Wrestling legend Tully Blanchard credits 'the power of prayer' for changing his life
Tullyy Blanchard speaks at the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in Downey on Thursday. (Photo by Alex Dominguez)
DOWNEY — After falling from the jet flying, limousine riding, wheeling and dealing lifestyle of pro wrestling, Wrestling Hall of Famer Tully Blanchard says it was prayer that helped him turn his life around.
Blanchard was the keynote speaker at the 35th annual Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast, held at the Rio Hondo Event Center last Thursday morning. He is a former singles and tag-team wrestling champion, who worked across the National Wrestling Alliance, World Wrestling Entertainment, and most recently All Elite Wrestling. Known as one of the original members of the Four Horsemen stable alongside Ric Flair, and Arn and Ole Anderson, he was inducted into the NWA Hall of Fame in 2009, and the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011.
At Thursday’s event, Blanchard spoke on turning points in life and the power of prayer.
He recalled the day that his younger brother was killed in a car crash.
“My brother had lost control of his car going to baseball practice…16 years old, he was gone,” said Blanchard. “That changed everything in my family. It wasn’t much after that, both of my parents came to know Jesus.
“I was 26, I’d graduated college, started my wrestling career, and my dad would call me and start preaching to me, and I’d go, ‘Look, if this is all you want to talk about, don’t call me anymore. That’s not my world, that’s not how I’m handling this thing.’”
Blanchard said he didn’t know that his mom and dad “were praying diligently that there was a Christian man in their other son.”
“I kept going, playing the life of a star. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, and Barry Windham and I used to get on TV and talk about jet flying, limousine riding,” said Blanchard. “We did. Private airplanes. I mean we did everything that you would think anybody was a star did. Drugs, sex, and rock and roll.
‘We wrestled every day someplace, 330 days a year, and get up on Saturday morning and fly to Atlanta and tape that 6:05 TV show at 10 in the morning when you didn’t want to do anything but sleep. But that’s how we made a living, and these prayers were rolling off in San Antonio Texas.”
Blanchard wouldn’t find his religion until a failed drug test cost him not only his position with the WWE, but a job offer with World Championship Wrestling.
“In my own genius, I had managed to get fired from the only two places I could work in the country in eleven days,” said Blanchard. “I had absolute panic. I don’t know if anything has ever hit you like that; I could not move.
“I laid in my bed, and I just wanted to go to sleep, just turn it off, and it wouldn’t go off. I laid in my bed for three hours, and at 4:03 in the morning I said five words that changed my life: Jesus take over my life…There was a calmness that came over me that I had never felt before.”
Blanchard said “That is what the power of prayer will do.”
“But you have to believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek him,” said Blanchard.
During the event, Mayor Claudia Frometa also spoke, thanking those in attendance for “praying for our city.”
She said that she “covets your prayers.”
“Downey has been a shining light in the southeast Los Angeles County region, and over the course of the last couple of years it has been on shaky ground. I think you’ve noticed; you’ve realized that,” said Frometa. “But at the same time, I think the Lord has a special plan for the city, and as believers we need to continue to believe that the Lord has a plan for the city of Downey, California; the 10th largest city in LA County.”