Richt Puts Dawgs in Torture Rack

Georgia has made a point of bringing in exciting guest speakers for the team this season. Randall Godfrey gave an impassioned speech after the Alabama loss. Head coach Mark Richt talked today about a speech Robert Edwards gave about returning for his senior season to try to win a title. This week's speaker, however, was a little different.

His name was Larry Pfhol. He was a teammate of Richt's at Miami. Most people will know him better by his professional name: Lex Luger.



Luger, of course, was a star in the professional wrestling ranks during the 1980s and 1990s. Given Luger's heyday in wresting occurred before many of Georgia's players started kindergarten, you might assume he wouldn't have been the most popular speaker ever. You'd be wrong.

"The torture rack, man," cornerback Asher Allen said. "Everybody knows that. That's WCW."

In fact, Luger was one of Allen's favorites growing up, he said.

"I used to have a video game on Nintendo 64 WCW Revenge," Allen said. "That was my character. I went undefeated with him."

Anyway, as it happened, Luger came to Athens to speak at the team's Fellowship of Christian Athlete's meeting Monday, which Richt said worked as a good tension breaker following Saturday's loss to Florida.

"He came by to speak to some of the team, not all of them," Richt said. "I wanted to introduce him to the team anyway, then I found out a lot of my coaches and some of the administration lived through the Lex Luger era."

This info came out after Richt was asked how the team handled yesterday's practice. The good story to come from it, however, was this:

When Richt was a grad assistant at Florida State in the early '90s, he was hosting recruits during the offseason. The Tallahassee Civic Center was hosting a WCW event -- Richt said it was Wrestlemania, but I'm pretty sure it was something a bit less prominent -- and Richt brought the recruits to the event.

"Lex is one of the guys that is going to be there, so I got the prospects up there as close as I could to the spot where the wrestlers come out to go through the ring," Richt said.

Luger walked out in typical pro wrestling fashion and was swarmed by the crowd. Security begins to spread the crowd out so Luger can't get through, when from a few feet away, Richt starts shouting, "Larry!"

"He doesn't flinch," Richt said. "He is still in the zone, the wrestling zone."

So Richt follows up with a "Hey, Larry Pfhol!"

"I wasn't that far away, but it was kind of loud," Richt said. "He looked at me and when he recognized it was me, he gave me a thumbs up and goes Hey, Boca,' then he went back to being this tough guy."

"Boca" was Richt's nickname in college, he said.

Of course, the conclusion to Richt's response to the story and to the question of how Monday's practice went like this:

"It was real big with the recruits because they were like This guy knows Lex Luger!'" Richt said. "Anyway, it was fun. Long answer to your question, yeah, Mondays are tough."