Exit Sandman: Inside the unhinged final ride of a hardcore wrestling legend

The beer, the cigarette, the Metallica song, the Singapore cane — The Sandman had one of the most indelible presentations in modern pro-wrestling history. In the same way that Pedro Morales was the ethnic babyface hero to the New York Puerto Rican community, The Sandman represented the drunk Delco county guys who would throw batteries at Santa Claus.

But for James “Hak” Fullington, the character everyone remembers came together in multiple phases.

“[Philadelphia wrestling promoter] Joel Goodhart comes in one day and he goes, ‘I just saw a billboard on [Interstate] 95: Mr. Sandman Box Spring and Mattress. So you are going to be Mr. Sandman,’” Fullington, now 62 years old and freshly retired, tells Uncrowned. “So that’s how I got my name.”

His first big break in wrestling came after training with Goodhart in Philadelphia and wrestling locally a year into his career, when he went down to the Memphis territory in 1991-92 to do a run against Jerry “The King” Lawler. “They said they wanted more of a gimmick,” Fullington remembers, “so I thought, ‘Alright, well, let me get a wetsuit and a surfboard because I’m The Sandman.’ I bought the wetsuit, no problem.

“But I didn’t have a surfboard, so I went to Gary [Wolfe], one of the Pitbulls, and I said, ‘Gary, where can I get a surfboard?’ We go down to this huge Rock Lobster bar on Delaware Avenue on the river in Philadelphia. He told the bouncer to go up and get a surfboard off the wall. They took it off the wall, he hands it to me, goes, ‘Alright, that’s what you’re taking to Memphis with you.”

After a six-week main-event run in Memphis, Sandman returned home to Philadelphia and an ECW promotion which had just been taken over by Paul Heyman. Amid an environment of pure carny chaos, he continued to evolve. “I came into the locker room, [Heyman] saw the surfboard,” Fullington says.

“He looks at me and he goes, ‘We’re breaking that over your head tonight.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, thank you.’ Because I don’t want to have to carry the thing around anyway, you know what I mean? I didn’t want to be that surfing dude.

“A couple months later, I forgot my wrestling shoes. I’m like, ‘Paul, dude, I’m sorry, I forgot my wrestling shoes.’ He looks at me, goes, ‘I don’t give a f*** what you wear to the ring, dude.’ And then like this big bell went off in my head. I’m like, ‘Alright, I’m not wearing no wetsuit. I’m not wearing wrestling shoes. I’m going to go to the ring as I go to the building. I can just go and be myself.’ And I’m like, this is the greatest thing ever. Boom, boom — big epiphany.

“So then a couple of months later, the kid Michael Faye in Thailand, when he got the [four] lashes with a cane, that was big in the news,” Fullington continues, “and Paul goes, ‘You know the kid in Thailand, right? The kid that’s going to get caned.’ He goes, ‘You’re going to start carrying a cane to the ring.’

“So we’re outside, I’m smoking a cigarette when we’re talking. There’s like, you know, like a 15-foot tree next to us out in the parking lot. Paul walks up, he rips a branch off the tree, he pulls all the little twigs off. It’s about like a four-foot branch. He goes, ‘Here, put some tape around this and cut a promo with it.’ So that — that was the evolution right there in a nutshell of how I went from Surfer Boy to Sandman with the cane.”

TRENTON, NEW JERSEY JUNE 13: Sandman makes his entrance during ECW Event at the Sovereign Bank Arena on June 13,, 2006 in Trenton, New Jersey. (Photo by WWE via Getty Images.) — Sandman makes his entrance during an ECW event in June 2006 in Trenton, New Jersey.

(WWE via Getty Images)

The final piece of the puzzle came together in an unconventional — and very Sandman —way.

“So it’s me and Missy Hyatt, we’re in Queens, and there was a strip club right within like 50 yards of the place in Queens,” Fullington recalls. “Me and her are in the strip club while they’re playing my music. Somebody like Guido [James Maritato] or somebody, comes running because they knew where the hell I was. They’re like, ‘Hak, your music’s playing!’ So I went right from the strip club, right up through the front entrance of the building, and then through the crowd. And then that turned into, I’m doing this every single time now.”

Once the package was complete, Sandman became a true wrestling icon, from the king of the bingo hall all the way to WrestleMania.

This past April, at Joey Janela’s Spring Break ahead of WrestleMania 42, after nearly four decades in the business, The Sandman had his retirement match, a wild, run-in and shtick-filled match against “The Invisible Man” — an undeniably entertaining spectacle which was the demented brainchild of Fullington and Janela.

“I hadn’t had a real match in over 10 years,” Fullington says, “and I just loved the ‘Invisible Man’ idea. And Joey said, ‘Let’s do a retirement match.’”

“We wanted to hype it as his final match, because Sandman, he’s obviously never going to wrestle again anyways. He only does run-outs,” Janela says. “So I said, ‘Let’s just make it say it’s a final match, and we can put out a video, like the Sabu video, and after the controversy last year, the fans are like, ‘Oh man, he’s wrestling The Sandman, of course.’ And I wanted to just swerve the fans and then announce him versus the Invisible Man. And it just — it worked.”

“I had a strip club in Delaware, right? And in the back, I had a wrestling school,” Fullington adds. “And I used to tell guys, ‘Dude, you should be able to have a match with nobody. You don’t have to have a person out there to have a match. You should be able to do that.’ And then that’s when I found out about the Invisible Man, and I thought that was totally great. Joey found out about how much I liked it, and then that was his idea. It was easier to wrestle nobody because the crowd’s so into it. The crowd is the Invisible Man, kind of, so they will go along with anything that happens out there. You can’t really do wrong in that situation. That’s why it’s easier work than working with another human.”

It was still a real physical obstacle for someone who hadn’t really taken in bump in more than a decade. Fullington knew he would be the sole focus of the match, like an actor who is in every scene of a movie.

“So for him, it was almost like a challenge and a testament to, ‘I’m 62 years old. What does anybody expect with this?’ You know what I mean?” says Brian Tosh, co-host of the “Sandman Podcast.” “And I think people even day of the show were expecting it to be some bait-and-switch and to never even get in the ring or happen or anything. But just the fact that it got delivered and done, it’s a testament to Joey’s mind and Hak’s performance and everybody who worked on the match.”

“I’m telling myself the whole time, ‘Hak, don’t blow up. Do not blow up,’” Fullington admits. “‘If you blow up against the Invisible Man, you’re going to be the laughingstock of professional wrestling. Hak, don’t blow up. Don’t blow up. Don’t. Blow. Up.’”

In the end, the match was filled with run-in’s and comedy spots befitting a Joey Janela Spring Break “Invisible Man” match.

“The run-ins, those were all Joey’s idea,” says Fullington. “The only thing that was my idea was Fonzie [referee Bill Alfonso], because I just wanted Fonzie in the match with me. For the past 15 years, I’ve had to remember two things: To pour beer down somebody’s throat and cane somebody in the ring. I had like 40 things to remember here. My brain ain’t getting sharper every day. If I got Fonzie out there, it’s somebody that I’m comfortable with, that I could talk to on the other side of the ring, like, ‘Hey daddy, what’s next?’ If I need to say something like that.”

“The fans would expect the ECW alumni, the ones that are living, the Tommy Dreamers of the world, to run out, you know? But it’s been done,” says Janela. “I didn’t want the cheap pops — I wanted the Guy Steels. I wanted the Outbreak to do the Tim Arson zombie tribute. [I wanted] Kendra Lust.”

Lust, an adult film star with more than 8 million Instagram followers, came out as The Sandman’s valet and made sure the match trended worldwide.

Janela had put on spectacles on previous WrestleMania weekends, but this was his greatest challenge. Putting together all of the moving pieces of an “Invisible” match, while simultaneously planning his own main event against the debuting 14-year-old Brodie Lee Jr. — the son of departed WWE and AEW star Brodie Lee. “It was just a hectic day,” Janela says, “because I had to produce this match. I structured this match and figured it out with all the pieces of the puzzle. And also me and Brodie, I knew that was going to be a 30-minute match and I had to figure that out with a 14-year-old. So juggling those two matches, it was something else.”

The climax of Fullington’s retirement match saw his old ECW rival, Mick Foley, make a surprise appearance to battle “Invisible Man” and his brother “Invisible Stan,” a final viral moment for one of the most viral pro-wrestlers ever. “Foley was something we tried for, for like three weeks. And for two weeks, it was off the table,” Janela says. “Then one night, maybe two days before the show, Foley contacted Bret [Lauderdale, GCW’s promoter]. They talked out some ideas and we thought maybe that was a 60% chance it was going to happen. [But I didn’t] know if Foley was coming until maybe two hours before the show.”

Pro-wrestling royalty: Sandman and Mick Foley hug it out after the former’s final match. (Photo courtesy of Brian Tosh)

“Mick and Hak, they’re just different cats, right?” says Tosh. “Mick and him were never boys. I don’t think back then they particularly liked one another, for probably some good reasons on both sides. The fact that Mick wanted to do that, it’s just a testament to who The Sandman is, but also a testament to Mick Foley’s character as well.”

After 20 minutes of shtick, gags and bumps, Fullington and Foley were both hit with invisible low blows and The Sandman was pinned for the final time, ending an iconic 37-year career in fitting fashion.

“The only condition that Hak told Joey [he had for] this match, the only stipulation that he had for it, was that he had to lose,” Tosh says. “He’s got to pass the torch forward so the Invisible Man can draw money for the next couple of years here now, you know? You’ve got to put the business forward, man. He’s a professional professional wrestler.”

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