Pro wrestler moves from the ring to the track

You might have seen him a few years back. Big, beefy guy with the bleach-blond crew cut and goatee. He often wore camouflage pants or shorts, combat boots and a T-shirt that read "I hate this town" or maybe one that stated, "I love the dark side" or even, "Your wife is coming home with me."

If you saw him, you didn't like him. No one liked Mike Mayhem.

It's different now.

The fake name - Mike Mayhem - is gone.

Instead, he's back to being Mike Houston, now a front-tire carrier on Jeff Gordon's pit crew. Though NASCAR's a sport that looks to former athletes to fill pit-crew positions, Houston probably is the only person on NASCAR's pit road to have been a professional wrestler.

Houston isn't the bad guy he portrayed when he competed along the East Coast in the National Wrestling Alliance. He was so convincing in the ring that more than once, fans met him in the parking lot wanting to scuffle. A woman followed him on the circuit and tried to persuade him to change his evil ways and be a good guy so he'd quit beating up her favorite wrestlers.

"I guess she didn't get the point," Houston said laughing. "It's a show."

Houston enjoyed a six-year career in pro wrestling before he quit in 2003 to focus on his pit-crew work. He got onto the wrestling circuit more by accident than design.

Houston, a defensive tackle on Western Carolina's football team from 1994-96, returned to the Charlotte area after college. He worked as a bouncer before a tryout with MB2 Motorsports in 1997 led to a job as a tire carrier. That year he met a trainer who used to wrestle. They became friends, and the trainer made a deal: Teach him how to jack a race car and he would teach Houston how to wrestle.

Lesson No. 1 was how to fall.

"I started laughing," said Houston, who stands 6-foot-2, weights 305 pounds and sports a shaved head. "What's there to learn about falling? I just stood right in the middle of the ring and dropped straight back. (It) knocked the breath out of me, and I barreled over just hurting. There is a proper way to land."

As there is a proper way to crash through a table. No, Houston said, the tables weren't cut to make it easier to crash through. The trick was to land in the middle of the table - at its weakest point and away from the legs. Then you could fall right through. Miss the center by a few inches and you might not crash through and could hurt yourself.

Same with getting hit in the head by a chair. Yes, that also was real, Houston said. The pain and wooziness, he noted, is like hitting your head on the top of car as you slide into the seat.

A lot of the action in the ring also was real even if the result was choreographed.

"I played football and I never got hurt worse than the first year of wrestling," said Houston, who frequently competed in matches at local armories, high schools or other small venues.

He said veterans performed sort of a public hazing in the ring early in his career.

"When they're in the ring, they demand your respect, and they'll let you know," Houston said. "If you pepper them pretty hard in the face or in the back, they'll give it right back to you. Or a lot of guys will test you.

"I was in the ring with The Barbarian the first time, and he just drilled me right between the eyes. I'm black and blue, couldn't see where I was for a few minutes. I gave it right back to him. From then on, we had a great match."

As Houston wrestled, he continued to serve on NASCAR pit crews. He would wrestle a couple times a month and always around the race schedule.

He made anywhere from $25 a match to $1,500, depending on the venue, promoter and ticket sales. More often, it was the lower end. Then there was that time he and his opponent carried their match beyond the ring, crashing through the locker room door to the crowd's excitement. The cost to fix the door, though, came out of the wrestlers' paychecks.

Despite the rough action, Houston missed only one race because of a wrestling injury. Eventually, he saw a brighter - certainly safer - career path in NASCAR. Through the years, the 33-year-old known now as "Tiny" has worked on the pit crews for Sterling Marlin, Jamie McMurray and Travis Kvapil, among others, before joining Gordon's team four years ago. He has been paired with front-tire changer Clay Robinson the past 10 years with various teams.

In May, the duo finished seventh out of 24 teams in the individual competition for front-tire changers and carriers at the pit-stop competition. They, along with the rest of crew, played a key role in helping Gordon win at Texas earlier this season.

As Houston focuses on this season and racing, he looks back on his wrestling career and laughs about it all.

Does he miss wrestling?

"No, not at all," he said.