Straight from the Hart (30 page)

bombs on the fans — mostly kids and their parents — for being smart-asses, because they were booing the faces. One of the parents then pointed out that the clown had been holding up the
Boo
sign, which was why they were booing.

The WCW guy then started chewing out the clown — in front of all the marks.

He then had Davey and Sting re-enter, while the clown now held a
Cheer
sign.

I was in the back watching this gong show with my old buddy Brian Pillman
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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

and he told me that this type of thing was a pretty regular occurrence, which, I must admit, gave me second thoughts about the whole gig.

After the TV taping I had dinner with Bill Shaw and Bob Dhue, who were the TBS executives running the WCW, and they asked me what my impressions were. I told them that while the WCW had some awesome talent, including up-and-coming young stars like Steve Austin, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Brian Pillman, as well as established stars like Barry Windham, Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton and Davey Boy, not to mention the whole network at their beck and call, the whole promotion was a gong show, as evidenced by the beach blast, the Mick Foley ghetto mugging and the clown holding the boo/cheer signs. Shaw and Dhue — whom I was later told had been the creative geniuses behind a lot of that crap — didn’t seemed too thrilled with my candor and told me that they’d get back to me. I wasn’t surprised when I never heard back from them.

They ended up hiring, as their booker, the ubiquitous Eric Bischoff, who proceeded to run the promotion into the ground and serve up future superstars like Austin, Benoit, Pillman, Booker, Foley, Jericho, Guerrero and Mysterio to the WWF, on a silver platter. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that I could have done a hell of a lot more with that crew and the resources at hand than Bischoff ever did, although that’s not saying much as damn near anybody could have.

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After the exercise in futility down in Orlando, I figured, once again, that my wrestling career was over and was prepared to get on with other things. I’d just found out that my wife was expecting our fifth child (Rhett and Tory had already joined Brit and Bruce Jr.), Lara — due near Christmastime. I was more than ready to do the family guy thing.

Near the end of August, out of the blue I received a call from Pat Patterson, who had beaten the sexual harassment rap and was back working for the WWF.

He asked if I’d like to come down to SummerSlam in Detroit — as his and Vince’s guest. The event was only two days away. I wasn’t sure what he had in mind but told him pretty bluntly that the past few times I’d been flown down to WWF gigs, it had been a waste of my time and that I wasn’t that keen on flying to SummerSlam unless I got paid for it. Pat seemed quite taken aback that I wasn’t marking out just at the opportunity to fly down and hang out with all the superstars, and kind of tersely replied that I’d be paid for coming down. I had no idea what Pat or Vince had in mind, but figured that if they were paying me, they must have something in mind.

Pat and Vince — who’d kind of kayfabed me on previous trips down to the WWF — couldn’t have been nicer this time around. They told me that they
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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

had a “really big story line” in mind, which called for me to be planted in the crowd, like a mark, and then, at some point, when Bret was in the main event, defending his world title against Doink the Clown (Matt Borne), Jerry Lawler was supposed to hit the ring and they were supposed to kick Bret’s ass. At that point, I was also supposed to hit the ring and kick their asses and brawl back to the dressing room with them.

The whole charade was easy — much like Stampede Wrestling type fare —

but got a hell of a pop, with the fans really getting into it. In fact, Dave Meltzer later wrote that there was something seriously wrong when a walk-on wrestler, who’d never been in the WWF before, got the biggest pop on the biggest pay-per-view of the summer. I’m not sure if he was putting me over, or knocking the WWF, but I took it as a compliment and was pleased that, at long last, things had gone without a hitch.

I still wasn’t sure exactly where the story line was going, but Vince and Pat assured me they had something really big in mind for me at their next pay-per-view — the Survivor Series in Boston — which was going to catapult me to stardom.

As it turned out, they had me, Bret, Owen and my brother Keith tag billed to originally wrestle Jerry Lawler, Doink, Shawn Michaels and my old crony, Terry Funk, in what was billed as the Family Feud. I, honestly, wasn’t sure how the hell Lawler and company could be construed as family, but then, on the other hand, Charlie Manson and his “family” weren’t exactly blood either.

A few weeks before the match was supposed to take place though, Lawler got into some kind of trouble with the law in Louisville and Doink was apparently fired for being drunk and disorderly. Terry Funk also pulled out the day before, so the match ended up being the Harts vs. Shawn Michaels, Greg Valentine, Barry Horowitz and some big rookie named Jeff Gaylord.

Before I flew down to Boston for the match, I’d been led to believe by both Vince and Pat that they had some hot angle in mind for me, which was going to set the stage for something really big for me, but the night of the show, Vince and Pat were both conspicuous by their absence and we were given our finish, instead, by Bruce Prichard (Brother Love).

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♥
STRAIGHT FROM THE HART
♥

The script called for Owen to be eliminated first, after which he was supposed to be pissed off at me, Keith and Bret for having allowed him to get pinned.

After that, the script (which was kind of flat) then called for Bret, in succession, to beat each of the heels — all with the sharpshooter, while Keith and I didn’t do much but cheer him on.

I got a decent payoff for the match, but to say it was an anti-climax would be an understatement, as the supposedly really big plans that Vince and Pat had alluded to certainly didn’t materialize. I was wondering if their definition of

“really big” and mine were different, or if they were both simply full of shit.

A number of years later though, I came to find out “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to say. In 2000, on the first anniversary of my brother Owen’s death, my beloved brother Bret divulged, in his weekly column in the newspaper, that “in September 1993, Vince McMahon . . . wanted me to wrestle my brother Bruce . . . who, as the story was going to go, would challenge me to a match . . . and our angle would build from there. I sat listening and finally told Vince McMahon that if I do wrestle any of my brothers, it had to be Owen, not Bruce. The WWF didn’t like the idea, but I simply refused to do it any other way.”

When I read the article, I finally realized that Vince and Pat had actually been on the level and not full of shit, as I’d long surmised, but that Bret had been the one who’d kiboshed things. What really pissed me off was that my having a “run,” as they call it, in the WWF wouldn’t have hurt Owen, as he was already in the WWF, making decent money at the time, while I was struggling to scrape by on a sub teacher’s salary, with a ton of expensive medical bills, including wheelchairs and whatnot for Rhett. As well, at that time, I was still ghostwriting Bret’s hit column, free of charge, and figured he was in my corner.

Apparently not.

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After the less than rewarding Survivor Series charade, naturally, I figured that I’d run my course in the WWF. I wasn’t expecting to hear from them, but about seven months later, in June, I was at home, watching O. J. Simpson and the bizarre white Bronco chase on the Los Angeles freeway, when my wife handed me the phone and said it was somebody from the WWF. It turned out to be Bruce Prichard and he asked if I’d be interested in tagging with Bret against Owen and Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart on a big, nationwide summer tour, to be billed as the Hart Attack Tour.

I hadn’t been all that pleased with Survivor Series, but seeing as school was out and I didn’t have any income over the summer yet still had bills to pay and a family to feed, he didn’t have to twist my arm too much. What’s that old saying?

“Money tends to make whores out of damn near everyone.” A couple of weeks later, I was on my way to southern California for the Hart Attack Tour. Our first shot of the tour was in San Diego. I flew into Los Angeles that morning to hook up with Bret, Owen and Anvil — who were already down there.

Seeing as we had the afternoon off and San Diego was only an hour’s drive, we went to Gold’s Gym in Santa Monica — where the owner, Pete Grymkowski,
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a big wrestling fan, used to comp the WWF boys. After our workout, we were upstairs hanging out with him, when in walked football player Al Cowlings, who just happened to be driving the white Bronco during O. J. Simpson’s bizarre cruise down the L.A. freeway a few weeks before. I was told that Cowlings was a big wrestling fan and he seemed to be a pretty regular guy. We hung out for about fifteen minutes and I was dying to ask him what was the inside scoop on O. J. and all of that but decided not to — not only because it was none of my business, but I didn’t want to commit the cardinal wrestling sin of coming across like a mark. Funny enough, later on, Owen and Anvil told me that they, too, had been itching to ask big Al the same question but also didn’t want to come across as marks.

When we went into the ring for our match that first night in San Diego, the building was half full and most of the fans seemed pretty flat — probably, in part, because most of the matches thus far had been lame and uninspiring.

Although the WWF agent for the tour, Jack Lanza, had given us a move for move script to follow, it was kind of lame and I figured why not freewheel or improvise a bit, just for the hell of it. I tried some of the standard Stampede Wrestling spots with Owen and Jim and they got an instant reaction, so we did some more and ended up having a pretty hot match. Afterward, most of the boys came up to us and were giving us high fives and complimenting us on having gotten the crowd, which had been pretty dead all night, off its ass.