Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (36 page)

When I phoned home in mid-December, Julie told me that Tom had seriously hurt his back during a match in Hamilton and that he’d been taken away in an ambulance.

As soon as I got off the road, I went to see Tom at Holy Cross Hospital. It turned out that he had two ruptured discs and was set to have emergency surgery. He was livid because Davey and Diana had shown up with a photographer from the Calgary Sun with the intention of taking a picture of him in his hospital bed. Then I told him that Vince had asked me to bring the Tag belts back with me after the break. Tom defiantly told me to tell Vince to go fuck himself, so I left it for the two of them to sort out. I understood that the belt was a badge of honor: It was Tom’s belt until he lost it.

Michelle blew my mind when she confided that she’d had absolutely no idea that Tom’s back was bad. She knew he had drugstore-sized jars of Placidyl and Percocet, and also told me that it was routine for him to drink forty ounces of vodka every night before bed. Now the doctors were insisting that his career was over, and she had no idea how he would support the family. I had no idea how Tom’s injury would affect my career either, or what would happen with the belts.

On Christmas Eve, Michelle, her brother Mark and Duke Myers picked Tom up when he was discharged from the hospital. They drove home at a snail’s pace because every little turn or bump caused him to scream in blinding pain.

While Tom was on his way home, I was on my way to the airport in a taxi to work Washington and Richmond on Christmas Day. At my house, we had celebrated as best we could a day early.

Thankfully Jade and Dallas were too young to know the difference.

20

“CUTS IN OUR HEADS LIKE PIGGYBANKS”

I SAT IN A TINY BAR across the street from the Amfac hotel in Los Angeles listening to Koko B. Ware banging the keys on a piano and singing “When the Saints Go Marching in.” He was a short, squat black wrestler from Memphis who had a great voice. As I sipped my beer with Anvil, looking out over the bar, I could see numerous faces from my past.

Harley Race had given up fighting Vince and had joined him instead. He was throwing back beers with Bill Eadie, the one-time masked superstar, who’d sworn to me in Japan that he’d never work for McMahon again. Here they both were. Sitting with Davey Boy was Billy Jack Haynes, the big wrestler from Portland I had last seen twisting his own ears with pliers in Stu’s van because he wanted to have cauliflower ears like the pros.

I spotted the smiling face of ?The Mississippi Mauler, Big Jim Harris, now wrestling as Kamala. I’d last seen Jim painting white circles on his black face in Croydon, England, when we were working for Max Crabtree. The Honky Tonk Man, Wayne Farris, was sitting with Jimmy Hart, his black hair in an Elvis Presley pompadour. Terry Gibbs, who once complained about working with me, was there too, bowed under the impossible task of trying to have a good match with Tom McGhee every night. No matter how hard Gibbs tried, they stunk the building out.

The lure of big money in the WWF was enticing wrestlers from everywhere.

It was easy to see that Koko loved entertaining the boys. “Oh Lord I want to be in that number, when the saints go marchin’ in.” Well, there were few saints among us. A snowstorm was about to hit Los Angeles, and once I caught a whiff that coke was on the way, I latched on to a girl I’d been chatting up and said, “Get me outta here!”

A few days later, at TVs in New Jersey, I found out that Jim and I would still be getting the Tag belts at the end of the month in Tampa. Tom was going to make the show just to drop the belts to us, a really big gesture for him considering the severity of his back injury. But he also wouldn’t want to miss out on his involvement in an angle that would lead to a big payday at WrestleMania III in Pontiac, Michigan. Vince was confident that the third edition of his extravaganza would pull more than 90,000 fans to the Silverdome, but not everyone was so sure.

When I asked Vince how my future was looking, he advised me to buy the biggest house I could find.

I looked at him blankly and said, “I already did.”

For the next few weeks Davey had special tag partners to take Tom’s place. I was thrilled to be in the ring with Mad Dog Vachon, The Crusher and Bruno Sammartino. We’d started to use the heel referee, Danny Davis, to do the same thing that Alexander Scott had done back in the old Stampede territory. Unfortunately, Danny wasn’t very good, though he was a nice enough guy.

I went home in mid-January and saw Tom again. He was in so much pain it seemed impossible to imagine him wrestling in less than two weeks. He’d lost fifty pounds and looked pale and weak. The doctors couldn’t have more strongly advised him to never wrestle again, but he refused to listen.

Three days later, I left home early in the morning. The plan was for me to get a rental car after I landed at the Pittsburgh airport and pick Jim up when his plane got in from Tampa. There I was waiting at the curb when I saw Jim, in handcuffs, being escorted from the terminal by a squad of Pennsylvania state troopers. He didn’t make the matches that night in Struthers, Ohio. I finally met up with him in the bar at the Quality Inn, where he told me he’d been charged with punching a U.S.

Air stewardess, which was a federal offense. Jim assured me he’d never laid a hand on her, and I believed him. We both feared this would cost us the tag title. But Vince said he thought this was a clear-cut case of a wrestler being targeted for harassment, and he hired the sharpest lawyer he could find to make U.S. Air sorry that they ever picked on one of his wrestlers.

On Super Bowl Sunday, we were stuck at the Holiday Inn in Tampa because Vince needed us a day early for TVs. Vince threw a Super Bowl party, which was a nice gesture, and especially enjoyed by Stu and Georgia, whom I’d brought down for a visit. Stu was putting holds on any wrestler who didn’t know enough to run the other way!

Super Bowl XXI turned out to be another lopsided contest. The New York Giants thrashed the Denver Broncos, and I considered that maybe wrestling had become so popular because our orchestrated finishes were often more exciting than the outcomes in pure sports.

The next afternoon, at the Tampa Sun Dome, some of the boys had to blink back tears as Davey helped the frail shell of The Dynamite Kid through the backstage area. When Tom painfully pulled on his gear it hung on him, and even I felt tears come to my eyes at seeing this broken machine that once ran like no other. Pat explained that all Tom had to do was walk out to the ring. So that’s how it was an hour later, with Matilda leading the way. Dynamite hadn’t even got to the ring yet when I came from behind and delicately knocked him to the ground with Jimmy’s megaphone. After a few minutes of making Davey look good, Jim and I double-teamed him, as Dynamite stayed curled up in a ball outside on the floor with Danny Davis looming over him and ordering him to get in the ring.

Then Jim hoisted Davey up, and I tore into the ropes delivering the Hart Attack for the finish. The whole match was only four minutes long.

Jimmy jumped into our arms, and the three of us, along with Davis, headed back to the dressing room. As Davey helped Dynamite back through the curtain, each and every wrestler and agent respectfully stood up from his chair and applauded Tom, even Vince.

I looked down at my new belt, realizing what being a champion had cost Tom. I wondered what it would cost me. In that moment I vowed never to forget that wrestling is a work, and I also vowed to pace myself for the long haul. I wanted to come out the other end in one piece.

At the WrestleMania III press conference, Vince revealed how he planned to fill the Pontiac Silverdome. They’d turn André heel and pit him against Hogan for a huge main event, a match that had been talked about for years. Piper would take on Adrian Adonis in what was billed as Roddy’s retirement match. One of the best wrestlers at that time was Macho Man Randy Savage, a flamboyant, second-generation wrestler. He was set to face Ricky Steamboat in what was sure to be a classic, anticipated as the best match on the card. Jim and I were satisfied to have secured a main event spot: a six-man tag match in which Danny Davis would team up with The Hart Foundation versus The British Bulldogs and Tito Santana. The thought was a six-man tag would take some of the load off Tom’s back.

The Foundation finally made the cover of the program, and the WWF came out with new action figures of us. For me, the dolls were the first clear indication that we might actually hold on to the belts for a while, even though there was a lot of talk that because of Jim’s assault charge we’d be short-term champions.

As I waited for my match at WrestleMania III on March 29, 1987, I watched on a backstage monitor as Bundy slammed Little Beaver and then delivered a 450-pound elbow drop on the ninety-pound midget. I couldn’t help but laugh when the three remaining midgets turned on Bundy and backed him off! Too bad Bundy didn’t see the hilarity of it—he prided himself on being a serious monster heel.

The building was so huge they drove everyone out to the ring in a motorized cart, complete with wrestling ropes. I looked out at the crowd, and I’d never seen or heard anything like it. People have never stopped asking me what it was like to wrestle in front of a crowd of 93,000. The truth is, I really don’t know. At the start of the match The Bulldogs bumped me and Jim out of the ring, and then they picked up a terrified Danny Davis, hoisted him over their heads and threw him over the top rope. While I was trying to break his fall, Danny poked me in my right eye; after that, what should have been one of my greatest memories is nothing but a painful blur. For the finish, Danny clobbered Davey Boy with Jimmy’s megaphone in the midst of a four-way brawl for the cheap win.

Roddy defeated Adrian and rode off into the sunset.

Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat delivered what many in the business would say was the best match of all time—at least to that point.

When it came time for the main event the fans were electric. I never saw André work harder until Hogan finally clotheslined him to the canvas. Hogan was able to pick André up and slam him like no one had ever done before. Then came Hogan’s finish, the running leg drop. All I can say is that I never heard a sound like that of 93,000 people counting André out along with referee Joey Morella.

I had twenty-three days off, and my eye was so sore that it teared the whole time. Stu wore the stoic face of a man doing his best to appear upbeat, but Bruce’s booking—ball shots, heel refs and fuck finishes—was driving him crazy. The business wasn’t so bad in the small towns, but in the big cities of Calgary and Edmonton it was awful. Stu’s only real joy was Owen, who was not only an exceptional worker, but honest and committed to his cause. If Owen was willing to give it his all, Stu felt he couldn’t give up.

Tom was scaring us. He now kept three huge bullmastiffs and had amassed an arsenal of shotguns and pistols. When we took the kids to visit him and Michelle, he sat on his back porch shooting at anything that moved, even though the kids were playing nearby in the sandbox. He seemed to take some sick pleasure in blowing the back legs off jackrabbits while he washed down pain pills with vodka and orange juice. Julie and I were happy to get the hell out of there, and after that we made a point of not bringing the kids around when Tom was home.

Davey and I helped Stu out by working a couple of weekends (which would ultimately benefit Vince, since our matches would build heat for an upcoming steel cage match between The Foundation and The Bulldogs when the WWF returned to the Saddledome in May). At the Stampede Corral, on April 17, I was lashed at the wrist with Davey in a four-corner chain match in front of a good crowd of nearly 4,000 people. The winner was the first one to touch all four corners, one after the other. Fans behaved like yelping hounds hot on my trail. Beaten senseless, I limply put up my hands trying to fend off Davey, both of us bloody messes, but he dragged me up from the mat by the strap of my singlet and tossed me over his shoulder. As Davey staggered from one post to the next, slapping his bloody hand on each turnbuckle pad, he pretended not to notice me touching each one with my own bloody hand. Then, as he drew close to the final corner, I jerked the top rope, spinning him around the other way. I dropped behind him and tagged the pad before he did, crumbling victoriously to the mat, too weak to stand. The crowd frothed at the mouth as I stumbled down the aisle toward the dressing room, past fierce angry glares, F-words and middle fingers.

Like in a bad dream, all too soon my suitcase was packed and ready to go again. As I trudged down the steps of my house, my aches and pains were only just beginning to subside, and I was just starting to get used to being a dad again.

The Foundation and The Bulldogs were now pitted against each other in steel cage matches for the belts. It was a kindness to Tom, a lot easier on him than a regular match, though nobody watching would have guessed. Cage matches are exciting because of the suspense of the teams trying to climb out and, of course, because of the blood, but in truth they are simple to perform. We were on last almost every night, and we gave it our all, in intense, physical, suspenseful Stampede Wrestling–

style. Gory too—we were determined to make these the greatest cage matches in WWF history, and so each night we took turns blading. After only seven shows we all had deep cuts in our heads like the slots in piggy banks. The finish every night was Tom’s, and it soon became the standard ending of cage matches everywhere. If it was Tom and me still in the cage at the end, I’d be trying to make my escape over the top, standing on the turnbuckle, when Dynamite, covered in blood, would grab my ankle and pull me down, crotching me on the top rope. Then he’d begin to slowly crawl toward the wide open cage door, with me crawling and bleeding behind him, unable to catch up. The suspense was incredible! Anvil would try to interfere from the floor, Davey would grab him and a vicious fight would ensue between them. Just as Tom stuck his head through the open door, out of nowhere Jimmy Hart would slam it as hard as he could on Tom’s head, knocking him back inside.