Twelve weeks to live. That was 2016.
On September 26, 2016 I had a massive stroke. The cause was a golf ball sized tumor in my cerebellum: Stage IV melanoma with leptomeningeal disease, cancer in the spinal fluid. I was given twelve weeks and told I would not walk again. I had already learned to walk once, after a construction accident broke my neck in 2012. I learned again. Memorial Sloan Kettering calls mine the only documented reversal of that cancer. It came back in 2024 and I beat it again. No evidence of disease, off systemic treatment.
Then I did what I had wanted since I was a kid at the Nassau Coliseum. WWE scouted me, and in June 2024 I walked out at a sold-out SmackDown at Madison Square Garden and pulled Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens out of the ring in front of a hometown crowd. As The Cancer Fighter I have wrestled for the National Wrestling Alliance and on the nationally syndicated United Wrestling Network, and raised money for cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering, the V Foundation and St. Jude. The story has run in the New York Post and Newsday, on PIX11, Inside Edition, ESPN, NBC, CBS and FOX, and I have taken it to Capitol Hill to fight for cancer research funding and into the Pediatric 1,000 Action Figure Initiative.
Outside the ring: an MBA in Marketing, twenty years in B2B sales and business development, a few companies of my own, and nine years coaching high school football, wrestling and lacrosse.
