Straight from the Hart (32 page)

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After the unfulfilling Hart Attack Tour, I was pretty much out of the wrestling business and can’t say I was really having any great withdrawal issues, as my wife had given birth to our fifth child — my daughter Lara — and I was also coaching my sons in baseball and hockey. I was inadvertently drawn back when my brother Ross and I ran into our old Stampede Wrestling commentator Ed Whalen just before Christmas 1994. Ed asked how my dad was doing. Ross mentioned that he was doing fine and that his eightieth birthday was coming up in May. Ed suggested a nice way to honor the occasion would be to have a commemorative wrestling card and invite back former Stampede Wrestlers from the past — for one last hurrah.

Ross and I agreed with Ed that it would be kind of cool and I suggested that the proceeds from the show could go to some good cause — which turned out to be the Calgary Quest Academy, a school for special needs kids, such as my son Rhett.

Whalen — who’d worked tirelessly for years for the Children’s Miracle Network and Easter Seals and whatnot — was all for that and we shook hands on it and agreed to make it happen. I soon began contacting wrestlers and was amazed by how many people wanted to be part of the show, including my
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brothers Bret and Owen and brother-in-law Davey Boy. They were headlining in the WWF. We also invited back other Stampede alumni, like Brian Pillman and Chris Benoit, who were stars in the WCW.

Our original intent was to have the card on or around my dad’s birthday in May but, because the WWE was on a European tour at that time, it wouldn’t work for Bret, Owen, Davey and the other WWE guys. We ended up trying to come up with other dates through the summer or fall, but for one reason or another, nothing seemed to work with everyone’s schedule. We finally had to book the show in December, because that was the earliest date we could get the building and the boys and everything else at the same time.

Ross and I were amazed at how many guys wanted to appear on the card, including WWF stalwarts like Razor Ramon, Shawn Michaels, X-Pac, Shane Douglas and a star-studded cast from the WCW including Terry and Dory Funk and Mike Shaw. We also were able to line up an impressive array of old timers, including Dan Kroffat, Tor Kamata, Gil Hayes, Archie Gouldie, Dynamite Kid and Angelo Mosca, among others.

In addition to the wrestling luminaries, we also extended invitations to surviving members of my dad’s 1938–1939 Edmonton Eskimos football team, as well as to other football and hockey stars, and dignitaries, such as the prime minister, the premier, the mayor and other prominent Canadians. We hoped all of this effort would make the show “a night to remember.” While it was exciting to see so many wrestlers and others onboard, the whole venture was, nonetheless, quite costly. By the first of October I’d already laid out over $40,000, out of my own pocket, to pay for building rental, airfares, hotel reservations, advertising and assorted other expenses — and that didn’t even cover the talent. I was confident that we would draw a good house, but for some reason, our initial advance ticket sales were pretty sluggish. Since I’d pretty much mortgaged the farm, my wife was starting to panic.

Thankfully, ticket sales began to move in the first week of December and by December 10, we’d passed the break-even point and my wife and I could finally breathe a bit easier. Much of the credit for the success of the show, I should point out, was due to the work of our tireless group of volunteers, including Bonnie Pacaud, Jude Heyland, Marge Gudmandson, Carson Ackroyd, Jim
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Wilde, Georgie Fixler, Gerry Forbes and Linda Slobodian — all of whom worked long and hard.

A few days before the show, I got a call from my brother Bret. This wasn’t unusual, since I was still writing his weekly column for him and figured he might be giving me some material for that week’s piece. That wasn’t the reason why he was calling this time though, as he tersely informed me that it had been brought to his attention that the WCW guys would be on our show. Since the WCW and the WWF were at war at the time, he demanded that I remove them from the card immediately or else he, Owen, Davey Boy and the other WWF guys would boycott the show.

It had been no secret, from the get-go, that former Stampede stars such as Pillman, Benoit, Shaw and the Funks — who were now working for the WCW

— would be on the card. I couldn’t fathom how Bret hadn’t been aware of that.

Beyond that, I stressed to him that this show wasn’t a WWF or a WCW show, but that it was about Stu. The boys were on the card because they wanted to pay tribute to him — plain and simple. Bret, however, stubbornly refused to change his mind and reiterated that if the WCW guys were on the card, the WWF

guys wouldn’t be and angrily hung up on me.

About twenty minutes later, Carl De Marco, the figurehead president of the WWF, called and said that it had been brought to his attention that non-WWF

performers were going to be on the birthday card for my dad and that this was a contravention of WWF policy and that if they weren’t removed, he’d have no recourse but to remove the WWF guys from the show. I endeavored to explain the situation to him, but, like Bret, he was completely unbending and told me to govern myself accordingly.

A few hours later, I had to drive out to the airport to pick up my old crony, Brian Pillman, and I related my dilemma to him. He was quite pissed off and said that he’d taken time off from his WCW schedule to fly up, strictly because of his high regard for Stu, and that so had the other guys and that Bret should understand that.

Later that night, I got a call from Owen — who told me that De Marco had called him and had decreed that he boycott the show. Owen sneered that De Marco was merely a figurehead flunky — about like Vickie Guerrero being the
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manager of
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Owen said that he had told De Marco he was going to be on the show, regardless of what he said and that was that.

Owen also told me that De Marco had tried to give the same ultimatum to the other WWF guys, including Davey, Razor Ramon and Sean Waltman (X-Pac) and that they, too, had no intentions of boycotting the show either. As it turned out, by showtime, the only guy who looked like he’d be a no-show was Bret — who still was refusing to change his stance.

The show, I’m happy to report, proved to be an unqualified success, and though it was a tribute card, the matches, in typical Stampede Wrestling tradition, were intense, with the wrestlers pulling out all the stops. It was a dream come true for me and Pillman to have the opportunity to work against two of our all time idols: Terry and Dory Funk Jr. We had an old-fashioned ass-kicker of a match that was rated “match of the year” by longtime wrestling journalist Dr. Mike Lano. I’m pleased to also report that, at the last minute, my obdurate brother Bret finally did show up and worked against Davey Boy.

The highlight of the night was when all the wrestlers, from the past and present, a veritable who’s who of wrestling legends, assembled in the ring while Alberta Premier Ralph Klein delivered a moving tribute to my dad, which had many in the crowd misty eyed. After paying all the expenses, I was also able to write a check for nearly $10,000 to my son Rhett’s school, which was an added bonus.

After all the hard work and assorted trials and tribulations, I was pleased and relieved that the show had finally been an unqualified success, but early the next morning, I was awakened by a phone call from Bret. I figured that since his match had gone well and that he’d not only received a decent payoff for it, but also a $1,200 commemorative biker jacket that Harley-Davidson motorcycles had custom made for each of the WWE and WCW wrestlers, that he might be calling to perhaps bury the hatchet. Instead, he launched into a profanity laced tirade, claiming that the only reason he’d worked was because it would have made him look bad if he’d been the only one to boycott his own father’s show.

He then informed me that since I’d defied his request to get rid of the WCW

guys, he no longer wanted me ghostwriting his syndicated newspaper column for him. His Christmas greeting to me, as he was bidding me adieu, was for
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me to go fuck myself — thanks bro, whatever happened to “’Tis the season to be jolly” or whatever else? Although my dad’s eightieth birthday show was a resounding success and certainly lived up to its advance billing as “A Night to Remember,” some aspects of it I’d just as soon forget — if you catch my drift.

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After the smoke had cleared from my dad’s birthday bash, I sent Vince McMahon a thank-you note for having allowed the WWF boys appear on my dad’s birthday bash. A few weeks later, Vince’s son Shane McMahon called me and said he and Vince were pleased to hear the show had gone well. He then related that he was now handling talent development for the WWF and, given the number of great workers that had emerged from Stampede Wrestling, the WWF was interested in working with us to establish a developmental territory in Western Canada. I mentioned to him that I’d proposed this several years ago to Vince and that nothing had materialized, but that if he was serious, I’d be more than happy to work with them on it.

He assured me he was quite sincere this time around and said he’d like to fly up to Calgary to meet with me and my dad. I made arrangements to hook up with him. The day that he was supposed to arrive, I drove out to the airport to pick him up, but he was nowhere to be found, and I found myself wondering what had happened. I later on ran into Owen, who told me that Bret had intercepted Shane and had convinced him to let him run a training facility for the WWF out of his house instead.