Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (33 page)

Stu got himself a TV slot right before the WWF show and asked me whether Jim and I would do him a favor and work Friday, November 1, for him. So there we were, back at the old Pavilion, doing a fourway double disqualification, with me and Jim trying to out-heel Rotten Ron Starr and a Tennessee Elvis impersonator known as the Honky Tonk Man. The Pavilion was barely half full and my heart went out to my mom.

The next day, in Omaha, when I walked into the dressing room, a tightlipped and serious Pat Patterson came up to me. “Jim missed his flight. He won’t be here tonight. Did you hear about Rick McGraw? He died last night—overdosed in his sleep.”

The dressing room was silent. Quick Draw wasn’t even thirty years old, and he left behind a wife and a baby daughter. The cause of his death was labeled a heart attack, but we all knew that his heart had given out under deadly dosages of downers. That night all the boys drank, celebrating the life of a departed friend. Just over the border at Fat Jack’s, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, I sang “Born to Be Wild”

at the top of my lungs, along with Steppenwolf and Cowboy Bob’s younger brother, Barry O.

During the fall of 1985, Jim and I often rode with Chris Pallies, otherwise known as King Kong Bundy, a bald, six-foot-four, 450-pound monster of a wrestler who was built like an egg on two sturdy legs.

Julie and I even nicknamed Dallas Little Bundy because he was husky and still didn’t have a single hair on his head. Bundy wasn’t your typical fat guy. Nothing jiggled when he stomped around. He had a sharp wit, was never short of a putdown or a comeback and often broke me up laughing when he jokingly made fun of . . . well, everybody.

Every few weeks I somehow managed to get Bundy and Big Jim worked up enough to have sumo fights in the dressing room. In Phoenix one night, Jim was just out of the shower and made the mistake of taking Bundy on when he was barefoot, sopping wet and naked. Bundy had just worked and charged Jim, slamming his back flat against the wall! Jim was flabbergasted and Bundy rubbed it in for the rest of the night . . . the week . . . the year. . . The memory of a naked Jim in this struggle is still instantly amusing to me. I was constantly pressing both of them for a rematch, but Bundy was immune to my prodding. Like a proud elephant that would never again let a measly rhino push him around, Bundy would laugh and say, “Let me tell you, little man, that dumb Neidhart doesn’t stand a chance!” I got a kick out of how he always referred to both me and Jim as little man.

On November 26, I was riding with Bundy in Jacksonville, Florida, and he eased the car to the side of the road because the space shuttle was about to take off. We got out and leaned on the hood of the rental car. Low and behold a bright flashing light rocketed through the sky, and we watched it until it disappeared. Most wrestlers forget there’s a real world out there, and it was really cool that Bundy found this way to remind me. When I called home to tell Julie about it, she told me that someone had finally bought our crappy house in Ramsay, a miracle only slightly less incredible.

By Christmas Eve, as everybody milled about at Hart house, my mom wore the look of someone who had miraculously survived the wreck of the Titanic only to find herself being hauled up the ramp of the Lusitania. Bruce had already maneuvered the Cuban out of his job as Stu’s booker by constantly going over his head till the Cuban gave up and let Bruce book. The air in the room was full of jealousy that somehow Tom, Davey, Jim and I had been spared the ghastly fate of the others: we were working for the WWF and no one else was.

I sat and talked with Owen, now twenty, who’d found himself a reluctant warrior in the monklike world of amateur wrestling at the University of Calgary, and who planned on becoming a physical education teacher. I suggested that he give the pro wrestling thing a shot while it was hot. It might be perfect timing to get in, make some money and then go back to school. As a teenager, Owen, like me, never wanted anything to do with the wrestling business; he’d worked once in a while at small rodeos to earn some cash, always under a mask, so it wouldn’t affect his amateur status. The more I talked about the cities I’d been to and the money I was making, the more his eyes lit up, until he turned to Martha, who mocked the whole idea. Martha clearly wore the pants in their relationship.

She did little to hide the fact that she didn’t particularly like our family or the business, even though I could have pointed out that it hadn’t been that long since she was a kid pounding her hands on the mat after my matches at the Victoria Pavilion.

Michelle, Andrea and Diana all looked stunning: a silent competition. Diana held five-month-old Harry on her lap and sat talking with Alison, who was cradling eight-month-old Lindsay. For a reason known only to themselves, Smith and Maria had seen fit to name their baby girl Satanic Ecstasy. My mother called her Tanya, whether Smith and Maria liked it or not. Smith buzzed around me like a giant fly, trying to interest me in an assortment of mostly illegal get-rich-quick schemes.

I soon found Jim, who made it clear that he hated the house on the Bow that Ellie had picked out for them. He carried on forever about the long, bellowing whistles from passing trains, the horrid winter weather, the icy river and the damp, chilly house. I saw it for what it really was: Stu was becoming too frequent a referee in their yelling matches. Jim wanted out of their new house and to be as far away from Stu and Calgary as possible.

He’d get his wish: Tom, Dave, Jim and I had to fly out to work first thing on Christmas morning.

I truly felt terrible about being unfaithful. It was so weird: I was on top of the world and ashamed of myself at the same time. I wrote a note to myself that read, Dear God, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do. I’ll leave it up to you.

I was in my room at the Five Seasons Hotel in Amarillo on January 5, 1986, when Julie called to tell me that she knew all about my affair and was leaving me. As I drove to the matches that night, I could still hear the reverberation of the busy signal I got when I tried to call her back. My heart rattled with fear.

Julie had gone through my old hotel receipts and found a recurring 201 area code phone number. I remembered the first rule of the wrestlers’ handbook when it came to these kinds of problems: Deny till you die. Julie called Rosemary, who conceded nothing despite Julie’s persistence. Whatever information Julie did manage to glean drove her to her own wild conclusions, which were probably pretty accurate. I professed only friendship with Rosemary, but who was I kidding? There wasn’t much I could do to defend my actions anymore.

After hours of long-distance conversation, we’d finally find some basis of forgiveness, but by the next morning she’d be leaving me all over again. Every time I got off the phone with Julie I’d call Rosemary, who felt terrible. But this was all my fault. I put in a distress call to my mom and dad, who were more than understanding. My mom went so far as to say that this kind of thing was inevitable and kidded that maybe Stu might have been happier if he’d done the same thing. Stu drove right over to the house and spent a couple of hours talking to Julie. It took three days, but after pleading from all three of us Julie decided to come down and see me. Rosemary could easily have stirred everything up, leaving nothing but a huge crater for herself to move into. Instead, she took one in the heart for me and helped me fight to save my marriage.

Julie was with me through Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Philly and then right into the eye of the hurricane, Newark. She was like an angry lioness, and I had a new swipe across my nose daily. I’d heard how she was leaving so often that I’d finally resigned myself to accept it. By the time Julie got home everything was off, again.

I finished that tour on January 21 in Billings, Montana. Michelle had driven down from Calgary to pick up Tom and drive him home. I begged a ride. For the whole snowy, eight hours home, Michelle enjoyed telling me how I’d blown it with Julie. I sat quietly through the drive fearing that I really had.

After they’d dropped me off, I found Julie sleeping, the babies nestled beside her. I rolled in next to her and wrapped my arms around her. She sighed and held on.

Two days later I went to see a twenty-three-room luxury house that had both mountain and city views and a forty-eight-foot indoor pool. The local economy had bottomed out, and the builder was desperate to sell. “Oh, Bret,” Julie gushed on seeing the spacious kitchen. My heart so wanted to find a way, but my head knew better. We went home to the reality of the small apartment we’d temporarily rented.

The next morning I made the call. By the time I was back on the road we were set to move in—on April Fool’s Day.

Within days, Julie was back on the warpath again, and I was actually relying on Rosemary to keep my spirits up. That was really unfair. Smack in the middle of an agonizing phone conversation, Rosemary and I decided we had to stop this. We both had our TVs on in the background, and just at the moment we made our decision, the space shuttle Challenger blew up. We sat in silence, both of us watching at opposite ends of our phone connection. That was the end of us too.

Over the next few weeks it was hard to get my mind off how miserable I was. Every time Julie issued the ultimatum that she was leaving, I pictured my kids growing up in Regina: How would I ever see them?

There was growing tension in the dressing room about the upcoming NBC Saturday Night’s Main Event special where all the angles for WrestleMania II would be set up, determining who would be on the big show. It was like Vince and George were walking by with that tray of big steaks again, and every dog in the kennel was snapping and jumping pretty high.

At the Holiday Inn in Fresno, California, on February 12, Cowboy Bob had overdone it again, but had made it safely back to his room. Then he made the mistake of getting up for a piss call, accidentally opening the door onto the hall, which overlooked a central atrium. He heard a commotion six floors down in the main lobby, so he leaned over the railing, naked, with one leg stuck behind him to hold his door open. But his toe slipped, and the door clicked shut.

In the lobby, Piper and Muraco were in the process of being arrested by a bunch of pissed-off Fresno cops after a high-speed car chase that ended in a rolled-over rental car! That’s when Cowboy Bob decided to march out of the elevator buck-naked, hollerin’ drunken epithets in his deep nasal whine.

The cops couldn’t believe their eyes.

Don and Roddy stood frozen.

Soon Bob was throwing wild punches. The cops shot him with tranquilizer darts that he looked at, pulled out and then laughed at, saying, “Is that all you got?” This little scene made the newspapers.

Two days later, in Phoenix for the SNME show, Roddy went off on George Scott in the hotel lobby.

George made the mistake of wagging his finger in Piper’s face, and Piper damn near bit it off.

At the taping, Bundy shot his angle with Hogan, pretending to break his ribs, and Piper set up his upcoming angle with Mr. T, whipping him with a belt. The rest of us anxiously waited to see what scraps of meat our masters would drop for us on the WrestleMania II card.

19

THROWN BONES

I NEVER HAD ANY IDEA how long any of this would last, so in mid-February that year, I brought my parents down to watch me work Madison Square Garden. My mom hadn’t been to a wrestling match since she and Stu had met when he was working New York in the 1940s. She’d watched some heel beat up on Stu and ran out of the building in tears.

Now, all these years later, she and Stu sat watching me and their son-in-law, the heels, take on The Killer Bees, who were B. Brian Blair and Jumping Jim Brunzell. The Bees were fast and light babyfaces who wore black-and-yellow-striped trunks. They had great psychology and were excellent workers.

My dad still hadn’t warmed to the idea of me being a heel. I’ll never forget the stunned look on Stu’s face as I viciously jackhammer-stomped a quivering Jim Brunzell lying out on the floor by the ring.

We built our heat up like wolves on a wounded calf, at one point doing a move we called the sandwich. I threw Anvil into Brunzell, shoulder-tackling him into the turnbuckles. Moments later, we went for the same move again, but this time with Jim throwing me. Brunzell moved, and I hit the turnbuckle so hard I nearly broke my collarbone. Brunzell slithered through Anvil’s legs and tagged a fired up Blair. The Garden exploded as the Bees made an awesome comeback, with me barely holding on for dear life as the bell clanged again and again over the noise of the roaring crowd. This one was a draw.

As I passed by my mom and dad in the crowd on the way back to the dressing room, my mom’s eyes were as huge as the smile on Stu’s face. He didn’t look like he minded my being a heel anymore.

Vince greeted us at the curtain with “Great match, guys!” Wow, he finally noticed us. He actually spoke to us.

Jim and I had to wait around all night, since we’d given Bundy a ride to the Garden and he was on last. In the dressing room, George Scott pulled me aside to tell me I’d be working with Ricky The Dragon Steamboat at WrestleMania II. Anybody who ever climbed into the ring with Ricky Steamboat would tell you that he was one of the best workers of all time. This was the chance I had been waiting for!

I was in great spirits by the end of the night. As we rode down in the backstage elevator, I challenged Jim and Bundy to one final be-all and end-all sumo match in the dressing room. Bundy dismissed the idea with a laugh, saying, “I don’t waste time with midgets.” We came out of the elevator laughing, and without thinking about it I walked straight outside. I usually left during the show, when the street was all but deserted, but now the show was over. I walked into a frenzied mob of about a hundred fans. Bundy and Jim tried to pull me back inside, but Bundy had a ton of heat for breaking Hogan’s ribs on SNME. As soon as the fans caught sight of him, he and Jim were slapped, kicked and spat on, while teenaged girls hung all over me, leaving lipstick kisses on my face and shirt.

When we finally made it into the car, Bundy and Jim chewed me out for almost getting us killed!