More Than Just Hardcore (33 page)

I liken it to the presence Lou Thesz had as champion in the 1950s. It’s obviously not the same kind of thing being projected, but if Thesz was in a room with 50 people in it and you knew only one was a champion, you would immediately know it was Lou. With Paul E., he could walk into a room and instantly command your attention in a different way. He just had a feeling about him that would attract people, an enthusiasm that was contagious.

And he loved to give his Hitler speeches before the ECW shows. He would get everyone, including me, revved up to go out and kick some ass! He would tell the guys how no one thought the company could make it, how they all had something to prove, every single show! When he was finished, all the boys were in a frenzy, and he was their commander in chief. Some of them would have taken a bullet for him.

“Heil, Paul E.!”

He really loved that part of it. Those were his very best promos. He would climb halfway up a flight of stairs, and that was his stage, while the wrestlers were the audience. He did a hell of a job, too. We all knew he was performing, but we all fell into his grasp every time he gave one of his orations.

Paul E. and the boys, including me, had a feel for those fans. The thing was, once we had them, we had them hooked. We had some real fanatics, and they loved that ECW product. And the boys in ECW loved being a part of all that. It was one of the few times in my career when I felt that everything had the right mix. It sure didn’t get that way overnight, but those ECW guys created a sense of camaraderie between all of us—between all the boys, and between the wrestlers and the fans.

The ECW fans were different from any other group of fans I’d ever encountered. They were loyal and came every week, but these people were radicals. It wasn’t like there were one or two—I’m talking about an arena full of radicals, and they thrived on being known as a radical group. They thrived on being very knowledgeable fans, too, but they also kind of liked the title of “those ECW fools.”

They created a few new chants, some of which were quite controversial. A lot of the guys didn’t like it when the ECW crowds would chant, “You fucked up! You fucked up!” at them. Well, the thing is, they were right! Whenever a guy got that chant, it was because he fucked up! And we all knew—you’d better not fuck up in front of those people, because they’ll let you know about it.

But when you had a good one, they loved it, and they let you know that they appreciated it, more than any other fans in the world (although some of the Japanese crowds were at about the same level). They really loved that product, and believe me, they really miss that product. I sure don’t remember wrestling anywhere else where the fans chanted the promotion’s name.

I still remember main-eventing ECW’s first pay per view, Barely Legal in April 1997, against Raven. On this show, I beat Raven for the ECW title, which I would lose to Sabu at the Born to Be Wired show I discussed earlier. The president of West Texas State, Dr. Russell Long, and his wife, Natrelle, went to the show with my wife and I and my two daughters. He was utterly dumbfounded by what he saw there. The crowd’s reaction to me was amazing; it was something that really moved not just me, but my entire family and friends there. A lot of guys say they’re all business and can’t be moved by the fans. Well, I was.

I had really become attached to them, and still keep in touch with some, like John Owen. John was a paraplegic with a lot of health problems, and wrestling was a great release for him. He loved it, and the other fans loved him. And another fan, old Mo, took me everywhere, including to the hospital. Her car was no limo, but the price was right.

The ECW wrestlers would give 100 percent every night. They wanted that thing to work so badly. There was a sense that we were underdogs, fighting the giants. At least, we thought we were, and it really helps breed unity when you have a common foe. It gave all the guys a bond, and we were all really tight together.

I broke those bonds a couple of times, though. Once was in late 1997, when I went back to the WWF (a period I’ll discuss in the next chapter). The other was a brief return to WCW in 1994.

I’d had a lawsuit over some money I was owed in WCW, and in 1992, Bill Watts (the old Florida booker from my 195-pound days, who was also a successful promoter in the south in the 1970s and 1980s) had become vice president of the company. He said he’d settle with me and get me some of the thousands the company owed me. But I also had to buy $ 150 of Swipe, this cleaner he was selling on the side, as part of the deal.

These days, he’s saying in interviews that we worked out a deal where I’d come in and wrestle on his 1992 Halloween Havoc show. Bullshit! I never told him I would wrestle for him on any Halloween Havoc show!

However, a year and a half later, I did agree to come in for one shot that turned into a regular stint.

I started on WCWs Slamboree 1994 pay per view, and worked a match with Tully Blanchard, who had been almost completely inactive for five years. I wasn’t really doing much with ECW at that time and I needed a stage. ECW was always a good stage that provided a lot of opportunities to a lot of guys, many of whom are still working today.

I decided to stay on and teamed some with Jimmy Golden, who was wrestling as Bunkhouse Buck. I found myself again working with Dustin Rhodes, who had become a really sharp talent in the ring. He had truly become an excellent worker, and a guy who loved the business—I mean, a true love for the business. Every night with Dustin was a night off. It was just fun, and we tried to do sillier stuff every night than we had done the night before.

I looked around WCW and didn’t especially like what I saw. In this business, you have to know when to hold and when to fold, when to blow and when to go, and this was a case where it was time to go almost as soon as I got there. There was no real direction for me there, and I never got the feeling I fit into anyone’s plans.

By now, Jim Herd had been gone for more than two years, and the company was being run by Eric Bischoff, who had replaced Bill Watts in 1993. Bischoff had been brought in a couple of years earlier as an announcer.

Shortly after he took over, in 1993, TBS brought me in to talk about taking over as booker. Bill Shaw, one of the executives who ran WCW, asked what I wanted to be paid, and I told him I wanted $350,000 a year.

“That’s no problem,” he said. “Would you be willing to work for Eric Bischoff?”

Hell, I figured I was on a roll, after the salary thing. I said, “No.”

He thanked me for coming, and I went on home.

I’m not sure I made the right call, because I never would have predicted Eric would have achieved the kind of success he would have by 1996. I also wouldn’t have done what he did, in terms of raiding talent from the WWF, because it would never have occurred to me that it would work. And it did!

Of course, he eventually lost control of it all, and he’s a big part of the reason WCW no longer exists. He signed guys like Hall and Nash to big contracts in 1996, which paid off at first, but then they got into the mindset of, “Why should I do anything for the company? I’ll get paid no matter what, so I’m just doing what I want to do.”

There were too many guys with power only looking to protect themselves, even at the expense of the company. And that is what started the ball rolling on the demise of WCW. Kevin Sullivan was officially the booker for much of that time, but it was hard for him to book cards half the time, because only half the guys were there who were supposed to be there. Guys didn’t want to travel. They didn’t want to work with certain guys. And they got their checks every two weeks, no matter what.

I don’t blame the guys who were able to get away with it. Some of them are still doing OK financially, because of those deals during that time, and their idea was to do the least amount of work and make as much money as possible. I blame the guy who was supposed to be in charge. By the time Eric left (the first time) in 1999, no one was sure who the boss was.

Earlier I talked about being a “good soldier,” which described a lot of guys in the business. But good leaders, good “generals,” were few and far between. For the last 20 years, we wrestlers have been led by assholes, because their egos and the mighty dollar have been more important to them than honesty, pride and dignity.

Where are they in the administrative end of this business? Well, nice guys finish last. The meek might inherit the earth, but they damn sure won’t inherit the wrestling business. The good generals, the Paul Boeschs, Don Owens and Sam Muchnicks, are dead and in the ground. They’re not coming back.

What the wrestlers need is someone who will say, “Hey, these guys who are busting their asses for me need some medical coverage and some retirement, and I’m going to see they get it. I’m going to see they get a fair shake, because they’re making me rich.”

That “who’s the boss?” feeling was also in WCW when I went there in 1994. Bischoff had turned WCW into a situation where there were “haves” and “have-nots.” Bischoff was pretty much doing what he wanted to, and the top wrestlers were doing not what they were told or booked to do, but what they wanted.

And maybe I would have been the same way if I’d had that much power and guaranteed money. I think a lot more people would than would admit to it. But I don’t think I would have, and that’s more about when and how I was brought up into the wrestling business than anything else. A lot of the guys who became the problems in WCW had come into the business in a different way than I did and didn’t grow up with that love for the business and the boys. We are all products of our eras and our environments. How could I expect Kevin Nash to see things like I did when he didn’t see the same things and learn the same lessons I did?

The whole place was just totally political. Hulk Hogan had come in and brought in a bunch of his friends, and so began an era of “cliques,” which happens periodically in this business.

The inmates were running the asylum, and it had gotten to the point that no one cared about the company, or anything, except how they were doing. In that sense, it was almost like the diametric opposite of ECW. WCW had an unproductive atmosphere at that point. Guys were looking at those big, guaranteed contracts, and it became the era of the contagious concussions.

I finally left WCW in the summer of 1994 because I was going nowhere. I was on a weekly deal, so I just told Bischoff I was going. He nodded but didn’t seem to register it much.

I ended up back in ECW, after getting a call from Paul E. Paul E. was glad to have me back, but he never got hot about my going to WCW in the first place.

Most of the times I went into ECW, it was usually on a day’s notice. I swear, they were late on everything. I’d be sitting at home, and I’d get a phone call from Paul E., saying he needed me on such-and-such a date. Sometimes, that would be the last I’d hear from him for weeks.

That was just the way it was. Sometimes, they’d just forget to send the plane tickets. And when I say, “they,” I mean Paul E.

Like Cornette in Smoky Mountain, Paul was a one-man show in ECW. He was doing everything, from booking talent, to storylines, to TV production, to arranging travel. When one guy is doing so much, crap like that happens. I just wish it never happened to me!

I’m sorry, Paul E.—you were a great booker and still are a good friend, but you were a lousy businessman.

When I came back to ECW, they had a deal where I busted out of a box and attacked Cactus Jack. We had a lot of fun. Hell, I’ve always enjoyed working with Mick Foley. To me, coming out of the box was really a classic angle. I don’t think one person in that entire arena knew it was going to happen.

When I had seen Foley previously in WCW, he had always been a heel, but he had become the ultimate babyface to the ECW fans. And I had always thought Mick’s ultimate role in wrestling would be as a babyface. Whenever you have a guy who understands the people and understands what working is really all about, there’s no doubt that he can be an excellent babyface or an excellent heel. And Mick had a great feel for his audience and for what they wanted to see. The greatest evidence of that was a year later, in 1995, when he turned heel! Who would have thought that Cactus Jack, who embodied what ECW was all about, could become an effective heel to those fans? He knew exactly what they wanted to see and made himself a heel by actively refusing to give it to them!

Everyone talks about his dangerous bumps, but Foley doesn’t get nearly enough credit for his psychology. He’s a really smart guy. Foley knew how to read those fans as well as anyone.

And I would specifically like to respond to Ric Flair, who wrote in his biography that Foley was nothing but a glorified stuntman who didn’t know how to

work, and that he only got over because Vince McMahon and the WWF found a way to get him over.

Bullshit. That is utterly ridiculous. If you look back at the guy’s career (and I’m sure Flair has no idea what it’s like to bust his ass on the independent scene), Mick Foley came up from a small Dallas promotion. He certainly grabbed me when I happened to tune into it.

I promise you this—Mick made more money in his last five years than Ric did in his 10 best years. And here’s the bottom line—if Vince McMahon had a choice of one of those guys, either Flair or Foley, to work on a daily basis to draw TV ratings or people to order pay per views, I bet you he would pick Mick Foley. And that’s not because Mick Foley is a freak; it’s because of what Mick Foley has become to the fans. He has become a legend; he produces revenue because he gives the people what they will pay to see. And that takes a sharp mind, because what they’ll pay to see changes constantly. I’ve seen Mick Foley have great matches with guys on the independent scene who weren’t going to have good matches with almost anyone else.

I’m not saying Mick Foley is the single greatest worker ever, but he is a great worker, and when you weigh everything about the guy, he didn’t get where he got by people saying, “Hey, this guy is going to do some freakish things.” He got where he got in the business by making people care about what he was doing, through his interviews and his matches. Mick Foley has been successful because he has a great mind for the psychology of the business, and he’s capable of a lot more in that ring than just falling off a cage or a balcony.