Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (30 page)

My mom was busy shooing five cats away from spraying on her Christmas tree. She loved putting every strand of real silver tinsel in its perfect place. She was happier than I ever remembered her that Christmas. She was surrounded by ten grandchildren, most of them under two. Eleven, if you count Tom and Michelle’s Bronwyne, which my mom always did. Even more grandkids would soon be on the way, with Alison, Georgia and Diana all pregnant. Maria was pregnant too, and Smith had his hands full: His Puerto Rican beauty was on the edge of a breakdown, possibly because being married to Smith hadn’t been all she’d hoped for. Through the window, I could see Dean chipping ice off the front porch steps. He was living at home too and also got a little bit crazier every year.

Then Georgia and Alison came through the swinging doors from the kitchen, each carrying a huge roast turkey. I picked Jade up and let her pull the chain on the dinner bell, and Keith rounded up all the stragglers to come eat. He and Leslie had been smiling all day because they’d just won $100,000

in the lottery. Wayne said grace and thanked God for Keith’s good fortune.

I looked over at my mom. For her, the greatest Christmas present was that she and Stu were finally out of the business, but in my dad’s eyes I saw an emptiness that told a different story.

When Julie saw my booking sheets that New Year’s Eve, her face drained of color. I wanted to make as much money as I could while I could, and I’d asked George Scott to book me steady. As of the next morning, I would be gone for fifty-five days, although I’d pass through Calgary twice on the tour. She barely spoke to me for the rest of the night. That was our pattern: What little time I had at home was ruined by her dread of when I’d be gone again. I finished packing my bags and rolled into our crowded bed, where Jade sweetly slept, sprawled out next to Julie like a tiny star. Baby Dallas was asleep in the crib.

As I lay there I couldn’t help but think, If you won’t hold me, I’ll find someone else who will. Just then, Julie wrapped her arms around me and whispered softly in my ear, “I’m sorry.”

“I know. Me too.”

What else was there to say?

17

“TURN US HEEL AND CALL US THE HART FOUNDATION”

AN EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD RED-HEADED ITALIAN KID named Carlo gave me a ride from the airport in Toronto to Hamilton, Ontario, on my first day of the new tour. He was the last and only fan of Buddy The Heartthrob Hart.

As soon as I arrived at the Hamilton Civic Centre an irate George Scott confronted me. “Your two buddies are going to be damn sorry they did that!” New Japan had called Vince, who’d called Stu, expecting him to order Tom and Davey to renege on their new arrangement. But they weren’t about to give up their lucrative deal for Stu, which made him look like a toothless old hound. “Well, your February tour to Japan is canceled!” George barked. “And I’m hearing a lot of crap about your brother Bruce too. What’s he going to do, run against your dad?”

I told George once again that I knew nothing.

A few minutes later in the dressing room, I stood with Don The Spoiler Jardin, his lips pursed and arms crossed, as we set up our angle with George and Chief. That night on TV, as the referee backed me away, The Spoiler pretended to load a chunk of steel into his mask. I came at him, he head-butted me, then pinned me, one . . . two . . . three. There was hardly any reaction from the crowd, who’d already sat through three hours of similarly onesided matches, waiting for Hulk Hogan to appear. I cringed knowing that my Stampede fans, pretty much the only fans I had, would now see me as a jobber. It is so important not to be labeled a jobber in the eyes of the fans. It can easily become a stink that is almost impossible to wash off. I just hoped that 1985 would turn out better than it was beginning.

When I got to the building in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on January 10, the boys were already lined up all the way down a long backstage corridor waiting their turn to see Dr. George Zahorian, a urological surgeon and osteopath from Harrisburg who relished his $35-a-night gig as commission doctor because he enjoyed being around the wrestlers. Zahorian was a tall, nerdy professor type, sporting suspenders, a dapper suit, polka-dot bow tie and black-rimmed spectacles. I joined the line and found that the conversation was still buzzing over the latest scandal: On December 28, ABC had sent a film crew over to Madison Square Garden with investigative reporter John Stossel and had run into some literal obstructionism.

In the buildup to that first WrestleMania, the hype soared to the point where it wasn’t unusual to see mainstream media around; their big probing question invariably was, Is it fake? The commentary in these stories was almost always done with sarcasm, in an attempt to portray wrestling as buffoonish melodrama. Maybe it was, but it was also great fun to watch and hard to do, and the media never gave anyone credit for that, preferring to point out that if the outcomes of the matches were predetermined, then somehow we were duping the fans.

When the WWF granted John Stossel backstage access after Christmas, it was to get more hype for WrestleMania. The wrestlers were preparing for their matches and didn’t welcome the intrusion.

The more Stossel pushed his microphone in everyone’s face, the more tense the boys got. Finally, Stossel challenged Dave Schultz, with the cameras rolling. In a nasal whine, he said, “I think this is fake.” Schultz wound up and cuffed him hard, knocking him to the ground, and then chased Stossel down the hall threatening to smack him again. I can’t say it was the right thing for Schultz to do, but I think wrestlers everywhere have always respected Dave for protecting the business. And Stossel found out that wrestling is as real as it is fake.

The story hadn’t aired yet. Perhaps what Stossel should have been uncovering was the lineup to see Dr. Zahorian. Quick Draw came out of Zahorian’s room carrying his own personal pharmacy: vials of steroids and an assortment of small boxes containing Valium, Percocet, Halcion, speed and his much loved Placidyls. He could have used a grocery cart.

When it was my turn, the doctor took my blood pressure and pulse. Then, like everyone else in the line, I handed him some crisp hundred-dollar bills and stocked up on twenty vials of testosterone, twenty Deca-Durabolin and four bottles of gonadotropin—to keep my balls from shrinking—along with several boxes of Halcion so I could sleep and a cache of needles.

We all knew Zahorian was a gouger, but at least he was a real doctor and his drugs were legit, which was better than buying gas from pushers at local gyms.

On January 21, 1985, I set my bag down in the dressing room at Madison Square Garden. I was still being billed as “plus one other match,” but I’d finally made it to the greatest hall of them all! Then out of nowhere, there he was, grinning like an evil spirit—that big rhino, Jim Neidhart. We had one of those backslapping embraces. Reinforcements, finally! It felt as though I’d been all alone in prison and a thug from the old gang had just been sent up. Jim looked the part too, sporting a chiseled flat top and a long, pointy goatee that gave him an odd resemblance to a mountain goat. He was now going by The Anvil, playing off his world-record anvil toss at the Stampede. That first night, he had a ten-minute squash match and went over strong. It looked as though they had plans for Jim, and I was happy for him. Meanwhile, they thought they were doing me a favor by letting me do a twenty-minute broadway with Rene Goulet. Since Rene was basically a jobber, it was a clear sign that I wasn’t going anywhere.

After the show, the boys drank and caroused at the Ramada on 48th and 8th, and I sat at the bar with Cowboy Bob taking it all in. Jim and Adrian Adonis hit it off like two bad dogs that like the same mischief. The place was packed with fans. One of them was Angel, an over-the-hill stripper who, I was told, had been quite striking in the Sammartino days. Her witchy-black hair fell loosely over melonsized tits that oozed out over clothes that once fit. Adorned with cheap costume jewelry and a star tattoo under one eye, she’d talk dirty, but that’s all she did.

At Poughkeepsie TV the next day, I felt like a puppy in a pet store putting on my best face: pick me, pick me. They didn’t even have me work, which meant I wouldn’t get any exposure on TV for another three weeks.

At least with Jim around, I wasn’t alone anymore.

On my first brief stop in Calgary, on January 25, Chief glared at Bruce, whose face kept twisting into a silly smirk. It got to the point where I thought Chief would wipe that smirk right off my brother’s face. “You think this is funny? I don’t get what’s to laugh about, Bruce. Look at that house out there.

There’s nobody here.”

Bruce flushed, and his smile vanished. “It’s not my fault you guys can’t draw up here.”

Chief shook his head and walked away. In truth, the poor attendance was nobody’s fault. It was going to take a while for the WWF to get established in Stampede Wrestling’s old turf.

Near the end of the show that night, Chief approached me with a lady from the wrestling commission. “Tell him what you just told me.”

She said that Bruce and a guy named Peter Rasmussen, the front man with all the money, had got a promoter’s license back in early December and would be running their first Stampede show in February.

Chief shook his head and left me standing there. I was steaming mad, wondering how Bruce could do this to me and especially how he could do it to Stu.

Bruce was nowhere to be found.

I sat next to Jim at a bar in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as he conversed happily with André the Giant about American football. I was drinking my beer, contemplating the six months that had gone by since I’d started with the WWF, amazed that I was somehow still hanging in there.

Just then Jim asked me, “Hey, Bret, who do you think are better conditioned athletes, football players or soccer players?”

I remembered that as a teenager André had been on the French national soccer team. With him staring at me intently, I answered, “All I know is that you won’t see a soccer player sitting on the sidelines with an oxygen mask over his face.”

André slammed his huge hand on the counter. “Another round here, and get him a beer too.” He pointed his huge finger at me. Jim grinned and pulled his goatee while I sighed with relief. The temperamental giant had finally forgiven me.

We celebrated Jim’s thirtieth birthday in Phoenix in the Rodeway Inn lounge. He and André both wore loosefitting flowered shirts. Quick Draw was out cold, with his forehead flat on the table and his hands hanging limp at his sides.

Princess Tomah, a genuine Chippewa lady wrestler now in her seventies, had worked every territory in her day, including Stu’s. She showed up at the Veterans Memorial Arena offering to help out, and Chief was kind enough to let her hang around and do the odd errand. Tonight she was drunk and happy to be back with the boys, behaving (and looking) like that whitehaired, sex-starved granny in the Playboy magazine cartoons. She kept offering to turn us all into real men, but there weren’t any takers.

André, Jim and I were still laughing about the cartoon I’d drawn earlier that night. For the last month or two I’d been secretly drawing on the blackboards in all the dressing rooms. No one knew who was doing it, but everyone was amused, especially André, who would laugh with a King Kong roar. My cartoons were usually of a buck-naked Chief doing something obscene: On this night he was banging Princess Tomah, arms proudly crossed, two feathers in his headband. Chief was such a straight guy that he never ran around carousing, which is what made it so funny.

Two days later, at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, Mr. T was sitting in the front row. This short, thick-set black actor, with his mohawk and pounds of gold chains, had been launched to iconic heights by his role in the brand-new TV show The A-Team. Three years earlier, he’d appeared in Rocky III, as did Hulk Hogan, and Vince wisely planned to capitalize on their prior association by teaming them up at WrestleMania.

Dave Schultz was in a really foul mood. He pulled Jim and me aside to say that he was furious that Roddy Piper had been given the main event spot at WrestleMania; he was determined to hijack the angle for himself. He wanted Jim and me to watch his back so he could drill Mr. T. “By the time it hits the papers, they’ll have to stick me in the main event. I won’t hurt ’im bad, just enough to get a story.” Jim and I tried to sound supportive, but when Schultz moved off, I pulled Jim aside and told him not to do anything that might get us fired.

Schultz had been in hot water ever since he slapped out Stossel. Chief was well aware that he was a ticking time bomb, so he hired extra police and told them that if a guy fitting Schultz’s description came anywhere near the ring, they were to cuff him and drag him back to the dressing room. Then he told Schultz he was off the card. The fuse was lit.

A few minutes later I heard a commotion. Jim and I tore out of the dressing room, and there was Schultz with his hands cuffed behind his back, spitting mad, on the cement floor outside the dressing room. The police had apprehended him before he got to Mr. T, and he was about to be escorted to the airport in handcuffs and put on a plane out of town.

At the TV taping in Brantford, Ontario, near the end of February, George Scott pulled me aside with some big news. They had a gimmick for me—a huge one.

“After WrestleMania, yer gonna ride out on a horse. A different one every night, just like the Rhinestone Cowboy. You can ride a horse, right? Cowboy Bret Hart! Can you imagine that? We’ll sell the action figure with the horse in the same box! It’ll be great!”

I found myself agreeing, even thanking him, but I hated it. That night on the drive back to the hotel, Jim couldn’t stop laughing at how funny it was, but then, every few minutes, he’d tell me how lucky I was.

At 1 a.m., I knocked on George’s hotel door. He was just about to crash after another long day of TV; his tie was loosened, and he was shielding his eyes from the light in the hall.

“George, I don’t want to be a cowboy.”

“Are you kiddin’ me? It’ll be great!”

I told him I was sorry, but I couldn’t even ride a horse and, where I come from, if you called yourself a cowboy, you’d better be one. I was surprised to hear myself suggest to him that since Jimmy Hart, The Mouth of the South, was already managing Neidhart, they could turn me heel, put us all together and call us The Hart Foundation.