Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (56 page)

Razor and I opened the show. For some reason, Pat told me not to win any of my matches with the sharpshooter, so I worked a spot with Razor where he stomped and broke my fingers as an excuse as to why I couldn’t use them for the rest of the night. His work had improved a lot since the Royal Rumble, and we pulled some clever spots going into the finish, with Razor falling backward off the top and me twisting to land on top of him for a pin fall.

My second bout was with Mr. Perfect. Vince hadn’t done much with Curt since he’d returned to fulltime wrestling after recovering from his back injury. Curt wanted to have a great match just to show Vince that he still could, and he did. In what many would come to rate as our greatest bout ever, Curt and I danced a tango that left them speechless backstage. Our impromptu pre-match interview was casual and hilarious as we kidded each other about whose dad was tougher.

With timing like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, we worked a rugged babyface match with most of our old great spots. Just as I went for the sharpshooter, Curt bent back my taped and supposedly broken fingers, bringing me instantly to my knees. He went for his perfectplex, honoring me by letting me kick out of his finish again. I went for a standing suplex, and we jackknifed backward over the top rope where Curt slammed his bad back hard across the ring apron. With both of us lying on the padded floor, a grimacing Curt rolled in first and I crawled in right behind him. Hebner stepped between us long enough for Curt to slide in and fold me up in a small package, but I managed to flip us over, pinning Curt cleanly with a one . . . two . . . three. It was a classic. Curt beamed with pride when I shook his hand in the ring.

I went backstage and watched Hogan and Yoko on a monitor. They moved in slow motion like a walrus squaring off against a hippopotamus. I rolled my eyes at how lame the finish was. Hulk proceeded to knock Fuji off the ring apron only to turn around and see a Japanese photographer in an obviously fake beard on the apron with his camera. Hulk got close and the cameraman exploded flash paper, supposedly burning Hogan’s eyes. It was a disgraceful way of doing the job. When Yoko pinned him, the crowd seemed relieved it was finally over.

Once Hogan got back to his dressing room, I knocked on the door and stepped in. Jimmy Hart, Dave Hebner and Beefcake were with him. I said, “Terry, I want to speak with you.”

We stared at each other.

“You told me at WrestleMania IX that you’d be happy to return the favor, and as I understand it, now you don’t want to even work with me, you won’t put me over and I’m not in your league.”

Hogan stood there speechless, so I carried on. “Well, you’re right. You’re not in my league. On behalf of myself, my family and most of the boys in the dressing room, you can go fuck yourself.”

He stuttered, “Brother, you don’t know the whole story.”

“I got the story directly from Vince,” I said. “Terry, you haven’t said ten words to me since you got back almost four months ago. If you want to level with me, then go ahead. I’m right here!”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you just told me to go fuck myself.”

“That’s right, and I’ll tell you again. Go fuck yourself.”

I turned and walked out, heading straight for the ring to wrestle Bam Bam for the main event finale of the tournament. Bammer and I had our best match ever. After twenty long minutes of Bammer bouncing me around like a basketball, I jumped on his shoulders, dove down to grab his ankles and pinned him with a victory roll. There was no mistaking who the real champion was.

At the end of the show, I stood triumphantly on the podium, wearing a purple cape and crown and holding my scepter, being interviewed by Mean Gene, when, as planned, Jerry Lawler came out to attack me. Lawler recklessly bashed me with a wooden stool and then picked up the heavy wooden throne and smashed it down hard on top of me—he really hurt me. I vowed to myself that I’d get even with him later.

When I finally got back to the dressing room, Vince pulled me aside to lecture me about how it was unprofessional of me to tell Hogan off. In fact, of the three of us, I felt that I was the only one who was being professional.

“Winning the King of the Ring is great,” I said, “but just doesn’t pay the same as being the World Champion, and you and I both know it!” It was one of those rare times when Vince had no comeback.

For perhaps the first time in my career I really did believe that I was the best worker in the business and that I would never take a backseat to another wrestler again.

The next day I was so sore that I could barely drive to the building in Columbus for TVs. As I hobbled in, Hogan came straight to me. He motioned with his big finger, “C’mere.”

I stared at him, and he softened and asked me, “Can I have a word with you?”

I nodded and off we went for a walk.

Terry told me that, yes, I was supposed to win back the belt, but that when Vince changed our contest at SummerSlam to a non-title match, he no longer wanted to do the match with me. But I clearly remembered the photo shoot we’d done with the belt and that Vince had told me I’d beat Hulk with the sharpshooter. I knew what I’d been told—and I stood firm.

“Vince said that you said I wasn’t good enough for you to even consider putting me over and that I wasn’t in your league!”

“That’s just not true, brother!” With a mad look in his eye Terry tugged me by the sleeve toward Vince’s office and barged right in. I didn’t mind. I wanted to know which one of my supposed friends was lying to me. Vince directed pleading eyes at me. And then when Hogan retold his version Vince coolly lied to my face. “I never, ever said it would be a title match.”

I realized that there was some kind of head game going on between Vince and Hogan, and I was merely a pawn to be played with and discarded.

When Hogan left the office, he had tears in his eyes. It would be a long time before I’d see him again.

He finished up a few days later, and most of the boys suspected he’d be back just in time to score the main event spot with Yoko at SummerSlam. Either way, it wouldn’t be me. I had Lawler whether I liked it or not.

When I made my rounds through the dressing room, several of the boys patted me on the back and praised me for telling Hogan off. Kevin Nash laughed hard as he described the look on Beefcake’s face when he saw my blackboard drawing. Nash hailed from Michigan, played basketball in Europe and was now called Diesel; he was playing the role of Shawn’s bodyguard. At just under seven feet, Kevin had an imposing presence that was offset by his good-natured sense of humor.

I was so physically wrecked from the three matches the day before that the promotion gave me the day off to recover: a first. I left to clear my head. Five hours later I got back to the hotel from a bar with a pretty girl with long black hair. In the wee hours of the morning she slept with her breasts pressed against my back. I thought of Julie, how she’d sleep with her breasts against my back just like this girl. I forgave myself as always. I wasn’t so bad, I was just very stressed and lonely.

As for Vince and Hogan, their actions spoke louder than their words—and even their words contradicted each other. I kept thinking, I will show them that I really am the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be.

PART THREE

STEAL MY CROWN

30

LONE WOLF

TO BE A GREAT WRESTLER, you have to be a real athlete and a great actor. To be a great champion, you need to be the best storyteller of them all, because your job is to work with the top hands, whoever they are. Whatever his opponent’s age, size, skill or style, whether he is a heel, babyface, Olympic-style shooter, showman, big brute or clumsy oaf, the champ has to have the versatility to bring the best out of each contender. A champion needs to be a champion first to his fellow wrestlers, and to protect and honor the profession for their sake. Or at least that’s the way it used to be when I was involved in pro wrestling. Even without the belt, I wanted to play this role and leave my mark on the business for years to come. My formula was simply to outwork and outwrestle my competition. And I would never stab backs.

On the other hand, champion wrestlers tend to hold on to their power like despots, and I shouldn’t have been so bitter toward Hogan. He was only guilty of being as greedy as he felt he’d earned the right to be. When I realized that my WrestleMania IX check was ten times bigger than the biggest check I’d ever got before, I wanted to dip my cup in too and never stop. Vince McMahon’s previous torchbearers—Hogan, Macho and Warrior—had made so much more than the rest of us all those years.

Throughout that summer of 1993, Yokozuna was the man. He sat in his first-class seat stuffing his face like Henry VIII. Lex Luger was in first class too, a perk left over from his old World Bodybuilding Federation contract. Back in coach, I tried not to let it bother me, but it did. I put Lex over without complaint. Although he was a mechanical worker who stuck to the basics and stayed there, he was a pro—safe, agreeable and easy to work with. I hoped maybe Vince would change his mind and put the belt back on me, but Lex was the one who got the SummerSlam match with Yoko.

Hogan was playing hardball in negotiating his contract, and I found out later that Hogan was being pressured by the Feds to roll over on Vince. Subpoenas were being served right and left, and I was sure to get one too.

Vince went to work repackaging and building Lex to be his next superstar. First he erased The Narcissist, then dressed him in skimpy red, white and blue trunks and turned him into his new all-American hero. The face turn was accomplished by having Lex slam Yoko on the deck of the USS

Intrepid in New York Harbor on Independence Day. No one had ever been able to slam Yoko, not even Hogan. Vince loaded Lex into a red, white and blue bus christened the Lex Express and with much flag waving and hoopla sent him off on a heavily hyped promotional tour, all summer long, across America. Vince couldn’t have done more to get Lex over.

I continued to be called upon to put Lex and Yoko over at house shows. I found myself toying with the notion of going to WCW, which was still throwing buckets of money around to all-too-eager former WWF stars. They’d been turning up the heat with improved TV production too, but they still didn’t have the hang of it, and their stuff came across, as Vince liked to say, like a “rasslin’ show.”

Their house shows were improving, but they didn’t draw despite having some exceptional talent—

Sting, Vader, Pillman and a muscled-up Chris Benoit, who looked like Dynamite and was working like him too. There was also a guy from Texas with long, blond hair by the name of Stunning Steve Austin, who impressed me a lot. WCW never did much with him, and I thought if he ever became available Vince should snatch him up fast because I’d really work well with him.

The biggest war the wrestling world would ever see was heating up, but this time Vince wasn’t steamrolling over small-time promoters such as my dad. He was taking on Ted Turner, with all of his arrogance, business savvy and billions of dollars. McMahon and Turner poked each other in the eye every chance they got, upstaging each other’s pay-per-views, screwing each other out of arena bookings and raiding each other’s rosters. The WWF’s house show business had been down, but the return matches between Yoko and me were drawing Vince some of the biggest houses he’d had in years. Meanwhile, wrestlers who came over, such as Kevin Nash, joked that back in the WCW they were still only working in front of empty chairs.

Yoko was no longer that humble kid who’d shuffled his feet and blushed when he told me that he’d be honored just to be in the same ring with me. Now he was King Shit. I understood all too well that the belt can do that to you, and I knew it wasn’t his fault. Yoko was agile for his size, and like every Samoan wrestler I ever knew, he was a hard worker. When he ran out of gas, I took the action to him so he wouldn’t need to move around too much. I bounced my fists off his sweaty head while he rolled his eyes, panting and giggling like a little kid. He’d come off the ropes for his big leg drop, and my head would disappear under his fat thigh with the crowd gasping out of fear. The truth was he never, ever hurt me with it, but afterwards the imprint of his red nylon tights would stay tattooed on my face for days.

Then Vince had me job out to Mr. Hughes, a rookie who was as big and black as he was stiff and green, and I felt I had no choice but to take a good look at my contract. I found out that it rolled over on December 31 and that, if I wanted to jump to WCW, I’d have to give my notice by September 30.

In pure sports you win or lose based on ability, but in pro wrestling, even if you’re the best, your credibility can be won and lost in no time at all with the stroke of a promoter’s pen—if you don’t stand up for yourself. I was still Vince’s biggest star, especially in Europe, so I had a good hand in this poker game. As Vince pushed Lex and Yoko past me, I kept my cards close to my vest and my head down through what would be one of the most grueling and difficult WWF summer schedules ever.

Each time I got home I’d train, tan and play touch football with Dallas and his friends over at the schoolyard. Then, just two-and-a-half days later, I’d find myself plopped down next to Owen as the wheels of the plane tucked themselves underneath us and we headed out on the road again, and we’d compare notes on the goings-on at Hart house. One time that summer I’d stopped by to find my mom upset and crying in her office. Stu sat across from her, with his glasses pushed up on his forehead, his lips pursed and the tip of his tongue sticking out, as he fidgeted with his hearing aid.

My mom hesitated to tell me what was wrong until I insisted. As a result of the last few years of Stampede Wrestling, and a few bad investments, they were nearly broke. Although Stu couldn’t hear us, I had the feeling he knew what we were talking about. When he left the room for a moment, my mom told me, “We’ve done a few things with our savings that we shouldn’t have.” Stu came back and she lowered her voice, adding, “It would break his heart to tell you.” I told her not to worry, I would always be there for them. Owen was angry that Bruce, Ellie and Smith were ceaselessly burdening our parents with their money problems, and I figured that this is what my parents had been doing with their life savings: bailing them out.