By Bruce Mitchell, PWTorch columnist

[Editor's Note: Jonny Fairplay is my guest on today's www.PWTorchLivecast.com. As a primer for listening to my interview with him, we present Bruce Mitchell's feature column in PWTorch Newsletter #788 from December 2003 covering his experiences with Jonny years before he landed a spot on Survivor and TNA Wrestling.]

"I moved down to Los Angeles to continue finishing the book until January 31, 2002, when being a passenger in a car with a wrestling fan, this fan tried to kill me by slamming my side of the car into a steel guard rail, two SUV's, and uprooted a lamp post. Dazed and confused, I came home where I collapsed and I can only tell you what I heard from the man who saved my life, Lewis Rach, that I had passed out, began spitting blood out of my mouth, and when the paramedics arrived, my blood pressure was 80/40 and I was close to clinically dead. I spent 13 days in intensive care at Cedars-Sanai Hospital, recovering from a shattered ankle, ruptured spleen, broken back in two places, and four broken ribs, one of which went into my liver four inches and caused severe internal bleeding."

-Roddy Piper accuses his former assistant and future Survivor star Jon "Fairplay" Dalton of attempted murder in a press release, 9/02/02.

Over the years of doing this job I've met my share of lulus, fanboys, wannabes, and nutjobs.

There's Danny Donny, who called me recently to ask if I'd heard about "the riot on Raw."

BCM: "There was no riot on Raw."

DD: "It was on the internet. The fans rioted and walked out because they admitted on WWE.com that it's all fake."

BCM: "They admitted that a long time ago."

DD: "It was on the internet."

Danny Donny got his name back in the '80s when Jim Crockett Promotions used to come to Greensboro every month. He'd come down to visit the "Front Row Section D" regulars during intermission and barge into whatever conversation was going on at the time.

"Front Row Section D" Head John Hitchcock: "Hey, look everybody, it's Donny." DD: "My name is Daniel."

There was Gary, who called my old radio show every single week to go over the minutiae of every single local independent show anywhere in the area that week. ("Whatever happened to the Lumbee Warrior?") I see Gary playing bass and singing off key on a local cable access church show every so often. There was Pete the Pirate and his very large girlfriend, regulars at the Box Seat Sports Bar pay­per­view shows. Long before Johnny Depp, Pete was really, really into pirates, so much so he wore a jaunty leather hat with a feather plume to match his pouffy three-sizes-too-small Seinfeld pirate shirt. The greatest moment in my own personal At The Bar history came when PTP's very large girlfriend tried to sit down in her chair, missed, and you could hear the "Boom" down the street.

There was the Wrestling Expert, who explained how Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair were brothers and that Magnum T.A. was the Dream's son. He also went to high school in Thomasville N.C. with the Undertaker, who he of course claimed was a nice guy.

Then there was Paul For You All, who once stunned an entire room of coed wrestling fans watching a WWE pay­per­view into silence by noting, "Hey, did you see Chyna's pictorial in Playboy? She sure has a nice cunny."

This doesn't even count the screwballs over the years who've called looking for advice on starting a wrestling career. (You know they aren't qualified if they're calling me for a recommendation.) The conversations usually go something like this, after they've kissed my ass for a while about how great my writing is:

SB: I've sent my resume to WWE and NWA"TNA, but I haven't heard anything.

BCM: What is it you think you could do?

SB: I could be a booker. I know a lot about the business.

BCM: No, you don't.

As you can imagine, I never get these calls from NCAA wrestling champions or Olympic Gold medalists. I get the annoying guy calling from Massachusetts who does a Vince Russo imitation. It's a very good imitation, mind you, except he does Vince Russo, so who cares?

So, six or seven years ago, when a little blonde loudmouth showed up for a UFC show at my apartment and started talking over everybody about everything he thought he knew about wrestling and how many rare wrestling "action figures" he owned, well, it was just another day at the pay­per­view. Jon would deny this, but apparently he was a big fan of Ultimate Warrior back in the day and was pretty shocked to hear the lack of respect the worst main eventer of the last twenty years engendered among the longtime fans he found himself with.

Oh, and he loved ECW, Raven in particular, which figured, since "What about Jonny" was a theme of any conversation he had back then (or now). Jon worked at Just One More, a local restaurant, as a waiter, but he let you know he had more and better stuff than you did, particularly his brand new big screen TV and state of the art satellite service (and his car, and his stereo, and his wrestling dolls, and, oh, have you seen my rare Original Series Brutus Beefcake?) He let us know immediately he wanted to be called Jonny Fairplay, even though he wasn't in wrestling or show business. This immediately earned him the nickname behind his back of "Crazy Jonny," putting him in second place behind the guy who once told me, in all seriousness, "My name is Craig, but you can call me Star Child." "Yeah, great, I need a beer."

Through hanging out with Jonny I got to know Liz, his then roommate/girlfriend. Liz was a beautiful girl, funny, educated and well-spoken. Jon talked so much trash about "I know how to keep my bitches in line" that I finally became appalled enough to ask her (in front of him, mind you) why she was with the scrawny little loudmouth. "He's not so bad when you get to know him." Fairplay's answer had to do with his anatomy, and if everything is in proportion, it ain't possible.

And no, I never met Dead Grandma. I did meet his mother and stepdad at Jonny's Wrestling Doll table at the Super Flea Market. Mom seemed nice enough but Stepdad might have been a little exasperated...

After listening to John Hitchcock, a self­absorbed loudmouth in his own right, brag about his adventures in the local New Dimension Wrestling promotion (previously chronicled in this space years ago) during pay­per­views Fairplay pulled his first weaselly move, buttering up Hitchcock and his in ring buddy, former WCW announcer Chris Cruise, trying to worm his way into the show.

See, Fairplay would be more than willing to help these two indy wrestling hambones over at their next show by heckling them unmercifully, climbing into the ring, and getting whacked on the head with a steel chair by one of the two untrained idiots. That'll get you heel heat, right?

So, the day comes for Jonny Fairplay's big wrestling debut at the War Memorial, One­A Baseball's Oldest and Most Dilapidated Stadium. By sheer coincidence we did a radio show before the ballgame, so host Andy Durham was there, as were my college roommate and his wife. The four­match mini wrestling show was after the game, a vain attempt to get the crowd to stick around and drink some more beer. The wrestling ring was even set out in left field right next to the grandstand, the outdoor bar.

Fairplay had brought in several friends of his from Danville, Virginia, where he's originally from, as well as a bunch of anti-Cruise signs. Fairplay was canny even then, kissing up to the one who had actually been on TV, instead of the other wannabe. Fairplay and his friends whiled away the innings with several trips to the Grandstand, so he was good and relaxed in anticipation of his star turn.

The big moment arrives. Fairplay yells and shakes his "Cruise World Order Sucks" sign. (Original, huh?) Cruise challenges Jonny to come down to ringside. He jumps the rail, to the delight of the crowd, and the fun begins...

"What's he doing, Bruce?" "I don't know, he's just supposed to go up and get hit by the chair." "Why does he keep walking around like that?" "I think he's drunk."

After several interminable moments pass, with Cruise and Hitchcock getting more and more frustrated and my civilian friends giving me the look, Fairplay finally wanders into range and gets smashed, this time with the chair. The moment was immortalized in the late, semi­lamented World of Wrestling Magazine, in a picture showing Hitchcock bearing down with his chair on Fairplay. Before Survivor on CBS, it was Fairplay's only national exposure. A magnet has held the picture in a place of honor on my refrigerator ever since the magazine came out.

Fairplay schmoozed NDW owner Chris Plano (another nutcase) well enough to slither his way into a heel manager spot on their Armory shows, something that didn't sit too well with Cruise and Hitchcock. One of the things that has always impressed me about Jonny is that he has a steep learning curve. It wasn't long before he could tell the good workers from the bad, and more importantly he figured out quickly what pro wrestling really is. Maybe you've seen him use that knowledge on Survivor the last few weeks.

He surprised me when I saw him work as a manager. He never impressed me as the most physical person in the world, and of course he hasn't won a physical Survivor challenge yet, but the guy takes a hell of a bump and nothing scares him.

Fairplay quickly became friends with indy stalwarts of the time like Otto Schwanz (who worked briefly for a time in WWE), Cham-pane (Marty Garner, who now is the Rock's personal assistant), and Eddie "Nite Stick" Brown. He wasn't all that popular with the veterans who ran the locker room like the 400 pound Rick Link and Manny Fernandez, two guys it was good to steer clear of even on good days. I once had to sidle over to Jonny at his wrestling doll table to tip him off that rumor had it that Link and Fernandez planned to brawl his way, "accidentally" wreck his table and him beside.

Back in those days Fairplay was also the king of hanging around the bar and pestering WCW and WWF wrestlers when they came to town. He wasn't afraid to throw my name around either, to my irritation. That led to one of those weeknight, three in the morning phone calls that can be the sometimes bane of my existence. A drunken Fairplay was at the bar with the WCW crew, laughing semi­coherently about how he went around telling all wrestlers what was wrong with them, or in the case of guys like Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero, what was right with them.

In an ironic preview of the famous Survivor scene where the popular Rupert was screaming at the hated Fairplay, about to beat his ass, Chris Jericho took offense at his comments about Van Hammer and things escalated. Somehow Fairplay escaped. It wouldn't always be like that.

The next night, Fairplay, who always had some sort of internet scheme going, called me to be on his internet radio show. I guess he expected me to congratulate him on his balls for telling the wrestlers off. He and his cronies, including the now famous Thunder D of Dead Grandma fame, were a little surprised when I lectured them on the Constitution like the Teacher I am: specifically the amendment guaranteeing the right for a man to have a drink after work in peace. The next morning I got an e-mail from WCW's Bob Ryder, who is no fan, rightfully complaining to me about Fairplay. I referred him to the radio show.

Sometime later Fairplay called me about another night at the bar, complaining about how WCW announcer Mark Madden blew him off when he asked him to introduce him to Raven, then his hero Raven treated him like a mark. I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy that one a little.

For reasons that escape me, Jon eventually moved to Portland Oregon, where he lost $4,000 promoting outlaw indy wrestling shows. He even got his show on television briefly, where he did color over his own Vince Russo-like storylines. I have a tendency to lose focus when people start telling me their great booking ideas so I'm a little vague on his booking ideas. The only one I remember is Statutory Ape, which is a skinny guy walking around in a gorilla suit. Terry Taylor probably kicked himself when he heard that one.

It was right about then I heard the news that Jonny was now the latest of Roddy Piper's infamous series of blonde young male assistants. Rumors had flown for years about these guys, considering Piper's admitted decades of drug use and his strange habit of bringing up homosexuality every chance he got on TV promos. Later, when the two were no longer working together, Fairplay took great delight in referring to himself as (allegedly) "Piper's only straight male assistant" in interviews. It's an indication of how cold wrestling is in the mainstream that no one in the press bit on this tidbit about the famous Hot Rod.

It figured they would hook up. Jonny was a star­climber and old out­of­touch Roddy needed someone who talked that talk the kids talk these days. Soon I was hearing about Piper's movie deals, about how Fairplay was helping with scripts, about the billionaire behind Jimmy Hart's XWF, about how Kevin Sullivan didn't like some of Jonny's booking ideas, and about who he saw naked in the dressing room, and on and on and on...

Then something happened. I got the story in bits and pieces from a mutual friend of Jonny's on the West Coast who helped me separate what was true from what was Fairplay "enthusiasm" in some of his stories. (Interestingly enough, Jonny has always been pretty straight with me through the years. Either that, or I'm more like Scout Lady than I think.)

Jonny had been in a car wreck, a bad one.

A few days later I got a call from a Jon I'd never heard from before. He was talking slowly and was obviously down. He had good reason to be. He had just spent a couple of days in jail, was facing felony drunk driving charges with the possibility of more jail time, had totaled his girlfriend's brand new Lexxus, enraging her father, and was suffering injuries including a serious concussion.

He told me what happened. He said Piper had gotten belligerent in a bar and he had to get him out quickly and to Piper's home, which was just a few miles away. Someone cut them off, something was said, and suddenly there was a bad car wreck.

To this day I still don't understand why Piper left the scene of the accident, particularly when he was badly injured and spent a week in the hospital after walking home. Piper wouldn't pay his bail when Jonny's Mom called asking him to help get Jon out of jail, dropping him as his assistant. Piper was tired of Fairplay using his name to get into the hot bars and parties in L.A. And the car wreck was the "in" Portland indy wrestler Lewis Rach needed to get Piper to fire Jonny so he could take his place.

Slowly but surely Jonny recovered. He got a good lawyer so I got to hear the community service stories. Soon, the old manic celebrity-struck Jonny Fairplay was back:

I'm doing great. I'm still in L.A. I'm working at an art gallery in Hollywood. The Tamara Bane Gallery; the exclusive publishers of the works of Olivia and Sorayama (pin-up art). Original pieces go for $5,000 to $70,000. You'll love this, I have a deal with BET (your second favorite channel to TNN) to sell an Olivia­Josephine Baker painting for $50,000. I've also been doing some stand-up comedy featuring a Christian puppet show (not really geared for Christians, amazingly). I'm working on getting on Kathy Griffin's Wednesday nights at the Laugh Factory. It's looking good. I saw Jeff Hardy the other day before Raw in Anaheim. He hooked me with four tix. Also saw D-Von for a little while; we're both friends with Jack Osborne (crazy world). Haven't seen any indy wrestling, fortunately. I am managing Steve­O from Jackass at a FAKE fake wrestling show in Hollywood on Dec. 9. That's about it. I've tried to call you a few times but I've guess you've been whackin' it to some HLA when I called.

---Jonny Fairplay, via e-mail...

Then he told me something odd. He said he was going to get his revenge, that soon he would be a bigger star than Hall Of Famer Roddy Piper. "All I can say is ‘18 to 4'," he told me. I had no idea what that meant. I thought it had something to do with the rating for Smackdown, which Piper was featured on at the time. The only thing I could figure was maybe he talked his way into an extra's slot on the Friends couch or something. He had been bragging about being in the audience for the Jimmy Kimmel Show, so that seemed possible.

Then he disappeared for a few months.

One of the great joys in my life was telling John Hitchcock about his old chair­bashing partner and watching the steam come out of his ears. Don't worry, they're friends again now that Jonny's a TV star, since Hitch is at least as big a whore for celebrities as Jonny.

I have no idea how Jonny does on the last two episodes of Survivor. I do know his most fervent wish is to work for WWE. Given the chance, he'd surprise a lot of people. He's been surprising me ever since I met him.

(Bruce Mitchell of Greensboro, N.C. has been a Torch columnist since September 1990. He also writes Torch VIP Email Express commentaries following most editions of Raw and Smackdown. He also participates in Torch Roundtables sent to Torch VIP Email Express members following most editions of Raw and Smackdown and NWA-TNA and WWE PPVs. A collection of his past feature columns are available at the Torch VIP website (PWTorch.com/members). He recommends The Rolling Stones Four Flix on DVD for your viewing and listening pleasure.)

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