My Life Outside the Ring (38 page)

I was floored. By any stretch of the imagination, this was an extremely harsh and precedent-setting ruling for a minor in the state of Florida. It made no sense.

I watched as court officers led my son to a little table to be fingerprinted. I watched as they removed his necktie and belt. I watched as they put him in handcuffs and led him through a side door off to the right of the judge’s bench. Just like that, he was gone.

As I stood there flabbergasted, I expected Nick to look at me for support. I expected him to come over and hug his family before they took him into custody. But Nick didn’t look back. He stood there and took the weight of that ruling on his shoulders, all on his own. Nick didn’t break down. He didn’t look to me for help. He didn’t whine or complain about the ruling—even though in my mind he certainly had a right to. Instead, he stayed strong. As crushed as I was by the judge’s ruling, I was equally proud of my son for taking it like a man and staying strong throughout that entire proceeding.

I held my head up and walked out of that courtroom and ignored the press who wanted me to comment. I also ignored the taunts from some of the members of the extended Graziano family, who wound up ranting and raving to the cameras in that parking lot.

What could I say? I wanted to stay positive. I was choosing to be a better person. I was choosing to walk on the high road. Sharing my real thoughts on that judge’s decision would have been anything but positive, believe me.

Instead I kept reminding myself that Nick’s a good kid.
He’s strong. He’ll get through this. We need to be grateful for this. There’s a reason for it. I know it. Nick will learn from this. In the end, it will somehow make Nick a better person. A better man. I just know it
.

I had to believe that. There had to be something to be grateful for in this horrible ordeal.

Back at my apartment later that evening, I kept pacing the floor trying to wrap my head around everything that had happened. My attorneys told me Nick would have access to a phone at a minimum-security jail, so he should be able to make a phone call as soon as he was settled. I had no idea when that might be, so I went a little out of my skull just waiting to get word that Nick was okay. I just wanted to hear my son’s voice, you know?

Finally, as the sun set out over the Gulf, my cell phone rang. It was Nick. He was anything but okay.

28 Days

“Dad, you’re not gonna believe this. I’m in the mental ward.”

I had never heard Nick’s voice shake like it was shaking on the other end of that phone.

“What are you talking about, Nick?”

“They walked me in past all these other inmates and into this medical facility and they put me in a padded cell. It’s like three by seven. I can touch both walls when I put my hands out. The whole length of the room is barely taller than me!”

“Wait, wait, wait. Nick, slow down. Did they say why you’re there? Is this temporary?”

“No! They said I’m not allowed to mingle with the adult prisoners ’cause of my age.”

“But you have access to a courtyard and everything, right? Like the lawyers said.”

“No! They have to keep my door closed the whole time. They’re saying this is the only cell they have available. That I’m stuck here. Dad, I can’t be locked up in here like that. There’s no windows, nothing. You’ve gotta help me.”

I promised my son I’d get to the bottom of this. “Just stay strong. We’ll get this fixed.”

I hung up that phone with my heart pounding out of my chest. As a parent, there’s hardly anything worse than getting a panicked phone call from your child. I had to help him. No matter what it took, I had to figure out what the hell was going on.

I called my attorneys, and they called the courthouse, the judge, and the jail. The best they could tell me is that this was some kind of a catch-22. Nick was sentenced in adult court, and he was sent to an adult prison, but because he was under eighteen they were required to keep him separated from the general population. This facility wasn’t built to house minors like that, so the only choice they had was to isolate him in the medical ward.

“That’s not what the judge ordered. He was supposed to serve eight months in minimum security,” I said. But Nick fell between the cracks—and guess what? It was Friday. Everyone was headed home. There would be no way to get this fixed over the weekend.

I can’t describe to you how hard my heart sank in my chest when they told me that. I was so angry and hurt, and once again totally helpless.

I had promised my son I would get this fixed. Now I wouldn’t be able to. He would be stuck in that situation for most of the next seventy-two hours.

Nick called back that night, and I told him the situation. It was a finite amount of time. I told him to just stay positive. To be grateful that he wasn’t mingled with the rest of the prisoners. Maybe that meant he would be safe. Maybe it was meant to be. I reminded him we had to find reasons to be grateful for all of this, no matter how hard it might be.

Nick seemed to calm down. It was only till Monday. He would be able to call me a few times a day. They would let him out of his cell and supervise him to make calls. I promised him that I would always be there to pick up those calls. Always.

It was a 100 percent commitment on my part. I would not miss a call—not because I was driving and my cell-phone service was sketchy, or because I was in the bathroom. I simply wouldn’t leave that apartment or step away from that phone until Nick’s situation was fixed.

I just never imagined it would take twenty-eight days for that to happen.

From that day
forward, I sat in a straight-back chair at the glass dining room table in that bachelor pad of mine. I laid out three cell phones: the one Nick would call me on, and two others that I could jump back and forth on to lawyers and family and friends. I called everyone I could think of that weekend. Lawyers I had dealt with through the years. Friends who were prominent in the area, who might be able to call in a favor. Anyone I could think of who might be able to get my son out of that situation.

It might not seem like much to think that he would be locked up from Friday till Monday, but my lawyers made me realize what a grave situation Nick was in.

Solitary confinement is meant for prisoners who are uncontrollable. Rapists and murderers who act out against guards or other prisoners get thrown in solitary as a last-resort punishment because it’s the most brutal punishment there is.

Isolation plays tricks on the human mind. After as little as forty-eight to seventy-two hours, many prisoners in solitary confinement have been known to crack. In extreme cases people have been known to start hurting themselves, scratching their eyes out, eating their own feces. True isolation is something human beings hardly ever experience in life. In the confines of a tiny cell, it’s considered one of the most brutal punishments known to man.

So how on earth did this judgment against my son transform from a minimum-security sentence to the most brutal punishment in the American justice system? How is that possible?

As I promised, I was there every time Nick called. Right from the outset I tried to be calm and positive with him in every conversation. I read to him from the Bible, just trying to make sense of what he was enduring and how it would help him grow as a human being. I read to him from
The New Earth
and
The Secret
. I read to him from James Ray’s books.

Monday came and went with no improvement in the situation. I was scheduled to start a media tour to promote
American Gladiators
. I was supposed to fly to New York to do Regis and Kelly, Letterman, every talk show you could think of. For the first time in my entire career, I canceled them all.

NBC was pissed. They were relying on the power of Hulk Hogan to go out and sell this show to the audience, but there was no Hulk Hogan as far as I was concerned. Right then, I was Nick’s father. That was it. I had only one obligation to fulfill.

It’s hard for people who don’t know me to understand that I’m not just talking here. I’m not exaggerating. I did not move for twenty-eight days. Jennifer was real weirded out by how focused and obsessed I was, just sitting in that chair at that table making phone call after phone call, trying to get this thing resolved. She had never experienced this extreme side of my personality. If she brought me food, I would eat. If friends stopped in to check on me, I would talk to them about what was happening to my son. But the only time I would get up is when I had to go to the bathroom. Then once every four or five days I would take a quick shower—always with the cell phone right there on the sink where I could reach it the moment it rang. I was determined to take every phone call, and make every phone call, from that solitary spot until my boy was out of that cell.

This was the resolve of coming back to the ring after Matsuda broke my leg. This was the resolve of exploding my kneecap as I won the belt from the Iron Sheik. This was the resolve of tearing my back by bodyslamming André the Giant but continuing to wrestle for twenty-nine days with no break, no rest, and no surgery. I knew I could do this, no matter how long it took. “If I have to sit in this chair for the next eight months, Nick, I will sit right here for you,” I told him. “No question.”

After the first few days and all the calls I made, word spread to lawyers all over the country. All of a sudden some of the top legal minds in the world were reaching out to help me. Robert Shapiro (of O.J. trial fame) called from L.A. at 2:00 a.m. I had Roy Black on the phone from Miami. Brendan Sullivan was calling from Washington, D.C. All of them giving me advice on how to handle this thing. My own lawyers tried to make pleas to the judge and sheriff’s department based on some of that advice. Nothing seemed to work.

The calls would come at any hour, and I felt I couldn’t afford to miss a single one. So sleep was basically not an option. Catnaps with my head on my arms were the best I’d do.

Nick was served breakfast at 4:30 a.m., and that was the only set time when I knew for sure he would call—so I was always right there to pick up that phone on the first ring. I could hear him breaking down. I could hear the sound of his voice. I could hear him start to obsess over the guilt of this accident and what he had done and how badly he was being punished. I needed to get him out of that situation. Fast.

In the middle of that first week, Nick was finally moved from the medical ward. Someone realized that was not an appropriate spot to hold a minor on a reckless driving charge. Rather than improve the situation, though, the move made it worse.

As a minor sentenced in adult court, Nick was still caught in the middle, falling between the cracks. Without some broader resolution, there was only one other solution available that would keep him segregated from the adult population without forcing him to stay in that tiny padded cell: They moved him to solitary confinement at a maximum-security jail.

Now my son was in a building with murderers and rapists. He was locked behind a solid steel door with a slot in the bottom that was big enough to put a tray of food through. Nick would lie down on that floor just to watch the feet of guards going by, just to know that someone else was there. This cell, which was slightly larger than the padded cell, had a window. As if that would somehow appease my complaints. The window was a couple of inches wide. Up high. It let in a sliver of light, that’s all.

I honestly would have rather seen Nick mingle with the murderers and rapists. He’s a big strong kid. I think he would have had a better chance at fending off an attack than he would at fending off the pressure that confinement was laying on his mind.

So I sat in that chair. I did not move. I kept making phone calls. Jennifer brought me food. Friends stopped by to check on me. I refused to move from that spot and those phones. I watched the sunset each night over the water. The sunset that Nick couldn’t see. It broke me down. Again and again.

I wouldn’t let Nick know that. When he called, I stayed as upbeat as possible. I had to. He was unraveling.

Toward the end of that first long week, it looked like there might be a breakthrough. It looked like the judge was ready to agree to step in and allow Nick to be put into the adult population at the minimum-security prison.

Then Linda spoke up. Remember when I let Nick choose who to live with as the divorce proceedings got started? Well, officially that meant that Linda had physical custody of Nick, and therefore, she had more say than I did. So, from what I understand, she had her lawyer call the judge to object to my request to mingle Nick into the general population.