6/WRESTLING
LIFESTYLE CHANGE
“MAD
MAC”
DAVIS
BATTLED DEPRESSION AFTER A BROKEN NECK
KNOCKED HIM OUT OF THE WRESTLING RING AND
HIS FATHER WAS DIAGNOSED WITH ALZHEIMER’S
DISEASE. SETTING HIS MIND ON MAKING A
COMEBACK PROVED TO BE THE ONLY CURE.
Don’t tell “Mad Mac” Davis professional wrestling is fake. The plastic cage in his neck
fusing two vertebrae together is real. So is the joy he feels when he climbs in the ring,
especially after life hit him with a flying elbow drop 12 years ago.
Although Davis seems as if he was born for the job with his tough-guy look –
clean-shaven head, ever-evolving facial hair, dark tan and ripped muscles – and a
booming voice and bigger personality, he didn’t take up wrestling until age 38. He
was working in radio when he caught the bug during a one-off opportunity to take
part in an impromptu wrestling match, and a promoter who was in the crowd
thought he had potential. Davis knew he was too old to get the WWE’s attention,
but he made quite a name for himself in the Georgia Independent Wrestling
Alliance and became something of a local legend.
Then everything fell apart.
Wrestling in a steel cage match against longtime rival – and real-life friend
– Mike Stratus in 2005, Davis broke his neck in two places. Shortly after, his
father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and Davis put off neck surgery
to care for his dad.
Five years living with and caring for his father followed by another four
watching a once vibrant newspaper editor slowly lose his memory while living
in a nursing home took its toll on Davis. The time is a blur now, and it wasn’t
until after his dad died in September 2014 that Davis realized he was battling
depression while trying to help his father navigate his own illness.
“The first two years after he passed away, I was in a deep depression and
didn’t really know it,” Davis recalls. “I had never been the kind of guy who gets
depressed. I’ve always been a glass-half-full guy.”
But there was something in that mostly empty glass. Even as the man he knew was
slowly slipping away, Davis reconnected with his father. His dad hadn’t always been
thrilled about his wrestling career, but one day during a fleeting lucid moment, he tapped
his son on the hand and told him he needed to get back in the ring.
After his dad was gone and his depression was under control, Davis set out to do just
that.
“I wanted to get back to the last place I really remembered being truly happy,” Davis
says. “I came back to find myself again and to honor my father.”
After more than a year of training, The Steel Scorpion made his comeback in October
in another steel cage match against Stratus – not only to get payback for his broken neck
more than a decade earlier but also, as the storyline read, to reclaim his father’s dogtags
that Stratus had swiped off him in the last match.
“The training was more difficult than I expected,” Davis said. “I’m no t as young as I
once was, and no matter how much work I was doing in the gym, I wasn’t prepared for
getting back in the ring, running the ropes and hitting the mat. It’s pretty stiff.”
“Honestly about halfway through I wasn’t sure I was gonna finish that match.”
But finish, he did, and he also got roped into one last “one last” match – a cage
match for the GIWA Tag Team and Heavyweight championship belts Dec. 2 at the
Milledgeville National Guard Armory.
Davis is pretty sure this really will be his last ride, but you can never
underestimate the pull of passion, and “Mad Mac” clearly has a passion for the ring.
You can’t fake that.
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MAD “MAC” DAVIS
FACEBOOK.COM/MADMACDAVIS
HHHH
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S OUT H MAGA ZI NE.C OM
O C T OB E R / NOV E M B E R 2016
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