Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (24 page)

If a guy puts his hands on you that’s one thing — but if you “think” he’s looking at you in a certain way — come on, think twice — give us the benefit of the doubt.

• • •

My experience at the magazine was invaluable. Not only did I learn a lifetime’s worth about the wrestling/sports-entertainment business, but I also learned how to write. Some months I would literally write the entire magazine myself. It was all about discipline. I knew every day what I had to do, and I did it. But at the same time, once I had conquered it, I quickly grew bored with it. I wanted to do more for the company — especially since it was foundering badly. I had so much more to give, but I just couldn’t crack that starting line-up.

Yeah, I was given more and more to do. But what I was given to do wasn’t going to have an impact on the big picture. Man, it was so frustrating — I knew I could do a better job than the people creating the product. But at the time I just went with the flow.

One of the first real breakout opportunities I received was when Vince asked me to start writing some of the promos the boys would cut to help sell tickets for upcoming house shows (untelevised wrestling events). I more or less became the voice of many wwf superstars, from the Smoking Gunns, to Bret Hart, to Kevin Nash.

Some of the guys used my stuff, others didn’t, but it was a great learning process. From there, under the tutelage of the great Jack Lanza, a former wwf superstar, I began to produce the boys as well. I can remember spending hour upon hour helping Sean Waltman, a.k.a.

X-Pac, with his promos. Later, Sean would finally hit his stride. But in those early days?
Ouch!

During that time I grew very close to Lanza. I was a sponge around 167

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

him — I wanted to learn everything from Jack. The guy had been a legend in his day, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to work under him. As time went on, I would begin to tell Jack about my frustration in the company. I’d tell him how I had so much more to offer than Vince could ever realize. Jack used to tell me every week, “Be patient, and just keep doing what you’re doing.” Man, I loved the guy; we grew extremely close. So close, in fact, that years later, when I flew down to Atlanta to interview with wcw, I called Jack from my hotel room to let him know what I was doing. Under circumstances we will get into later, Jack knew I was unhappy, and he told me I had to do what was right for me. Now here’s the sickening part of the wrestling business, the part that I loathe — the reason I am writing this book from the back of my own store and no longer a part of an industry that is very hard to get out of my blood. To make a long story short, I took the job with wcw and I called Jack to thank him for everything.

I got his voice mail, so I punched in my phone number and left it.

About 15 minutes later, Jack called back and Amy answered the phone.

“This is Jack Lanza, did somebody page me from that number?” Jack said.

Amy was pleasant to Jack because she knew how I always ranted and raved about him.

Amy said, “Hi Jack, this is Amy Russo.” Then Jack Lanza hung up the phone. Now obviously I was thinking Jack was probably on his cell phone, or maybe in a car with a bunch of guys so he couldn’t talk to me at the time. So a few days later, I call his house. I explained to his wife what had happened and I said to her, “I just hope Jack isn’t not taking my calls because I’m with wcw now.”

“Oh, no, Jack isn’t like that,” Jack’s wife said.

I never heard from Jack Lanza again.

That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what’s tough about the business. There are no friends — only people that butt up against you when you’re somebody. Some may say that maybe Jack was showing his loyalty to Vince by not talking to me, but I question that. Jack didn’t seem to be worried about loyalty when he told me to go for the 168

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Forgiven

job at wcw. It’s just cold. You never know who your friends or your enemies are. You learn to trust no one, and that’s unfortunate. It took me several years to really see things for what they were, because I wanted to believe that this was the chocolate factory, and Vince was Willy Wonka. But it wasn’t, and neither was he.

And yeah, you can say whatever you want about Vince Russo, but after I rose to a position of power in the wwf, the first thing I did was bring back Louie. You know — it’s that Italian thing.

169

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Chapter 32

“YOU WILL NEVER

FORGET THE NAME . . . GOLDUST”

I’ve said that I was going to expose everything and everybody. Cleanse the soul. Nothing is off-limits — not even me. I’m a hypochondriac.

My whole life I’ve had this fear of dying — it’s just morbid. I think it started when I was about six. I remember discovering a blood blister on the bottom of my foot. At the time, I didn’t know what a blood blister was — I’d never seen one before. However, we did have little grayish-blue stones that surrounded the outside of our four-foot pool.

So in my mind, one of those stones had lodged itself into the sole of my foot. I was too petrified to tell anybody about this — I thought I was a goner. At six years old, I actually calculated the years in my head as to how long it would take that little, grayish-blue pebble to pass through my entire body until it reached my brain and killed me.

I swear to you, that’s a true story.

Then in my teen years, after I’d learned about blood blisters, I had to come up with something else I was afraid was going to take my life.

This time the deadly killer was the brain tumor. Again, I swear to you, 170

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Forgiven

every week I thought I had one. One time, I even went as far as to call my parents — who were at a wedding — and make them come home because this was the one that was going to kill me. I later discovered I had the flu.

I’ve just always had this fear of dying . . . I don’t know why. After the brain tumors, I went through that bad stretch after getting married. Man, I didn’t know what disease I had, but it was
surely
the end.

Then came the wrestling business. Every week I was on the verge of a heart attack — I just knew it. God, how awful would it be to die on the road . . . my poor wife and kids. That’s my greatest fear today, missing them. What would I do if I didn’t see them every day? Then the funniest thing happened. Once I was out of the business, no more chest pains. I guess it was called S-T-R-E-S-S!

Once I hit my 40s? Prostate cancer, colon cancer. Now I’m back to the heart thing. Oh, I’ve been having some minor aches and pains —

you know pains in my left arm, can’t catch my breath, palpitations, that kind of thing. But now what’s even worse is that I have to worry about something happening to a member of my immediate family.

That’s
four
more people to worry about. That’s the whole reason I started talking about this in the first place. . . .

Three days ago, my daughter Annie discovered a bump on her head. So, for the past three days I’m feeling this bump. I’m feeling both sides of her head — bump on one side, no bump on the other.

“Annie, did you hit your head playing?”

“No, Daddy, I don’t remember hitting my head.” Panic sets in. Brain tumor again — I diagnosed it right away. I was sick for three days because we couldn’t get Annie into the doctor right away — she’d discovered the bump over the weekend. I’m looking brain tumors up on the internet. I’m feeling her head while she’s sleeping. I’m a
wreck!
Last night, I took my sons to see the Nets and left after only three quarters because I was worried sick about my daughter.

Today we find out Annie has cat scratch fever, which until now I thought was just a Ted Nugent song. The tumor turned out to be a swollen lymph node.

171

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been like this. I can never enjoy the moment because I’m always worried about tomorrow. Even my success in the wwf. . . . You think I ever enjoyed it? I didn’t — I was always worried about the “unknown.” One day there will be a logical explanation to all this, but for now . . . there goes my chest again.

The logical explanation is simple — if I died back then, I knew I was going straight to hell. At the time I wrote the above passage, I hadn’t acknowledged God in my life. Sure, I would have told you that I believed in God — but I wasn’t living it. Today, I fully understand. It’s not enough to believe, you have to
live it.
Your entire existence has to be about him.

Everything you do and everything you say is all geared towards glorifying him. Yeah, it’s hard to live your life that way, but in the end, you’ll be the one living in eternal peace.

Tonight, if I went to sleep and never woke up I’d know that I was going straight to heaven to be with God. I’d know that I would be loved and protected as I waited patiently for my loved ones to join me. I know that I would be side by side, working hand, in hand with the one who matters most — Jesus Christ.

• • •

I was with Kevin Dunn over at the television studio when Vince conferenced us in on a call. Vince told us he had an idea for Dustin Rhodes, a new character named Goldust. Vince described Goldust as an eccentric individual straight out of Hollywood. Goldust would recite lines from movies, as well as put every situation and opponent into a Tinseltown context. Vince then broke into this deep, somewhat effeminate voice, a voice he wanted Dustin to master. When Vince hung up, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what he wanted, but I went back to my computer and started writing for Dustin — I mean Goldust. I bought a few books with famous movie quotations and tried to fit them with the various wwf superstars who would be foes of Goldust. Immediately I came up with the phrase, “You will never forget the name . . . Goldust.”

172

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Forgiven

In the first vignettes promoting the arrival of the new character, you never saw what Goldust looked like, only a graphic that read,

“Coming soon to the wwf . . . Goldust.” So the anticipation was built up for weeks. Then finally, the curtain parted and out he came, literally. In perhaps one of the most glamorous entrances in the history of the business, Goldust graced the runway in a gold sequined robe trimmed with glorious golden feathers. His long platinum-blond wig caressed his golden painted face as the fans immediately began the infamous chant of “Faggot, Faggot!” Hearing this — we just went with it, not blatantly, but through innuendo. The promos I wrote for Dustin were some of the best work I’d ever done. If you listened, you would have found them hysterical. Just imagine what he said when Jake “the Snake” Roberts was his opponent. . . . In no time, Dustin became the character — he
was
Goldust. His wife Terri was added as his valet, Marlena, and as Jim Cornette would say, we had “the hottest heel in the territory!”

Goldust was on fire. Everybody was talking about him — not just the fans, but also mainstream media. He became so popular, I even had the opportunity to write and produce a skit between Goldust and Conan O’Brien on
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
. Predictably, Vince started to get a lot of public flak over the character, so he came up with the notion that Goldust wasn’t in fact gay, but simply playing on the homophobic fears of others. A great concept at the time — and it made all the sense in the world. There is no doubt people weren’t forgetting the name “Goldust.” Man, it was magic. I wrote it, Dustin played it, and it was the hottest thing on wwf programming. No question this character was ahead of his time. At that point nobody knew what was around the corner. Nobody realized that in about a year wrestling would be out — and sports entertainment would be in.

Not to be arrogant — but I knew. Goldust was the kind of heel the fans wanted, the first heel of the 21st century. It wasn’t the Goon, it wasn’t T.L. Hopper, it was Goldust. So what did Vince do with it? He killed it . . . stabbed it right through the heart. Man, I could feel Goldust’s pain. Why would you want to kill the hottest thing you had 173

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

going? The outside pressure was just too great — especially in the overseas markets. The controversy over “Was he . . . or wasn’t he” just became too much. There was nothing I could do, there was nothing Dustin could do — the character was put to rest.

I’ve got two Goldust stories that I’ve got to get in. Two stories you’ve never heard before and may not believe even after I tell you.

But trust me, they happened.

At the height of Dustin’s run as Goldust, an entertainment photographer who did some freelance work for the magazine pulled a few strings and got us passes to work the red carpet area of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion the day before the Academy Awards. Now understand this — we had no business being there, but the camera clicker knew some people who turned the other way upon our arrival.

On the day we showed up it was nothing short of a mad house —

hundreds of people working frantically to set up for the Tinseltown glam fest. Along with Marlena, Goldust and I sat in the back of a limo and picked our spots. When any area became clear, we would dash out of the car, rearrange a few things, and roll camera. In an hour’s time, we had about eight vignettes in the can, but were still looking for that one with the 20-something-foot Oscar statue that stands at the door where the stars enter the pavilion. It was beginning to get dark — we had to get the shot. Seeing a crack in security, Marlena, Goldust and I headed to the area where the Big Oscar lay ever so gently on the grass. With no time to spare, I picked the Oscar up and stood it erect. Goldust then got in position and we rolled camera as he said a few words. Once all the words were out of his mouth, we turned around and headed for the limo. Maybe it was a message from God, or the devil, but as soon as we turned to leave, a strong gust of wind came — knocking the huge Oscar on its gold butt,
Ba-boom!