Straight from the Hart (28 page)

In July, the WWF came to Calgary for a big show and TV taping. After the show my parents hosted a barbecue for the WWF brass and the boys. I ran into Vince McMahon and he seemed to be in pretty good spirits and he said that he’d been tied up with a myriad of things lately but was still keen on pursuing the farm system concept we’d discussed in New York. He wanted to have me fly down in August for SummerSlam and said that we could meet afterward.

I was fine with that and flew in for SummerSlam — which featured Randy Savage and Elizabeth’s wedding, as well as Bret taking on Mr. Perfect (Curt Hennig) for the intercontinental strap. I was seated in the ringside, watching the matches, when one of the WWF agents came up to me and said there’d been an emergency and that I needed to call home immediately. Naturally I was apprehensive about what might have happened this time. I rushed to the pay phone adjacent to the dressing rooms in Madison Square Garden and, after ringing busy several times, I finally got through to my mother-in-law. Half hysterical, she related that my wife, who was six months pregnant at the time, had been rushed to the hospital, hemorrhaging. It didn’t look like she or the baby would make it; I needed to fly home, immediately.

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As I was straining to hear her, the WWF was staging this over-the-top skit

— only about ten feet away — in which Jake “The Snake” Roberts had just crashed Randy and Elizabeth’s so-called wedding with a bunch of poisonous snakes. There was all this screaming and shrieking — which was really weird, having my mother-in-law’s anguish on the phone and all this feigned anguish right beside me.

As soon as I got off the phone, I ran into the dressing room and told Bret —

who’d just won his first major singles title that night — there was an emergency and I had to fly home. I asked him to convey my regrets to Vince. I’m not sure if Bret didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation or what, but I was astonished when he replied that Vince wouldn’t be happy that I was standing him up, and that I should reconsider. There was no time for any of that and I reiterated that I had to fly out immediately. Bret shook his head, disapprovingly, and informed me that I was likely blowing my big opportunity. I could only stare in disbelief and finally told him, so be it, and took off for the airport.

When I arrived home, my wife gave birth prematurely to our son Rhett. He’d been due in early December, but was born on August 31. He weighed less than two pounds, with all kinds of complications, including a hole in his heart and collapsed lungs; the prognosis for his survival was pretty grim: the doctors were doubtful he’d make it through the night.

Being a Hart though, he was a fighter and hung in there. Each night, for the next several weeks, my wife and I would sit outside his incubator in the neo-natal intensive care unit at the Foothills hospital, beside his bed, hoping and praying that he’d make it.

Every night, his heart would stop six or seven times, which would set off these alarms and the nurses would come running over and use a defibrillator or some such thing to kick-start his heart again — all of which was extremely nerve wracking, especially since, on any given night, two or three babies, in similar circumstances, wouldn’t make it. It was pretty heartbreaking and gut wrenching to be seated nearby, while the doctors, who were almost devoid of emotion, broke the news to the devastated parents that their baby hadn’t made it.

What was really strange was that whenever my wife or I made our way to or from the neo-natal intensive care unit, which was always an emotional hell, we
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would have to walk through the maternity ward where it was high season for celebration, with proud papas beaming at their healthy newborns, handing out cigars and flowers, completely oblivious to the trials and tribulations ensuing just down the hallway.

After several months of struggling to survive, Rhett began to hold his own and was allowed to go home just before Christmas — which was one of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever received. During that tough stretch, I received an incredible amount of support from several members of my family, including my parents, my mother-in-law and family, as well as my sisters Ellie and Georgia, in particular. I might add that Bret, his wife Julie, her sister Michelle and Dynamite couldn’t have been nicer.

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Throughout that difficult stretch, I continued to write Bret’s column and each week he would call me up from the road to give me some general idea of what he wanted to talk about. In January, he called me up for our weekly confab and was quite bent out of shape because the WWF brass wanted him to drop the intercontinental strap to Jacques Rougeau.

He said that he didn’t mind doing the job, but that in his estimation Rougeau was a lousy worker and the only reason they were putting the strap on him was because he was kissing ass and doing whatever else to appease and curry the favor of some of Vince’s homosexual bookers — whom he not so affectionately used to refer to as “the Gay Mafia.” As a result, Bret said he was seriously considering jumping to the WCW (World Championship Wrestling). They had made him a lucrative offer and he wanted to know what I thought.

I told him that regardless of what he thought of Rougeau, personally, he was still obliged to do the job — that was what being a professional was all about.

Beyond that, if he were to walk, he’d most likely be permanently burning his bridges with the WWF — which, I cautioned him, might not be a very good career move, considering there were only two promotions up and running at that time.

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Bret seemed half pissed that I wasn’t more empathetic to his situation, but told me he’d sleep on it and decide what he was going to do. I’m not sure whether I had any influence on his decision, but he decided to do the job for Rougeau and stay put, even though he wasn’t happy about it.

A couple of months later, at Wrestlemania, the WWF put the intercontinental strap back on him, having him beat Roddy Piper (who’d since dethroned Rougeau). Funny enough, after winning the strap back, Bret, who’d been routinely knocking Pat Patterson’s booking since having to drop the strap, was suddenly effusive in his praise, touting him as a brilliant manipulator.

A few months down the road, Bret called me up again for our weekly chat from London, England — the site of SummerSlam — where he was slated to defend his intercontinental belt against Davey Boy. He’d been in pretty good spirits for a while, but this time around, he seemed down. When I asked if anything was wrong, he informed me that the WWF wanted him to drop the strap to Davey Boy.

Bret claimed — not that convincingly — that it wasn’t doing the job that bothered him, but losing to his brother-in-law (Davey Boy was married to our sister Diana) was a deliberate slap in the face, and he figured the WWF was just doing this to insult him.

He said that since there was still a standing offer on the table from the WCW, he was seriously thinking of telling the WWF where to go, and heading to the other promotion once again.

I figured he would have already learned his lesson the last time, but painstakingly pointed out to him that, lest he forget, Davey and Dynamite had dropped the tag straps to him and Neidhart back in 1987 with no qualms and that he shouldn’t read too much into having to do the job, as it was all just part of the job description. Once again, he seemed half pissed that I didn’t put him over or tell him he was doing the right thing, but he kind of tersely said he’d think things over and decide what to do.

To his credit, he put Davey Boy over in front of nearly 80,000 ecstatic fans at Wembley Stadium in what many in the know consider to have been one of the best matches in WWF history. Watching the match back home on pay-per-view, I had goose bumps as it unfolded over nearly an entire hour of incredible
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back and forth action. I was as proud of Bret (and Davey Boy, too, I might add) as I’ve ever been of any two wrestlers. After that match and that weekend, on Bret’s behalf, I wrote the following, in his weekly newspaper column:

“Where boasting ends, there, dignity begins”

— Edward Young,
Night Thoughts

I’m not going to offer any hollow excuses for my intercontinental title defeat at the hands of my brother-in-law, Davey Boy Smith at SummerSlam. There’s no shame in having lost if you’ve given it your best and I can take solace in knowing that I did. On this night, the decision went to the better man — so be it. I congratulate Davey Boy on a job well done, but, in the immortal words of General Douglas MacArthur, “I exit with my head held high, but shall return.”

Losing to Davey Boy at SummerSlam may have been the best thing that could have happened to Bret, because he gained more glory and recognition from that defeat than for any match he ever won and he was suddenly being mentioned in the same breath as legendary workers like Ric Flair, the Funks, Harley Race and Rick Steamboat.

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The week after his epic encounter with Davey Boy, Bret called me up and divulged that the WWF brass were so pleased with his match at Wembley that they were going to put world title on him a couple of weeks hence, in Saskatoon. He also mentioned that WWF booker Pat Patterson had been given an indefinite leave of absence because of some sexual harassment indictment and that Bret had recommended me for the job. He said that he’d pointed out to Vince how many stars had been developed up in Calgary while I was running things for my dad, as well as the many cutting-edge concepts we’d introduced to wrestling. Vince wanted to fly me out to Saskatoon to discuss the possibilities and that, as far as Bret was concerned, the job was mine. I thanked him for having touted me and though I’d long since come to realize that talk was cheap, when dealing with the WWF, I figured something might come of it.