Barry Hardy
Barry Hardy is appearing at a 1991 wrestling fan convention outside of New York City as Agony of the Lords of Darkness, a tag team that had been enjoying some success in independent promotions. He has an elaborately painted face, wears a long black robe, and carries a large battle axe. Although he looks menacing, Hardy is a soft-spoken fellow who enjoys posing for pictures with children. Hardy wrestled as one half of "the Executioners," as well as under his real name in the WWF in the early 1990s, although his in-ring victories were few.

I started just watching pro wrestling, and called up Larry Sharpe, went to the Monster Factory, and tried out. He said I had what it takes. After that I started training with Charlie Fulton. He used to be in the WWF and the NWA, which is the WCW now. I trained there for about a year. After that we bought a ring, and I opened up my own school. We have a Monster Factory in Baltimore too. My partner runs that now. I trained my partner.

We started doing the Lords of Darkness gimmick like a year ago, and ever since then we have held the Atlantic States titles, and then after that we won the World Wrestling Alliance titles, and Larry Sharpe was our manager. We just recently won the Mid-Eastern Wrestling Federation–that's running down in Maryland and Pennsylvania and Virginia–we hold those belts now. We're trying to get into the WWF and WCW. Basically they just look at your wrestling ability, how long you've been wrestling, who you've worked against, to see if you're any good or not. Then they'll bring you down, they'll give you a tryout. If you've got something they want, if you got the gimmick or if you've got the right wrestling moves, then they'll probably pick you up. The best thing is word-of-mouth. Like the different ring announcers go around; you see them at different independent shows. If they see you work and they like you, they're gonna tell somebody, and hopefully eventually it'll go back to one of the bigger promoters, and something big will come of it.

I really didn't know what I was gonna do. I was just working different jobs. I was a mechanic, and then once I really started going to wrestling and seeing Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair, they were like my idols. After that, like I said, I trained, and then I taught my partner to wrestle. We teamed up, and we're on our way to the top, hopefully. Right before we teamed up, we were wrestling singles. I had the Maryland Heavyweight Championship, and I held that before we teamed up. After we teamed up, we held three titles. We still have the third now.

My mom, she's the one who helped me really get into it. She gave me the money to start a school and everything. She was really cool about it. A lot of my friends were like, "You're crazy, you'll never make it anywhere." Now they're the ones who want the free tickets. My wife was real supportive of it, my kids love it. They don't get to come to a whole lot of them because it's usually far away where we gotta go, and she has a full-time job. We've been doing a lot [of traveling] lately, like within the last few months, and it's been real rough. For a while we were just doing independent shows right around in the area, and trying to get the exposure, get the gimmick out. Plus, the more you work, the better off you are. And we work at the school about three times a week also.

I love pro wrestling, and that's why I definitely want to get on a contract. Doing it part-time is OK, but if you're doing it full-time, you can definitely call it your career. If you're doing it part-time, it's just tough because you do have to work another job. By the time you get home you're tired, you gotta go to the gym, lift weights, and then you gotta maybe go to a show or something. And the shows are on the weekends, so you work all week, wrestle all weekend, and you're dead to start the week off again. It's real hard on the family life. It's tough to be married and be a wrestler. You gotta have an understanding wife, that's for sure.

Larry [Sharpe]'s good, I think he helped our career a lot. He gave us a big push, and hopefully we'll be going to Japan. If we do that, then things definitely will start paying off after that. [Sharpe's] one of the toughest people in the business, I'd say, as far as trainers go. A lot of trainers, they'll take your money. You go into their school, they'll have a couple of their other students work out with you, and they don't even watch what's going on. Larry, he was in the business for 20 years. He was a wrestler. He wrestled in the WWF, and NWA, you know. He's wrestled in Japan, everywhere. He'll stay right there and watch you. If you ain't doing something right, then he'll correct it. He's tough. I think he's one of the best teachers in the business, if not the best. I've gone nowhere but up since I've started my career, and the Monster Factory is what got me there. When you say, "Hey, I went to the Monster Factory," you end up getting a lot of respect because everybody knows the caliber of talent that has come out of there.