Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (41 page)

My feet stuck out from underneath him, kicking like when the house fell on the witch in The Wizard of Oz. In truth, André was a great worker—I never felt a thing.

After the match he told me that he’d specifically requested to work with me at least one time because he considered me to be a great wrestler. It meant more to me than he would ever know.

When I boarded the tour bus at the backstage door, I saw two young girls crying uncontrollably as they held a sign that said “We love you Hitman.” Jimmy Hart couldn’t get over it. “That’s something really special, someone ought to film that. That’s not something you see anywhere else for anybody else in this business.”

I went out drinking with Italian girls and talked about American politics and music. Owen stayed mostly in his room; after a few days he seemed on the verge of cracking, as did many of the wrestlers. Warlord and Warrior said they thought they were shrinking because there were no gyms and the food was too un-American. By the time we arrived in Cagliari, on Sardinia, the wrestlers were almost ready for an uprising.

I spent my last days in Italy at a strange hotel in Sassari that had some sort of a cruel zoo out back.

Locked in cages and looking to be barely alive were exotic birds, a bunch of mangy baboons and a miserable wart-hog. I felt a kinship with these poor creatures and fed them apples that I mooched from the hotel. On the final night of the tour Warlord slept on a couch in the lobby because he was terrified that he would miss his wake-up call for the flight back to America.

When I got back I had a disappointing match at the Spectrum Arena in Philadelphia, a twenty-minute draw with Curt Hennig. We’d worked out what we thought was a great match before we got into the ring, and it wasn’t as though we didn’t try hard, in fact we tried too hard. But it turned into a sloppy struggle that left both of us wondering whose fault it was. The following night, in Toronto, we had the exact same match except this time everything clicked and we had the entire building on its feet.

With Curt, I was able to do moves that I could never dream of doing with Bad News or Honky. We adjusted to each other’s timing in an epic back and forth battle where we constantly gave back to each other. I had Curt beat after I came off the second rope, spiking his chest with the point of my elbow, hooking his leg for a one . . . two . . . when the bell clanged. Curt made his escape while I grabbed the house mic and pleaded for five more minutes. Curt turned to leave, signaling me to turn my back on him. In a flash he was back in the ring, viciously beating me down to the mat. Curt climbed to the top turnbuckle, but I popped up to my feet and greeted him with a fist to the gut, causing him to lose his balance and crotch himself on the corner strut. The crowd was going crazy as I dragged him off by the hair and clobbered him from one corner to the next until he bounced out of the ring and slithered away in full retreat. The fans thundered their approval. It was one of the best matches I’d had in years, and I owed it to Curt, a great worker.

The WWF was finally doing some Hitman merchandising, and a tank top and my trademark shades were on sale and doing well. The WWF devoted a special issue of their Spotlight magazine to me that spring, with a seductive head shot on the cover. I’ll never forget Greg Valentine joking that just looking at it made him want to fuck me. It was the biggest selling wrestling magazine to that date. In a Japanese wrestling magazine being passed around in the dressing room about the same time, there was a gruesome, full-length picture of Dynamite with his head shaved and scarred and all his teeth knocked out. He looked awful, and I was embarrassed for him. The Rougeau incident haunted him, and he seemed to be self-destructing. Michelle and her kids had temporarily moved into my house because Tom had thrown them out in a fit of rage.

My shirts sold out, but that didn’t seem to mean anything to Vince. Despite the push he’d promised me, he had me putting Perfect over to get him ready for Warrior and Hogan. The chemistry between us only got better, and we easily had the best match on the card. Despite the fact that I felt betrayed yet again by Vince, it didn’t show in my matches. I was the guy he counted on to get guys over so that they could make the big money.

23

WAGES OF SIN

I SPENT HOURS AND HOURS OF 1989 rolling across America with Owen. We’d always been close, but it was on those long, lonely trips that we really bonded. I loved his mischievous sense of humor, his directness, his good nature and his integrity. He had a deep respect for both our parents, and he was aware of the sad truth that so many of our siblings seemed more and more helpless and hopeless, always relying on Stu to bail them out. Like me, he never wanted to become one of them. It meant a lot to me when Owen told me that he had faith in me, and that I was well regarded by the other wrestlers for being truthful and dedicated.

His hopes and dreams, doubts and fears, were much the same as mine. He was going to marry Martha on July 1; he knew that few in the family really appreciated her, and he couldn’t have cared less. I told him how I’d gone through similar experiences with Julie not being accepted and that he should just follow his heart. Owen liked that Martha was smart and controlling: He had no doubt that she’d keep him on the straight and narrow. He also liked how he was treated by her family.

Owen hated being a jobber and asked me what I thought he should do about his situation. It was obvious that Vince had no plans for him, no matter what he’d said, so I suggested that it might be time to leave the WWF and try Japan—if he stayed much longer, a jobber was all he’d ever be. Then he could come back when the WWF was hungry for fresh talent again. I passed on to him what Pedro Morales had told me: “You can’t stop talent.” He confessed that he planned to give his notice at the next TV tapings. Quitting the WWF was a bold decision, but he was young and talented in a business where so few were. He’d be back someday.

Just before he quit, I remember Owen and me driving through Eugene, Oregon. I couldn’t help but read the glaring words radiating from a huge billboard: “The wages of sin are death!” I thought about Julie back home. Lately she’d become paranoid about being “alone” in the house, even though the place was full of people, including a live-in nanny and handyman. Julie’s moods were up and down, and she had recently checked herself into a hospital with severe chest pains. The doctors told her it was all in her head and released her. I was worried about her, but I had my own chest pains—

of a different sort: that petite, redheaded hairdresser from Boston; that melt-in-your-mouth blond corporal from the Wisconsin National Guard; the knockout Budweiser girl from Baltimore. I was such a bad dog that I wondered whether I’d end up in heaven or in hell. I smiled at the vision of a place where a guy like Owen would be dressed in white, playing checkers, while another guy gently plucked a harp. This was a sharp contrast to another vision, where a devil with a face oddly similar to Jim’s, wearing red tights, sets aside a pitch fork, pulls on his beard and pounds nails into my head like in that Hellraiser movie.

Owen’s wedding was another overcrowded and plastic affair at Stu’s house. Surprisingly, the Hart clan showed considerably more class than some of the Patterson clan, one of whom put his cigarette out on one of Stu’s oriental rugs, leaving a deep, black hole. Tensions were such that he was lucky he didn’t get beat up. Bruce was Owen’s best man. Just days before the wedding, Tom had broken Bruce’s jaw in an overreaction to some petty slight, so it was more than awkward to have them both there.

Stu sat passively in the kitchen, stoic and tight-lipped. Stone cold sober and unable to relax, he was on display like a regal silverback gorilla at a zoo. Looking at my father, I thought about how the toughness in truly tough men never really dies out. The night before, Dynamite and Davey had turned on each other in the biggest angle that Stampede Wrestling had seen since Stu started up again. But my father saw it for what it was: the last gasp of his dying business.

Two days after the wedding, things got bleaker. Wayne had quit in disgust over the disorganization, and Ross had stepped in to drive the van on a long, rainy, miserable trip through northern Alberta.

The crew was late as usual, and Ross put the pedal to the metal despite desperate pleas from the boys to slow down. The van hydroplaned; he lost control and veered head-on into an oncoming car, sending Davey crashing through the windshield. Davey needed eighty stitches in his head. I think the only reason he didn’t die was because of his thick, powerful neck. He was left with permanent vision problems and neck pain. Karl Moffat injured his knee, which ultimately cut short his budding career.

I really think if Moffat hadn’t got hurt, he would have gone a long way in the business. Also injured was Chris Benoit, but he managed to recover fully. Ross was devastated.

Since Owen had by now quit the WWF, he was called back into action after a brief honeymoon to fill in for Davey. Owen and Dynamite ended up selling out the Pavilion for the next three weeks in what would ultimately be the last great matches for both Dynamite and Stampede Wrestling.

For me the highlight of the summer of 1989 came when Curt and I wrestled in Anchorage, tearing the house down. In my opinion it was one of the top five matches of my entire career, and it wasn’t even caught on film. People who were there have never forgotten it, and they still bring it up to me to this day.

At one point I climbed up from outside the ring and Curt rushed the ropes, sending me flying off the apron, sailing fifteen feet in the air. I cleared the timekeeper’s head by a hair and crashed chest-first into the steel barricade behind him. I wasn’t hurt, but nobody knew it, not even Curt. As I lay on the floor writhing in agony, I smiled to myself, content that I was dancing with a real artist. I eventually climbed back in, turned the tide, and we proceeded to give the Alaskan fans a whale of a match. I absolutely loved working with Curt!

A disgruntled André wasn’t happy about being left off the SummerSlam card in favor of a black bodybuilder and actor called Tiny Lister, who had played Hogan’s nemesis in a B movie Vince had co-produced, called No Holds Barred. For most of the summer André had been main-eventing the house shows with Warrior, and he was disgusted at having to lose every night to an arrogant and unskilled nobody who hadn’t paid his dues; André insisted on jobbing out in less than fifteen seconds, taking a series of, you guessed it, clotheslines. Grim-faced, André would roll out of the ring and lumber back to the dressing room as sell-out crowds chanted, “Bullshit,” with some fans even demanding refunds.

But Warrior was Vince’s new superstar. Knowing Vince, he probably found it onerous to keep paying André his contracted percentage of every card he appeared on, plus picking up the costs of a valet and the two first-class seats the giant needed every time he flew. André’s deal was a promise written in stone by Vince’s dad, and André was just starting to realize that Junior might not feel compelled to honor it in perpetuity. In Anchorage, André told me with a sour look on his face, “Vince is nothing like his father. When his father gave me his word that was all I needed.” André was like an old circus elephant, and I sensed that if Vince had his way, this circus was moving on without him.

The Hart Foundation had been re-formed again, and we were more than deserving of a break. But just hours before our match at SummerSlam on August 28, Vince told us that we’d be losing, in an ill-conceived non-title match, to his newly crowned tag champs, The Brain Busters, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard.

There was history here. At the height of our tag title reign for the WWF, Tully and Arn had been the hottest team in the rival NWA. The NWA had been recently bought by Ted Turner, who had renamed it World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Turner, the broadcasting mogul behind CNN, was now coming after Vince. With the intense rivalry between the two companies, die-hard fans had long awaited this matchup. But now Vince had poached these two from the opposition—and wanted us to lose to them: it was an immense blow to our pride. If we couldn’t beat them in a non-title match, then when could we beat them? We stood our ground in a long, tense discussion with Vince, but then we grudgingly complied, knowing we held no cards. I was worried we’d crossed the line with Vince.

We left before the show was over, zipping up the New Jersey turnpike disappointed and pissed off. I looked forward to drowning my misery with our new favorite friend, Jack Daniels. When we got to the hotel bar, SummerSlam was still on the big screen, and I tossed down a few shots. I was sitting there lamenting that I didn’t see how things were going to get better when some guy at the end of the bar got physically pushy with a pretty strawberry blonde. Before I knew it I had intervened, telling him to scram. She stayed. She was perfect.

I awoke early the next morning with a slight hangover and leaned across my bed to find a note:

“Thanks for saving me. Love Connie.” I rolled back over thinking that it was she who had saved me.

Like Julie, in my own feeble way, I was afraid to be alone.

Vince had promised The Brain Busters that they’d make more money in the WWF than they ever had before, but it didn’t happen, so they gave their notice in favor of going back to work for Ted Turner.

So our sacrifice to put The Brain Busters over at SummerSlam ended up serving no purpose whatsoever.

The Rockers had resurfaced in the WWF when the AWA finally went under. The day after SummerSlam ’89,Vince put us together in a taped-for-home-video babyface match at TVs in Springfield, Massachusetts. Like I’d predicted, the four of us tore the house down with a twenty-minute broadway. Shawn and Marty were both energetic, and Shawn in particular displayed an agility and coordination I’d never seen before in pro wrestling. Unfortunately for them, at that time the fans would never buy guys their size beating the huge ’roided-up monsters that roamed the WWF tag team division.

When The Hart Foundation and The Rockers came back to the dressing room, everyone congratulated us, even Vince, who smiled like a lizard and called it “?. . . a terrific, one-of-a-kind match!” As I headed off to the showers, I thought to myself, He still needs us. We’re safe.