Straight from the Hart (21 page)

From what I was told, my dad was to receive a million dollars down payment from the WWF as well as ten percent of the gross whenever the WWF ran in any of our towns, including Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Regina, Saskatoon or anywhere else in Western Canada. In addition, the WWF would bring my brother Bret and my brothers-in-law Davey Boy Smith and Jim Neidhart onboard and give them lucrative contracts. That was all well and good as far as they were concerned. I was excluded from the whole deal, reportedly because there were concerns that I would have done whatever I could to block it — which, I have to admit, may well have been the case.

I suddenly found myself unemployed with a wife and a ten-month-old baby to feed. The demise of Stampede Wrestling couldn’t have come at a worse time.

I’d just plowed most of my money into a new house in upscale Oak Ridge and also had a lot of money tied up in another house in Deer Ridge that I was looking to turn into a revenue property. But the economy in Alberta crashed that fall due to the federal Liberal government’s despised National Energy Policy; with the downturn in the economy, the real estate market also crashed.

As a result, I wound up not only losing both of my houses, but my car as well and suddenly found myself broke, out of work and grasping at straws.

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BRUCE HART
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I’d been through hard times before — back in the ’60s when I was a kid — so while I certainly didn’t like it, I was somewhat accustomed to it. The person I felt really sorry for was my wife; when she first hooked up with me, I’d been a pretty high profile and seemingly successful wrestling star, as well as being the booker for one of the hottest wrestling promotions in the business. Now, I was out of work, we had a new baby girl, Brit, but we didn’t even have a place to live — all of which was pretty distressing. To her credit, and my great relief, she stuck with me and didn’t lose faith. It really meant a lot.

Later on that fall, I was contacted by Vince McMahon’s right hand man, Jim Barnett. He said that since I knew the terrain, they wanted me to handle their publicity for the WWF’s shows in Western Canada. Unfortunately, the WWF’s gates in Western Canada initially were lousy — in part because their sedentary brand of wrestling paled in comparison to the balls-to-the-wall style our fans had become accustomed to. After about three tours — none of which were very successful — I had yet to receive a penny for my services and called Barnett to inquire what was going on.

Jimsy — who was kind of like wrestling’s answer to Truman Capote —

seemed quite disconcerted that I had the unmitigated gall to actually demand my money and curtly informed me that my check, which was for the grand total of $150, was in the mail. He then told me that I’d been fired.

With the wrestling business no longer an option, I tried to find a job with the Calgary Board of Education as a schoolteacher, but they told me they weren’t hiring at the time. I finally took a $100-a-week job working at a place called Weightlifter’s Warehouse, selling nutritional supplements, vitamins and making protein shakes and that kind of thing. Remember when Mickey Rourke’s character in
The Wrestler
was working in the deli — that was pretty close to what it was like for me at the time.

A few months after I began my stint at Weightlifter’s Warehouse, my dad called me up and told me that Vince McMahon Jr. had just informed him that he couldn’t afford to give him the million dollars he’d agreed to pay for the promotion and that the deal was off. In other words, since the WWF was still running shows in Western Canada and had heisted all our best talent and not
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paid a cent for any of it, he’d just screwed him — far worse, I might add, than he screwed my brother Bret in Montreal a few years down the road.

My dad was royally pissed and told me that since he had a binding legal contract, he was going to sue Vince for the money. The next day though, my dad called me back and said that Bret and Davey Boy were freaking out that if he sued Vince it would cost them their jobs. They’d begged him not to take legal action.

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A few weeks later, my dad — still seething over Vince Jr.’s swerve — announced that he was going to start up the promotion again in the fall. I, honestly, didn’t think it was a very good idea, as we had lost all of our best guys to the WWF, not to mention our momentum. I felt he was going back for all the wrong reasons. Nonetheless, I could see where he was coming from and told him that in any case, he could count on my support.

We started training a few rookies down in the Dungeon: Chris Benoit, who’d just graduated from high school and had been hanging around the matches in Edmonton for years; my brother-in-law Ben Bassarab, who’d had a few matches in the past; a big weight lifter/football player named Tom Magee, who’d recently won the “World’s Strongest Man” contest in Montreal and looked to have a lot of potential; and a former Stampede football player named Les Kaminski, who had a bit of a local following. In addition, we were able to recruit a few veterans, like the Cuban Assassin (Ángelo Acevedo), Gerry Morrow, Mr. Hito, Kerry Brown and the Honky Tonk Man. It gave us a bit of a nucleus to work with.

About a month before our scheduled startup date of October 24, 1985, my dad called me up again and said he had both good and bad news. The good
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news was that CFAC, our former TV station, had agreed to give us a one-hour time slot and that Ed Whalen had also agreed to come back to do the show.

The not-so-good news was that since I’d been the one who’d orchestrated the ill-fated angle with the Stomper and “Bad News” Allen back in 1983, Whalen was apprehensive about returning if I was the booker. Since having him back was critical to our chances of success, I had no choice but to withdraw, and my dad installed my brother Keith — who was working as a fireman and therefore could only make weekend shots — and the Cuban Assassin to jointly handle the matchmaking.

Although I wasn’t pleased with that turn of events, my main priority at that point was that the promotion got off to a good start. I’m not sure if it was due to the booking or if our talent wasn’t that good or what, but when we came out of the starting blocks in November, we came out stumbling: terrible crowds, dull, uninspiring matches and one aggravation after another. Since he was losing a ton of money, my dad probably should have just thrown in the towel at that point, but his stubborn pride wouldn’t let him admit that reopening had been a huge mistake, so he doggedly persisted.

In March, after five months of lousy business, Ed Whalen, of all people, called up and apologized for having been reticent about me being the booker and asked if I’d consider taking the book again. I wasn’t all that keen about it, as things were a mess at the time, but finally agreed to come back and see what we could accomplish.

I’d love to be able to relate that as soon as I took the book again, business suddenly turned around and everyone lived happily ever after, and so on and so forth, but that, unfortunately, wasn’t the case. If anything, things seemed to go from bad to worse, as morale among the troops was at an all-time low, with all of our decent talent trying to jump ship to the WWF and most of the others bitching and pointing fingers at everyone but themselves for all the shortcomings.

Exacerbating things, in order to accommodate Bret and Davey Boy, my dad had brought in WWF agents Mark Scarpa and George Skaaland (Chief Jay Strongbow’s and Arnold Skaaland’s sons respectively). Not only were neither of them fit to set foot in the ring but they were always undermining the promotion:
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BRUCE HART
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bitching about how Mickey Mouse our promotion was; shit disturbing about the long road trips and the lousy payoffs; bragging that, unlike all the other saps in our employ, they could, at least, go to the WWF after their tenure in Stampede.

The only glint of hope when I took the book was that a few of our rookies, such as Chris Benoit, Ben Bassarab and Johnny Smith had been making some strides. Aside from that, there wasn’t much to get excited about. A few weeks after I took the book back, there was something to get excited about though, as my brother Owen approached me and told me that since the University of Calgary was scrapping its amateur wrestling program and therefore revoking his scholarship, he wanted to turn pro.

Contrary to some of the bullshit I’ve heard, Owen had a long and deep-rooted passion for the wrestling business and had already wrestled a number of times in the past, including a tour of England and numerous spot shows for our promotion — usually under a mask, or under some bogus assumed name, to protect his amateur status.

I was more than happy to have him come onboard, as he was not only a terrific wrestler but had a great attitude and also a marvelous sense of humor.

Owen’s first road trip could well have served to turn him off the business for good however, as we had to drive nearly 800 miles through a raging snowstorm to wrestle in Winnipeg, only to have most of the gate receipts ripped off by this two-bit conman who was masquerading as a promoter named Tony Condello.

We then had to drive back through the same snowstorm, empty-handed, with most of the wrestlers bitching and moaning all the way, arriving barely in time for the show in Calgary.

Our main event that night was supposed to have been “Strangler” Steve DiSalvo against Ron Ritchie, but neither of them showed up. We found that they’d both defected for tryouts with the WWF — which had reportedly been arranged by Davey Boy and Dynamite.

I was working that night with this inept alcoholic named Chick Scott, who blew a simple spot and I wound up blowing out my knee out so badly that my foot was locked in place pointing backwards — kind of like that grotesque Joe Theismann injury. I ended up having to undergo reconstructive knee surgery
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and my doctors politely suggested that I should, perhaps, consider retiring from the ring.

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