Rick Dorsey is a sports columnist for The Augusta Chronicle.

Squared circle no place for Karl Malone

Web posted July 8, 1998

By Rick Dorsey
Columnist

Credibility may be the toughest individual trait to establish fully, and it's probably the easiest one to squander.

A lifetime of free throws and fadeaways, a resume of MVPs and 25,000 points erased with one swipe of a steel chair across the back of some unsuspecting NWO member, one body slam of Hulk Hogan, one pay-per-view tag-team wrestling match with you as protagonist.

Karl Malone, you're a mortified cinch for Springfield and the Basketball Hall of Fame, and you may have redefined the position of power forward with your bulging biceps and ability to finish a pick-and-roll.

But come on.

Who are you kidding? Professional wrestling?

The male soap opera, the testosterone tales in tights, has lured another foil, and this one seems to be blinded by the reflection from his Rogaine-covered bald spot.

Whoever your agent is Karl, fire him. If this is the kind of promotional work that he deems appropriate, another method to cull some extra cash this summer, dismiss him like you would Greg Ostertag.

I'm all for marketing your talents. But as a clown?

Nobody wants to go through life being known as The Mailman Who Couldn't Deliver A Title While Michael Jordan Was Around. I know that's a cruel and unusually punishing cross to bear, but you're not alone.

You don't see Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, John Stockton or Reggie Miller running to rings across America, challenging heavier and grumpier men in hand-to-hand combat.

So why would you further damage your reputation with these absurd cameos in the scripted, made-for-TV ``sporting'' events? You have a great career, a good family and a correctable stutter of a free-throw motion.

Or is that, ``I've gotta beat Hogan! I've gotta beat Hogan,'' you mutter at the free-throw line.

The current NBA lockout does not include your common sense, which you apparently left on the Delta Center's floor after Jordan's Game 6 jumper.

Karl, don't you see? By squaring off against Dennis Rodman this Sunday in something called ``Bash at the Beach,'' you are sinking to his level and now can be lumped into his exclusive jester category.

Nothing positive can come from you wrestling Rodman or Hogan. Nothing.

Win and it's predetermined. Lose and it's predetermined. Get injured somehow, by either breaking a finger or by separating a shoulder or by fusing your vertebrae, and it's instead preternatural.

This is not trying out at tight end for the Dallas Cowboys, another ridiculous venture you've talked about pursuing. It's not even entering the Mr. Universe competition, your first foolish game.

Pro wrestling is the traveling circus, a choreographed miniseries packaged with volatile interviews, cartoonish characters and indoor pyrotechnics. By joining it, Karl, you're not legitimizing this as sport but instead degrading yourself as joke.

Reggie White, Kevin Greene and William Perry have all tried their wrestling schticks, and look at the turmoil now following them.

And who's next?

Mark McGwire in the World's Strongest Man competition, taking on Magnus ver Magnusson in the firetruck pull with your teeth?

Or Anna Kournikova competing in the Miss Fitness America pageant?

Or Craig Stadler in the Coney Island hot dog eating contest?

There may have been 40,000 people at the Georgia Dome on Monday, and you may have suckered a diamond cutter on Curt Hennig, but Karl, wake up.

Save the machismo for the playoffs. And leave the wrestling for the pros. The actors, that is.