Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (47 page)

Once we’d dropped the belts, I figured it was time for that singles push Vince owed me. Curt Hennig had taken the Intercontinental belt from Kerry Von Erich, whom Vince pulled the plug on pretty fast, and there was now a buzz about me and Curt working a program. Curt was the best heel in the company, maybe even in the business, at that time, and I knew he’d be keeping the belt for a while, especially since Hogan would obviously be winning the World title from Slaughter at WrestleMania VII. The IC belt would need to stay on a heel to balance out the cards. My instinct told me to wait: It was the guy who worked with Curt after his next opponent who was a more likely bet to get the belt.

I’d have to outwork everyone, even Vince, and I knew I could.

On March 12 at Biloxi TVs, The Foundation was to take on The Legion of Doom for a home video.

Even though we were still the champions, we were supposed to put them over, as the video would come out after WrestleMania VII. I didn’t care. I’d come to like and respect the team who were once The Road Warriors, and this would be our one and only chance to work with them. Joe Laurinaitis, or Animal, had a wide mohawk and was a thick powerhouse. His partner, Mike Hegstrand, or Hawk, was a big, loud raspy-voiced character with a long, sinewy torso. I always thought the best actual wrestlers of our generation came out of Minneapolis: guys like L.O.D., Rude, Hennig, Warlord and Darsow had all grown up watching the AWA’s greatest workers like Bockwinkel, Ray Stevens, Mad Dog Vachon, even the Brit tough guy and shooter Billy Robinson, all of whom had a more credible style than most American wrestlers.

About an hour before our match, Hawk tilted his head back and plopped three or four Placidyls in his mouth as if he was trying to impress me and Jim. By the time we made our way to the ring, Hawk was half asleep on rubber legs. Needless to say what should have been an all-time classic turned into a bore as Animal, Jim, and I did all we could not to expose to Vince or the agents that Hawk was nearly comatose. I liked Hawk, but I was disappointed that he ruined something that meant a lot to the rest of us.

After the Gulf War ended, Vince decided to move WrestleMania VII from the L.A. Coliseum to the L.A. Sports Memorial Arena. The rumor was that Slaughter had so much heat that there was fear of a bomb threat, but many of us in the dressing room thought it was because ticket sales were slow.

With the war over, the Slaughter angle was quickly losing steam.

Kerry Von Erich opened the show by defeating Dino Bravo. Upon his victory Kerry came up grinning and shooting his fingers like six-guns in what would turn out to be an eerie prefiguring of events yet to come for both of them. Hogan looked tanned and muscled and was decked out in an American flag bandanna. Randy Savage looked more like a lime-green psychedelic space cowboy as he worked on his match with Warrior. Davey Boy beat his close friend Warlord in only four minutes. The look on Warlord’s face told me he was just starting to realize that he’d been given a thumbs-down for a serious push.

Jim and I went on early in what was really a call to go out and kick the show into high gear. The Nasty Boys headed out with Jimmy Hart, who was wearing a spray-painted motorcycle helmet as protection from us. Our music played and off we went, the pink tassels on our epaulets swinging as we high-fived fans on our way to the ring. I pulled open my jacket to expose the shiny gold belt that had meant so much to me once upon a time. But now I was galloping beyond that. Beware the dark horse!

We ended a terrific match with some classic Foundation. With the ref pushing me back into my corner, we turned our backs long enough for Jimmy to toss the half-dead Sags his crash helmet, which Sags then smashed beautifully over Anvil’s head. Then he pulled an equally blown-up Knobbs across Anvil’s chest as he rolled under the bottom rope. By the time I stepped out on the apron the ref was diving down for the count, one . . . two . . . see ya, Jim!

Exhausted, I stood at the back curtain watching Warrior summon some mystical power to beat Macho Man, with the help of his new heel valet, Scary Sherri Martel. But up in the crowd tiny Miss Elizabeth left her seat, climbed into the ring and with superhuman strength hurled the robust Sherri over the top rope. Then she made up with Randy in the middle of the ring to a huge pop. Miss Elizabeth was truly a flower among the weeds.

As for Hogan and Slaughter, from where I stood they looked like two elephants tussling over a water hole. Slaughter barely tapped Hogan on the head with a steel folding chair, and Hogan bladed himself, but even with the blood the match was a hokey affair, with Hogan wagging his finger in Slaughter’s face before the big boot and the leg drop. Same old story. Vince knew he needed a new one and he wasn’t going to find it in Warrior, or Hogan.

The day after WrestleMania VII was Julie’s birthday. We sat parked in a rented convertible looking out over Red Rock Canyon, just outside Las Vegas, sipping wine coolers in the warm breeze. The thousands of giant red boulders reminded me of a Road Runner cartoon. We were relieved to have found some peace and quiet after six days in L.A. running around with so many Harts and a teething Blade. The night before he’d slept between us as we quietly whispered back and forth so as not to wake him. Then Blade sat up looking cranky, slapped me on the hand and then brought his fat little hand down right on Julie’s forehead, as if to say, You two, keep it down, I’m trying to sleep! He rolled over and fell back asleep instantly. I laughed so hard I had to get up and leave the room.

I told Julie I thought that if I could have a good run for three years I could make enough money to pay off the house and come home for good. I loved Julie, but somehow I had turned into this—

wrestler. On good days, she still saw me as her hero, but she was long past tired of having to share me with the wrestling business.

The next day at Vegas TVs, Pat asked me if I knew how to put on a scorpion death lock. I told him no, but that I could figure it out. So I went in search of a wrestler who could show me. The only one who knew was a Mexican named Konan. As I lay on my back he held the heels of my boots in his hands, threaded his leg between mine, stepped over me while crossing my legs and jammed one of my feet under his armpit, all while twisting me over like a Boston crab. This move looked great but was a total work in that it was damn near impossible to put on somebody unless he let you, or he was out cold.

After my match, as I looked out at the crowd, there were pink and black signs everywhere. The Hart Foundation music, now mine alone, thumped loudly as I strutted past the Gorilla position, the long table where Gorilla Monsoon sat wearing a headset sending the matches out. I passed by Vince, who looked more than impressed by my crowd reaction. I took a chance and asked, “So are you gonna give it to me or not?” He grinned playfully and said, “Yeah, I’m gonna give it to you.”

The next day, in Reno, Pat handed me an interview sheet requiring me to do interviews for upcoming matches with Curt. I told him I’d pass unless they were planning to put the IC belt on me.

Minutes later, in Vince’s office, I counted on my fingers how many times he’d failed to come through with his promises. By the time I got to the eighth finger, Vince cut me off, chuckling, “Forget all about it. It’s ancient history. Think about the future, Bret.” I looked him in the eye and told him that history repeats itself over and over.

We both laughed like I was kidding, but I wasn’t. Pat came in and interrupted us to tell me I had to come up with a name for my new finishing move. Between the three of us we tossed around different ideas until finally I threw out, “?. . . executioner, eliminator, sniper, sharpshooter . . .”

“That’s it!” Vince cut me off smiling. “I like that! Sharpshooter!”

I saw a glimmer in his eyes that told me if his head were made of glass I’d see all kinds of gears whirring around in it.

The next day Julie came with me on a tour to Japan. I was happy to see a familiar, smiling face waiting for us in the lobby of the hotel in Tokyo. Hito, bowlegged as ever, had moved back to Japan a few years earlier, after finishing up his career in Calgary. He was now oddly content running a profitable noodle shop left to him by his late sister. He kindly took Julie and me out for dinner and drinks, and we talked about old times. Hito spoke well of Owen and regarded Stu like he would a father.

The next day the WWF had me booked to reunite with Jim for one more tag team match in The Tokyo Egg Dome. There was no pressure on me whatsoever because I knew it would be nothing but easy working with The Rockers. Unfortunately, once we got out there, the serious Japanese fans didn’t buy the phony rehearsed high spots. Just because there were sixty-something-thousand of them didn’t mean that they weren’t the same deadpan Japanese fans. We took it up a notch, and it felt good hearing both Snuka and Valentine say afterwards that it was the best tag match they’d ever seen.

The main event pitted Hogan and a Japanese star named Tenyru against The Legion of Doom in a blood-filled orgy of gore that made no real sense, but at last got a reaction out of the lifeless crowd.

Most of the wrestlers were set to fly home the next day except for me, Earthquake and Hogan; we would take an early train to Osaka for one more show in Kobe. So after the show that night, Julie and I hit the heart of the Rapungi district, eventually winding up at the Hardrock Cafe, where various wrestlers fraternized with Madonna’s road crew and with chain-smoking ring rats, who’d only sprung up in Japan in recent years. Julie had formed so many thoughts about Japan from what I’d told her about my previous trips she was thrilled to finally see it for herself. L.A., Vegas and Japan all in one trip was a far cry from being at home in the kitchen with the kids.

After my match in Kobe, an anxious Earthquake asked my advice on what he should do about being openly challenged by the equally massive Koji Kitao, a sumo sensation now trying to make a name for himself as a pro wrestler. Quake was big John Tenta, a four-hundred-pound mountain of a man who shook the ground when he walked and hailed from Surrey, B.C. He had been the Canadian amateur super heavyweight champion, and had enjoyed short-lived notoriety in Japan in earlier days as a white sumo wrestler, where he was undefeated. I really didn’t know what to tell him. Quake sat there simmering and aggravated, concerned about what he might do if Kitao got him mad enough; his only real worry was that someone might jump in on their match. When Hogan and I both assured him that we’d watch his back, it seemed to calm him considerably.

The two big men circled each other furiously, like Rhodan and Godzilla, huffing and puffing, sometimes drawing close enough to take swipes at each other. The spectators’ faces wore perfectly frozen looks of horror like you’d see in those old Japanese monster movies—the only thing missing was the shrieking sound effects! Finally Kitao put his tail between his legs and backed down to catcalls from the crowd, then slunk back to his dressing room knocking and smashing things as he went. I felt like announcing over the PA, Rhodan is dead, you people can go back to your homes!

Quake came back grinning from ear to ear. Hogan and I patted him on the back. “You showed ’em!” I beamed. I always thought it was a funny little fight, especially since they never once touched each other!

While Hogan got ready for his match, he asked me what Vince was doing with me. I considered Terry a friend so I told him where I stood. I was surprised to hear him say, with a hurt look on his face, that Vince was trying to bring him down; his WWF deal was up soon and he told me that Ted Turner’s WCW was interested in him. It was easy for me to see that Terry liked his ovation that night because it showed Vince that Hogan could always go back to Japan, that maybe the WWF needed Hulk Hogan more than he needed them. But, as he confided to me, Terry really didn’t want to go anywhere Vince had one more jerk-around in store for me. In May he announced that he’d changed his mind and was putting me back with Jim. Three weeks later, after much worry on my part, I was summoned to see Vince at the Sacramento TVs, where he did another about-face: I’d be taking the Intercontinental belt from Curt at SummerSlam at Madison Square Garden, just like I’d figured out back in April. I remembered that day in 1979 when Hito told me Vince McMahon said I didn’t have a big enough name to wrestle in Madison Square Garden. As I left Vince’s office, I felt a deep sense of pride and accomplishment. The Intercontinental belt was the first step in my far-off dream of being the WWF World Champion.

Steroids were about to give the WWF a different sort of jab in the ass. On June 27, Dr. George T.

Zahorian III was convicted by a jury in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, of four counts of distributing anabolic steroids to a bodybuilder who was working as an undercover informant for the FBI, four counts of distributing large quantities of schedule III and IV controlled substances to the same informant, four counts of distributing anabolic steroids to four professional wrestlers between November 1988 and March 1990 and two counts of using his office condominium, valued at $3.7

million, to facilitate the distribution of controlled substances. The condo was immediately seized by the U.S. government.

Zahorian maintained throughout his trial that as a physician to various wrestlers he’d done nothing wrong by providing steroids, which he said were necessary considering the physical demands inherent in pro wrestling. His lawyer argued that as a physician Zahorian should be allowed to provide steroids for performance enhancement, and Zahorian testified that he was unaware of a law that had gone into effect in November 1988, banning the sale of steroids for anything other than the treatment of disease. Zahorian was set to be sentenced in about two months: He faced a maximum of forty-four years in prison and $3 million in fines.

During the Zahorian case, investigators found FedEx waybills that linked shipments from Zahorian directly to the homes of several wrestlers, including Hogan, as well as to Vince at his new monolithic office building in Stamford, Connecticut. During the trial, Zahorian described Hogan as already having a serious steroid abuse problem when the two first met in 1984, and he admitted to dispensing steroids to fifteen to twenty wrestlers at an average TV taping.