Straight from the Hart (9 page)

My dad hired a veteran midcard heel named Joe “Tiger” Tomasso as Dave’s replacement. Tomasso was a lot more easygoing than Dave Ruhl and a few weeks after he took the book, he pulled me aside and ran a story line by me, one which called for me to come to the rescue of Dan Kroffat — one of our hottest faces. In early December 1972, a tag match would ensue, with Kroffat and me taking on Kendo Nagasaki, a masked heel from England, and his partner in crime, Lord Sloan. To add a bit more fuel to the fire, Tomasso said he wanted the match to be a “hair vs. mask” stipulation — which meant that Nagasaki had to unmask if they lost, but if Kroffat and I lost, we would have to get our heads shaved — and we both had long hair.

We shot the angle that Friday for the following week and, to my pleasant surprise, nearly sold out the Pavilion. In the dressing room before the match, Tomasso came up to me to give us the finish and asked me if I could get some color — which is wrestling parlance for blood. I was a bit taken aback, but told him if he thought it might help get the match over, I didn’t mind giving it a whirl. As it turned out, the blood did help to get the match over. I’ve since gotten color on a number of occasions and, later, when I was booking, I had guys do it when it seemed to serve the purpose. I might add though, that, in the
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past couple of decades, bookers and wrestlers have gone to the well too often in that regard. Getting juice should never be construed as a compensation for getting heat or selling, because it’s not.

Since we drew good houses in both Calgary and Edmonton for my debut matches, my dad let me work weekend shots until the end of my university semester in March — which only whet my appetite to go on the road full-time.

After I finished my junior year at the University of Calgary, my dad let me work the circuit, full-time, for the summer. We had several other young guys breaking in at the time, including Afa and Sika Anoia, Gadabra Sahota (a.k.a.

the “Great” Gama), Kim Klokeid, Randy Morse, Ray Stefanko, my brother Smith and Rick Martel. Although none of us were making much money, we probably would have worked for nothing, as it was a great learning environment, in and out of the ring.

One of the guys I really learned a lot from was Dan Kroffat, who was always trying to come up with new angles and concepts; one of his concepts, in fact, was the ladder match, which would go on to become a big thing in the WWE.

A lot of the boys, especially the veterans, couldn’t stand Kroffat. He was pretty cocky and tended to come across as a smart ass, a know-it-all type, but I always found him to have good insights into the business.

On one of the road trips, Kroffat and I were discussing what set the great babyfaces apart from the average ones and he said that he’d never seen a face draw a dime — regardless of whether he was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a world-class amateur wrestler, or whatever else — if they didn’t have two key elements of working down pat: selling (getting sympathy) and being able to come back with fire (intensity). Since that time, I’ve seen (and trained) countless wrestlers and can attest that Kroffat’s hypothesis is bang on; if you don’t have those two elements down, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll amount to anything.

I also learned another valuable lesson back then. When I first started in the business, my matches were always scripted move for move beforehand and I figured I was on the right track. One day though, on the way back from Saskatchewan, I was talking to a couple of grizzled veterans, George Gordienko and Geoff Portz, who told me that scripting was akin to having training wheels
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on a bicycle and that in order to become a good worker, you needed, at some point, to have enough confidence to “freewheel” or improvise.

Improvising, they pointed out, was what working was really all about, as it enabled the crowd to feel that their cheering, booing or whatever had some bearing on the outcome. Establishing that interactive bond with the fans was what it was all about. Portz, to reinforce his point, icily noted that you wouldn’t find any “paint by numbers” renderings in any museum. When he put it that way, I got his point.

The next time I worked, I eschewed the script and decided to ad lib — charting unknown territory. The immediate feedback was remarkable and convinced me that Portz and Gordienko were right on the money. Since then, I’ve become an ardent advocate of improv.

Scripting, unfortunately, seems to be the mode in the WWE these days —

which is one reason why a lot of marks have turned off wrestling. It’s also one of the main reasons why so few of today’s up-and-coming workers have actually learned how to work. If it were up to me, I’d get rid of most of the scripting and spend more time teaching the wrestlers the basic precepts of working — selling, coming back, relating to the fans, making them relate to you and things like that — then let the pieces fall in place from there. If they were to go that route, I have no doubts that the business would be a hell of a lot better — though who am I to cast aspersions upon the gods?

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Heading into summer 1973, I was having a blast; but in the immortal words of Ed Whalen, there was a “malfunction at the junction.” We had this spot show, near Medicine Hat, which was nearly 200 miles east of Calgary and during my match, my opponent and I got our signals crossed. I ended up taking a bad bump and really messed up my shoulder. My arm dangled limp, my collarbone protruded through the skin — it was painful as hell.

Seeing as there was no hospital in the town, I had to drive back to Calgary with my arm in a sling. About halfway home, I blew the engine in my car and had to hitchhike. A couple of guys pulled over and offered me a ride —

which was nice of them, but it turned out they’d been drinking. They ended up skidding off the road on a curve and nearly rolled. I then had to hobble to a nearby farmhouse where I called my dad, who came out from Calgary to pick me up.

When we got to Calgary, he took me to the Holy Cross Hospital, where X-rays confirmed that I’d dislocated my clavicle, broken my collarbone, torn all the ligaments connecting them and that I’d be needing surgery. It would keep me out of action for a long time — which was pretty discouraging.

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I was in my hospital bed later that morning, waiting to be wheeled in for surgery when one of the nurses appeared and said there was a long distance phone call for me. I was wondering who it could be since no one had any idea that I was in the hospital. I’m not sure if he’d found out from my dad or what, but it was Dory Funk Sr., who said that he’d heard about my injury and was just calling to wish me well and to tell me not to let it get me down. I couldn’t believe that a legend like him would see fit to call a “wet behind the ears punk” like me just to wish me well. His call meant the world to me. Sadly, a couple of weeks later, I was shocked to hear that he had died of a heart attack. He remains a source of inspiration and wisdom to me.

At the time I was injured, I was being pushed as one of the top faces in the territory, so to sustain the momentum, I suggested to my dad that he use my brother Keith — who’d just started training with me and the others down in the Dungeon. My dad seemed to like the idea and although Keith was pretty nervous and tentative, he eventually began to get the hang of it and would soon develop into a pretty decent hand.

That summer, my dad had my brother Dean and I run his beach for him. The beach had previously been run by these old friends of my dad’s, with the main activities out there being swimming and family picnics in the daytime and, on occasion, square dances and company barbecues during the evening. Dean was one of the slickest hustlers I’ve ever seen and together we convinced my dad to let us run keg parties, which were like something out of the John Belushi movie
Animal House
. Later we would promote rock concerts out there, much to my dad’s chagrin. It wasn’t exactly the kind of clientele my dad approved of, but by the end of the summer, the beach had become the hottest party spot in town for kids. We ended up making more money from it than we did from wrestling

— which was pretty cool.

From doing the rock concert scene I also learned a few things that would help me in wrestling. Most of the bands my brother Dean booked out at the beach were these one hit wonder types or bands who were on the downhill slide. One time Dean and I had this old stoner band called Iron Butterfly, who’d had one hit in ’60s called “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida.” Prior to the show, they appeared to be so wasted and out of it that Dean and I wondered if they’d even be able to drag
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their asses out onstage, but when the show started, they began to get energy from the crowd — most of whom were probably polluted themselves. They ended up having an awesome concert. Upon further reflection, I came to realize how critical it was for any performer — be it a band or wrestler — to feed off the crowd and have the crowd, in turn, feed off them. Without that, everything else is kind of moot.

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