

"You've got all kinds of small outfits that have popped up around the country, and there are several organizations around Knoxville and Maryville that have matches," he said. "It's changed a lot since the day I started. Cable TV changed it a lot, and Vince McMahon is the main man in New York, of course. When cable came along, he kind of put everybody else out of business, so to speak.

'It'll never end'

"But the wrestling game carries on, and it'll never end. It may not be what it was when I started, but it's a popular sport. This group over at Alnwick seems to be a good group with a bunch of young guys that's willing to learn. We're gonna take us a couple of those boys to school on Saturday night, see if we can't teach them a thing or two. I'm getting ready to open up a can of whoop- ... stuff, so to speak."

Such bravado is part of the game, as any true wrestling fan knows. Over the course of his career, he's been the good guy and the bad guy; he's basked in the roar of approval and the cheers of supporters, and he's antagonized those who boo him, using that visceral anger to beat and batter his opponents. A successful wrestler has to have some showmanship in the ring, he said -- and the ability to withstand and deliver some physical punishment as well.

"Wrestling is a contact sport, just like football, and sometimes you get your brains knocked out, buddy," he said. "I've been knocked out and knocked goofy; it's a wonder I can think at all. I've been lucky, and I stay with the weights, because the more I stay beefed up, the more pounding I can take. Working out, calisthenics, bicycling, running -- the man in better shape is gonna win, especially if he knows a little something.

"Some people may say it's all fake, but when you get slammed to that mat, it's gonna start to tell on you, especially after you've been doing it for a while. It's a rough sport, but it's something I've always enjoyed, and I just thank God that I've been physically able, had a little size and had a chance to do it."