Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (13 page)

“Put your hands up over your head, you crazy son of a bitch!”

I looked up from the passenger seat to see a scowling Mountie with his gun drawn! I slowly put my hands up, then told the officer a slightly embellished story about how my dad had finally let Smith be in charge of some shows and how he had everything riding on getting André on that plane. Then Smith came out, followed by one very angry giant. Smith simply held his hands out to be cuffed.

“On account of what your brother just told me, I’m going to let you off, but so help me God, if I ever

. . .”

André’s stare burned straight through Smith, and me too, and he never forgave my dad for letting Smith take him to the airport that day.

Meanwhile, the NWA Championship ended up being fought on a high-school wrestling mat in Butte, Montana, that night because the ring never showed up. It was Smith’s job to hitch the ring trailer to the van before it left. He forgot. Few champions would’ve worked without a ring, but Harley didn’t complain, he had that much regard for Stu.

After only a few weeks, the big-name attractions of the Stampede card were just a memory, and a good portion of the crew were making plans to try their luck working in other territories. Big Jim Neidhart was playing football again and had been signed by the Oakland Raiders.

At the A4 Club in Saskatoon, a slightly more upscale night spot a few blocks from the Baldwin Hotel, where we usually stayed, I sat down to some beers with Jake, Wayne and a new kid by the name of Terry Sawyer. He was an affable Virginian, a reputable amateur, compactly built, with short arms and legs and neatly trimmed blond hair. He’d done a tour as a medic at the close of the Vietnam War, and when he told me he’d held soldiers in his arms and watched them die, I believed him.

Sometimes he’d just stare out the van window into the black night, clearly reliving some hell he couldn’t forget.

A scrawny kid approached Jake. “North American Champion, my ass! You don’t look so tough to me!

I got a hundred bucks says I can take you right now!”

This kind of thing happened to wrestlers all the time, and it was seen as disgracing the territory for the champion to get his ass whipped by anybody, no matter what the excuse. If the situation was unwinnable, a wrestler needed to bluff or call for backup. Jake never pretended to be a tough guy, but we all thought he could make quick work of this kid. Soon enough the kid was following Jake outside to have it out. Wayne, Terry and I didn’t bother to get up. “Be over before we get out the door,” I said.

Then curiosity got the best of us. We found them in an alley, where our North American Champion was in the process of begging off. Terry grabbed the kid and head-butted him square in the nose, knocking him out cold!

“It’s called protectin’ the business, Jake!” he said.

After blowing hot and cold for a while, I was now seeing Julie, the girl from Regina, regularly. But because we didn’t often stay over there, I could only get together with her at the building while the show was going on. We’d find some quiet place out back. She was nineteen and never wore makeup, and her coloring was spectacular: shaded brown Romanian eyelids from her dad’s side and high Assiniboine cheekbones from her mother’s side. She blushed like those toy Indian dolls that you see for sale at the airport.

Julie also started bringing her sixteen-year-old sister, Michelle, to the matches. Michelle was tall and thin with those same striking eyes and pouting curl to her lip. The only family members Julie felt really close to were Michelle and Mark, their seventeen-year-old brother. Julie told me that her mother, Marge, had been divorced twice and that their house was filled with lots of half-sisters and half-brothers. She wanted to get out of Regina and maybe look for work in Calgary. One night that summer I told her she was welcome to stay with me if she came, and then Wayne called out, “Bret, you’re up.” Julie looked like a sad little girl as I got up to leave her.

Tom had booked himself to work a tour for International Wrestling, which was the number-three wrestling office in Japan. Antonio Inoki’s New Japan was number two, and the number-one company was All Japan, run by Giant Baba. At the time, he had no way of knowing that Stu was working with New Japan to put together a jointly promoted card to take place in Calgary on August 17, 1979, which was to be broadcast in Japan as a TV special. Tatsumi Fujinami was New Japan’s WWF World Junior Heavyweight Champion (the WWWF had just dropped a “W” for cosmetic reasons), and the plan was for Dynamite to work with him. Now that Tom had booked himself with rival promoters, that couldn’t happen. Hito was pushing hard for me to get the big match with Fujinami instead, and I appreciated it. It would open doors for me, and I was confident I could rise to the occasion.

I had this weird dream in black and white. I was wrestling Dynamite at Madison Square Garden. For some reason the roof had caved in. It was pouring down rain, lightning flashed, thunder clapped. The crowd stood drenched, pressed in close, cheering loudly, nobody leaving. Tom and I were dripping with sweat, rain and black trickles of blood. We leaned on each other to hold ourselves up. I threw a hard lifter, and Tom staggered, almost falling. He spun back and slammed one right back into me.

The ring had long since collapsed. Ring posts jutted out at odd angles, with the ropes hanging loose.

This fight was unstoppable.

A call from Ross jolted me from my sleep. Much to my disappointment, he told me New Japan bought out Tom’s International contract, and they wanted Tom to wrestle Fujinami at the show in Calgary. All I could do was hope something else would open up for me.

Tom had a terrific match with Fujinami. Mr. Shimma, a small, Jiminy Cricket–looking guy who was the New Japan moneyman, immediately signed him for a tour of Japan starting in September. The money was great, triple what he was earning with us, and Tom would finally get the big break he deserved. Despite his size, The Dynamite Kid was being touted as the next big sensation in wrestling.

I was both proud and envious; what I needed now was an opportunity to prove what I could do outside of my dad’s territory.

Then Stu came back from the annual NWA convention, which was attended by promoters from all over the world, with the news that Jim Barnett, out of Atlanta, wanted me to work down there. Stu told him I was keen, but weeks went by with no word, so I began to lose hope that I’d be going anywhere.

Heading into September, Hito and Sakurada got booked to work in Florida. There was no other established tag team for them to drop the straps to before they left, so Keith and I suddenly found ourselves with the belts again. At the same time I was involved in a heated singles feud with Terry Sawyer over the British Commonwealth Junior Heavyweight title. Terry had been a good babyface, but he surprised everyone, especially himself, by being even better as a heel. The storyline was that I accidentally cost him his hair in a match he had with Dynamite—the gimmick of that match being that the loser gets shaved bald—and he turned on me with a vengeance.

Finally Stu heard from Barnett and told me that I was set to start in Atlanta in October. He also put in a call to Peter Maivia, the promoter in Hawaii, and just like that I was booked for a one-week working vacation before Atlanta—mostly to work on my tan.

But I needed a dramatic exit from my dad’s territory; the fans always needed an explanation to cover the wrestlers’ comings and goings. So we cooked up the idea that I would drop the British Commonwealth Junior Heavyweight belt to Terry Sawyer in a “loser leaves town” match.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, Julie called. She and Michelle had hitchhiked in from Regina and were at a pay phone by a motel at the edge of town. I was grateful that Jake The Snake had moved out and I had room. On the way over to pick them up, it hit me that I couldn’t smarten Julie up as to what was about to happen in the ring because I didn’t know what she might tell people. I was so old school, I couldn’t bring myself to explain to anyone not inside the business what was going on. The code among pro wrestlers at the time was to kayfabe, which is wrestling jargon for babyfaces and heels not being seen together in public and doing whatever it takes to perpetuate the idea that wrestling is real. It was thought that if the fans knew the matches were a work, it would destroy the business, along with the livelihood of everyone in it.

So when Julie and Michelle climbed into my shitbox gray Caddy, I told Julie that I was about to fight a

“loser leaves town” match the next day. I was sure to win, I said, “But if I do lose, somehow, then I might have to leave town for a while.” The look on my face said, I wish I could tell you everything.

But I kept my mouth shut. She didn’t say a whole lot after that, and she and her sister crashed on my couch like stray kittens.

The following night, I was lying on my belly on the mat at the pavilion with a deep cut above my eyebrow and drops of blood splashing on the canvas. Fans were standing and shouting, some of them telling me to stay down and others urging me to get up. I was thrilled about getting out of town, but I had no idea what lay ahead for me: It was going to be my first time away from home all by myself. On the other hand, I felt terrible leaving Julie, especially leaving her in the dark. The referee knelt beside me and asked, “Is it time?” I looked out at rows of loyal Calgary fans, many of whom I’d known since I was small. “Yeah, stop the match, Sandy. It’s time.”

6

NOT A BIG ENOUGH NAME

WHEN I LANDED IN HONOLULU, the airline had lost my luggage. I had managed to lose my plane ticket to Atlanta too and had to spend the cash I had to buy a new one. I wasn’t about to call my dad and ask him to wire me money; I prided myself on being a son my parents didn’t have to worry about. But I did have the phone number of a genuine Samoan prince in my pocket, and I called him from the first pay phone I saw. No answer. Now what? I hung up the phone only to turn and find Prince Sui standing there smiling at me like an answered prayer.

Dean had befriended Sui on one of his many mysterious trips to Hawaii, and then Sui had come up to Calgary to break into the business. He was easily big and muscular enough to become a wrestler, but it turned out he was happier being around the business than in it. In a Hawaiian shirt and a brand-new cherryred El Camino, Sui reminded me of a happy Neanderthal. As soon as we pulled away from the curb, he handed me a joint. “Light this up, brudda, you’re safe with me.” I didn’t want to offend him . . .

When we got to his place, Sui loaned me shorts, flip-flops and a Clark Hatch muscle shirt. Thanks to the Don Ho buffet and training every day, I got up over two hundred pounds for the first time ever.

At the end of a week by the blue Pacific, I was relaxed and carefree, skin bronzed and hair wild. On the way to my match, Sui made me promise to have a good one because his entire family and all his friends would be there. He had promised them I was tough, and I sure as hell better be.

In the dressing room I met the legendary Samoan High Chief Peter Maivia, who ran the territory with his wife, Leah. Their son-in-law, Rocky Johnson, was one of my favorite wrestlers when I was a kid.

Rocky’s young son, Dwayne, hung around just outside the dressing room. Dwayne was destined, twenty years later, to become The Rock, one of the biggest stars in the history of wrestling.

Peter wanted a twenty-minute draw and felt awkward asking me whether I’d mind working heel, but I thought it was a great opportunity. My partner was Kurt Von Steiger, another wrestler I had watched when I was growing up, who was still doing his Nazi gimmick. We were up against Buck Zumhoff and Greg Gagne, son of Verne Gagne. Greg was a decent worker, although—just as they did with me—people said that he got ahead because he was a promoter’s son. I set a blistering pace, doing most of the work, much to the relief of Von Steiger. In front of a loud and easy crowd, I discovered how much fun it is to play the part of a hotheaded jerk, and I made the babyfaces work even harder to keep up with me. Back in the dressing room, between gasps for breath, Greg told me I needed to slow down. I went off to shower, smiling.

As I was lathering up, I was startled by Ripper Collins, a squat, pigfaced wrestler with slicked-back white hair. I hoped he was just admiring my tan, but he asked me straight out if I was gay. He shuffled off after I bluntly told him I wasn’t. I remembered a sordid incident when he worked Stu’s territory a few years back. Halfway through a show in Fort McMurray, he left the building to get gas for Stu’s van and picked up a teenaged hitch-hiker whom Ripper allegedly sexually molested. The boy managed to fight him off and get away. As Stu described it, “Ripper damn near bit the poor kid’s prick off.” Ripper was arrested but somehow managed to persuade his naive landlady to bail him out, explaining that it was all a dreadful mistake. She used her house to post his bail bond, but he skipped over the border and was gone by morning. The poor lady lost her house. Ripper died of AIDS

in 1991.

Judging by the grin on Sui’s face when I came out of the dressing room after the match, he was pleased with how I’d done. I left Hawaii the next day. I often wonder what became of Sui—I have never seen him again. Mahalo, brudda.

I walked into the dressing room in Atlanta on October 5, ready to make my mark. Abdullah The Butcher turned in his chair and shot me a look. “I remember you.”

As I shook his heavily jeweled hand, I asked, “Remember the T-shirt I silk-screened for you in art class? Stu let me give it to you as a present, out behind the dressing rooms back in Calgary.”

“That was you?”

What I didn’t tell him was that when I was twelve years old I was so terrified of him that I couldn’t look him in the eye. Abdullah was heavier and older now, but back in 1970 he had moved like a three-hundred-pound cat, flying through the air to deliver an elbow drop that looked like it would kill you. Not long after I’d given Abdullah the T-shirt, I’d sat with my friend Wilk next to the timekeeper watching this giant monster sink his teeth into my dad’s bloody head. I’d kicked him as hard as I could, leaving the imprint of my running shoe on the seat of his white karate pants. He had turned his bald, scarred head, rolled his eyes right at me—and had let me live. Wilk just stared at me, horrified.