“My name is Finlay… and I love to fight”.

The voice of Dave ‘Fit’ Finlay rang out over the PA system, followed by his intimidating Celtic-themed entrance music. The several thousand people in the arena all heard it, but I was the only one who couldn’t see the barrel-chested, gap-toothed, fighting Irishman approaching the ring in person.

Finlay climbed through the ropes and stomped across the mat, each footstep reverberating underneath the ring, where I sat alone, a little person dressed as a leprechaun, in the darkness that I’ve been afraid of as far back as I can remember.

That night was to be my debut with WWE, the world leader in sports entertainment and a company I’d dreamed about being part of since before I learned to walk. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. As Finlay’s opponent, Paul Burchill, made his way to the ring, I tried to distract myself from the nerves by reflecting on everything in my life that had led me to this one moment. I thought of the multiple surgeries I had to endure before becoming a teenager. I thought of playing RBI Baseball on my old NES while trapped in a full body cast at the hospital. I thought of the yellow rubber ducky sitting on the bathtub, surveying the wreckage of our house around it. I thought of my brother and my mom, both of who left my life so early for different reasons. I thought of the unwavering support of my grandpa, who believed in me when no one else did. Most of all, I thought of my dad and how I wanted to show him that the son he raised was going to amount to something.

As I heard the sounds of the match going on above me, the butterflies in my stomach turned into elephants. My heart was pounding in my chest. What if I messed up? What if it went the same way as when we’d first rehearsed the spot earlier in the day, when the first impression I’d made on the most powerful man in the wrestling industry wasn’t good at all? Everything I’d worked for in my life to this point all came down to what I did in the sixty seconds after that green light came on. If I blew it, my run in the big leagues would be as short as me.

I kept myself calm and focused on the task at hand. It was simple. I just had to crawl out from under the ring, give WWE owner Vince McMahon the ‘Tazmanian Devil’ he wanted, and everything would be fine. Then there would hopefully be a second week, and further weeks beyond that. Who knew how long it would last? Sitting in the dark under that ring in Bakersfield, I had no idea that it was the first of what would end up being more than 500 weeks with the company. I couldn’t know I’d visit volcanoes in Ecuador and get chased by roosters in Guadalajara. I couldn’t know I’d appear in feature films and get to meet my childhood heroes. And I certainly couldn’t know that I’d surprise everyone with exciting matches at big WWE events or climb a ladder in the middle of the ring at Ford Field, looking around at 80,000 screaming fans and thinking, “How did a midget from Oshkosh, Wisconsin make it to WrestleMania at all?”

I heard the referee’s hand strike the mat three times. The bell rang and Finlay’s music started up again. This was it.

The green light came on. The ring apron was lifted up.

I took a deep breath, then scurried out from the darkness and into the spotlight.