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Precious Paul competes in a different wardrobe these days. He's gone from loincloth to lycra. From scanty pants to snowpants. From bare chest to bearskins. Oh, yeah, he's also gone from the World Wrestling Federation to the Iditarod. The musher who dashed out of Anchorage wearing bib No. 79 Saturday is called Paul Ellering in real life, and he really has switched from the World Wrestling Federation to the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He's parked his half-nelson and pulled on a parka. He's stopped talking about Hulk Hogan and started talking about Rick "Hulk" Swenson. This is an Idita-first. A professional wrestler tackles the 1,100-mile mush to Nome. Talk about your midlife career changes. "I've always been a person who challenged myself," said Ellering, 46, of Grey Eagle, Minn. "I think everybody needs something to make you want to jump out of bed. Everybody needs a passion." After the better part of a quarter-century in professional wrestling, Ellering is lucky he can do any more than roll out of bed and thump to the floor. He may have been a world-record weight lifter, as he claims. He may be a fitness maven too. But, hey, if you are abused by sleeper holds often enough, it's inevitable that eventually your back and knees will sound like Rice Krispies right after the milk is poured. This all may be a hoot to us, but the Iditarod is no lark for Ellering. He once hung out with The Legion of Doom so he can probably tag-team his way to the Bering Sea Coast with a legion of huskies. Racing the Iditarod was not a spur-of-the-moment leap for Ellering. He started his kennel by buying dogs from five-time champ Swenson. He's raced the 500-mile John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Minnesota several times, and he's received pointers from 1989 Iditarod champ Joe Runyan. In 1991, Ellering read a book about mushing and was intrigued. About the same time, he ran across Runyan giving a seminar. Ellering introduced himself. With common interests in hunting, fishing and mushing, they've been buds ever since. "The guy's awesome," said Runyan, who now lives in Cliff, N.M. "He's the most inspirational guy I've ever met." Why? Runyan thinks Ellering's attitude is Norman Vincent Peale-upbeat and that he is more motivated than Michael Jordan. Still, it's not as if Runyan thinks Precious Paul will be Precocious Paul and win the Iditarod on his first try. "I think he'll have a real steady team," Runyan said. "It's not a championship team." Slimmed down from his wrestling weight of 255 pounds to 180, Ellering has a sturdy, muscular build and a thick mustache. When he arrived on Fourth Avenue on Saturday morning, he was the man in black, wearing a dark sponsor cap, a black jersey and black pants - and dark glasses. Like most Iditarod rookies, Ellering didn't sleep much the night before the start. "No rest for the wicked," he said with a wicked smile. "I've sort of trained on lack of sleep." Though he is new to the Iditarod, Ellering's mushing and wrestling careers overlapped before he gave up headlocks three months ago to operate a health club near Grey Eagle, his home 35 miles north of St. Cloud, and drive dogs on nearby trails. He shifted back and forth between the two disparate worlds for much of the 1990s. But while admitting that neither group really understands the peculiarities of the other, Ellering did adopt an aphorism to live by. "Never trust a dog to guard your food," Ellering said. "And never trust a wrestler to guard your food." Ellering, who does not have the fanciest dog truck (driving north with his dog boxes resting on a flatbed trailer), said he always knew he'd try the Iditarod and this seemed like the right time. He liked the idea of being part of the first race of the new century and being part of a race that commemorates the contributions of the late Joe Redington, father of the Iditarod, who died in June. "I want to put it on the old resume," Ellering said. Not that he thinks it's going to be easy. He's broken the race into thirds: Relax the first third, pick up the pace the second third, and push it through the last third. Ellering said he used the Precious Paul moniker because he invested in commodities and "since I am such a precious commodity." Now that he's retired from wrestling, though, Ellering is in the market for a mushing nickname. Once he makes Nome, he'll probably find a way to rhyme Ellering and Bering. q This column is the opinion of Daily News sports editor Lew Freedman. He can be reached at lfreedman@adn.com.
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