Give him the chance and he'll still pin you down. But not in the ring, not even outside the ring. But in your mind and heart about your beliefs and your relationship with Jesus.
Speak out of turn and he'll quickly convince you that he's not playing and that this is serious business.
The business is more serious than the millions he made as a professional wrestler in the '80s. And he doesn't get paid the same way he did back then.
The place where Tully Blanchard used to feel most at home professionally has turned from a ring of fire into a ring of truth.
The sound of the bell is no longer the beginning of a world tag team wrestling match. It's now a sound that he remembers well, a sound that led him down a road he no longer walks.
Blanchard rose to the pinnacle of wrestling, winning world tag team titles in both the National Wrestling Alliance in 1987 and 1988 and the World Wrestling Federation in 1989. He and his partner were the first tag team to accomplish winning championships in both. He also gained fame as a member of the original Four Horsemen with Ric Flair, Arn Anderson and Ole Anderson.
Touring the country with Baby Doll, Blanchard became the longest reigning NWA world television champion in 1985, 1986 and 1987 and won and defended the NWA U.S. Heavyweight Championship in 1985.
To wrestling fans worldwide, Blanchard's name was synonymous with treachery, success, fame and even violence.
"There were unbelievable amounts of money being given away," he says. When he was asked to reunite with the other three of the original Four Horsemen, Blanchard signed a contract that would net him $750,000 per year for three years. But when he showed up at the Philadelphia Spectrum for a match in 1989 he failed a drug test.
He had quit wrestling for his former manager to reunite with the Four Horsemen. He eventually lost the chance to wrestle with the Horsemen again and found himself in a "predicament."
"I had lost two jobs in 11 days," says the man who had earned close to $1 million the previous year.
Laying in bed early one morning, Blanchard tried to figure out a way to get back into wrestling, and tried to figure out a way out of the predicament he was in.
"I was trying to figure out how to hit the ground running. How to stay a big star and make a lot of money and stay in wrestling," he said.
Then he uttered the words, "Jesus, take over my life."
"I had never used the word 'Jesus' before except for when I was cussing," he says. "This time it was different."
"The biggest miracle was that there wasn't any deep-rooted spirituality behind my conversion to Christianity," he says. "I was never made to go to church or sit in any youth groups. God just answered the prayer of my parents," he says, smiling.
"Since they became Christians they had not been able to reach me. I was unreachable."
In a different corner of the ring now, Blanchard knows the value and meaning of true success.
"When you have a new heart, old things truly are passed away," he told a group of youth at Lake Alfred Methodist Church Wednesday. "Knowing about Him and knowing Him are two different things. You can sit in a church and not know Jesus."
He doesn't earn $200,000 per year anymore. He speaks wherever he is asked to speak. He drove in a car for ten hours from North Carolina to speak in Polk County this week.
"God closes the door to give us something else to do," he says with confidence.
Coming out of his wrestling career, Blanchard founded "Ring of Truth Ministries," a prison ministry.
"We call it 'the belly of the whale,'" he explains. "No one wants to go there, they're looked down on, they're unforgiven. Ted Koppel hit the nail on the head when he said, 'prisoners get out!'"
Blanchard's concern is that prisoners are given a chance to change their heart before the doors of prison are closed behind them and the doors to society are opened before them.
"Prisons aren't rehabilitation houses," he says. "They're warehouses. The only way a man can change is if his heart is changed."
Blanchard has a tranquility and a different light and compassion in his eyes than he used to, says the Rev. Rocky Branch of First Baptist Church of Lake Alfred. It's not the shimmer from fame and glory and power in the wrestling ring, but the fame and glory that comes with knowing the Lord and the power of Christ.
Branch first heard Blanchard speak in 1991.
"Tully started doing D.A.R.E. programs. He had come to the end of his rope and turned to the Lord and tried to give back to the community through D.A.R.E. When I got word of what he was doing, I asked if he's come to the church."
Branch said Blanchard is not the same man he once was which helps give power to a message that comes from an otherwise powerful man.
"Tully has changed so much it's incredible," he said. "If anyone had known him they would hardly be able to believe their eyes."
"He's an impressive person. He makes you think," Branch says. "He makes you evaluate your own situation. He was a really good wrestler. He'll wrestle on occasion now, but now he's fighting in the square circle for the Lord."
Blanchard will give his testimony again at 7 p.m. today in the gymnasium of Auburndale High School and tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. at Lake Alfred Baptist Church, at 9:45 at the First United Methodist Church of Lake Alfred, at 11 a.m. at Cypress Cathedral on Havendale Blvd. in Winter Haven and at 6 p.m. at First Assembly of God in Lake Alfred on Haines Blvd.
