Happy Birthday Russ!

[dutch134]

Happy Birthday to the Man, the Myth, the Legend!!!!

[goferphan]

I will second that...Legend more than myth. Myth more than man.

[r.payton@att.net]

BS-but thanks !! Does NOT mean we are going to be swapping spit in the showers anytime soon !!

[WhippetGrappler]

Happy Birthday Old Guy!!

[dutch134]

I hope NOT!

[TomWright25]

My birthday congratulations as well, Russ. You must be over 30!

[1stplace]

Happy Birthday Russ. My gift to you will be sending an email to Indiana's athletic director complaining about Goldman. This thing has to get rolling eventually, right?

[buckvader]

Happy Birthday Russ!

[MOJO]

Ode to an Old Warrior King

The young wrestler sits to rest
The battle for today is over
His body aches
His singlet and headgear covered in blood
For today was the battle of all battles
For tomorrow no one knows.

As he bends down to untie his tattered shoes
An equipment manager yells: “Rise up for Brother Russ Payton, The Great Coach & Warrior Wrestler is in the Locker room!”
The young Wrestler, exhausted from battle rises
Brother Russ calmly approaches,
Called by name, the young warrior answers: “Yes sir Coach Russ, sir!”
“Come closer” the Warrior Coach says, “you are injured?
See to that wound quickly,
Sunday we wrestle again! Iowa, Cornell, San Francisco St., there are more giants to conquer!”

The great old coach strides through the locker room to check on all his Wrestlers
The young Wrestler again sits on the floor beside his battered locker
He asks his friend and fellow Wrestler
“He, Coach Russ, He is a great man?”
The fellow Wrestler smiles and responds in whispered tones -
“That is Brother Russ, the Great!”
“Son of Gable, Hodges, Yarigan,
Brother of, Schultz, Smith, Morris Johnson, Baumgartner, all of the great warriors!”

The young Wrestler responds to his friend:
“This Coach Russ, he, he never sleeps? Never surrenders?
“Sleep?” Scoffs the wise friend. “Only with the occasional young goddess, Mila Kunis, Kate Hudson, Rihanna and the like. Surrender? The mere utterance the word brings flame to his eyes and whiffs of acrid smoke from his flaring nostrils, so I have heard! No, never surrender!”

Another older wrestler/warrior, with a blackened eye and ripped singlet, face covered with the bumps, burns and bruises from a thousand sprawls & headbutts, overhears the younger wrestlers conversation. He looks up, and with a sparkle from his good eye, he chuckles, growls: “ All true, my Younger Brothers....but.... Old Coach Russ, he is not Only a son of Gable and a brother of Schultz...
Coach Russell Payton is also a Son of the Ancient gods of Wrestling, the gods of Hercules, Thor, Milo of Croton, Zeus!"
Though trembling a bit and wide eyed, the younger fellow Wrestler responds, “If he is the s-s-son of the ancient wrestling gods,
Then why d-d-does he need US?”
The fellow Wrestler ruefully chuckles, shakes his massive head, but says nothing, and turns his head to the older, eye-blackened warrior. The Old wrestler mat-chapped lips make an audible,... crack..., as he speaks to the youngest wrestler, as though warning a recalcitrant toddler, and says ‘“It’s NOT Brother Russ what needs US! It’d be US who need HIM!”

That night,...alone, the young Wrestler rests his head
dreaming of wrestling
and is risen...
The next morning...ready...
to fight again!

Happy Birthday Brother Russ
Miss you and my other Brothers.
MoJo