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You might have seen him a few years back. You know, big, beefy guy with the bleach-blonde crewcut and goatee. He often wore camouflage pants or shorts, combat boots and a T-shirt that read "I hate this town" or maybe one that stated "I love the dark side" or even "Your wife is coming home with me."

If you saw him, you didn't like him. No one liked Mike Mayhem.

It's different now.

Mike Mayhem is gone.

Instead, there's Mike Houston, front-tire carrier on Jeff Gordon's pit crew. Even in a sport that looks to former athletes to fill pit crew positions, Houston likely is the only person on NASCAR's pit road to have been a professional wrestler.

Houston isn't the bad guy he portrayed when he competed along the East Coast in the National Wrestling Alliance. He was so convincing in the ring that more than once fans met him in the parking lot wanting to scuffle. A woman even followed him on the circuit and tried to persuade him to be a good guy so he'd quit beating up her favorite wrestlers.

"I guess she didn't get the point," Houston says laughing. "It's a show."

How Houston became a professional wrestler -- enjoying a six-year career before he quit in 2003 to focus on his pit crew work -- is a story in itself.

A defensive tackle on Western Carolina's football team from 1994-96, Houston returned to the Charlotte area after college. He worked as a bouncer before a tryout with MB2 Motorsports in 1997 led to a job as a tire carrier. That same year he met a trainer who used to wrestle. They became friends and the trainer made him a business proposition: If Houston would teach him how to jack a race car, he would teach Houston how to wrestle.

Lesson No. 1 was how to fall.

"I started laughing," says Houston, who stands 6-feet-2, weights 305 pounds and sports a shaved head. "What's there to learn about falling? I just stood right in the middle of the ring and dropped straight back. (It) knocked the breath out of me and I barreled over just hurting. There is a proper way to land."

As there is a proper way to crash through a table. No, Houston says, the tables weren't cut to make it easier to crash through. The trick was to land in the middle of the table at its weakest point and away from the legs. Then you could fall right through. Miss the center by a few inches and you were just as likely to get hurt as you were to fall through.

Just like getting hit in the head by a chair. Yes, that also was real, Houston says. The pain and wooziness, he notes, is like hitting your head on the roof of your car as you slide into the seat.

A lot of the action in the ring also was real, even if the outcome was choreographed.

"I played football and I never got hurt worse than the first year of wrestling," Houston said of matches often held at local armories, high schools or other small venues.

He admits the circuit's veterans subjected him to a sort of public hazing in the ring early in his career.

"When they're in the ring, they demand your respect and they'll let you know," Houston says. "If you pepper them pretty hard in the face or in the back, they'll give it right back to you. Or a lot of guys will test you.

"I was in the ring with The Barbarian the first time and he just drilled me right between the eyes. I'm black and blue, couldn't see where I was for a few minutes. I gave it right back to him. From then on we had a great match."

As Houston wrestled, he continued to work on NASCAR pit crews. He'd wrestle a couple of times a month or so and always work around the race schedule.

He could make anywhere from $25 to $1,500 per match, depending on the venue, promoter and ticket sales. More often, the money was at the lower end. Then there was that one time he and his opponent, Jeff Justice, carried their match beyond the ring and crashed through the locker room door to the crowd's excitement. The cost to fix the door, though, came out of the paycheck of both wrestlers.

Despite the rough action, Houston missed only one race because of a wrestling injury. Eventually, he saw a brighter career path in NASCAR. Through the years, the 33-year-old known now as "Tiny" worked on pit crews for Sterling Marlin, Jamie McMurray and Travis Kvapil, among others, before joining Gordon's team four years ago. He's been paired with front-tire changer Clay Robinson for the past 10 years with various teams.

In May, the duo finished seventh out of 24 teams in the individual competition for front-tire changers and carriers at the pit stop competition. They, along with the rest of crew, played a key role in helping Gordon win at Texas earlier this season.

As Houston focuses on this season and racing, he looks back on his wrestling career and laughs about the experiences.

Does he miss wrestling?

"No, not at all," he says.

No need to. He doesn't get bruised as much in racing as he did. While some still may consider him a bad guy because of the team he's on, others view him as a good guy.

Contact Dustin Long at 373-7062 or dustin.long@news-record.com