Tom Zenk is walking down the hallway of his apartment in Minneapolis. This is the first place he's ever lived away from home is the not-to-far-away suburban hamlet of Robbinsdale, Minnesota, where Zenk first started to wrestle as a child and where he trained to become a bodybuilding champion and eventually a professional wrestler.
 

	Zenk walks by a wall of photos that chronicle his athletic career. There's a photo of his wrestling team at the University of Minnesota, there are a series of photos commemorating his Mr Minnesota, Mr Twin Cities, and Mr North Country bodybuilding championships. There's a photo of Zenk with nine-time AWA World champion Verne Gagne and St Paul promoter Wally Karbo. And there's one more photo of Zenk, a shot of him backdropping Jimmy Doo, taken during his first professional match at La Crosse, Wisconsin.     Zenk walks into his living room and sits down on his couch, which converts into a bed at night. He has a bedroom but its currently inhabited by a weightlifting bench, a rowing machine, a stationary bicycle, and a number of barbells and dumbbells.  He has traded a bit of the muscle that won him his many bodybuilding titles for an increase in cardiovascular capacity.
	He may not be as physically awesome as he was in his bodybuilding days, but he feels that his body is more suited to the mat sport than it was two years ago.  "Strength is very important," he said, "but stamina gives you the ability to use that strength for a longer period of time. My training program had changed drastically since my bodybuilding days."  "I've definitely started to pay a lot more attention to my cardiovascular training," he continued. "I used to get on the bicycle at the gym or do some rowing as a diversion from lifting. Now, I make a point to do the bicycle and the rowing, and charting my progress. I also work with a sports physiologist to measure the body's ability to effectively use the oxygen I take in. Physical fitness is more than how big your arms are. It involves your whole body."
	Zenk looks to Verne Gagne, the man who gave him his start in professional wrestling, as a perfect example of a wrestler in excellent physical condition. "You don't have to have 22-inch arms like Hulk Hogan to be a great wrestler," he said. "Look at Verne Gagne's career. You can't tell me there is anyone is wrestling who has accomplished more than he has. He won the World title on nine different occasions, without being a "Hulk."  I could have gone that route. In fact I think I could have been bigger than Hogan. But I didn't feel that was the correct route to take for wrestling. Gagne has always been my idol. I wanted to wrestle the way he did - and win the World title like he did."  Zenk's first meeting with Gagne came as a complete surprise. They met during a meeting Zenk had with promoter Karbo. "He just walked into Mr. Karbo's ofice, and I was in shock. It was the first time I had ever seen him with streetclothes on. It was like seeing a movie star or something like that. I was dumbfounded. And this was only a couple of years ago. It wasn't like I was a kid."

With additional help from Brad Rheingans, Zenk was ready for his first pro match in only three months time. He did not win his first pro match but he has not found every match subsequent to that one as easy.  " I'll tell you, so far the toughest match I've been in has been against the Road Warriors, " he admitted.  "Curt Hennig and I took them on one night, and I'll never forget the beating we took. They are absolutely awesome. All those terrible things you hear about them are true. I came out of the ring with more bruises and bumps than in any other match."
 
 

"The trouble with me wrestling the Warriors is that I have a lot of trouble getting aggressive. I've always learned to follow the rules in any sport I've participated in, be it football or baseball or wrestling. When you wrestle a guy like Jimmy Garvin, who's so good at hiding the illegal tactics from the referee, you really get hurt if you can't fight back. One thing I have to learn is that in the pros, you have to bend the rules to win sometimes. Even Verne said that to me, and he was the greatest scientific wrestler of all time."
 

The one point most of the AWA fans have noted is Zenk's physical similarities to current World champion Rick Martel. "The first time someone said that to me I thought to myself, I don't look like Rick Martel, not at all. But I sat down with a wrestling magazine and looked at it and me in the mirror at the same time. We do both have the same haircut, we both keep ourselves in good shape, and we both smile a lot. I guess we both have a lot to smile about. I'll tell ya, if I had the World champion belt around my waist, I'd be smiling in my sleep."

The way his career is going, Tom Zenk might be smiling in his sleep real soon.