More Than Just Hardcore (44 page)

You can look at Vince McMahon and say he should do more, but he has done a great deal through the years. He’s fired a lot of guys for being visibly high. He’s put a few who needed it through rehab. And over the past couple of years, it hasn’t been WWE that’s had the problem—it’s been the independent promotions, the guys who used to be with WWF, WCW, or ECW.

I believe the drug problem in wrestling is subsiding and will continue to subside because there are people in the business who are realizing that staying employed in it is a way to become a successful individual and maybe even retire at a young age. Career spans will shorten as time goes by, not only because of injuries caused by guys working such a physical style nightly, but because of the monetary opportunities.

And that might be a good thing, because this business of wrestling can be hard, and it forgets you. I think of Wahoo McDaniel, the only guy I ever saw who would fight for the underneath boys, every single place he went, to get them more money. He always busted his ass in the ring, and then he’d be in the back, fighting for somebody else’s payoff, which no one did. You weren’t going to find anyone else to do that, but Wahoo would.

My wife and I drove 250 miles to his funeral in Odessa, Texas, a couple of years ago. There were two people connected to the wrestling business there—my wife and I.

Guys don’t realize that Wahoo was someone who fought for them all those years. He was always the leader, the “Crusader Rabbit,” always the guy who’d go pitch the bitch to the promoter.

What the business really needs is a wrestler’s union. In the old days, it would have been impossible because you would have had guys trying to bust one organization at a time when there were 30 organizations. That promoter could call one of the other 30 promoters and say, “Hey, I need a little help,” and there’d be new talent in the promotion, while whoever tried to start the union would find themselves alienated from the business.

Today I think it’s possible. And I’m not talking about something that would mess up things for Vince McMahon or his company. I’m talking about something that would do nothing but help. Right now would actually be the easiest time in the world to do it. Wrestlers starting a union isn’t the same as wrestlers just trying to hang up Vince by his balls. People have to get over that idea that a union is the enemy. It’s not to put Vince, or anyone else, out of business. It’s just something to make sure something is set aside for guys who need medical care for their in-ring injuries, especially those guys who spend 15 years putting over the Triple Hs and Undertakers of the world, because those top stars didn’t get to where they are, making that huge money, without some help. And that help came from scores of guys who put them over, but who never made that huge money. Those are the guys who should be looked after, and it should be those top stars who are fighting for a way to take care of those other guys. Those underneath guys deserve a little something for busting their asses to help make the business the success it is.

A union is not there to ruin Vince. It’s to help with health care, to do some good for the guys who have done good for that company for so long. Eventually, I wouldn’t be surprised if the one who figures this out is Vince himself. But it needs to be done, and it’s not for old Terry Funk, because I’m out of it, but the business needs to look out after guys, the guys who spend their time in it and don’t make enough to retire on. The few who are making that five million a year need to look at the other guys with some compassion. I bet you Benoit, Guerrero, Triple H and Undertaker all see it, because each one of them has been in the position where they weren’t making money hand over fist.

And it wouldn’t be a big bite out of Vince, but it is something that needs to be looked at, because believe me, there’s a guy in that company for years who has made a decent living. And maybe he’s not the smartest guy in the world, or the most marketable, but he’s done a lot of jobs for you. And if it weren’t for guys like him putting the stars over, how would the wrestling business make stars? Maybe some will benefit who don’t deserve it, but better that than the guys who deserve the help not getting it. There have been and are a lot of guys who lived in this business who either need some help, or will, for the 2,000 backdrops they’ve taken in their career, or all the power bombs they’ve taken.

The only thing is, people have to stop looking at it like it’s there to hurt the business. Unions want employers to succeed because when they don’t, suddenly there are a lot of lost union jobs, so they have a stake in the company doing well. If WWE had been taking $500 a night from every house show for the last 20 years, they’d have something started, for guys who needed it. I’m not talking about giving a guy $100,000 so he can buy caviar, or re-tile his swimming pool. I’m talking about helping the Wahoo McDaniels and Johnny Valentines of future generations, who would otherwise die with nothing, no way to pay their hospital bills, in their last days.

When John Ayers died, his wife was able to send those kids to school because he had some benefits from the NFL players’ union. And she doesn’t live in the lap of luxury, and she still has to work to earn a buck every day.

The business is getting a little better about acknowledging its history and the legends of the past, but a lot of greats don’t get the recognition they deserve.

I can’t finish this book without mentioning one guy who should always be remembered—Danny Hodge.

Of all the guys I ever knew in wrestling, the one guy I never, ever would want to shoot with would be Danny Hodge in his prime. Hell, take Danny Hodge now, in his 70s, amputate his arms and legs, and I might have a 50 percent chance with him.

I watch the shootfighting groups like Pride and Ultimate Fighting Championship, and they have some tough guys. But let me tell you—you can have all the Gracies, all the Shamrocks you want. They couldn’t hold a candle to Danny Hodge.

Danny Hodge was a three-time NCAA wrestling champion, and one of the strongest men I’ve ever known. His grip strength was unbelievable—I’ve seen him crush a pair of steel pliers with one hand.

Danny was world junior heavyweight champion for years and was a perfect fit as a legend in Oklahoma and other parts of the South and the Midwest. The rest of the country had no idea what they were missing.

As a person, Danny was a great guy, just a lot of fun to be around. He was also the greatest shooting wrestler in the world for years, but if you dropped him into New York as the world junior heavyweight champion, the people there would look at him and say, “Oh, come on! Who are you trying to bullshit?”

They would have prejudged him based on his size and appearance, because he didn’t have a musclebound physique, and I don’t know how his southern talk, peppered with “dadgums,” and “gollys,” would have gone over.

But he was a great one, and everyone in Oklahoma and everywhere else he wrestled knew there was only one Danny Hodge. And there’s never been anything like him since.

In a way, though, he reminds me of Jim Raschke, who wrestled for years in the AWA and Georgia as Baron Von Raschke. The baron was a tall, bald German who goose-stepped and used a clawhold. He reminds me of Hodge because the baron also did not have a very impressive physique. He was another guy you might take a look at and think, “Well, he couldn’t whip anybody.”

But Raschke was a great amateur wrestler and one of the toughest guys you were likely to meet in the wrestling profession. He could stretch the hell out of damn near anybody if he’d really wanted to.

So as we come to the end, I hope I’ve given you at least a sense of the great, crazy guys who made pro wrestling such a wild business. I encountered so many great characters, and it’s sad to think they’d be forgotten in future generations.

And me? I wouldn’t move for anything. There is no opportunity in the wrestling business that could make me move from this place.

And there’s not a lot I regret about my career. I got to wrestle almost everyone who was a top guy over the course of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I do wish I had gotten to work with Chris Benoit more than that one time, just because he was so talented and such a pleasure in the ring. I worked with Joe and Dean Malenko just a few times in Japan. They were a great tag team, and I would have liked to work more with them. And this might seem funny, but one guy I would have loved to work with was Art Barr. Art teamed with Eddy Guerrero in Mexico as Los Gringos Locos in the early 1990s, and he was so far ahead of his time it’s not even funny. Art died of a drug overdose in 1994, just a couple of weeks after his biggest match ever, on a pay per view put on in the States by the Mexican promotion AAA. Art and Eddy just burned the house down whenever I saw them on TV.

I also never got to work with Verne Gagne, who I got to watch when I was just breaking into the business. Verne’s AWA ended up dying a slow death in the 1980s, and a lot of people knock Verne for his company going under, but that son of a bitch was a phenomenal worker.

There are others, but I was lucky enough to work with a lot of the true talents of this business.

I do miss being around my brother. Junior moved to Florida a little more than 20 years ago, to book for Eddie Graham, and he never moved back. We still see each other now and then, but not like when we were young.

You might have noticed that I have lived my life somewhat differently than a lot of wrestlers. I haven’t been on the road, nonstop, for 20 years. More than 30 years ago, I let myself get sucked into the business to the point that it cost me my marriage. Well I was surely blessed to get her back and get a second chance, and I was sure as hell not going to let it happen again. And I haven’t.

And I’ve been very fortunate, very lucky. I enjoy the hell out of my home, and the wrestling business has been good enough to me to allow me to be centered in the middle of nowhere. And no matter where I’ve worked, I’ve been able to come back here as much as I want.

Stacy lives in Amarillo, now, and Brandee’s in Phoenix, but she travels quite a bit in her job, and we get to see her a lot. I wish Brandee was here, of course, but I love the fact she’s only a couple of hours away on an airplane. She’s also a registered nurse, helping to deliver babies and working on her master’s degree, to become a nurse practitioner.

They’re both flight attendants, and I do worry about them being in the air so much. When 9/11 happened, everyone remembered the policemen. Everyone remembered the firemen. Everyone remembered the people who died in the World Trade Center. Everyone remembered the passengers on those planes.

The travesty of the crashes was that those flight attendants had their throats cut, and hardly anyone has mentioned them. That’s a pretty hard way to go. I tell my daughters constantly, “Watch out! Keep your eyes open and be aware!”

But at least I see them regularly enough that I get to tell them that often.

And there’s one more member of the family I haven’t mentioned—my Jack Russell terrier, Tooter Brown. I’ve had dogs all my life and loved dogs, and when the girls were growing up, we had three dogs—Masa, Scooby and Boo. They all died the same year, and it was tough. I told Vicki, “I don’t want another one.”

But she found Tooter in Waco, and brought him home. And we haven’t had a quiet moment since. One time, he went down to the creek on our property, and found a beaver hole. He wouldn’t come out, and we had to dig a 15-foot tunnel for his little ass.

But I love the people here, I love my family, and I love to be home. If you want to know why I’ve done all the crazy things I’ve done, it’s very simple—it was to be home, to have a life, other than just wrestling. Believe me, I love the wrestling part, but I love this part of the country and I’m not going to go anyplace else.

Why did I go to New York City 12 years ago, only to turn right around and come back? Hell, I don’t want to spend a lot of time in New York City. Why did I go to Japan and do the insane things I’ve done? I’ve been able to do something that a lot of wrestlers, even in this day and age, would love to be able to do—to have fun in the profession and be my own boss, and still get to spend time at home, where I want to be.

It’s not the most successful thing for me financially, and I realize that, but it hasn’t been bad. I can’t think of much else that I want. Money has always been a necessity, but it’s not my guiding force. My guiding force has been my family.

I’ve seen a lot of guys get those things reversed, and believe me, I’ve gotten them reversed in my lifetime, but by God, I got it straightened out. I’ve had it straight for more than 25 years, and I’ve done it right. I’m proud of that fact.

In fact, you probably won’t see me out on the independent circuit too much, anymore. I know that sounds like bullshit coming from me, but it’s the truth. It’s getting to where it takes more and more to get me to leave the house.

And there are health concerns. I have had some retinal injury to my right eye, I recently learned. It’s not something that bothers me constantly, but it is the kind of thing that can get worse if I take a blow to the head. At times it’s worse than other times, and sometimes looks like my right eye is looking through wax paper, because things can be that hazy.

It’s not just my eye, (or “My eye! My eye!” for you empty arena match fans). If you saw Beyond the Mat, you might remember the scene where the doctor was telling me I needed a right knee replacement, because I’m bone on bone down there from the years of taking a pounding in wrestling. Well, seven years after that doctor visit, my knees are still godawful. My body goes ahead and screams every morning when I get up. What it usually screams is, “Stay down! Stay in bed!”

But I get up every morning anyway. More than 10 years ago, I had knee surgery by Dr. James Andrews, a well known sports physician. He later treated Ernie Ladd’s knees and told Ernie, “Geez, Ernie, I’ve only seen one person with a worse knee than you.”

Guess who?

I realize I could get a replacement, and people wonder why I haven’t gotten one. Well, they say those things only last for about 15 years, and I don’t want to have to get two of them done, so I’m going to wait until I’m 105 to have my knee replacement. That way, it’ll last me the rest of my lifetime. But just barely.