Tully Blanchard was born into a professional wrestling family. The son of wrestling promoter and star Joe Blanchard, Tully got involved in the family business early. He began by selling programs and refreshments. Later, he did some refereeing. The business led him to fame, fortune and the rock bottoms of excessive living before finding Christ and leaving his former life behind to minister to the incarcerated throughout worldwide.
In college, Tully was a star football player at West Texas State University, where he was the teammate of two other future professional wrestlers, Tito Santana and Ted DiBaise. After graduating, when his dreams of professional football didn’t pan out, he trained as and entered into a career as a professional wrestler.
A couple of years into his career, Blanchard’s 16-year-old brother died on the way to baseball practice as the result of an auto accident. Both of his parents found Christ as a result of the event.
“After the rolling around and the pity and the sorrow and the grief and blaming themselves for letting him drive to baseball practice,” Blanchard said.
Jesus came into their lives and gave them peace and saved them.
Missing the Wake-up Call
Though he’d been successful in his career, Blanchard didn’t get the same wake-up call. He was multiple payments behind on his mortgage, strung out on drugs and alcohol, and considering suicide. He didn’t turn to God. Instead, he turned to himself. He quit wrestling, gave up his vices and got himself into shape.
Still troubled with debt, Blanchard returned to professional wrestling, joining the National Wrestling Alliance and earning success by winning championships and feuding with the likes of Dusty Rhodes and Magnum T.A. In early 1986, he joined with Ric Flair, Arn Anderson and Ole Anderson to form one of the most well-known stables in professional wrestling history, the Four Horsemen.
Tully Blanchard gave up Wrestling for Greater Desires in serving prison ministries. Photo credit: Mike Kalasnik Creative Commons
The Four Horsemen
The four members of the stable carried a persona of excessive drinking and embellished a partying lifestyle they referred to as “styling and profiling.” For Blanchard, it was less an act and more of an extension of his personal life.
“It was exactly like what we talked about during the television interviews,” Blanchard said. “I got drunk a lot, I got high a lot, and I had lots of women.”
Blanchard and Anderson left the NWA in 1998 for the World Wrestling Federation and found success. When the NWA was bought by Ted Turner and re-christened as World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Blanchard’s old fried, Flair wanted Blanchard and Anderson to return so they could re-form the Four Horsemen. Blanchard signed a $250,000 annual contract and the stage was set for their return. Before it could happen, Blanchard tested positive for cocaine in the WWF and the WCW contract was voided.
Tully Blanchard Gets the Wake-Up Call
The WCW wasn’t going to hire Blanchard and the WWF had suspended him. Blanchard was joblessness and facing the prospects of hitting rock bottom again. Unable to sleep, Blanchard was desperate. “The words `Jesus Christ take over my life’ came out. You might think that was understandable and great. But this was a man who hadn’t been to church since he was 5 years old. He didn’t have the knowledge to ask Jesus Christ to take over his life. God, and the power of the Holy Spirit, came down and put the words in my mouth and in my brain, and put me to sleep right after I said that.”
Though he has wrestled off and on since then, Blanchard left wrestling, dedicating the bulk his time and efforts toward prison ministry, where he has helped countless others turn their lives around. He is the founder of Tully Blanchard Ministries, a Christian ministry for inmates and has served on the board of advisers for the International Network of Prison Ministries. He also serves on the staff and as a platform speaker at Behind the Walls a prison ministry of Bill Glass dedicated to sharing Christ in towns, cities, churches, prisons, jails and youth facilities across the United States and foreign countries.
As Blanchard says, “[w]e don’t get to choose our place of service. It’s not glamorous and it’s not fun but Jesus told us to go into all the world and preach the gospel.”
Resources Possibly Used for This Post (or you may otherwise enjoy)…