More Than Just Hardcore (39 page)

I have never had any desire to sue anyone, but that was an instance where I probably could have. We were out at the stable earlier in the day, and I asked the guy running the stable, “Well, how’s the horse?”

He said, “Oh, he’s just fine.”

I said, “Don’t you think you ought to ace (meaning give the horse a tranquilizer to keep him from getting riled up) him?”

And they aced him. If they hadn’t, I might not be here today, because that horse probably would have torn Candido and me to pieces. As it was, even on ace, the horse got surprised by us fighting in there and momentarily regained all his strength and bearings, just long enough to scramble my brains.

And none of this was the horse’s fault. I ended up OK, but it sure could have turned into a bad situation. I’ve had a horse kick his way out of a metal horse trailer and completely destroy it, just by kicking, so a horse’s kick is a pretty powerful thing.

Another time, I was wrestling Jerry “The Wall” Tuite, when I went for a moonsault outside the ring. You guessed it—he completely missed me! I loved The Wall—he was a great guy and a lousy cribbage player. He was also a lousy, lousy catcher!

I yelled at him a little after the match. “Goddamn, how can you miss me?” He said, “Sorry, Terry.”

Another of my hardcore opponents was Norman Smiley. Smiley was a great guy who got the gimmick of being a coward named “Screamin”’ Norman from Russo. What a lot of guys didn’t realize was that Norman was whole lot tougher than they thought he was. He had worked for Japan’s UWFI, which was a group working in a shoot style, a brutal, punishing way to work. I knew Smiley could go, although he never felt like he had to prove how tough he was. I was also glad I was never someone he decided to prove it to.

And he really had fun with the “Screamin”’ Norman thing. He must have loved it, or he wouldn’t have done it so well. The only problem I saw was, that was going to be a hard gimmick to overcome later. It was a fun character, but it was a character that was going to stay near the bottom of the card. There was no way “Screamin”’ Norman was ever going to be a main-event deal.

They even had a deal where Bischoff beat me for the hardcore title. It was kind of a goofy deal, but hell, I didn’t care, it was their title. That was their business, and their business was amok.

I should take a moment here and talk about Eric Bischoff. He was brilliant in some of his first endeavors. He brought in Hulk Hogan when a lot of people in the business thought Hogan was washed up, and made millions with him. He launched Nitro, the first time anyone dared take on Vince McMahon on a weekly basis. He brought in a lot of other WWF talent and gave them new leases on life. I probably wouldn’t have done any of that if I’d been in his place.

Having said that, Eric didn’t have a real understanding of the business overall, and I think he knows that now. His biggest mistake might have been becoming so involved with it himself as a performer, or allowing himself to be manipulated by others while he was supposed to be the boss. I don’t think he would allow that to happen now.

And it wasn’t even so much the guaranteed contracts themselves—it was who they gave the guaranteed money to. You have to use good judgment when you’re giving a guy that much power.

But hell, what do I know? Maybe Kevin Nash understands the business better than I do, after all. I was always someone who had compassion for the other guys in the locker room. Nash made himself a lot of money with his philosophy of the business. That philosophy was to make Kevin Nash as much money as possible, at the expense of all others. And he was certainly not the only one who thought that way, either. Worst of all, those guys had no concern for their profession. They didn’t give a shit about wrestling itself, or else they’d have been working every week. Not one of them was concerned with the product they were putting out.

Actually, one of the guys who got a reputation for being a difficult guy was someone I thought a lot of—Scott Steiner. He was a good kid and I always enjoyed being around him. When I was around him in 2000 in WCW, he hadn’t changed and still hasn’t, at least to me. He was still a great guy, and I still talk to him to this day. Scott and his brother Rick were two great guys, and they were smart. Both of them saved their money from wrestling, and I’m sure they’re doing OK now.

In the end, Bischoff had a good plan for short-term success, but that was all he had. If you’re running a wrestling company, you have to surround yourself with people who love the business, in order to succeed long term. You have to pick the guys who are going to be good soldiers, and eliminate the other ones. The beauty of the wrestling business is you can do that. A company can handle one or two people of that mentality, if they’re big enough draws to justify it, but WCW had a locker room half-full of people like that. And that was no one’s fault but the guy running the company—Bischoff.

Making movie actor David Arquette the world champion would have to rank up there with the stupidest ideas ever, too. How much does he weigh? 180? Hell, that shows that everyone has a chance! Anyone can be a professional wrestler! That was nothing short of an insult to the fans and to the other wrestlers.

So Eric was a guy capable of both a great idea and total idiocy. I don’t think he was a wrestling genius by any means, and I think he ought to count himself lucky that he’s able to draw a weekly paycheck from this business, working as an on-air character for Vince McMahon. He should be damned thankful for that check.

I think if he had it to do all over again, he’d do a lot differently. I think he would have built some stars of his own early, so he could have people who weren’t such massive problems. He should have started creating talent instead of relying on guys who were known problems like Kevin Nash and Scott Hall.

That was one thing Paul E. was always great at in ECW, until the end. No matter who the WWF or WCW took from him, he always had somebody waiting in the wings. He was always making someone who could step into a position at the top level.

Eric also had found some success with smaller wrestlers who did more highflying, the cruiserweights. The origin of the term “cruiserweight” in wrestling came from a car ride that I shared with Chris Benoit and Diamond Dallas Page, in 1993. We were heading to an independent show, which, as it turned out, would be the only time I worked with Chris. I really loved working that match with him and wish I could have worked with him more, because he was (and is) a great, great worker.

Anyway, we were in the car, and Page was asking me a million questions about what I’d do if I ran WCW. I told him that what I thought would be great would be go with a cruiserweight division and have it be totally separate. At the time, wrestling in the United States was all heavyweights (WCW had done a light-heavyweight division but never did much with it), and I thought the smaller guys could put on different styles of matches.

What I didn’t know was that apparently Bill Watts was on his way out as head of WCW, and Page’s buddy Bischoff was talking to the TBS people about replacing him.

About a year after Bischoff got in, he got the cruiserweight division going. But I have to tell you, I don’t think Bischoff thought up that name all by himself. I think his buddy Diamond Dallas Page might have suggested that one.

My idea, though, was to do “Cruiserweight TV,” with no mixing against heavyweights and all matches best of three falls. I also thought of experimenting with the idea of using a one-count as a pinfall for the cruiserweights.

I still think if WWE were to split their guys by weight, with one show nothing but cruiserweights, it would be interesting to see who got the better rating. It would certainly make for a clear distinction between the two shows they have, since Raw and Smackdown! are supposed to be different divisions. I’m not sure the heavyweight could produce the action like the cruiserweights, to sustain a better rating. Cruiserweights, in this day and age, are not just a unique attraction—they are a necessity, because of their speed and the unique action they can create. They can perform moves that you’re just not going to see a 300-pound guy do, especially off the top rope. Maybe if they raised the ropes another three feet, they might be able to do them, but that’s about the only way I can see.

It was obvious the end was near when the top guys just started vanishing, one by one. Hell, even Eric Bischoff secluded in his office in the back, somehow came down with a case of the contagious concussion!

Bischoff ended up leaving the company when Vince Russo pulled what might have been the single stupidest stunt of his career on a major pay per view in July 2000. They did a deal where Hogan went to the ring, and Jeff Jarrett laid down to let Hogan pin him for the title. This was all some pre-arranged deal, but what wasn’t pre-arranged (at least with Hogan) was that Russo did a profanity-laced tirade on Hogan after the match and declared Hogan was champion of nothing. Hogan ended up suing the company, so they at least lost money on attorney’s fees, and I bet you that thing didn’t draw one new viewer or fan to WCW.

You just don’t deal with a piece of talent that way, especially a piece of talent that has produced the box office Hogan has.

Actually, that might not be the most absurd thing those two were part of. The more I think about it, the more I think the most absurd thing they ever did was to think that they were proficient promoters and bookers in the wrestling business.

In a strange way, working for a company I knew was doomed helped me to have a good time there. I did my little part, just had a good time with the boys, and didn’t worry about the rest. Still, I will never understand why someone, before it was too late, didn’t look at the figures and say, “Hey, this thing’s going in the wrong direction.”

And what does it say about that company, or about me, that even I got that attitude, toward the end? Here I was, a guy who was supposed to act out of a love for the business, and I was reduced to just thinking of it as “just a job.” By 2000, they had taken the heart out of just about everybody.

Wrestling’s a joint venture—the promoters and boys have to work together, or it will fail. The top guys all had their own agendas, and none of them were to help the company.

In contrast to the stagnation that started WCW’s fall, Vince looked long and hard at his company in 1997, and changed a lot of things, going for more of an ECW style and doing some other things, and it was successful for him. But that was because he owned it and he had the concern for it.

Who had that kind of love and concern for WCW? No one, and somebody should have, because it was a wonderful place for guys. Looking through a wrestler’s eyes, and not an owner or promoter’s eyes, it is not healthy for one company to be the only one in the business, and that’s what we have now.

Even the WCW announcers were out of control! One night I was watching a show, and Mark Madden was calling the match. Whatever wrestler it was dug under the ring and came up with a table. Madden laughed and said, very sarcastically, “Would you believe there’s a table under the ring?”

Well, that did a hell of a job getting over how clever Mark Madden was, but it didn’t do a damn thing to make anyone want to order a pay per view, or even watch the next match. He wanted to get himself over, at the expense of the talent.

Of course, maybe I was spoiled, because I came up in the business around greats like Steve Stack, Gordon Solie and Lance Russell, but I thought WCW’s announcing sucked. Now, I don’t think Tony Schiavone or Mike Tenay suck, but I think they had gotten away from describing wrestling with simplicity, which is the cornerstone of great wrestling announcing. They had gotten into a pattern of describing moves almost in code, using all these fancy, contrived names that don’t really tell the people what the move is. You’re gaining new fans all the time, so it’s important to explain things to people in a basic way. I shouldn’t have to get out my slide rule to figure out a 360, a 450, a 720, or a 1080, or whatever. By the time I’ve finished adding and subtracting, and figured out the degree of the flip, the goddamned match is over!

Gordon Solie, probably one of the greatest announcers ever, probably used no more than 35 to 40 wrestling terms, and even those, he used over and over, to make people understand what he was talking about. He didn’t bombard people’s senses with new terms for things that really shouldn’t be that hard to comprehend.

It’s bullshit like Maddens commentary and world champion David Arquette that make me think, “Thank God Vince bought off what was left of WCW. Thank God he bought out that godawful pile of dogshit!”

Of course, I slid around in the shit for a while, took my money and went on back home to the ranch. I’d probably even roll in shit, if the money was right. I can always take a shower and get rid of the stink.

But WCW wasn’t the worst place I ever worked. Several independent promotions are tied for that honor. A lot of my independent experiences over the years have ended with me chasing the sorry, son-of-a-bitch promoter down the road to get my money! Now that is a bad workplace! In WCW I never had to worry. My paychecks came just like clockwork.

Those independent promoters were some strange individuals, and sometimes I questioned their priorities. I won’t mention names here, but I worked for an independent promotion run by two guys who were supposedly the best of friends.

Well one night we were in the dressing room, and one of them came in and announced, “It’s over! We are dissolving the partnership!” I asked, “Why are you doing that?” “Because that bastard stole my arena rat!”

Now, an arena rat was a wrestling groupie, like a girl who hangs out at the matches, hoping to “get together” with a wrestler. Now, can you imagine that shit? And she was fat and ugly, too, just a horrible-looking broad!

In 2000, there were still one or two places I hadn’t worked yet, so I thought I’d get to them. XPW was an ECW-like group operating on the West Coast. The owner was Rob Black, who produced porn movies and is a very controversial figure, even in that industry. But I have no complaints about him, or about that group. He paid me my money, and he treated me very well while I was there. Vicki came with me, and they treated her like a million dollars, too.