Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (46 page)

One Man Gang, Haku, Honky Tonk, Tito Santana, Greg Valentine and Bill Eadie were let go. And then there was Bad News, who, upon being given notice, not surprisingly grabbed Vince by the scruff of the neck and told him he was lucky that he didn’t kill him for all the lies he’d told him. Then Rick Rude quit after finding out how much Warrior was paid for SummerSlam compared to what he got for carrying their entire match.

It was going to be a whole new team, but it looked like I had a starting position.

On October 29, I drove to Fort Wayne, Indiana, with Kerry Von Erich, another of Fritz Von Erich’s sons. Kerry was a big, handsome, well-built kid with a kind streak a mile wide who wouldn’t think twice about giving you the shirt off his back. I loved how genuine and considerate he was, especially to the fans. To that point the highlight of his career was beating Ric Flair for the NWA World Heavyweight title in May 1984 in front of more than 40,000 of his fellow Texans at a tribute card to honor the memory of his oldest brother, David. Unfortunately, like his brothers, Kerry had a history of drug problems and was often mistaken for a dolt by wrestlers who didn’t know him well.

That night I mentioned to Kerry that I’d decided to bring my brother Bruce down for Survivor Series.

I’d become sympathetic to Bruce’s struggle to support his family and how desperately he still wanted to be part of the business. Since Vince had raved about his letter, I took it upon myself to play matchmaker in hopes that Vince would meet with Bruce and maybe give him a job. In many ways Bruce had a great mind for the business, if only he could reign himself in from doing the really stupid things. Kerry and I talked on and on about our brothers and good times that we’d both had as famous families in such a strange business.

Just as we neared Fort Wayne, Kerry confided that he’d made up his mind to join his brothers in heaven. He was only waiting for God to tell him when. I said, “Kerry, your children will always need you, even more than your brothers do. You have to think of your children.” He allowed me to think I’d made him change his mind, but I feared it was only lip service.

For our SNME match the next night, The Hart Foundation marched out wearing pink and black Civil War jackets to drop the belts to the Rockers. Jim and I were somber, thinking this might be our last ever match together. Pat wanted it to be best of three falls, so the four of us had spent the afternoon creating a match that had a mixture of great moves and cute little rehearsed spots. We all dug deep to find ways to top our last SNME match, which many considered to be one of the best tag matches ever.

What started out as a terrific match snowballed into a colossal cluster-fuck after Jim accidentally broke the top rope. The match was taped and could easily be edited, but the ref, Freddie Sparta, couldn’t figure out that he needed to temporarily stop the bout and fix the rope, even though I explained it to him. Both teams needed the rope to do our best spots, and without it the whole match turned into an embarrassing night of miscues until finally The Rockers beat us. I was furious at Freddie. I hoped that before the match aired in a couple of weeks we could somehow do it over. I wanted it to be a great moment for both The Rockers, Shawn in particular, whom I respected and who had admitted to being a bit of a Hitman fan.

Five days later in Milwaukee, Jim lugged his bags into the dressing room with a huge grin on his face.

He’d had a long telephone conversation with Vince earlier in the day and was absolutely stunned when Vince told him that he’d changed his mind. He wasn’t going to air The Rockers winning the belts—The Hart Foundation would keep them, for now. To Jim it was a stay of execution, but my heart sank. What was to come of my push, the real push, the one that Vince just promised me? I never thought I’d see the day that I’d be disappointed to find out that I was keeping a belt. I’d made the mistake of getting my hopes up.

Calgary was quilted by an early winter. Under the blanket of white lurked a darkness that made its way up snowy steps and into Hart house.

My mom sat riveted to the TV in the kitchen, concerned about the tension in the Persian Gulf. Living for four decades in Canada hadn’t muted her American patriotism any more than her New York accent. While America was preparing to kick the hell out of the mother of all evils, Alison’s four-year-old daughter, Brooke, raced into the kitchen and came to a screeching halt in front of my mom.

“Grammy! Dean’s dead!”

“That’s not funny, Brooke!”

But upstairs in the boys’ bathroom Stu, Smith and Georgia knelt beside Dean’s naked body. Smith cried as he ran his fingers through Dean’s hair, kissing him on the forehead and pleading in desperation, “No, Bizz, don’t die!”

One look from Stu told my mom all she needed to know. Dean had ignored his doctors one time too many. Only the night before, the hospital called again, and Stu told Dean he would take him for a dialysis treatment first thing in the morning. Stu had woken him, but when Dean went to wash up he keeled over.

Dean Harry Hart, dead at thirty-four.

At that moment, I was with Bruce and Jim in Providence, Rhode Island; it was the day before the Survivor Series, and I’d arranged for Bruce to meet with Vince. All of us were called into a small office in the back of the Civic Center, where Chief handed me the phone. “It’s your pop.”

Stu came on the line. “I hate to have to tell you this, our Dean Harry has expired, he’s no longer with us. He succumbed late this morning.”

Some sour-faced old fart was yelling at me to get the hell out of his office and off his damn phone. I put my hand over the receiver to tell him that there was a family emergency, that my brother had died, but he wasn’t listening. So I raised my voice and told him again, only this time I added that he better get out before I threw him out.

After the show in Providence, Bruce, Jim and I drove down to Hartford, Connecticut. Being the old-school wrestling promoter that he was, Stu told me to finish my bookings—there was nothing that could be done for Dean anymore. I would have gone home anyway, but I could tell by the look in Bruce’s eyes that he didn’t want to face it yet, so I kept on, trying to keep a handle on my grief.

The following day was American Thanksgiving, and at the Hartford Civic Center wrestlers gorged on a catered turkey dinner. Survivor Series was only hours away. Bruce and I mostly kept to ourselves, telling each other stories about Dean. Word of our brother’s passing spread among the wrestlers, and dozens of them paid their respects.

On our way to the lunchroom Bruce and I had run into Vince and Pat coming out of an elevator. They were in a great mood, and Pat gave me a crisp slap on the back. “Cheer up, you look like someone died, for Chrissakes.” I managed to calmly say, “Yeah, Pat, our brother Dean passed away.” Neither he nor Vince seemed to take the news on board and walked cheerily away, annoying yuk-yuk laughs reverberating down the hall in their wake.

Bruce had expected a warm welcome from Vince. Now doubt and rejection added to the sadness on his face. “Don’t worry, Bruce,” I tried to reassure him, “they’re just busy, and it must be that they don’t know.”

In contrast, neither of us will ever forget the kindness of Kerry Von Erich, who smiled and said,

“Don’t worry, he’s up there right now with my three brothers. They’ll look after him.”

I didn’t know whether I could even work, but the memories of how Dean loved my matches and of our good times together growing up inspired me. I wanted to dedicate the match to his memory.

It was bizarre to meet Vince’s new gimmick: a towering red-haired kid from Houston named Mark Callaway, his Huck Finn features hidden by the dark circles painted under his eyes to give him the look of a cadaver. He was The Undertaker, dressed all in black, complete with a wide-brimmed hat.

Pat explained to all of us that Vince wanted him over super strong, didn’t want him even leaving his feet.

How odd that, today of all days, my job was to battle death in a strange kind of morality play.

Once The Undertaker was eliminated by disqualification, I was to be the last man standing against The Million Dollar Man.

As fate would have it I was the first WWF wrestler to ever lock up with The Undertaker. Little did I know that, much farther down the road, he would wind up being the last wrestler to work with me in the WWF.

Once Taker was eliminated the stage would be set for me and Ted DiBiase to steal the show. Losing can be a beautiful thing if it’s done right. The Hitman character was generally seen as a wrestler who, try as he might, could never quite win. This made him more human than, say, Warrior or Hogan. His constant struggle to make it to the top was endearing to the fans because it was something they could identify with in their own lives.

In his live commentary Roddy told the world that I was dedicating this match to my brother Dean, who had died the day before, knowing it would sink into the hearts of wrestling fans everywhere.

The only fans who didn’t know were the ones in the building.

We had a beautiful up-and-down exchange full of near finishes. As I slid in behind Ted with a quick crotch roll, the crowd counted along with the referee, one . . . two . . . but Ted, the old pro, kicked out yet again. I could feel Dean’s presence next to me, smiling. I pushed off Ted and headed over to the corner perching myself on the middle rope. Suddenly, in my mind, I was alone. No Ted, no crowd. I’m a kid back at the Pavilion, outside on the grass, standing over Dean. He has Curly Clark, a big, freckle-faced, red-haired program seller, clamped in a full nelson. They’re both sweaty and panting with their shirts off, and then Curly finally taps out and Dean, the smallest of the Hart kids, springs to his feet with big eyes and a handsome smile. My hero!

Then I snapped back to the Hartford Civic Center and the sold-out Survivor Series and I was about to launch myself off the ropes at Ted, thinking, This is for you, Dean. I know it isn’t much, but it’s all I got. It was time for me to slip and fall on a banana peel, breaking the hearts of the fans, who wanted me to win this one for my brother. I dove across Ted, but as we fell to the mat he rolled through, cradling me, his fingers tightly locked. There was no escape. I kicked out just a hair too late. My eyes were cold, wet and hurt. I hoped Dean enjoyed it. For me, the emotion was always real, especially the heartbreak. The camera captured my sorrow for all the Harts watching on TV back home, where my intentions were understood.

When I returned to the dressing room, Ted embraced me, sweat and tears indistinguishable.

As expected the rest of the pay-per-view was centered on Warrior and Hogan. I hung around backstage taking in their silent competition for that elusive top spot, but I think wrestling fans were beginning to see them both for what they really were, two colossal steroid freaks who did little or no actual wrestling. If you watched either one of them wrestle once, you’d seen all that they had.

I was hoping that Vince would take a moment with Bruce, but the more we hung around, the more it bothered me that neither Vince nor Pat even offered their condolences. Once the show ended, Bruce, Jim and I simply went back to our hotel.

November 27, 1990. A miserable, viciously cold day in Calgary.

The Harts gathered around the dining-room table. It seemed only fitting that we tell some stories about Dean and all the characters he’d charmed and conned over the years, and it wasn’t long before we were all smiling. Tammy put on a brave face holding her and Dean’s daughter, hoping that with the help of Stu and Helen she’d survive all this. Finally the Hart clan, minus the grandkids, bundled up against the twenty-below weather and piled into various cars to drive to a small parcel of Stu’s land two minutes down the hill from Hart house. In brutal wind and snow, we shivered through our last words before scattering Dean’s ashes. The tears froze on our cheeks.

Back at Hart house we listened to a cassette tape Owen had sent from Germany on which he talked passionately about Dean and how much he wished he could be there with us.

There were those in the family who felt that my parents should have had a more elaborate funeral for Dean. Personally I loved the honest simplicity of it, and I think Dean would have liked it just the way it was.

On January 16, 1991, fighting began in the Persian Gulf. Three days later, at the Royal Rumble, Slaughter dethroned Warrior for the WWF World title. The angle felt eerie to most of us in the dressing room. Some of us debated whether wrestling was too much of a cartoon to make light of something as serious as war, especially one where the U.S. was bracing for a high body count. Yet, most of the wrestlers had faith in Vince, since he’d always had an uncanny sense of giving the public just what they wanted and his gambles always seemed to pay off. And Vince had a vision of more than 100,000 fans coming out to WrestleMania VII at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to watch the WWF’s real American hero, Hulk Hogan, give that traitor Slaughter what he had coming. The WWF even asked Slaughter to burn the American flag, but he flat-out refused: He had enough heat as it was. He had received death threats, and there were bomb scares at the buildings he worked in.

The Royal Rumble did nothing for me, Jim or Davey Boy, who was waiting in the wings for his own supposed big push. He was now calling himself The British Bulldog and really looked the part, being bigger than ever. He wore long, braided hair extensions beaded in the colors of the Union Jack that also adorned his impressive sequined cape.

At the TVs in Macon, Georgia, on January 28, Jim and I were once again summoned to see Vince. He told us we’d be dropping the tag straps at WrestleMania VII to The Nasty Boys, two school chums from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Brian Knobbs was a loud, lovable three-hundred-pound kid with a blond mohawk. Jerry Sags was also a slab of a man with a black mohawk and one tooth missing up front. They took the numerous complaints from the boys about their stiff, sloppy work good-naturedly, as a bit of harmless teasing. The truth was they were as wild as two Brahma bulls in a china shop, and most of the boys loved them because they were true to the spirit of wrestling’s notorious wild men of the past. They reminded me a lot of Adrian Adonis.