Straight from the Hart (12 page)

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BRUCE HART
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A few weeks before Dynamite was supposed to start, I was talking with my brother Keith — who was still booking — and his assistant, Jack Kruger, about Dynamite. Generally, when a new guy came into a territory, the rule of thumb was to have him go over strong on his first night out — have a “smash” as they call it, and then try to build off that. I was well aware how important first impressions can be and was interested to hear what Keith and Kruger had in mind for Dynamite. Much to my chagrin, Kruger divulged that he couldn’t see many of our heavyweights wanting to do a job for a skinny, unproven teenager.

Keith agreed and said that, all things considered, he really couldn’t see Dynamite being much more than undercard fodder for some of the bigger guys.

I was pissed off at their prejudiced mindset and figured that I needed to do something to keep Dynamite from being chewed up and spit out before he even had a chance to show what he was capable of.

I was trying to think of a way to present my case to my dad when it occurred to me that the lighter weight divisions in boxing were now the big ticket, featuring dynamic new stars like Sugar Ray Leonard, the original Hitman Tommy Hearns, Roberto Durán and Wilfred Benitez. At the same time, the heavyweights — after the retirement of Muhammad Ali — had gone into the toilet, with a group of uninspiring and charismatically challenged plodders like Larry Holmes, Leon Spinks, Gerry Cooney and Joe Bugner.

I pointed this out to my dad and said that since our heavyweights weren’t exactly setting the world on fire, why didn’t we endeavor to go the same route that boxing had taken and rather than having Dynamite work with the heavyweights make him out to be a champion of his own weight division, which we would call the mid-heavyweight division?

My dad — ever the old-school conservative type — was reticent about going that route, but given that not much else had been working at the time, he finally agreed to bring Dynamite in as the British Commonwealth mid-heavyweight champion. It had a good ring to it, especially since the British Commonwealth Games were scheduled to take place in Edmonton that summer.

We soon began hyping Dynamite’s imminent arrival, although there was quite a bit of skepticism. It was much like the response another skinny teenager also launching his career in Alberta at that time —Wayne Gretzky — was
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receiving. We’d had some smaller guys in the territory, hands like John Foley, Ángel Acevedo (the Cuban Assassin), Norman Charles and Hubert Gallant; most of them had been mired in the undercards because of their size but were decent workers. I persuaded my dad that we could perhaps give them a new lease on life as mid-heavyweight contenders. The smaller guys quickly became the hottest thing in the territory and would also inspire another skinny teenager who was contemplating whether he wanted to get into wrestling — my brother Bret. Later on, as you all know, Bret came to be “the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be,” but I’m sure if you were to ask, he’d be the first to tell you that even he couldn’t hold a candle to the Dynamite at that time.

Even though Dynamite proved to be everything I’d touted, and then some, our territory, unfortunately, continued to struggle — mostly because our heavyweights, who were still getting the biggest push, were, for want of a better term, the drizzling shits.

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That fall, my brother Smith, Dynamite and I were invited by a German promoter, Edmund Schober, to wrestle in a big forty-five day tournament, coinciding with Oktoberfest, in Hanover, Germany. It was called the International Grand Prix. The tournament would prove to be quite the learning experience. When we arrived, I was pleased to find several other guys I’d crossed paths with in the past over there, including Afa and Sika Anoia, Kim Sakurada, Mr. Hito and Bob Della Serra — all of whom had worked in Calgary. As well, there were a few guys I’d worked with in England: Pat Roach, Dave Cross, Colin Joynson, Caswell Martin and Tony St. Clair.

Upon my arrival, one of the first things I noticed was that the media in Germany treated wrestling as if it was a shoot, which was different than back home. I was intrigued at how they’d have these press conferences where they’d ask all these shoot style questions — about which factors might enable you to emerge victorious and how you’d prepared for the big tournament and all that type of thing. On many occasions, the American wrestlers would offer tongue in cheek responses — which were dutifully reported the next day in the papers, word for word.

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Giving credit where credit is due, the Germans did a hell of a job at hyping and making a big spectacle out of everything. Each night, before the matches began, they would have a marching band play some music and the wrestlers would parade to the ring for formal introductions, bearing their country’s flag — much like the Olympics — with the marks getting all caught up in this nationalistic fervor. As well, when the wrestlers came to the ring for each match, they’d play entrance music for them — usually German military marches, which the American boys used to sardonically refer to as Adolf Hitler’s Greatest Hits.

At the time, I thought it was all kind of cheesy, but I noticed that, nevertheless, it seemed to get the fans really pumped. Later on, when I took over the booking for my dad’s promotion, I had the wrestlers come to the ring in similar fashion

— our rock music entrances would later become the norm, not only in our promotion but in the WWF.

Because of the prevailing perception that the tournament was a shoot and perhaps because of all the hype, many of the European wrestlers, in the immortal words of my old friend Dory Funk Sr., became “marks for themselves.” Probably the biggest mark for himself of all was the German champion, this haggard looking old bag of bones named Axel Dieter, who bore a striking resemblance to the Wile E. Coyote character from the Road Runner cartoons. Axel was always stiffing guys and most of the Europeans used to let him get away with it because they didn’t want to jeopardize their job security.

One night, Axel stiffed Afa Anoia — who was generally pretty laidback but not the kind of guy you’d want to mess with. Afa responded by dragging Axel’s scrawny ass all over the ring and embarrassing him in front of the countrymen who’d come to perceive him as invincible, like some kind of superman.

After the match in the dressing room, Axel went ballistic and pulled out a big revolver and began shooting up the place and rasping in broken English that he was the only real shooter in the promotion — apparently because he had a gun. Axel’s outburst not only pissed off most of the American and Canadians, including Smith, Dynamite and me, it also made him the butt of numerous ribs, courtesy of us North American boys.

As I mentioned before, every night the matches began with a big parade of all the wrestlers marching to the ring. After everyone made their way to the ring,
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part of the routine was that the ring announcer would present gifts — flowers, chocolates, champagne and pastries— to various wrestlers from adoring fans.

One day before the matches, Smith, Dynamite and I, who were living in a trailer on the fairgrounds adjacent to the big tent where the matches took place, noticed Axel sneaking in early with an armful of wrapped presents, which he put on the announcers’ table. After he left, we went to check out the gifts. We noticed that they all had tags that read “To Axel.” They were from assorted

“female admirers.” It was Axel’s way of making the promoter, who was a big mark himself, think that Axel was really over; in turn, it would compel him to push Axel more.

As a bit of mischief, Smitty, Dynamite and I changed the tags on all the gifts, designating them instead to a bunch of the jabroney types — most of whom had never received a present before and were quite shocked at the unexpected windfall. Axel was seething when the jobbers were given his gifts, while Smith, Dynamite and I were having trouble keeping straight faces.

A few days later, Smith and Dynamite had this ring rat friend of theirs who worked at a local bakery make this really fancy pastry for Axel — the main ingredient was dog food and it featured assorted other ingredients not fit for human consumption. Afterward, in the dressing room, we were half gagging watching Axel and cohorts stuffing their faces with the dog food delight —

which they all seemed to think was some kind of Bavarian delicacy called

“mincemeat strudel.”

Another time, Dynamite got a big bottle of cheap wine and injected this liquid laxative used to deworm racehorses through the cork and then had it gift wrapped all fancy and left it on the table for Axel. For the next several days, Axel and all of his Colonel Klink type comrades were all complaining of acute diarrhea but weren’t sure how they’d contracted it.

Aside from Axel and friends being marks for themselves, the trip to Germany had been quite positive, as I learned a lot about hype and marketing — all of which I would put to good use when I became booker in my dad’s promotion.

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A few weeks before the end of the tournament, I got news from home that an old friend of the family had committed suicide.

This wasn’t the first time I’d experienced the loss of a friend or associate, but for some reason — perhaps because I had too much time to ponder such things

— I began dwelling on the fact that, to put it into wrestling terms, we all have to ultimately “do a job” for real. It truly affected me.

Before long, I had allowed myself to spiral into an out of control depression and by the time I made it back to Calgary, I was in a hell of a mess. Ringo Starr once lamented that “you’ve got to pay your dues, if you want to sing the blues”