Straight from the Hart (18 page)

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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

It wasn’t uncommon for wrestling fans from different parts of the world —

be it Australia, Japan, Europe or the United States — to drop in at the house, meet my dad or want to have their picture taken in the infamous Dungeon. I figured this was likely just another group of fans but was more than happy to come and meet them and sign a few autographs or whatever.

When I arrived at the house, my dad introduced me to this laidback contingent of black guys, most of whom were in Bermuda shorts, flip-flops and whatnot —like some ensemble from those Malibu Rum commercials. They reiterated what my dad had already told me. They were enormous Stampede Wrestling fans and our TV show — via pirated transmission — happened to be the number one ranked show in their country, Antigua. Their mission was to convince my dad to bring Stampede Wrestling to the Caribbean. Initially, I figured they were just hardcore wrestling fans, but was soon informed that they, in fact, were high-ranking government officials — including the secretary of state, the justice minister and the deputy prime minister of the country.

In any case, by the end of the afternoon, my dad, who always seemed to have an appetite for adventure, wound up agreeing to send a contingent of our boys down to Antigua later that summer, with the government agreeing to pay airfare, hotel and expenses, and split the gate.

I was initially planning on making the Antigua show. However, it turned out to be on the same day as a special memorial show in Hawaii for my old friend, Peter Maivia, who had recently passed away. In my place, my dad sent my older brother Smith to look after things and to bring our share of the gate back with him. Among the contingent my dad sent down there for the show were Dynamite, David Schultz, Kerry Brown, Duke Myers, John Foley, Jim Neidhart and Charlie Buffong.

I don’t think most of the wrestlers were expecting the show to be anything out of the ordinary — perhaps a chance to enjoy some fun in the sun — which was better, most agreed, than having to drive to Saskatchewan. To everyone’s surprise though, the gate was well over $100,000, which made it, far and away, the biggest gross we’d ever drawn.

Our cut of the gate, I’m told, was in excess of $70,000 — which meant that most of the boys, especially guys like Dynamite and Schultz, who were the main
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STRAIGHT FROM THE HART
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event that night, could be looking forward to big payoffs. On the way home from Antigua, my brother Smith — who’d been entrusted to bring the money back

— decided to stop over in nearby Puerto Rico to hook up with Tricky Dicky Steinborn, who was now booking for the promotion down there. Nobody’s quite sure what transpired after that, other than that Smith’s suitcase, in which he had the gate receipts from Antigua, disappeared — from Steinborn’s hotel room. After an extensive search, it never turned up. The common conjecture was that Steinborn, who had a reputation within the business for being light-fingered, had ripped it off. In any case, Smith ended up coming home empty-handed and my dad ended up having to pay the wrestlers out of his own pocket.

I’m told that Schultz and Dynamite got around $2,000 a piece, with the others getting about half that. Under normal circumstances, that would have been not a bad week’s payoff, but given the size of the gate, Dynamite, Schultz and company were pissed with their payoffs and figured that it might have been an inside job.

As a result, Dynamite gave his notice and booked himself to Portland, while Schultz, who at this time was involved in a big angle with his old buddy the Honky Tonk Man, jumped ship as well and tried to run opposition against my dad in Calgary and Edmonton.

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The loss of Schultz, Honky Tonk and Dynamite — all of whom were playing key roles for us — would take its toll and, for the first time since I’d taken over the book, business declined. Without Dynamite and Honky Tonk — both of whom had been getting over as our lead heels — my dad was on the lookout for someone to pick up the slack. Bret and Davey Boy had just returned from a Japanese tour and were effusive in their praise of this big, black heel they’d seen over there, Allen Coage. He wrestled under the moniker “Bad News” Allen.

Bret described him as a cross between Abdullah the Butcher and the Stomper but bigger and more impressive than either of them. This was pretty high praise, since those were two of the hottest heels in the history of our promotion. That would be like a football scout touting a hotshot college quarterback as a cross between Joe Montana and John Elway, but stronger and more mobile.

As an added selling point, Bret also boasted that News was a bona fide shooter, having won an Olympic medal in judo at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. With a résumé like that, my dad was sold and he offered Bad News the highest weekly guarantee he’d ever given a wrestler — nearly double what he’d been paying Dynamite, who, at that time, was probably the best worker in the business.

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♥
STRAIGHT FROM THE HART
♥

Before he arrived, News was being treated like some vaunted first round draft choice who was going to revive the franchise. On his first night in the territory, the Pavilion was packed, with fans eager to see the latest big thing.

News made an impressive debut, destroying some jobber and cutting a pretty intense promo afterward, in which he touted himself as the Ultimate Warrior, long before, I might add, anyone had ever heard of Jim Hellwig.

In those days, whenever a new heel came to a territory, the norm was to have him destroy whichever faces he was matched against in his first few weeks —

kind of like Mr. T in
Rocky III
. That would establish the new heel’s heat and create the anticipatory buzz for him to take on the top faces.

For the first month or so that “Bad News” Allen was in the territory, things went according to plan, with him destroying some pretty decent faces including Mr. Hito, Hercules Ayala and Gerry Morrow. In most cases, they bled for him and ended up being carried out on stretchers — all of which served the purpose of getting him over and priming him for the big title showdown against our current champion: Bret.

At this point, Bret continued to be one of News’ strongest supporters — so much so that he said he’d be more than happy to drop the strap to News, to help get him over. I thought that was pretty decent of him. We had News win the strap the next week on a hot finish. Thus far, everything had smoothly established Bad News as our dominant, alpha heel.

Once a new heel has had his initial run in a territory and run roughshod over everyone, he’s then usually obliged to return the favor. He’s supposed to make prospective challengers look like they’re capable of beating him — which is, of course, what compels the fans to buy tickets. All of that is pretty much understood from the get-go, or so I thought. No sooner than we’d put the strap on him and were expecting News to start selling and taking bumps for the faces, he suddenly exhibited this pronounced reluctance to sell or take bumps. . . .

Some of the boys attributed his reluctance to sell to his vaunted reputation as a shooter — something that was relatively common among egocentric amateur champions coming into the professional ranks. I, frankly, never thought that was the problem. In talking to News, I never discerned he had any problem having to sell for the faces.

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BRUCE HART
♥

From what I could see, the problem stemmed from the fact that he was nearly forty when he broke into pro wrestling, which was pretty late to be starting and, since the Japanese office that started him had put him over from the outset as a dominant heel, he had never really learned how to take bumps or sell. In Japan

— where monster heels like Allen didn’t have to take many bumps or sell that often — News could get away with it. But that didn’t cut it in North America.

Adding insult to injury, Allen also informed my dad and me that, because of some congenital disorder, he was unable to get juice.

That, of course, didn’t sit well with babyfaces, like Bret, Davey Boy, Hito and company — all of whom had gotten juice several times for News. Several of them complained long and loud to me and my dad, claiming that News’ congenital disorder was bullshit and it was all just part of his self-serving agenda.

Beyond all else, News’ refusal to sell, take bumps or get color made for some pretty lousy matches — but since my dad had invested a lot of money in him and didn’t want to admit he may have made a mistake, he was insistent that we keep pushing him as our top heel.

Things, unfortunately, didn’t improve. None of the faces wanted to work with News and gates declined by the week.

Making matters worse, News had a propensity for brawling out on the floor and wading into the crowd, using fire extinguishers, chairs and whatever else to batter his opponents. That type of thing was pretty common in Japan. We used to refer to it as the “Godzilla syndrome,” after those grainy Japanese monster movies from the ’50s. However, fighting in the crowd and beyond the designated ringside area was strictly forbidden by the boxing and wrestling commissions in places like Calgary and Edmonton — for fear of riots or fans getting injured.

In the past, most of the heels complied with that regulation, but News would routinely wade out into the crowd, bowling over spectators and beating the hell out of his opponents. As a result, the commissions began levying heavy fines —

which my dad ended up paying. That didn’t seem to deter Bad News either. He continued to break the rules — almost defying the commission or anyone else to do anything about it.

Eventually, the head of the commission in Calgary — a guy named Gordon Grayston, who’d been a flunky referee for my dad back in the ’60s, but was now
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on a power trip because of his position — suspended Bad News indefinitely.

That put us in an awkward position. Calgary was where we shot our television show and with our lead heel and champ unable to appear on TV, it compromised the hell out of our ability to get story lines over.

At that point, quite a few of the boys, including Bret, Davey Boy and myself, urged my dad to cut his losses and find another lead heel. My dad, however, felt that News had been unfairly treated by Grayston and stubbornly stuck by him.

That was noble on his part, I suppose; Grayston had, in fact, been an asshole.

Nonetheless, it didn’t solve our problem of having no lead heel and gates on the slide. For the next few months, things continued to deteriorate. News wrestled on top in our other towns, but since he wasn’t on television, there wasn’t much interest.

Being the booker, I soon found myself taking the heat for the lousy gates. I didn’t feel it was warranted, and I chose to shrug it off. If there was one thing I’d come to realize the past few years, it was that when things are going well, the boys usually take the bows and when they’re not going well, the guy calling the shots is usually the first they point fingers at. As some unemployed football coach once ruefully noted, “It’s easier to fire the coach than to replace the whole roster”; that’s probably why supposedly great coaches like Mike Shanahan, Mike Holmgren, John Gruden and Bill Belichick have all been fired at one time or another.

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