HINTON, Okla. — Marcus Dupree laces up his size 13 crimson boots. They shimmer beneath spotlights and bare the "OU" emblem for the University of Oklahoma, where the former football prodigy captivated the nation during the early 1980s. The footwear completes his ensemble, resplendent with a sleeveless OU jersey swaddling his 6-2, 285-pound frame and athletic tape wrapped around his wrists.

At 52, Dupree is slower and heftier than the strapping teenager who inspired comparisons with the dominant running backs in history. But he has found a way to attract paying spectators with his mystique and entertain them with some action. This flamboyant getup helps him assume a character as fantastical as the transcendent player he used to be.

Dupree fastens the second bootlace. Now he is ready to wrestle.

Dupree was the most courted high school running back ever, the most promising star for two college seasons and the most curtailed pro, after a knee injury turned his awesome potential into an epic tragedy. He spent decades in comfortable obscurity, before the 2010 documentary "The Best That Never Was" revived his celebrity.

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Renewed interest created opportunities for Dupree as of late, but between the playing career that birthed his legend and the film that resurrected it, he hustled to string together a livelihood.

He maintains the same ethic these days, and of the several gigs he has pursued, wrestling throughout the Mid-South has endured. He gave it a try full-time in the mid-1990s and returned to the ring once or twice a year since then.

He performed this month at the Sugar Creek Casino, a squat and smoky establishment off Route 66, an hour west of Oklahoma City. A gas station, two fast-food chains and two mostly vacant inns nearby are the predominant businesses for miles. The area felt especially desolate that weekend, when weather reports of icy roads deterred prospective spectators from driving out. General admission cost $14. About 50 people attended.

Wrestling sells, just not so easily in a place like Hinton. On Sunday, World Wrestling Entertainment likely will stuff the Alamodome in San Antonio with more than 60,000 fans for the Royal Rumble.

Dupree does not make much money from wrestling events anyway. He gets in the ring to live out a childhood dream.

"I just like to make people happy," he said. "We do the wrestling events to see kids cheer and see kids' faces smile to it, like I did when I was younger."

In the 1970s and '80s, wrestling enthralled the Mid-South, where there were few professional sports teams. Saturday nights belonged to men like Tommy Rich and Junkyard Dog, whom Dupree idolized. A neighbor once got so invested in a match while watching it with Dupree, who was a teenager at the time, that the man brandished a gun and shot out the television.

"He wasn't crazy," Dupree said. "He was just a guy who liked wrestling."

The notion of Dupree wrestling before a small crowd in the middle of nowhere can be misleading. He is not scraping by, contrary to his downtrodden depiction in the documentary as a truck driver — another one of his numerous former jobs — during the BP oil spill cleanup.

He enjoys mixing wrestling into an invigorating entrepreneurial life he has developed. He leveraged exposure from the documentary to make diverse business connections, including a lucrative foray into oil and gas. He started Dupree Solutions in 2012 to patent and sell filters that reduce airborne silica dust kicked up by fracking and protect drillers from silicosis, an incurable respiratory disease.

He raises show horses on 15 acres in southern Louisiana but plans to move to a bigger property to carve out more profitable riding trails. He runs MVP Recruiting & Consulting to help high school players and their parents garner scholarship offers from Division II, Division III and NAIA schools. In Mississippi, along with lobbyist Chip Reno and state Rep. Scott Bounds, Dupree persuaded Gov. Phil Bryant to commission a trail for historic local athletes the way the state has for blues musicians. He invested in a pharmaceutical company developing migraine medication called "Migrainade." He acted in "1 Mile to You," a movie that comes out this year. He is working on an autobiography and wants to start a sports podcast.

His Sugar Creek booking followed days of paid appearances at autograph signings and booster parties in New Orleans, where OU was to play in the Sugar Bowl. Interview requests that week had to go through his publicist, Kim Funchess, who also happens to be his girlfriend.

Despite having plenty going on, Dupree, a native of Philadelphia, Miss., considers every gig valuable.

"That's how I was raised," he said. "No matter what you do, you can't really be satisfied. In a blink of an eye, things can just disappear. Never get comfortable.

"I got 11 grandkids."

Inside an event center adjacent to the casino that usually hosts country music acts, Crowbar Championship Wrasslin' constructed a ring for 18 wrestlers on the card.

Gregg Swab, the CCW promoter, billed Dupree as the headliner. At least one man was starstruck.

"I saw you play and I know what you did," John Youngbull, a table games manager at Sugar Creek, told Dupree before the show.

He beamed after Dupree signed a wrestling poster and posed with him for a photograph.

Youngbull grew up 60 miles farther west in Elk City. He was disappointed that fans would not fill the event center for Dupree.

"I would have thought it would be packed full because he's a phenomenon," Youngbull said of Dupree's football legacy. "Now, he's wrestling."

More often Dupree is met with effusive attention when he gets hired for an appearance in Oklahoma. Even the dead have an apparent interest.

Dupree said that multiple times he has been requested at grave sites. He once signed a patch of artificial turf placed before a tombstone during football season.

"It's awesome," Dupree said. "I love college football."

Youngbull turned out to be the most outspoken Dupree fan at Sugar Creek. The far majority of spectators did not realize Dupree was on the card until they arrived.

"I was shocked to see him," said Sam Walley, a fracker raised in Sandhill, Miss. "He's still a legend in college football."

Walley, who wore overalls and accompanied a co-worker and his four kids, appreciated that Dupree would perform in Hinton.

"He's working," Walley said. "I'm in the oil field. It's up and down, and up and down. ... In that documentary, he was driving a truck."

Look past the pageantry and overacting that is easy to mock and wrestling will reveal an admirable, sometimes backbreaking work ethic. Literally.

David Haskins trained Dupree in Memphis when he ventured into wrestling in 1995. Haskins performed last year at age 53. He cracked his vertebrae, which pinched his spinal cord and numbed his fingertips.

Haskins said Dupree would have vaulted the local territory to star in Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation, but the grueling travel — an eight-cities-in-seven-days tour that looped 2,000 miles through Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana — pushed him out.

"They would have done anything to have a black star," Haskins said. "He would have been an unbelievable draw."

Another "woulda been," "shoulda been" moment for Dupree.

Dabbling in wrestling has worked out fine for him. He has approached it like a passion rather than have lofty expectations, the way he did in football.

Marcus Dupree always is a "baby face," wrestling parlance for the good guy. He prefers making a heel turn as the Crypt Keeper, a villainous alter ego he created. The Crypt Keeper does not speak, stares out with shrunken pupils (thanks to spooky contact lenses), envelopes in a black robe and wears a black luchador mask that conceals his identity.

Unrecognized as the Crypt Keeper, Dupree can pretend to be somebody else for a change, while still rousing a crowd. The other men on the card seek the same rush. None makes his living in the ring.

"On the weekends I do this," said Sam Moore, a truck driver for J.C. Penney who weighs nearly 500 pounds. In his match, he easily dispatched Largus, a medieval fighter with an animal pelt who launched himself into the unmovable Moore.

Chris Stevens operates 45 health clubs around Oklahoma. He wrestled against Brandon Groom, whose gimmick, naturally, is dressing like a groomsman and proposing to women. Stevens incorporated his girlfriend, with whom he shared an uncomfortably long kiss backstage next to Dupree, who busied himself on his phone. Stevens stationed her at ringside, scantily clad in tight leather to accentuate her physique and able to distract Groom so Stevens could steal a win.

Most of the wrestlers expected to make $100 from the event, but at intermission they received envelopes that felt light. The casino imposed a $25 fee per performer.

The wrestlers remained in good spirits despite the skim. Moore said he usually makes $40.

Dupree, as a special guest, made at least four figures for his work. He planned to earn every dollar, no matter the modest interest in his fame or the unimpressive crowd size.

He talked strategy backstage with Jamie Holley, his adversary for the evening, who looked like a 19th century strongman with his twirled moustache and singlet.

Their bout started off with a slipup. Just before Dupree parted the curtain and marched out to the OU fight song, the announcer loudly introduced him as "Marcus Allen," a running back for Southern California who played in the NFL for 16 years and made the Hall of Fame.

Holley righted the situation once he entered the ring, with his unscrupulous sidekick, a man dressed like a sheikh, at ringside. Holley insulted the OU fans in the crowd and then blasphemed their icon.

"You were washed up then and you're washed up now," he spewed at Dupree, inciting boos. "The best that never was? You never were!"

After some grappling to draw out a slow start, Dupree tossed Holley halfway across the ring.

Then Holley gained control. It was at this point Dupree really sold his act like a savvy businessman and a committed wrestler. He planted his sweaty cheek into the mat with force. He gasped for air when Holley distracted the referee so that his henchman could choke Dupree with the threads of his scarf.

Dupree grimaced when Holley wrenched his left knee, the one that faltered and ruined his football future at 21.

Dupree treated the 50 people watching from foldout chairs like they were 50,000 filling out an arena.

Eventually, Dupree capitalized on an opening. Holley leapt cross-body at Dupree's chest and Dupree caught him in midair, in position to deliver a high-arching body slam that rattled the ring.

Dupree had offered a response earlier for anyone who might call wrestling fake: "Get in the ring. Let me body slam you a couple times."

Dupree pinned Holley for a three count, and afterward the announcer correctly said his name as the victor. When Dupree finished high-fiving fans over the railings, he reinforced his OU allegiance by starting chants of "Boomer! Sooner!" and "Texas! Sucks!"

Swab, the promoter, took a loss on the night, but he was pleased with Dupree.

"The people that did come, that's what they came to see," he said. "You go to a movie because Brad Pitt's in it. They got Marcus Dupree."

Dupree stuck around after the event longer than any wrestler. He posed for every photograph request out of good nature. He pursued new business opportunities out of shrewd habit. He nodded at an older man in a cowboy hat.

"That's a friend of mine," Dupree said. "He sold his company for $13 million. I got a lot of oil friends."

He exchanged cards with Kyle Eastwood, 31, the mayor of Anadarko, a city 40 minutes south of Hinton, and whose law firm sponsored the event.

"He's got some big things going on in Anadarko," Dupree said.

A wrestler with tattoos blanketing his body named Red Dogg proposed Dupree wrestle him in Mississippi.

"We'll probably do a big show down there when I slow down," Dupree said.

Not that that will happen any time soon. He still is hustling.