Buff Bagwell’s CAC Men’s Wrestling Award acceptance speech

On Wednesday, August 21, 2024, Marcus Alexander Bagwell — Buff himself — was presented with the Cauliflower Alley Club’s Men’s Wrestling Award during the second night of its annual banquet.

Below is a transcript of his speech, including the introduction by “Nature Boy” Paul Lee, delivered at the Plaza Hotel & Casino in downtown Las Vegas, slightly edited for clarity. For details on the rest of the awards that night, see It’s true, Kurt Angle a CAC hero.

“Nature Boy” Paul Lee, who has been wrestling over 40 years, started off his introduction of Buff Bagwell with a self-referential, “There’s another ‘Nature Boy’?”

“This man getting this Men’s Award is a man that began his career, as a Handsome Stranger, and he became Marcus Alexander Bagwell, and then the most fun character, Buff Daddy. We all love Buff Daddy. Buff, which I call Mark, is the only two wrestlers in WCW from the beginning to the end. That was Mark and the last man that got an award last night, The Icon [Sting]. Give it up for them two guys, folks,” said Lee, waiting for the applause to abate.

He continued:

In 1990, I was in WCW doing what we call a jobber, or now, I believe it’s called now enhanced talent. Look, what I always liked to call it — a worker. That’s what we offered. I got to get the guys over, and I loved it, that’s what we supposed to do. Every time we’d do something, we supposed to do it the right way, right?

What I what was happening back then was some of the guys were taking advantage of the workers. It was just like killing.

Every time I got in the ring with Mark, whether it was a singles match, if it was one of his many, many tag team partner, regardless, Mark was so humble. We worked great together. I got all my heel crap in, and he was just a guy, he was one of us. That’s hard to do.

As I look around here today, everyone of y’all is rasslers, we’re just people. You might be in a main event platform, or you might be just a worker. You’re one of us. We’re all together, right?

According to Lee, Bagwell is one of the few big names who remembered those who put him over. A friendship developed through the years between them, and Lee found himself defending Bagwell to a degree.

“People have lied about Mark. They made up things. They said he was a bad guy, that he had a bad ego. Let me tell you something, Mark had some demons, like some of us had. He went through and I tell you what, folks, if you ain’t never went through something, you’re going to go through something before your life ends, okay? So you’d better be sure somebody’s praying for ya.

“But Mark was always there. I seen him, I’ve done indie show, and he’s setting up right beside me, selling gimmicks. If a fan could not afford something, he gave it to ’em, you know? I mean, that’s cool. I don’t care, we’re all people right?” On a personal basis, Lee said that Bagwell had given money in support of Lee’s two children with disabilities.

Bagwell is a “true friend.”

“In this business, we meet a lot of people, folks, but there’s only a few you’re going to call friends. They’re going to be there if you need to call them. When Mark was going through all this problem, I’d make sure I’d text him or call him to tell him, ‘I’m here for you if you need me. I don’t care if it’s two in the morning, three in the morning, call me,” recalled Lee, praising Bagwell for now being two years clean and sober.

“I’m ready to put you over any time, brother,” concluded Lee.

Looking sharp in his white suit, Bagwell spoke from the heart.

Trying to wrap up 34 years pretty quick, years ago, I believe that what we do for a living picks us. I really do with all my heart. Some people say, no, no, you pick it. If you really do your homework, you will see that what you’re doing for a living picked you.

And wrestling picked me in 1989. Missy Hyatt saw me at a pool, and she said, “You should be a wrestler.” I said, “Those guys don’t make no money.” And she goes, “Our lowest paid guy makes $100,000 a year.” I said, “Can you tell me more?”

I thought it was going to be pretty easy, because I was an athlete. I was a boxer, football, baseball. Pro wrestling is something I’d never seen before. It’s just different. It’s not because I’m doing this for a living, pro wrestling, you gotta have a little bit of everything. You gotta be a little bit cool, you gotta be a little bit of a nerd, you gotta be a little bit of a badass, you gotta be a little bit of a pansy. It’s just a little bit about everything to be a great pro wrestler, and a lot of guys have it, and a lot of guys don’t. But we all shoot for that.

At a very young age, I shot for that with WCW. Ten wonderful years, and five World Tag Team Championships with four different partners. Love tag teaming.

WCW was really, it was fantastic, man. It was a great place. We had guaranteed contracts. Really, we were spoiled rotten. It was ridiculous, because we had contracts, and the WWF boys were, you know, they’re working, one week paycheck’s would be $500, the next week it’d be even more. But they just never knew what they were getting, when we had guaranteed contracts. We were spoiled rotten under Ted Turner.

The unbelievable happened in 2001, the unheard of, which was the WWF bought the WCW. It changed my life in a really bad way, overnight. We were just a few weeks before that, we’re on private jets with Eric Bischoff, high fiving because we’re going to put the WWF out of business. Now, as we’re high fiving Eric, we’re really going, “That ain’t good. We need two companies.” I mean, there’s only two, that ain’t good. But of course, when you’re on a private jet with the boss, it’s like, “Yeah, we got them again, brother.” But really, we’re like, “Man, that ain’t good.” We knew it wasn’t good with just one.

Well, little did we know, the one bought us, and man, it was a really bad time in my life. My contract, along with a few others, ironically, was up at the exact same time. So we had to jump ship. They always say the first one in gets bloody — well, brother, I got bloody.

I was excited. I mean, they had me on Monday Night Raw the very first week, main event. And we knew something was a little bit wrong, because the next week was Atlanta. So we wanted to ask, but we wasn’t going to dare ask, but we knew something wasn’t quite right. So we did the match regardless. And the next week in Atlanta, I was released, and man, that opened up, that opened up hell for me.

I didn’t realize how close I was to be a drug addict. I was a drug addict with a WCW leash holding me back. And when that WCW leash, and WWF was gone, I went on a 20-year sedation that I’m embarrassed about, I’m upset about.Looking back on I can’t even believe it. I tried to do the right thing by wrestling in gyms and doing the right thing, but, man, it just ripped my lungs out that I wasn’t on the big screen no more.

Man, everywhere I went, “Why aren’t you in the WWE?”

Tomorrow, if you get fired from your job, it ain’t that big a deal to you. But when the world knows you’ve been fired from your job, it’s deep. So I dove in to my addiction.

I went to places I never thought I would go with my addiction. Even at the end, I was doing the by myself thing. I was isolating. And I’ve never isolated.

Diamond Dallas Page came to me and he said, “Brother, if you don’t get straight, I’m out of your life.”

And at that junction, Dallas was about the last thing I had in this career. And so I decided to get sober August 27, 2022 so this August 27 will be two years that I’m sober.

Bagwell paused here for much applause.

There’s only a few reasons why I was able to do that, and one of them, brother, is God. You gotta fill up the void with something. The reason I was able to get clean is you gotta fill that void with something else. I filled my void with God first, my girlfriend second, and then my body was third — in that order. And by going with that order and doing everything you hear: going to rehab for 30 days, going to aftercare, getting a sponsor, 90 meetings in 90 days, work the steps. By doing those things, I’m telling you, you can and you will get sober, and I did.

More applause.

If somebody could have come to me and said, “You know what?” During that 20 years of my sedation, if somebody came to me and said, “Man, if you try this way, I guarantee you your life will be 2% better.” I think I would have, may have, tried it, but nobody ever did. But I can tell you, if you do those things I just said, your life is going to be better. It’s just up to you on rolling your sleeves up and going to work, how much better your life gets — and my life got a lot better because I rolled my sleeves up when I did that. Yeah, I rolled my sleeves, I went to work, brother. Going to work is doing what you’re supposed to do, it’s right in front of you. The right way. And I always did it the right way, but not under sedation.

I got excited again about everything,

When Brian [Blair] called me on this CAC thing, I was ecstatic. For the first time my peers were going to look at me like accepting me, and that was a giant deal, because I’d really burned the bridges with my peers. So I want to thank my peers, I want to thank CAC for doing what you do. People don’t realize that y’all don’t get paid to do this. This is what y’all do for us. The 58th annual, I want to give a round of applause again for the CAC, to Brian Blair and Madusa, to Jimmy Hart, to everybody, to all the staff that’s here working. Don’t know all the names, but we know that if you’re part of this, thank you and it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.

I thank God. I thank that wonderful girlfriend of mine, Stacy Brown … she’s been with me. Again, I can believe if you roll your sleeves up and you do what I did, it does come back to you. Thank you. CAC, thank you, Stacy, and thank you, God.

RELATED LINK

• Buff Bagwell story archive
• Cauliflower Alley Club story archive
• Cauliflower Alley Club website