Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (90 page)

Terry Funk had been listening to us, and now he asked me how my family was doing. I told him how crazy things had got up at Hart house. Terry knew the Harts pretty well, and he gave it some deep thought before telling me: “Everybody’s crazy. The whole world’s crazy. You’re crazy. I’m crazy. It’s all about to what degree you’re crazy.” In my concussed state, Terry made a lot of sense.

Poor Davey was a case in point; he was a shell of his former self and still hooked on morphine. Being in no shape to wrestle, he hadn’t lasted long in the WWF, but Vince still said he needed him, so he headed off to a rehab program in Georgia. In answer to my criticisms of the year-end show on Stampede Wrestling, that involved various non-wrestling members of the Hart family, Bruce ripped into me on the Stampede Wrestling website for taking shots at Davey in my column. He defended Davey, saying he was “a damn loyal and trusted trooper of the clan who’d been unjustly maligned and made to look bad.” Bruce had as much right to express his opinion as I did, but he didn’t know the truth.

I felt more and more estranged from so many people in my family because nobody stood shoulder to shoulder with me in defending Martha, except my mom. Keith, Wayne, Alison and Ross all steered clear of Ellie and Diana, supporting me only from behind the scenes. I understood why Georgia was on Ellie’s side: she had spent her whole life defending Ellie and turning a blind eye to Ellie’s actions, and she would never forget Ellie’s support when she went through the loss of her son, Matt.

Struggling with my concussion, I’d begun ducking Martha’s calls: it was too hard to listen to her rant about how Ellie and Diana were bullying my parents into settling with Vince like a heel tag team.

Martha said, and I agreed, that Diana, Ellie and even Bruce thought that life is like wrestling in that they can just turn themselves heel and then turn back babyface over Christmas, expecting to be forgiven.

At the building in Hamburg, Terry Taylor handed me a five-page script and told me I had to cut a heel promo on my German fans. “I won’t do it!” I said. “Just let me go out and say a few words.” I walked out to chants of “Owen! Owen!” and explained that I’d suffered a concussion that might end my career and if I didn’t get another chance I wanted to tell my German fans I’d never forget them. I talked about how much I loved Owen and how the last match we ever had was right here in Hamburg. The emotional outpouring from the crowd was powerful enough that it took me a long time to do my walk-around. When I finally came back through the curtain, Terry Taylor hung his head, ashamed that he had asked me to rip into fans who loved me so much.

Each night after his hard-core matches, Brian Knobbs came back to the dressing room with a new ugly gash in his head. I couldn’t help but draw him on the blackboard, showing the progression from day one of the tour, when he was smiling and happy, to days three and four, looking more bloodied and battered. In the last drawing, he was in a wheelchair with lumps on his head and the caption was STARTLING NEW EVIDENCE! PRO WRESTLING IS REAL! Brian laughed and hugged me when he saw it.

On the last night of the tour, in Leipzig, a four-year-old girl in a white dress climbed into the ring with flowers, ran up to me and jumped into my arms. She held me tight like she was taking care of me now. Everybody was crying and chanting for Owen. Every outstretched hand I touched around the ring empowered me like God’s angels boosting my batteries.

I had one last bus ride with the boys. I have a vague memory of The Wall taking a handful of pills and of someone shaving his eyebrows. Ric Flair made the mistake of standing in the aisle and when the driver hit the brakes he took an ugly fall into the stairwell. When he got up, very slowly, I wondered how much longer he could keep going. I didn’t tempt fate anymore and was happy to have my seatbelt on, tight.

WCW spared no expense, putting me on the Concorde to rocket to New York City for a toy fair. I was happy to have the chance to experience such sophisticated speed before they retired it. At the toy fair I met fellow Calgarian Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn. I was a big fan of his comics and we joked about his old Aberhart high school beating Manning in basketball but never in wrestling!

At that convention I saw the coolest Hitman action figures ever created, but nobody would ever see them. Unbeknownst to anyone, and like the Concorde, WCW was almost out of business.

From the toy fair, I was beamed across America to Las Vegas for a signing at the Nitro Grill. I had some Hitman dolls in my overhead bag and every few minutes one of them would call out, “Ouch!”

which got me a lot of strange looks for the whole flight. After the signing, I dashed off to make a flight home, but once we were in the air they announced that all flights were backed up and it didn’t look like we’d land in Salt Lake City on time to make my connection. My head pounded, and every time I looked out the window at the clouds below the mountain peaks I thought of heaven and Owen. Soon my mind wandered to the thought of him lying on the mat like a dying bird after hitting a car windshield. I thought, I need to get home, Owen. Just then a woman passenger collapsed in the aisle right beside me, and the flight attendant feverishly worked on her. “We’re losing her,” she called out to another attendant. A runway was cleared at the Salt Lake City airport so we could land, the woman was met by para-medics and I raced across the terminal and squeezed through the doors of my plane home just as they were closing.

That night was a combination of heartbreak and wonder. That’s when I had a most powerful dream about Owen, who woke me from a deep sleep. He had tears in his eyes and was angry. “What is a life worth?” he said. “So is that all I’m worth? Fucking kill me and I’m worth $36 million? Is that it?” I told him, “Owen, it’s not about the money. You know that.” He was also seething about Ellie and Diana, and I didn’t know how to comfort him as big tears slowly dripped down his cheeks. This dream haunted me enough that at the time I kept it to myself. But it didn’t surprise me, afterwards, when the next day Martha told me she had come up with a settlement number for Vince’s lawyers—$32 million, close enough to my dream to spook me. I haven’t dreamed of Owen since then.

I kept waiting for the headaches to fade and my life to return to normal, but every time I saw Dr. M, he told me it was going to take time. When I told him I couldn’t feel the hole in my neck, he asked me to lie on a padded table in his office and told me to relax my head in his hands. As he poked around, he slipped his finger an inch deep into my neck.

I told him I cried all the time, and asked whether it was normal when even a shaving commercial could bring me to tears. He looked me in the eyes and said, “You’re gonna start crying right now, aren’t you?” I instantly blinked back tears, thinking, What the fuck is wrong with me?

Again, he told me it was all part of the concussion: my brain was like the squares on a soccer ball and the square that triggers pleasure had been bruised. He arranged for all kinds of brain tests with world-renowned specialists in Toronto and Montreal, and he even sent me to a psychologist. I was trying to take it easy, but simple things like carrying my groceries, tying my shoes or doing shoulder checks while I drove only aggravated the never-ending headache from hell. Steak tasted like liver and my libido disappeared. I was afraid I’d never get better.

I showed up to see my parents every other day, only to get into it with Ellie about Survivor Series yet again. Diana would join in, screaming at me that everything was my fault because I wouldn’t drop the belt to Shawn Michaels. Diana, Ellie and even Bruce hated that Paul Jay’s documentary, which had now been seen all over the world, portrayed me as some kind of Canadian hero: a whole new audience beyond the wrestling world now respected me for standing up for what was right.

Ellie left me a phone message demanding to know what options my parents had and that someone needed to enlighten her as to why this was the way things had to go. I wasn’t even sure what she meant, and it was beyond me to understand why she kept calling me about the lawsuit when our parents and Martha made all the decisions having to do with it. In her message, Ellie said that she had no hard feelings and that she and Diana hadn’t done anything wrong. But the truth was, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, they’d long since faxed Jerry McDivitt at the WWF a copy of Garry Robb’s entire case file, which my mom had left on her desk. All I ever truly asked of Ellie and Diana was for them to stop making comments about Owen’s case until we knew what happened. I kept saying, “Just do what Owen would want you to do,” but they wouldn’t listen. I knew that our confrontations would ultimately lead to the destruction of the Hart family and thought Vince must be laughing at how easy it was to play the Harts against one another.

Over the next few months, the only joy I got was when I took my parents to watch the real Hitmen, who were first in the Western Hockey League (WHL) and making another run for the Memorial Cup.

The only time I ever saw my dad forget his broken heart after Owen died was one night when the Hitmen won a game in overtime, and he rose up to his feet jubilantly clapping as hard as he could.

One time, Stu asked me what it would take to make peace with Ellie and Diana. Maybe it was selfish of me, but I could only shake my head and tell him sadly, “Out of respect for Owen, I can’t.”

I kept myself busy doing promotional work for WCW in order to receive half—and then a quarter—

of my salary. According to my contract, they could fire me any time after six weeks if I couldn’t wrestle. If I did appearances, they kept paying me, but the longer I was out of the ring the less they paid. Dr. M told me that it’d be at least nine more months before we’d know anything. Despite my best efforts, it became more clear to me every day that I’d evolved into a wrestling tragedy, just as I’d feared. Thank God I had thought to take out an insurance policy from Lloyds of London to cover me.

It made little sense to me, or anyone else, when I was flown to Nitro in Denver on April 10 that year.

But as I was asked, I charged into the ring, bashed Hogan with a chair, and in an act of pathetic desperation, Hogan juiced big time.

Good guys don’t last long in a wrestling office, especially when times are bad. Soon after that Nitro, Bill Bush was fired and replaced by Brad Segal, a TV exec who knew even less about the wrestling business than his predecessors. Bischoff and Russo were back and, ironically, the new storyline centered around two failed “experts” joining together to save WCW.

By the time I did Thunder in Memphis on May 2, every wrestler knew the WCW ship was sinking. It didn’t surprise me to spot Lex and Liz openly sipping long-neck beers on the hood of their car at the back of the building. For some reason, Jarrett was called upon to smash a gimmicked guitar over my back. Things had got so bad that on May 7, Owen’s birthday, a 150-pound actor named David Arquette won the WCW World title from Jarrett at the Kemper Arena.

That same day I was home in Calgary. I’d been scheduled to be in Kansas City to be deposed by Jerry McDivitt, but it was canceled at the last minute, so I drove to Owen’s grave for the first time in a while. I found myself telling the black marble monument, adorned with flowers and weathered cards and letters, that it was time for me to pick up the pieces. Just then two jackrabbits hopped right past me. I wondered if they were brothers. I wondered if Owen’s death was some kind of colossal super rib that he was subjecting the whole family to in order to expose our shortcomings. It had ruined us and it would never, ever get better. I told Owen I loved him, that I’d fight to the end for him, and then broke down hard.

Diana had begun a serious romance with one of Bruce’s novice wrestlers, a young kid named James.

No one could blame her, but it didn’t help things when she phoned Davey to tell him about it while he was dealing with the worst phase of rehab. He immediately checked himself out and flew home.

There were several explosive clashes between Diana, Davey and Stu at Hart house, including one where Davey inadvertently knocked Stu down and hurt Stu’s shoulder. The police were called and Davey made the front page of the Calgary Sun, being led away in handcuffs. Bruce kindly offered Davey a place to stay.

Before I got hurt, I’d promised to do some appearances to promote a Hitman photo book.

Concussed or not, I did major talk shows where they’d invariably ask me about Owen. Inadvertently, I became the spokesperson for the rights of wrestlers and the wrongs of the business. I talked of the need for a wrestlers’ union and wrestling schools, and I condemned the stupidity of backyard wrestling, a fad where young teens often put one another in the hospital because of real hard-core matches. I didn’t feel comfortable being the voice of everything negative about the business because I still had a lot of friends making a living in it, but I still had a lot of passion for my art form. It was being killed off, and I felt the need to defend it.

A while before, I had taken on Bruce Allen as a manager. In June that year, he told me he’d always had his doubts that I was hurt. I?was about to leave for Montreal to see Dr. Karen Johnston at McGill University to take comprehensive brain tests. Concussions are still largely misunderstood, and the medical world was only starting to see how broad-ranging their effects can be, from symptoms that last only a few minutes to those that change a person forever. I underwent various brain scans, X-rays and a functional MRI, which all left my head pounding like a drum.

Some of the tests were at Montreal General Hospital, where I met a young man of about nineteen by the name of Antoine. His girlfriend spotted me coming through the front door and then she and his brother loaded Antoine up in his wheelchair and found me in the radiology department. I felt kind of silly talking to them wearing only a little blue hospital gown and slippers, but Antoine was a huge fan of mine and was dying of cancer. His girlfriend told me that with three tumors in his brain he was in a lot of pain. He told me that I was his hero, how he cried after Survivor Series, and that wrestling wasn’t the same after that. I said, yes, that was the day that wrestling died. Then he spoke about Owen and broke down crying in his wheelchair, and I changed my mind and thought, No, that was the day wrestling died.