More Than Just Hardcore (24 page)

And if you think about it, that would be such a mild angle today. And we poured real shit on him! We had to be “real,” so it had to be real cowshit—wet, runny cowshit! Now, why we had to do that, I don’t know, but the ammonia, the shit and the piss that was in that stuff damn near blinded Jaggers.

But at least we were being real!

McMahon’s early shows on the USA Network featured his stars, but also featured stars from other groups. A lot of the NWA promoters thought at first that he was being cooperative, but it was a facade. I knew what his game was as soon as he took that USA slot from Blanchard. He was featuring the guys he wanted to take from the different promotions.

I think ultimately McMahon ended up succeeding where Eddie Einhorn (and that no-good, phony-testicle-showing son of a bitch Pedro Martinez) failed because of a few reasons. First, he was able to create a perception that his product was hot, and because he surrounded himself with the right people. Einhorn’s IWA was a similar effort at national expansion, but was doing no more than selling a product. Einhorn made a lot of wrong decisions, including on talent. Johnny Powers was a good worker, and he could draw money in limited areas, but he was not someone who could be a national franchise.

Neither was Mil Mascaras, Einhorn’s champion. He was someone the wrestling world nationally didn’t know. He was a draw with Hispanic audiences, but you move him up into Minneapolis, and people weren’t going to give a shit about him. Einhorn also had Ox Baker, who was a hell of a character, but as a national star he didn’t work, either. There’s a difference between being able to be over in one area and being able to get over everywhere.

Vince also had location on his side. If something doesn’t come from New York or Los Angeles, it’s not considered “in.” And coming from New York gave the WWF the legitimacy for the national push. If Vince had been heir to a wrestling promotion in Oregon or Oklahoma, I think things would have turned out very differently for him, and for this business.

The other thing Vince had going for him was Vince himself. I’m not just saying this—Vince McMahon is the smartest man in wrestling, or else he wouldn’t be in the position he’s in now.

When Vince started his national push in late 1983, he pulled the top talent out of Gagne’s Minnesota territory, which was the top territory in the country at that time. He took their top wrestlers right out of there.

It was the right move, because Vince’s original Northeastern territory already had a large population, and when he took Gagne’s top talent, he effectively added Minneapolis, Chicago and Gagne’s other top cities to his list.

In retaliation for Vince’s expansion into his area, Verne Gagne tried promoting in the Northeast, Vince’s stronghold, under the guise of working a cooperative deal with alliance members in opposition to the WWF, but it was an unworkable approach, because someone was going to have to be boss, and those old promoters couldn’t agree on who that would be. Junior and I even worked a couple of shows for the group, which was called “Pro Wrestling USA,” but we knew it wouldn’t last.

Vince went about it the right way, but the main thing he had going for him that Eddie Einhorn didn’t, was that Vince was willing to risk all the money he had on it. Vince backed his plan up with big bucks, paying the wrestlers more than they could make in their territories. And once he started to roll, it was over, and no one could catch him, although it took some of the other promoters years to figure that out.

Vince’s traveling show made the regional guys less of a big deal. If you’re a regional promoter running a town every week, and there’s now a traveling show coming through only periodically, your show is now ordinary. That traveling show becomes the big thing.

In the past, when someone had promoted in an NWA area in opposition to the NWA promoter, the other alliance members would send in top talent and help squash the opposition. And some of the old promoters had made rumblings about running national. Verne Gagne talked about running from his strong, Midwest base, and the California promoters, Mike LaBell and Roy Shire, made some noises, but the other members stepped in before they got going. But that approach wasn’t working this time, because Vince had succeeded in making his wrestling seem like the big time.

Some of those NWA promoters were very good friends of mine. When I decided to go to work for Vince Jr. in 1985, some of them viewed me as a traitor.

They said, “You’re leaving us! You’re supposed to be an NWA member and loyal to the NWA!”

Hell, there was no NWA at this time! By 1985 it was gone. Vince had already won. As soon as I saw the angle he had in 1984 with Hulk Hogan and Cyndi Lauper, I knew he had won, because he had found a wider appeal than any company had before.

I don’t remember who called who, but I’m pretty sure I called Vince, trying to get in. I do remember the show I debuted on. It was also the first show for Randy Savage and the British Bulldogs.

Randy Savage was Randy Poffo, son of my dad’s old friend, Angelo Poffo. I’d actually been one of Randy’s first professional opponents. He wrestled under a mask while playing for a minor-league team of the St. Louis Cardinals. I knew even then that he had a lot of talent, but I had no idea he’d hit as big as he did. That whole family is so tight-knit, and I’ve always marveled at their ability to stay close through the yeats in the wrestling business.

Somehow we all ended up in the same airport and flew into Poughkeepsie for the TV taping. I have to tell you, I was thoroughly impressed. I had been around all the territories, but this thing was organized and run on an entirely different level.

It was a high-end production, with the people working for Vince all doing their jobs like a well-oiled machine. It was a first-class operation, built and designed to run the country, and by 1985 it was a matter of when, not if.

It was a match with Savage’s brother, “Leaping” Lanny Poffo, after I’d started in the WWF, where I lost an entire pectoral muscle and a tricep muscle from a neck injury. In the match, I gave him an airplane spin, stopped and dropped his throat across the top rope. I’d do this by dropping him to the mat with him across my shoulders. This particular night, I was too far from the ropes, when I tried it. When I landed on the mat, Lanny’s entire weight came down on my neck, and I lost all the tone and control of that pectoral and tricep.

I had actually talked with Vince’s father, Vince Sr., in 1980, about me coming into what was then the New York territory to work with his champion, Bob Backlund, but we just couldn’t make it work.

I would have enjoyed working with Backlund. He was an NCAA Division 2 amateur wrestling champion and one hell of a performer. He was over very well with those fans. A lot of people underestimate how over Bobby Backlund was. Backlund actually came through Amarillo in the mid-1970s. He had been a job boy (a wrestler who gets squashed every week, to make the stars look good) in Oklahoma, and after a few months here, we contacted Eddie Graham and got Backlund booked in Florida, where he did very well, until he finally ended up with Vince Sr.

We recommended him to Eddie because he had a great athletic background and was easy to work with. We saw a lot of potential in him, and I think he learned a lot here. He learned a great deal more from Eddie in Florida, and Bob was a great fit for his place and time.

Now, there was a new champion. Terry Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan, had taken the belt from The Iron Sheik on January 23, 1984 and was the face of Vince’s promotion, which was breaking all boundaries and going nationwide.

I had worked with Hogan before. In 1981, we worked in Sun City, South Africa. And the adage was true—don’t go to Sun City, especially if you’re wrestling on a show run by a bunch of Pakis!

I’d set the whole thing up for Hogan—$35,000 cash, which was certainly more than the $8,000 I was getting. Good thing I had a big run on a blackjack table! I set him up with a better deal than I did for myself. But I went directly to Hogan with it and around Verne Gagne, and I was happy about that, because I wanted him to make the money from it and not have to share it with Gagne.

We really had a great match, and then Terry asked me, “Would you pick up my money?”

He said he was due to wrestle in Japan, so I told him getting his money would be no problem, but when I did, I had to do all the money changing. I had to ride with the Pakis, and they took the worst roads I’d ever seen. There I was, riding in a Mercedes, with one idiot to the right of me, one to the left and three in the front seat.

Sun City was technically in South Africa, but everything in the city was done in Botswana money, including our wrestling payoffs. We had to change our Botswana money into South African rands. To do that, we had to go to this remote outpost in the damn jungle, where there were baboons, lions and every other goddamned animal you can think of.

The Pakis were not happy. They only drew a crowd of about 300 for the show, and they’d laid out all this money, so I was telling them what great guys they were and laughing at their shitty jokes.

After getting the money in rands, I had to take it to a South African bank and have it transferred to my bank in the States, my money and Hulk’s, because I couldn’t change it into dollars there. They said the transfer would take 10 days to two weeks.

About two days after I got home, I got a call from Hogan’s mama. “Where’s Terry’s money?”

“Well, ma’am,” I said, “it’s gonna be here. It’s gonna be a little while.” It finally came, though, and I sent it to him.

The mere fact that we actually got paid made that trip better than my other excursion into Africa a couple of years earlier. That one was a trip to Nigeria, the true asshole of the world, for wrestler/promoter “Power Mike,” the most rotten son of a bitch in the world.

Junior and I should have known something was wrong on the plane over there. We were nearly there, and all the natives in their suits got up and went to the bathroom. They came out wearing all their crazy-ass African costumes. I swear, they had bones in their necks and all that shit!

We stayed at the Holiday Inn in Lagos, Nigeria. We would turn on the TV and see the “picnic at the beach,” which was where they had 30 or so people, criminals I guess, tied to posts. People would be having lunch in this field, while soldiers would walk by the people who were tied to stakes in the ground, and shoot them. It was public execution while people were dining.

Frenchy Bernard was on the tour with us. He was the referee, and we were going to a small town called Katana, about 70 miles from Lagos. It was an all-day trip. We were in this bus, and about halfway there, Frenchy said, “My God. Look out there. It’s a body!”

I looked, and sure enough, there was a dead body.

I said, “Hey, there’s a body on the side of the road!”

The driver didn’t say a word. He just kept on going. On our way back, two days later, I looked out the window when we got to the same spot, and there was the damn body, except by now, someone had stolen the dead man’s clothes, and some animal had eaten a big chunk out of his torso.

At the Holiday Inn, we’d sit back and drink beer when we weren’t working. When you had a bottle of beer outside there, you had to put your thumb over the opening when you weren’t drinking, because that was the only way to keep flies from flying down into the bottle!

I sent my clothes off once to be washed, and the dirty bastards stole my clothes! They sent back what they didn’t want.

One night, we went to eat, and they brought us a plate of hors d’oerves, with little toothpicks in these small pieces of meat.

I said, “What is this?”

The waiter said, “Oh, it’s very good! Bush meat!”

“OK,” I said, and tried one.

“Well, this is good,” I said. “What is it?”

“Oh, in America, you call it ‘rat.’”

Goofy sons of bitches!

One time, I asked one of the locals, “So what do you do for fun?”

The guy told me, “Oh, we have betel nuts and palm wine. Very, very crazy, but you chew the betel nut too much, and your teeth get black.”

“Well,” I said, “Give me some of that betel nut, and some of that palm wine. Let’s try that shit out!”

I went to my room, locked myself in and secured the windows, in case I got all goofy and decided to climb out, or something. Then, I chewed the betel nuts and drank the palm wine.

The next morning, I woke up to find I had chewed a hole in the mattress the size of an orange.

The big show had drawn something like 90,000 people, or some ungodly number, in a soccer field, and so we were looking forward to a good payday. Well, the naira had to be changed into pounds, and the pounds had to be changed into dollars, but Power Mike was going to handle all of that. Every damned dollar managed to get lost in translation, though. Power Mike did nothing, except live well!

And then when the tour was over, we had to leave through the Lagos Airport. Try getting out of that son of a bitch sometime!

But all in all, I thought everything went well in Africa my second time, especially for Hogan. But when Hogan got to Japan, he did some interviews that really kind of pissed me off. He was telling the reporters he had beaten me in two straight falls! I thought, “That son of a bitch!”

Keep in mind—he was working for Inoki, so he was on the other side from me. Not long after, he and I were in Japan at the same time and I went looking for him in his hotel room. I ran through the door and nobody was there.

Looking back, I’m kind of glad no one was there, because I might have been the one who went out the window, 30-something stories above the ground. It’s funny how you can look back on stuff like that and laugh. I was not happy at the time, but it’s just the kind of shit that takes place in this business.

I actually was the one who connected Hulk Hogan with Sylvester Stallone for the part of “Thunderlips” in Rocky III. Stallone called me up and said he needed a huge wrestler for the part of, well, a huge wrestler. I gave him a few names, and it came down to Sly choosing between Hogan and Gorilla Monsoon, whom Vince McMahon Sr. suggested. Gorilla was a tall mountain of a man, but Stallone wanted a more muscular guy, and so he went with Hogan. I tried in 1985 to get Kerry Von Erich the part of the Russian boxer that Dolph Lundgren eventually got. Sly was in love with the guy, but Kerry couldn’t memorize any lines.