Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (63 page)

Owen came through the cage door looking cut in his black singlet and tore straight into me. For the next thirty minutes we brawled up and down, back and forth, until finally Owen made a last escape over the cage. I climbed up to the top and managed to catch him by the hair and pull him back inside. I suplexed him standing off the top corner; falling backward, I held him safe and secure. Then I tried to escape, but Owen caught me by one foot, dragged me back and twisted me into the sharpshooter. I’ll never forget the pride I felt when I heard the crowd pop even without the blood. I slowly reversed the sharpshooter as Owen frantically fought his way to the ropes.

Below us, sitting behind Bruce, was Jim, who was doing a great job looking like a school bully slouched at his desk. Owen and I climbed over the top to the outside. Owen discreetly braced a leg through the bars as I gave him one last bash into the cage, and he fell back, hanging upside-down, as I dropped to the floor. The crowd exploded. Right on cue Jim jumped over the railing and took Davey out from behind with a clothesline, while Davey purposely flipped Diana over the railing to get her involved. They thought this was clever, but it infuriated me and Owen. Jim and Owen worked me over inside the cage until Davey peeled off his shirt and led my brothers in a charge over the top to rescue me. Jim and Owen made a quick getaway, and while I was being helped out I looked up to see an amused Smith straddling the top of the cage, posing and flexing his muscles. When it was all over, it was hailed as the greatest cage match of all time, which it certainly wasn’t, but it was surely the best one without blood.

I arrived home on September 3 for five days’ rest before heading over to Europe again. I had one important thing to do. I saw Owen enough on the road that I rarely visited with him at home, but this time I drove over to his perfect house. We both loved our coffee, so I’d bought him a cappuccino machine, which I left on his front steps along with a note.

It has truly been a pleasure working with you and I’m sure going to miss all the fun and high energy you brought with you to each and every match we had. I always knew you were a great and gifted worker and I’m very proud of you. I’m happy to have helped in any way to bring your talent to the forefront where it always belonged. Owen, you’re all pro! Good luck in the future, call on me when you need me, and come home in one piece. Love, Bret

Back on the bus in Europe. Davey and I worked tags all over Germany and the U.K. with Owen and Jim. The thing I remember most about that tour was Shawn, Razor and Nash talking to me in Hamburg about the idea of forming a clique of top guys who strictly took care of their own. This was what Buddy Rogers did in the 1950s, working only with his selected clique to get him over, so they could monopolize the cash flow. These boys wanted me to be the leader, to voice concerns pertaining to the group as a whole. Even though they were my friends, I couldn’t see it, and with the exception of Nash, their degree of pill popping was something I didn’t want to be around. I told them, “Ultimately everybody has to work their way to the top all by themselves. If someone can outperform me, every night in every part of the world, then go ahead, step up and do it!”

September 27, 1994. Poughkeepsie. I gingerly took a seat in Vince’s office, sensing the decision had been made about me dropping the belt. Backlund had slammed me as hard as he could ass-first into the mat in a dark match the night before at TVs in Utica. I wouldn’t find out for another two weeks that he’d actually cracked my pelvis.

This new Crazy Bob was beginning to get over. The Howdy Doody heel with his red brush cut was a character disappointed with the crowd for booing him, since he’d always been so true and good; he was angry at them for having lowered their moral values. In the dressing room, Bob continued to be the picture of class. He often had his face buried in huge books about politics, or he’d be working out, in push-up position, relentlessly pushing a little metal wheel with handles on each side, back and forth, back and forth, on the dressing-room floor.

Vince began to lay out the finish for our Survivor Series match. Owen would be in Bob’s corner and Davey in mine in a submission match where only they could end it by throwing in a towel. At some point Owen would incapacitate Davey, and in an emotional twist he’d persuade my poor mother, who would be seated in the front row with Stu, to throw in my towel out of fear for my safety, costing me the title. Even though I was losing the belt, I liked the drama of it. My feelings about Bob getting the belt had completely changed. He was trying so hard, and besides, how would I feel if a young buck had misgivings about putting me over some day?

I felt kind of bad for Bob when Vince told me that he’d only be champion for three days and then drop the belt to Diesel. By then I’d be at home, supposedly injured, and Diesel would take my place wrestling Bob at Madison Square Garden. Diesel was six-foot-nine: Maybe Vince felt he needed a champion physically as big as Hogan. I suggested to him that he keep the belt on Bob—there was plenty of time for Diesel to make it to the top—but his mind was made up.

Vince was full of surprises that day. He went on to say that he was thinking of moving me up to being more of a spokesperson, the Babe Ruth of the WWF, as he originally had in mind for Hogan.

He told me he wasn’t putting me out to pasture and, more importantly, he said my salary wouldn’t change; in fact, he insisted, it would go up. He caught me further off guard when he presented me with a handsome custom-made pink and black leather jacket with my name sewn onto it. But the more he talked, the more I wondered whether this was, in fact, the end of the line, just as it had come for Macho Man and even Lex, who, as of late, knew nothing but the sound of their own tires spinning. But for the time being, I was still his champion.

At the end of September a match between Owen and me, once again billed by the WWF as the last we would ever do together, was supposed to be the highlight of the debut of yet another of Vince’s TV shows. But my broken pelvis clicked with each step. I confided to Owen that I was hurt and that not only could I not take any bumps, I wasn’t sure I could work at all. Owen told me not to worry, that he’d do all the work. The match turned out to be a ballet of two brothers who really loved each other. After we pushed off, Owen slapped me, spinning my head: Sweat flew, but he barely even touched me. The slap sound came from Owen slapping his own thigh. We worked like this until we eventually wound up in some kind of a leg lock, which looked painful, but was as comfortable as crossing our feet watching TV. I sold it like crazy while Owen pretended to press against my knee with his boot. We took the match higher and higher, totally faking every move, while the crowd, Vince and all the boys in the back marveled at how intense it was. Finally Owen appeared to have me beat as he climbed the top rope. Then Davey tripped him up, causing Owen to lose his footing and crotch himself on the top rope. Owen writhed in mock agony as I slid over him, hooking his leg gently. “Thank you, brother,” I said. It was the most pain-free match I ever had.

That October I was back in Calgary with time off to work on Lonesome Dove. Despite early-morning set calls and the freezing cold, I was having more fun doing the show than I could ever remember.

Being picked up before dawn for sunrise drives out to the set was a peaceful way to wake up; there was wildlife everywhere, even a huge, antler-less moose who loped alongside the van, framed by a backdrop of snow-covered Rockies rising out of early-morning mist. The days were long, but I was happy with my scenes, especially one where I brawled in a saloon, slamming a cowboy across a table, when, bang, I got shot, or squibbed, and fake blood oozed out of my shoulder. No retakes in wrestling, I thought, before going absolutely nuts on everybody in the saloon—and they loved it. In fact, they wrote me in for the season finale to be shot in early December.

By the time I got to TVs in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, on November 8, the news was only just hitting, and hitting hard: Randy had jumped to WCW. Jack Lanza told me how Randy called Vince at four in the morning, drunk, to tell him he’d signed: “Randy never even gave Vince a chance to make him a counteroffer.” I found Vince in his office, and I could see he was shaken. I told him, “I’ve only really worked for two people in my life, you and my father. I want you to know that no matter what happens, I’m loyal to you.” Vince had tears in his eyes and so did Lanza when he came up to me later to thank me for being so supportive.

That same day I found out it was going to be Shawn and Diesel in the main event at WrestleMania XI, which I had no problem with. I just worried that it would be awfully hard on my body to keep this thing with Bob red-hot for another four months to be able to carry off an “I quit” submission match at the big show.

The Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio was always a good building for me. Bob and I were going to be on early in Survivor Series ’94, leaving the spotlight for Shawn and Diesel to have their falling out, which would start the buildup to their match at WrestleMania XI.

After thirty-five minutes, I finally wrestled Bob into the sharpshooter. Owen tried to interfere, but Davey cut him off at the pass and chased him full-sprint out of and around the ring. Owen rolled under the ropes, and Hebner intercepted Davey, giving Owen time to hit me with a bulldog, saving Bob. I pulled myself up by the ropes, shaking my fist at Owen, just as Bob pounced on me and slapped on his painful cross-faced chicken wing. Davey again tore after Owen but, just as he was about to catch him, Owen dropped flat and Davey tripped and collided head-first with the steel ring steps, pretending to knock himself out. Owen did a beautiful job of acting sorry as he tearfully tried to revive Davey. Meanwhile, I fought helplessly to escape Bob’s chicken wing. Owen begged our mom to throw in the towel, and after much pained deliberation my parents nonchalantly stepped over their unconscious son-in-law, with Owen begging them to end my suffering. Stu angrily refused, but Helen, in a great, teary performance, couldn’t take it anymore and tossed in the towel. To their dismay, Owen was so happy he’d cost me the title that he jumped up and down with glee and raced back to the dressing room. I could hear the furious crowd as Stu and Helen helped me to the back, as Bob strapped on the World title belt. In the end, I was honored to pass the torch to Bob.

After the match, one wrestler after another paid me their respects. What touched me the most was when Earl Hebner said to me, blinking back tears, “If anybody ever says you’re not a total pro, I’ll punch them in the mouth.”

I’d been overthrown. According to the storyline, I’d suffered a shoulder injury in Backlund’s crossface chicken wing and had to be sent home until early January to recover, the longest off-time I’d had in ten years.

On November 29, in Calgary, there was a press conference announcing the debut of the Calgary Hitmen. Earlier in the year, legendary NHLers Theo Fleury and Joe Sakic had invited me to co-found a junior hockey team in Calgary whose coach and general manager would be their one-time mentor Graham James. Theo thought it would be a good idea to name the team after me, and I thought the media exposure would more than offset the investment they wanted from me. That day, the logo was unveiled along with the team colors, which were my ring colors of pink, black and white. The logo featured a phantomlike hockey player in a goalie mask bursting out of a triangle. Our celebration that night was diminished by a couple of local sportscasters who hated wrestling, plain and simple, because they thought it promoted violence. Overlooking all the accomplishments of a local boy, they declared that I was a horrible role model for a junior hockey team. With the NHL on strike at the time, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the only reason they ripped on me was because they needed something to talk about. The story got national exposure, and Don Cherry defended me on Hockey Night in Canada. Hitmen merchandise flew off the shelves. As Vince so often proved, sometimes a little controversy can be a good thing.

On Christmas Day at Hart house, I was seated next to my mom at her end of the long dining-room table. She always had me sit to her right, and then she’d hold my hand. How could I not feel tranquility about how my life was turning out? I was thrilled to have a hockey team named after me, and I was on TV in Lonesome Dove, getting paid to play cowboys and Indians, while still flying around the world playing the role of a hero to millions of kids. Maybe that palm reader in New Orleans was actually right, and I would become bigger than I ever imagined. As the plates were being cleared, my mom gazed at me with love and pride.

My father also smiled at me from the head of the table. The former Canadian amateur champion stooped a bit when he walked now, more because of his bad knees than his back. He was happy that Ellie had made it up from Tampa for the holidays. The downside was that she’d left Jim behind, free to indulge in his vices and roll around with his demons. Stu was happy as long as Ellie was happy, but he was disappointed at how Jim had turned out.

Both my parents looked tired, no doubt from worrying about everybody all the time. Maybe they’d never done the math to realize that twelve kids would produce fifty or sixty grandkids, an almost infinite circle of concern. They were just plum tuckered out.

34

THE CLIQUE

BY NEW YEAR’S EVE, I was packing to leave again. I couldn’t help but feel like a tired horse being hitched to the wagon one more time. I had a feeling that 1995 was going to be a telltale year for me.

I told myself that it was out of my hands and just to do my best.

After having been off for six weeks, it was downright weird to be in the dressing room at the Houston Summit; I rubbed my weary eyes at the sight of Captain Kirk standing right in front of me.

William Shatner was there to do a bit spot on Raw to promote his new sci-fi series, Tech Wars. He was an agreeable sort of guy, but all business. At the end of my match with Jeff Jarrett, whose manager was The Roadie, I have a vague memory of telling Captain Kirk, “Go ahead, give The Roadie one more!” I was more than amused to watch Shatner drop The Roadie with an elbow smash and fire him over the top rope.