Straight from the Hart (26 page)

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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

That night, I was supposed to work with “Lethal” Larry Cameron, but by 7:30, no one other than myself, Johnson and Kerry and Bob Brown, who’d come down early to indulge in some fishing, had arrived. As a result, I had to first work with Kerry, close to forty minutes and, with the rest of the boys still not there, as a contingency, I had Bob Brown interfere and cost me the match, at which point I challenged him to a match — all of which was just a means of playing for time. After working over eighty minutes in both matches with the Browns, much to my relief, the rest of the crew finally arrived and Bulldog and I went into our finish, pleased that we’d been able to save the show.

When I got back to the dressing room, I was half exhausted and in the process of asking the faces why they’d been so late, when, out of the blue, I was sucker punched from behind by Dynamite, which knocked me on my ass and dislocated my jaw. As I staggered to my feet, I was then head butted in the mouth by Davey Boy, which drove my teeth through my lower lip and knocked me on my ass again. At that point, my brother Dean and a few of the other wrestlers interceded and they then escorted me out and I ended up having to go to the hospital to have my jaw put back in place.

I was told later that Dynamite and Davey Boy had ambushed me because I’d supposedly been making fun of them for having to ride 2,500 miles, round trip in a crowded van — which was a radical departure from flying first class in the WWF. I don’t recall having made such a comment, but even if I had, it would have been kind of funny and certainly shouldn’t have warranted me getting sucker punched, or all the other bullshit.

I’m sure the real reason for their attack, beyond drugs and alcohol, was that they were pissed off that I’d snatched them earlier for trying to give me the spiked beer. When they were in the WWF, Dynamite and Davey had similarly sucker punched Jacques Rougeau, Outback Jack and others after they’d accused them of having pulled ribs on them — which, I should note, they had.

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The weekend after the Northwest Territories travesty was my brother Owen’s wedding. I’d been asked to be his best man and was eagerly looking forward to the big occasion, but in light of all the bullshit that had taken place up north, I told Owen that if either of those two A-holes — Davey or Dynamite —were at the wedding, I wouldn’t be there.

Owen implored me to reconsider and we had a big meeting up at my dad’s place. At my dad’s and Owen’s behest, the Bulldogs were invited to come over and account for their transgressions. Einstein showed up and sheepishly apologized, claiming he was drunk and that he and Dynamite had been stirred up by this shit-disturber newcomer, Ricky Rice, who claimed I’d been making fun of them for having to ride eighteen guys in the van on a gravel road for 5,000 clicks. I accepted his apology and we shook hands and made peace, but Dynamite never did show up and never put in an appearance at Owen’s wedding either, which was just as well.

The wedding went quite smoothly and there were no problems or issues. A couple of days after the wedding though, there was another “high spot,” as we call them in the wrestling business. The boys were supposed to heading west to Prince George, British Columbia, on the Fourth of July for a show. The
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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

past three or four years, on the Fourth of July, there had been serious accidents involving wrestlers, including Brutus Beefcake nearly being killed in an accident on the beach involving a paraglider; the following year, three wrestlers, including Adrian Adonis, were killed in Newfoundland when their car swerved to avoid hitting a moose and went off the road; the next year WWF referee Joey Marella, son of Gorilla Monsoon, was killed in a car wreck in New Jersey.

When the wrestlers left that day in ’89, someone sardonically made reference to the Fourth of July curse — which may have been a bad omen. True to form, this time around, my brother Ross was driving the faces’ van on some stretch of mountain road. He had a head-on collision with a motor home and nearly went down the side of the mountain. Several of the wrestlers were seriously injured, including Jason the Terrible (broken leg), Sumu Hara (broken hip), Davey Boy (separated shoulder and facial lacerations), and Chris Benoit (concussion).

Thankfully, no one was killed, but the accident unfortunately marked the end of Jason’s career, and also put an end to the Davey Boy vs. Dynamite story line, which we’d been expecting to be our big ticket for the summer.

Even though the promotion limped along for a few more months after that, that plus the Hay River melee and all the other unfortunate incidents took their toll. My dad decided to pull the plug on the promotion at Christmastime —

which didn’t exactly result in “Joy to the World” or any festive celebrating.

After all the crap my dad had been made to endure the past few years, no one could blame him for pulling out. On the one hand, I was sad to see him close, as I had put my heart and soul into the operation and it marked the end of the dream. I was proud of a lot of what we’d accomplished the past couple of years — especially the development of rookies, like Owen, Pillman, Benoit, Liger, Hase, Hashimoto and others, all of whom would go on to become major stars in the next decade.

On the other hand though, all the bullshit had eroded my passion considerably and my dad’s decision to shut down was almost like the plug being pulled on some terminally ill patient who’d been suffering far too long.

The person I felt saddest for at the demise of the promotion was my dad. I probably never realized until then, just how much the wrestling business meant to him. It hadn’t just been a job or occupation, but his passion and such a part of
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♥
STRAIGHT FROM THE HART
♥

his whole being. It had taken him from a life of punishing poverty and oblivion and made him one of the most well known and respected people in Canada.

(This was later recognized when he was inducted into the Order of Canada.) Wrestling had also provided a pathway to fame and fortune for many others in our family, including my brothers Bret and Owen. I’m sure that something inside my dad died when he had to close down the promotion.

Not to digress, but I read some years later in Dynamite Kid’s not particularly well written book,
Pure Dynamite
, that when my dad shut the promotion down, Dynamite was pissed off that no one had thrown him any bouquets or given him any props for all he’d done for the promotion.

I found that kind of amusing, because most people will tell you his (and Einstein’s) return to the territory in 1989 was one of the main reasons why Stampede Wrestling went out of business. There’s no arguing that Dynamite was one of the primary reasons for the rise of the promotion in the late 1970s

— his performances were cutting-edge and razor sharp. By l989 though, he was like a rusty, dull blade who could no longer “cut it” and because of that the promotion had gone down. We may have lived by the sword, but we would die by it as well.
C’est la vie.

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If you’ve seen the Mickey Rourke vehicle
The Wrestler
— which, in my opinion, should have won the Academy Award for Best Picture, hands down — you may recall that one of the most pervasive themes was how addictive the wrestling lifestyle is and how difficult it is to go back to the real world afterward.

From one who’s been there and done that, I can certainly attest to that. In its own twisted way the wrestling business is kind of like a real life Never Never Land in that wrestlers are allowed to extend their childhood: dressing up in costumes and playing cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, or whatever else.

I can certainly see now why guys like Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan and Terry Funk have kept at it for so long. I suspect the same is the case for athletes from other sports, like Brett Favre, Mark Messier, Chris Chelios and Nolan Ryan, as well as entertainers, like Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart.

One of the toughest things for me to adjust to after I got out of wrestling was dealing with the inherent cynicism. In wrestling, where everything’s a work and everyone seems to always be working everyone else, you tend to become cynical and figure everyone’s working you, or that they’re all marks and need to be worked by you.

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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

Either way, you tend to have this skewed take on everything and don’t take anyone at face value. When I eventually came to realize though that most people outside the wrestling realm didn’t seem to have any overriding agenda, my cynicism abated — which made things a lot better. After my dad shut down the promotion, fortunately, I was able to hook on with the Calgary Board of Education as a substitute teacher and though the money wasn’t great, there wasn’t much stress. I was also delighted to find out in February 1990 that my wife was expecting our third child in September and I’d be able to spend some

“quality time” with my family — something I’d missed out on while I was on the road.

Later that summer, my dad was asked by an old friend named Richard Kessler if he could promote a Stampede Wrestling retro show at a rodeo in the small town of Rockyford, Alberta, which was about fifty miles east of Calgary. My dad readily agreed and recruited a few of former Stampede guys, including Gama, Gerry Morrow, Cuban Assassin, Phil La Fon, Leo Burke, my brother Keith and myself, as well as a few rookies he’d been stretching in the Dungeon.