Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (75 page)

Once again, we agreed that going forward, we would clear any negative comments with each other before putting them out there for the public to hear, and we’d work together as professionally as we always had, aiming for King of the Ring in June, if I could make it back by then. We shook hands and I felt good that we were back in sync.

The street fight with Stone Cold on Raw built up like a showdown at the O.K. Corral. That night I sacrificed all I had for Vince and his company, determined to turn my knee injury into a positive.

Even though Steve and I had fought it out numerous times before, I’d never been the despised one before: The crowd was as bad-tempered as a pack of vicious dogs. Coins bounced off my sore, stitched-up head as I headed out to the ring in blue jeans, a blue T-shirt and Doc Marten boots. It was impossible to wear a knee wrap under the jeans, so I went out without knee protection.

Now the reluctant hero, Stone Cold paced the ring in his black AUSTIN 3:16 T-shirt and jeans, only to be pounced on by Owen and Davey at the sound of the bell. Shawn came to Steve’s rescue, cleaning house all the way back to the dressing room, leaving me to deliver an intense shit-kicking to Steve, during which I methodically placed his ankle through the back of a steel chair and climbed up to the top turnbuckle. When I jumped off, Steve moved and I made out that I injured my knee when I landed. Of course, Steve promptly slammed my unprotected knees with the chair. We’d forgotten to calculate for no knee wrap: the damage and the pain were very real. It has given me pause to think that the knee problems I’ve suffered ever since were severely aggravated by this one angle on this one night. Then Steve twisted me into a sharpshooter and cinched it in until The New Hart Foundation, now including Brian Pillman, barged past several referees and agents to make the save. I was delicately placed on a gurney and stretchered out to a waiting ambulance with Owen and Davey shouting and pleading for the attendants to be careful as the camera crew followed us. I could hear Owen yell, “Watch his knee! Get ’im to a hospital!” with such emotion that I almost cracked up.

They lifted me into the ambulance, but just as it was about to pull away the audience realized that Stone Cold was sitting in the driver’s seat—it was an ambush! Steve scrambled back and put a vicious beating on me before he was jumped by Owen and Davey and the whole ruckus was broken up by a gaggle of refs and agents.

When the ambulance finally pulled away, a steaming Owen huffed to Davey, “He’s not gonna get away with this. We’ll kill ’im. We’ll kill ’im.”

I had knee surgery on Wednesday, April 23, spending one night in the hospital. I barely got in the door of my house the next day when Vince called and said he needed me to be at Raw in Omaha, Nebraska, on Monday. I told him that the doctor had warned me not to do anything, but Vince assured me that if I showed up, I could come out in a wheelchair and nobody would touch me. In real life, the other members of The Hart Foundation—Owen, Davey and Pillman—were chomping at the bit to keep the momentum going, and I felt I would be letting them and the business down if I didn’t show. The last turn of the screw? Jim would be there too. Vince explained that he wanted Anvil to come out in the final seconds of the show just as Stone Cold was about to get his hands on me in my wheel-chair. Owen, Davey and Pillman would all be preoccupied at ringside, and I’d be trying to fend Steve off with my crutches. Out of nowhere, Anvil would blindside him, and I’d whack him with my crutch, knocking him off the ten-foot-high stage! Steve would land on a giant stunt mattress, in the dark, which would quickly be removed before the cameras found him sprawled out on the cement.

Although I didn’t relish making the trip just four days after major reconstructive surgery, I told Vince I’d be there: I had a strong feeling that Jim being hired back depended on it. So that’s what I did.

Over the next few weeks I came out in a wheelchair and then on crutches, for real. My heel turn, and the angles it spawned, were a huge success. We really had great heat, Vince’s ratings were rebounding and the house show business was good, with Davey subbing for me in main events against Taker. There were all kinds of spinoffs involving The Hart Foundation that benefited not only Austin, but Taker, Mankind, Legion of Doom and, of course, Shawn. It was great to see the whole dressing room working as a team to beat WCW.

I worked TVs every week, ripping into America. Being a heel was fun, but I really feared where this was leading. The fans were so pissed off that I couldn’t even hear myself talk when I did my in-ring interviews (though I couldn’t have been more pleased when Meltzer wrote that my interviews were the best in the business all year).

The Hart Foundation wore black leather jackets like mine, except for Pillman, who wore a black leather vest—the jackets served as protection from the constant barrage of dangerous objects! We were having such a successful and creative run that I even went to Vince one more time to see about bringing Bruce in as a heel World Junior Heavyweight Champion, the chance that Bruce had been waiting for all his life. Vince seemed to like the idea of revealing yet another secret member of The Foundation, which was really just the WWF’s version of what Bischoff was doing with the nWo.

Vince told me he was still hoping that I’d be able to work with Shawn at King of the Ring. My knee was sore and swollen, and my recovery slow. If I was working with somebody I could trust, I thought I might be able to pull it off. The question was, Could I trust Shawn? What I should have been asking myself was, Could I trust Vince?

Raw, from Newark, Delaware, on May 12, opened with The Hart Foundation at the top of the ramp, with me in my wheelchair praising them as the best that the WWF had to offer. They all seemed legitimately touched when I borrowed a couple of lines from the Sebastian Faulks war novel, Birdsong, to introduce them: “‘I would take these men into the mouth of hell to fight the devil. I would trust these men to breathe for me and to pump my blood with their hearts.’ Jim The Anvil Neidhart, Davey Boy Smith, my lovable brother Owen and Brian Pillman. We are The Hart Foundation!”

At the end of the show, with the idea that I’d soon be working with Shawn at King of the Ring, I called Shawn out to the ring. The last thirty seconds were supposed to be mine, and then Shawn would give me his superkick, toppling me backward, out of my wheelchair, as the show went off the air. But the fan noise was so loud I couldn’t hear my cue. Instead of the show ending with Shawn nailing me, we went off the air with me dressing him down. I felt bad about it, but Shawn thought I did it on purpose and was furious. I told him that they had the footage of him superkicking me out of my wheelchair, which they could replay all week on Vince’s other shows. And they did—over and over.

On May 19, at Raw in Mobile, Alabama, Shawn and I built more heat for our King of the Ring match, but because my knee still wasn’t ready and I couldn’t go long, Vince’s idea was that I’d promise that if I didn’t beat Shawn in less than ten minutes I’d never wrestle in America again! A Hart Foundation member would be handcuffed to each ring post, and of course one of them would free himself to ensure that I won, just in the nick of time. During an in-ring interview in the first half of the night, Shawn was groggy and slurring his words. As I climbed into the ring with The Hart Foundation to open the second half, Shawn appeared on the big screen, wasted, and suggested on live TV that I couldn’t get it up for ten minutes and that I’d been having some “Sunny days,” a blatant suggestion that I’d been sleeping with Sunny. I couldn’t hear him well because it was so noisy in the ring, so the remark sailed right over my head. When the interview was over, most of the boys were seething at how unprofessional it was. Any hopes we had of working together went out the window. Shawn was so out of it that night, Hunter and Chyna had to help him out of the building.

When I got home, Julie and Stu were upset about the Sunny comment, but it wasn’t until Dallas and all his school pals asked me whether I was doing stuff with Sunny that I realized that Shawn had hurt my family. At that time, the pro wrestling code of honor was still clear: No man hurts another man’s family. Jim Ross phoned me at home to apologize on behalf of the office and to promise that Shawn’s unprofessional behavior would be dealt with. I’d heard that line before. This time I felt I had to do something to settle the score.

Throughout that week I brooded about what to do. I wondered about beating the hell out of Shawn for real at the pay-per-view, but that could be costly to the company if he got badly hurt, and I also had to be careful of my knee. I decided to tell Vince that I had to pull out of the pay-per-view because my knee wasn’t ready. Vince had a plan: Stone Cold would finally catch me alone, flatten me and bash the hell of my knee, taking me out of the pay-per-view storyline and what would have been a clean win over Shawn.

At the Raw in Huntington, West Virginia, on June 2, I had an in-depth talk with Vince. He told me that the company was in financial peril and that he was only just hanging on: The next six months would either make him or break him. He said Ted Turner was hell-bent on putting him out of business, and he told me he might have no other choice but to restructure my contract. Of course, I’d still get every dime he owed me, but I’d get it on the back end, years down the road. He added that he appreciated how hard I was working for him and told me not to worry about anything.

I sure didn’t want to receive the money owing to me now at the back end of my contract, so I did call my lawyer to see what my options were if Vince tried to do that kind of a move, but when it came right down to it, I didn’t believe that he ever would.

King of the Ring went down on June 8, according to the new plan. The next day we were all supposed to be at Raw in Hartford. Shawn was nowhere to be found. I happened to mention to Jim that as soon as I saw Shawn I was going to straighten him out once and for all. I never thought Jim The Anvil Neidhart could be a voice of reason, but he got a worried look on his face and pleaded with me: “Please, I just got back here! Don’t do anything now! God, Bret, I need this job! Just forget about it.” What could I say? I resigned myself to not beating the shit out of Shawn.

At about 6 p.m., I went into the bathroom to gel my hair before going across the hall to tape interviews. I was surprised to see Shawn’s reflection go by me in the mirror. I could see he was uptight, so I smiled and casually said, “Hey, Shawn . . .”

He cut me off. “Fuck you! You haven’t talked to me in over a fucking month, what makes you think I’m gonna talk to you now?”

Even though I had hair gel all over my hands, I was primed to go back to my original plan, but Shawn vanished through the doorway, past Crush, who was lacing his boots up and heard the whole thing.

I set out to find Shawn, but he was gone. I paced around the backstage area until Owen, Davey, Jim and Pillman came to find me.

“I know Shawn’s watching from somewhere, waiting for me to leave this room,” I said. “I’ll bet you the second I walk out of here, he’ll walk in. All his stuff is in here. Watch.” I crossed the hall, walked into the interview room and cracked open the door to peek back out into the hall. Shawn strode past me into the dressing room. He was bent over fixing his boots when I marched straight up to him.

I pushed him to his feet. “You got something to say to me?”

He flicked a weak punch at me and missed. Balancing awkwardly on my good leg, I popped him on the chin, rocking him on his heels. He came for me, so I grabbed him by his long mane and pretended I was doing a hammer throw at the Olympics. I was dragging him around the room when a hysterical Pat and a frantic Lawler ran in and jumped on top of me. Unable to pry me off, Pat shouted for the other wrestlers to help, but Davey and Crush had no intention of saving Shawn. It was nothing but a scritch-fight really, but when we were finally separated, clumps of Shawn’s precious hair fell from my hands. I blasted him: “Don’t fuck with me or my family, you little fucker.”

Shawn looked ready to burst into tears as he stomped across the hall to Vince’s office. Shouting loud enough for everyone to hear, Shawn quit, saying it was an unsafe working environment. Then he stormed off, slamming doors behind him.

Vince looked like a jilted lover whose boy toy had up and left him. But he told me that this had not only been inevitable, but was long overdue, and that it was his fault for not dealing with Shawn sooner. He told me to take the night off. I felt silly to have come to blows over something so stupid, but while everything in wrestling was supposed to be bullshit, that bullshit was everything to me.

Before Raw was off the air, Vince was hyping the inside story of a backstage brawl between me and Shawn for sale to fans on his 900 number.

My scuffle with Shawn was the talk of the business. Meltzer wrote that I’d always been professional, and questioned the reasoning behind Shawn’s claim that he couldn’t trust or work with The Hart Foundation. Jack Lanza told me that Vince had known a real physical confrontation was coming before I did, because Shawn had told him he was going to punch me out as far back as May, at the Evansville Raw, but I couldn’t tell if Jack was just trying to stir me up. I tried to put it all out of my mind, including Vince’s talk about reneging on the financial terms of our contract, and did my best to heal up for the July In Your House, which was going to be in Calgary. I had two good distractions: Paul Jay and his High Road Productions crew arrived and began shooting the documentary on me.

And the Calgary Flames wanted to buy The Hitmen. I knew a hockey organization such as the Flames were best suited to manage the team, and so I agreed to sell it On July 3, Shawn agreed to come back: It’s not like he had any choice—Vince had threatened to stop his $15,000-a-week paychecks. I hoped the little bastard would finally straighten up, but I was thrown for a loop when Vince told me that Shawn was going to guest referee my SummerSlam match with Taker at the Meadowlands on August 3. Shawn would turn heel on Taker, costing him the belt. Though I’d finally get another stint as champion, a sour feeling ran through me: as heels we’d be in direct competition with each other again.