Straight from the Hart (27 page)

The show came off surprisingly well.

I rode back from Rockyford with my dad and he was pumped with how well the show had gone, but also lamented the fact that the WWF had wiped out all the smaller promotions, such as Stampede Wrestling — which was where all the good workers had developed their craft. He said it was a shame the WWF

didn’t see the merit in re-sowing the seeds at the grassroots level. He suggested that I drop our old friend Vince McMahon a line, pointing out that wrestling was the only major sports entity that didn’t have a farm system or viable means of replenishing its talent pool and that perhaps they could see fit to revive Stampede Wrestling for that purpose. Although I was dubious that I’d get a reply, I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained and therefore dropped Vinnie Mac a line, extolling the virtues of starting up a farm system, so to speak.

A few days after I’d mailed the letter, I ran into my brother Bret up at my dad’s. Bret was still working for the WWF and I mentioned the letter to him.

He shook his head and smirked. Sardonically he posed the rhetorical question: if Vince had gone to such great lengths to systematically wipe out all the regional
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promotions, such as Stampede Wrestling, back in the ’80s, why the hell would he want to give any of them life again?

A couple of weeks later though, much to my (and Bret’s) surprise, I received an extremely pleasant reply from Vince, thanking me for my letter and extending an invitation to me to fly down to the upcoming Survivor Series, at which time we could discuss things in more detail.

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A few weeks later, I flew down to Hartford for the big pay-per-view. The night of my arrival, I was sitting in the ringside watching the matches when one of the referees came up to me and said there was a message for me to call home.

I went into the back and made the call and was saddened by the news that my brother Dean had died that afternoon in Calgary.

Even though Dean had been having health issues the past few years and had been on dialysis, his death still came as a shock. Of all my brothers, the two I was closest to were Dean and Owen. Although Dean was the smallest, physically, of the eight boys in the family, he probably had the biggest heart and wouldn’t back down from anyone.

After I got off the phone, through tears and laughter, I found myself reflecting on the many misadventures Dean and I had been through together, including the trip to Amarillo, the rock concerts we’d promoted, and the escapades in Hawaii, among other things, when I felt a big arm draped around my shoulder and turned around to see it was Kerry Von Erich. He told me he’d just heard about Dean’s passing and offered his condolences; he then told me that he’d said a prayer, asking his brothers David, Jack and Mike — all of whom had died in the past few years themselves — to look after Dean up in heaven. The next
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thing I knew, Kerry was sobbing and getting quite emotional and I soon found myself, instead, having to console him. In any case, I was greatly impressed with his sensitivity and compassion.

The next night, the WWF had a show in New York at Madison Square Garden. After the show, Curt Hennig, Rick Rude and Mike Hegstrand (Hawk from the Road Warriors/Legion of Doom) took me out on the town. We went to the China Club and then the Hard Rock Café and they went out of their way to show me a good time, which I thought was an incredibly nice gesture on their part, especially since I’d only just met them. While we were at the Hard Rock, Curt asked the deejay to dedicate a song to me — Billy Joel’s classic

“Only the Good Die Young.” Sadly, Kerry, Curt, Rick and Mike would all leave us far too early themselves. Whenever I hear that song, those guys come to mind.

As for my meeting with Vince, he came up to me after the show in New York and told me that he’d been busy as hell with a number of other things and hadn’t really had much of an opportunity to give any thought to the farm system concept yet. He said that we could perhaps discuss it some other time.

On the flight back home from New York, Bret asked me how the meeting with Vinnie had gone and when I told him, he gave me one of those smug “I told you so” smiles and said that Vince liked to just pull people’s strings like that and that rarely did he deliver on most of his promises.

Bret then reiterated what he’d said in the first place: that, in his opinion, Vinnie really didn’t give a rat’s ass about developing new wrestlers, that he figured all you really needed to do was take a prospect — be he a bodybuilder or football player or what have you — and teach him a few holds and leave the rest to the scriptwriters, which is pretty much what they’d done with guys like the Ultimate Warrior. I figured Bret — who obviously knew Vince better than me — was probably right.

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In early May, my brother Bret, whom I remained on good terms with, called me up and said that the
Calgary Sun
had approached him about writing a syndicated weekly wrestling column. He told me that he’d like to do it, as it would enhance his exposure and might help kick-start his singles career, which had been stuck in neutral since the Hart Foundation tag team with Jim Neidhart had been disbanded. The only problem was that he’d never done much writing before himself. He wondered whether I might be able to ghostwrite the column for him — as I’d ghostwritten most of his English and Social Studies essays for him back when he was in high school.

I told him I’d be happy to give it a shot, but that my writing style tended to be tongue in cheek and satiric. Bret said he was fine with that and the column

— which was often outrageous and had people wondering whether Bret was serious or not — turned out to be a big hit.

In one of the early columns, I paid my respects to the revered, or should I say, reviled, Australian wrestler (I use the term very loosely), the one and only (thankfully) Outback Jack:

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A lot of fans have — okay, I won’t insult your intelligence —

one foul tempered and foul mouthed, toothless skank, looking to file a paternity suit, asked me what’s become of him. Some of you may recall him as the colorful Australian wrestler whose unique wrestling style resembled that of a kangaroo with two left feet. Well, we were recently able to track Jack down in his native Australia. He relates that after being injured in the ring (probably from tripping over himself), he was forced to retire and went back to school, where, after several unsuccessful attempts, he persevered and was finally able to obtain his degree

— as a sanitary engineer. He’s now stationed at Moroganga, a sheep station in Australia’s remote Western Desert region where he rides herd over a raunchy group of volatile, unruly and at times, highly unpredictable portable latrines. He tells us, quite proudly, that friends now call him “Outhouse Jack” — which, when you stop and think about it, is probably what he should have been called in the first place, since his performances in the ring usually stunk to high hell.

With the column quickly becoming a hit, Bret’s popularity also took off.

Each week, he would call me from wherever he was on the road and give me the lowdown on what he’d like me to write about in the column and then I’d take it from there. Quite often, during our weekly confabs, he’d also seek input from me on finishes and angles — since I had a wealth of them from my days as a booker in Stampede. In the past, I’d given him ideas, such as the pink and black attire, as well as the wraparound shades and biker jackets that Brian Pillman and I had worn during our Bad Kompany days. During one of our conversations, he told me he was looking for a new signature finish and wanted to know if I had any suggestions. When I was booking in Calgary, I’d had one of the Viet Cong Express use a cross-legged version of the Boston Crab that we’d devised down in the Dungeon as a finish; it had gotten over pretty well, so I suggested that to Bret. He wasn’t all that keen on it, initially, but said he might give it a whirl and see what the reaction was. He called me back the next week
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though and was quite stoked at how well it had gotten over — so much so that the WWF had given it the new name “the sharpshooter” and wanted him to use it as his signature finish. As most of you probably know, it would go on to become one of the most celebrated finishes in the history of the WWF.

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