'Sunset flip' unfolds for dad, 2-year-old making memories

Lil One hopped on the bed the other night and said, “owies.” I’m not sure how exactly to spell the word, but I know what it means. I tued the TV to professional wrestling. Owies, she calls it.

And so another generation is hooked on the squared circle. A 2-year-old girl and her dad, sitting on the bed, watching grappling for three hours. We’re making memories. I can’t think of a better way to bond, me explaining to her the physics behind a drop toehold, seeing the bright joy on her face after she watches the beauty of a perfectly executed sunset flip.

The female wrestler Chyna died last month. Tough loss. But the bigger loss for me was that of Blackjack Mulligan, who passed away a couple of weeks before Chyna.

As I explained to Lil One the other night, Blackjack Mulligan, whose real name was Robert Windham, was the father of wrestlers Barry and Kendall Windham, and the grandfather of Bray Wyatt and Bo Dallas. (Bray Wyatt is one of my favorites among the current crop of wrestlers, and he leads a Southe Gothic horror cult.)

Blackjack Mulligan also was the father-in-law of Mike Rotunda, whom I watched as a very young child, and who later became Irwin R. Schyster, or I.R.S. in the then-World Wrestling Federation.

All this was lost on Lil One, who, in the middle of my little dissertation on the history of pro wrestling, demanded “more milkie.”

I retrieved the milkie and retued to the bed, pondering Blackjack Mulligan — the black moustached outlaw cowboy who struck fear into the hearts of his competitors — and the faithful friend that is professional wrestling.

I first watched Blackjack Mulligan in the Mid-Atlantic territory of the National Wrestling Alliance when I was a kid in North Carolina. It was in the late 1970s, which, combined with the early 1980s, will always be the glory years of professional wrestling for me. We Southe boys used to call that northeaste WWF stuff fake. Of course, I didn’t know then that Blackjack Mulligan had spent time in the territory up north.

So pro wrestling was with me through the Malaise Era and into the Reagan years of Cold War and crack. I forsook her in the early 1990s and retued again during the end of the Clinton presidency when, I think not uncoincidentally, the sport was at its raunchiest.

I left again, then retued around the end of President W’s term. That’s when I introduced my eldest daughter to the sport. On the first night we watched pro wrestling together, the Boogeyman came out and stuffed worms in his mouth. Long story short, my daughter was terrified, and became a fan.

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Wrestling and I have been together through recessions, wars and rumors of wars. Maybe The Miz or John Cena will be my eldest daughter’s Blackjack Mulligan, her Ric Flair or Greg Valentine. Perhaps Lil One will always have a soft spot in her heart for Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins.

The nation rages over who our next president will be. We used to set aside certain times for such things; it seems we rage daily now. But there’s also a time to come home from work, put the Inteet down and drift away in three hours of meaninglessness, unbothered by the goings-on of the world.

There is nothing new under the sun, in the White House or on the wrestling mat. I’ll explain these things to Lil One, while we watch owies over a beer and milkie.