Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (71 page)

The WWF had been blitzing San Antonio for weeks in an all-out effort to fill up the Alamo Dome for the Royal Rumble on January 19, 1997. In the end, it was one of the most papered shows in the history of the WWF, but they did pack the Dome to the rafters.

Stone Cold was one of the first combatants in the battle royal, and the story was that he was unstoppable. He whooped ass on nearly everyone, tossing out a record eleven wrestlers, one after another—until I came out. We worked with each other, back and forth, until it was down to seven men left. Then I happened to catch Austin off guard and tossed him over the top rope, eliminating him, but the referees were conveniently distracted by Terry Funk and Mankind, who were brawling on the floor. Austin shot back under the ropes and into the ring and flipped Taker and Sid out, just as I dumped out the fake Diesel. Technically, I had just won the coveted title shot at WrestleMania XIII, but Steve came from behind, threw me out and was awarded the win instead. As per the plan, he hightailed it back to the dressing room as I went absolutely nuts in the ring, manhandling the referees.

I followed the storyline, once again complaining on mic that I’d been screwed. This was all great heat for Steve, and I went along, though I was wondering where the payoff was for me. Where was my character going?

But nobody came close to the terrific job that Shawn did in the main event with Sid, not even me.

Afterwards I went to Shawn’s dressing room to tell him that I was proud of him. He thanked me, and I thought everything was fine between us.

Terry Funk was only there for the one night, to be in the battle royal. It pained me to see him hobble across the dressing room afterwards. He was barely able to walk after taking so many hard bumps throughout his storied career, yet he had still given it his all, part machine, part masochist. This great worker and former NWA world champion pulled me aside in the showers that night and told me that he respected me for all I had given to the business all these years and in his opinion I was the best worker around. I left the building after the show feeling pretty damn proud of myself.

The only thing still keeping me babyface was Stone Cold, who kept coming out of no-where like a villain in a good Western, jumping me and leaving me for dead every week. He reminded me a lot of Dave Schultz, in a different package but with the same intense meanness. Steve was a great chicken-shit heel, which I mean as a compliment. I loved working with him because it came across like we really hated each other; our interviews and brawls looked like even more of a shoot than the stuff I was doing with Shawn.

Much to my surprise, Beaumont TV on January 20 was the Bret Hart show. Although I was happy to play a major role on Raw, Vince had me do a carefully scripted in-ring interview that called for more complaining, which I thought was beginning to kill me off with the fans. “I was screwed out of my title match with Sid by Shawn Michaels. I got screwed at the Rumble by Stone Cold. I got screwed by the WWF,” I said and glared down at Vince. I then pointed accusingly at him and said, “And I got screwed by you!” On live international TV, I quit, climbing over the guard rail and walking out through the crowd. It all seemed quite real, too real, but I did as Vince told me. In an in-tense promo, Austin ripped into me about whining and complaining all the way back to Canada. “The only person you could possibly beat up is your wrinkled-up old man in his little old basement!” (Stu always took it as a sign of respect when a heel wrestler mentioned his name on TV.) The marks groomed by the ECW had grown in number: By the winter of 1997, they regularly bought up the tickets for the first few rows of seats at all of Vince’s TV shows on the east coast just so that they could be heard on TV around the world booing the babyfaces and cheering the heels. They made life really hard for Rocky Maivia, just because they knew they could get under his skin. The general TV audience had no idea that it was the same group of ECW fans showing up everywhere.

Instead they thought a trend was developing, and as a result hating the good guys and loving the heels actually started to catch on. At Beaumont, though, the fans were still cheering for the good guys. After I quit on live TV, Gorilla Monsoon announced that what happened to me at the Rumble was a travesty and he wanted to make up for it by inviting me, Taker, Va-der and Stone Cold to participate in a final-four match at the In Your House pay-per-view on February 16, with the winner to face Shawn for the title at WrestleMania XIII. So back I came through the crowd, accepted the match and then brawled up and down the aisle with Stone Cold until we went off the air.

Afterwards, in his office, Vince introduced me to a bigwig from the USA cable network that carried Raw. They were both very pleased with that night’s show, and the USA rep said it was the most exciting Raw they’d ever done. Vince gave me a proud slap on the back and said, “It’s all on account of him.”

On February 2, I was on dead last for the matinee of a double shot in Montreal, and the agents told me not to worry if, as a result, I was late getting to Ottawa that night. I got there as the opening match began, which was more than two hours before I needed to be in the ring for the main event.

As I entered the back door of the arena, Austin caught me by the arm to tell me that Shawn and Hunter had been making a big stink about me being late. He also told me that Shawn was trying to drive a wedge between us: He’d actually told Steve a few days earlier that I’d been asked to put Steve over in Toronto and had refused. I told Steve there was no truth to that at all. There was no avoiding the fact that Shawn and Hunter were stirring things up behind my back. They wanted war rather than peace. That night Pat came to me and sheepishly explained, “Vince would like you to put Hunter over, just to show the boys.”

“I don’t mind one bit, Pat,” I said, “but when the boys you are talking about happen to be only Shawn and Hunter, it does bother me.”

I did the honors that night as I’d been asked, but I was steamed over the insult. I called Vince the next day only to hear him side with them, telling me that Shawn and Hunter also said that on top of my tardiness I was lackadaisical in the ring. I figured after all this time Vince knew me better than that.

“Where are you going with me?” I countered. “I thought you said I was going to play a major role in all the booking.”

Vince gave me that yuk-yuk laugh. “Well, you probably think this is crazy, but you’ll screw Shawn this Thursday at Lowell TV so Sid wins the belt. Then in the final four, at In Your House, Shawn will screw you out of winning, and from there Taker will work with Sid at Mania for the belt, and Shawn will put his hair up in a ladder match, and you’ll cut it all off.”

I was a bit stunned at how casual he was. “So, it’s not me and Shawn at WrestleMania XIII for the belt?”

“It’s too predictable now. I’m changing it.”

But I could see this for what it really was. Shawn had refused to work with me or put me over, and it changed everything.

On February 7, I was sitting with Davey in the dressing room in Pitts-burgh listening to Shawn bitch about Steve. I was slightly relieved to know that I wasn’t the only one he feared. Poor Rocky Maivia was also being buried by Shawn and Hunter for sup-posedly not wanting to job, for not selling and for stealing their spots. Rocky was a good kid, and he tried to be polite and respectful, but he couldn’t get them to like him at all.

Just then Vince, with his lawyer, Jerry McDivitt, waved me into his office. I handed him a clipping from a Quebec City newspaper. “As far as me being lackadaisical, believe what you want.”

Vince put on his glasses to read: “There were only four thousand wrestling fans at the Coliseum last night in attendance at the WWF show and this is the reason the actors did not give their all. All the hoopla we have been accustomed to was absent. Only the match-up between Bret Hart and Steve Austin and the fight between newcomer Phil LePhon and Owen Hart drew fans to their feet. The finale between Farouq and Shawn Michaels did not produce the desired re-sult.”

I told Vince that I knew he wasn’t being straight with me: Everything he’d promised me was being changed because Shawn didn’t want to put me over. If he was trying to ruin me, I said, I wanted him to know that I was aware of it. With this kind of treachery and deception, I might as well be in WCW.

“I don’t know if you realize it but I’ve only won three matches since I came back.” Vince stammered that everything I said just wasn’t true—he now had too much invested in me not to get everything out of me that he could.

On February 13, in Lowell, Massachusetts, the big news was that Shawn was forfeiting the World belt because he’d suddenly somehow sustained a career-ending knee injury and needed surgery.

Taker looked at me like this was all bullshit and said, “I’ll believe it when I see the scar. The little fucker doesn’t want to drop the belt.” Taker, Sid and I headed down the hallway to Vince’s office.

Shawn and Hunter, Pat, J.R. and Brisco were already there when we arrived. Vince seemed really upset that Shawn was hurt and was near to tears as he explained how I’d win the belt in the final four for my fourth title reign.

The catch? Sid would work with me in a title match on Raw the night after and Austin would cost me the belt, setting up a new makeshift lineup for WrestleMania XIII with Taker and Sid headlining in the main event while Stone Cold and I worked the semi-main event. I actually liked the new storyline, accepting that Taker and Sid had every right to be the main event. But as Vince went on explaining how everything was going to change, I looked over at Taker, who tugged on the corner of his eye and made a skeptical face. Sid was tight-lipped, and Steve wore an intense glare as we had our futures rewritten, probably fearful that he was going to be turned babyface just when things were finally taking off for him. He knew that Shawn was better to have as a friend than as an enemy. Back in the dressing room, Steve told me again that he supported me, but he added that he didn’t want to get involved in dressing-room tensions. Steve was going to ride the fence.

Shawn did an in-ring interview that night that I watched on a TV monitor backstage along with the other wrestlers. He walked out without so much as a limp and with the heartbreaking trickle of the occasional tear, he talked of having lived his dream. Fans jeered him, so the cameras cut to close-ups of girls crying. He said he simply had to listen to his doctors. He’d not only hurt his knee, he had “lost his smile” over the last few months and was going home to find it. Every wrestler standing with me rolled his eyes as Shawn forfeited the title, handing the belt to Vince, who was caked in makeup and looked peculiarly Dracula-like as he, too, appeared to be fighting back tears. I’d worked a tag team match with Shawn at the Meadowlands only three days before, and there was nothing wrong with his knee. He hadn’t wrestled since. I found myself agreeing with Taker—I’ll believe this bullshit when I see the scar.

Three days later, I drove up to the back of the arena in Chattanooga for In Your House. A bad flu had hit the dressing room. Stone Cold was there, even though he was green in the gills. He barely spoke as we worked out the finish with Vader and Taker.

When the four of us hit the ring, Shawn’s teary-eyed retirement interview played on the giant screen. Shawn was there, watching it all on a monitor in the back, while word trickled down to the dressing room that he miraculously wouldn’t need surgery after all. Then Shawn pranced out swatting hands as he made his way to the announcers’ table to guest commentate.

It was a great four-way match with battle-royal rules and the belt on the line. Vader potatoed himself this time, taking a boot while coming at Taker with a steel chair. He split his eyebrow open and bled everywhere, getting eliminated, and the blood kicked the match into high gear. The referee gave us the cue, and I delicately dumped a sick Steve over the ropes to the floor, eliminating him. In a climactic series of false finishes, as the referees were trying to drag Austin off the apron, I ducked a clothesline from Taker and tipped him out as Steve was hauled back to the dressing room. Then Earl Hebner handed me the belt to begin my fourth title reign. Despite the cheers from the crowd, I didn’t have a single moment to appreciate it because Sid’s theme music was pumping so loud to build up our title match on Raw the next night.

At Raw, which was in Nashville, I strode to the ring looking like a confident champion, even though Sid was the babyface and Nashville was his hometown. He was a good friend, but he scared me every time we worked because he was awkward and injury prone. I had a new idea, one never done before, where I would drag Sid over to the post and put on a figure four-leg lock around the post. It looked extremely painful and Sid writhed in agony while I hung upside-down from the outside corner. As I wrenched on his knee I smiled, because it was totally painless, looking so real but feeling so light.

After several commercial breaks and one more airing of Shawn’s teary retirement speech, right in the middle of our match, we went into the finish. At the end I’d somehow managed to bait Sid into sunset flipping me, then cleverly rolled through and twisted the six-foot-nine powerhouse into the sharpshooter. Sid desperately tried to power out of it, but he was done for. Then Stone Cold fought his way to the ring apron and cracked me with a chair. I sold it just long enough to be caught bent over so that Sid could step over me and powerbomb me to the mat, pinning me for the title win.

The WWF had just created a European Championship belt, and the first tournament to crown the new champion would take place on a sold-out nine-day tour of Germany that February. I was happy to get away from Shawn and all the other goings-on. This time I had decided to drive instead of riding on the bus with the boys. Getting to the venues was a challenge, but I loved the fleeting freedom of the road, and somehow luck landed me at the buildings safely every night. The European fans were sympathetic over how my character had been screwed recently and cheered me on louder than ever. On February 25, I had a wonderful match with Owen in Hamburg.