THE STONE COLD TRUTH (9 page)

The school cost $1,500, just like Chris Adams said. You had to pay weekly, unless you had the money to pay it up front, which, hell, nobody did. Certainly not me. But I had officially started going to wrestling school.

The classes were every Saturday after TV tapings at the Sportatorium. At first, I was very slow to catch on. There was one kid—he weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds—who was a natural. His name was Todd something. He had all these reversals and stuff like that. He made it look easy. He learned to chain wrestle pretty quickly.

Chris was showing us all these holds, and—unlike Todd—I was fumbling through them. I needed repetition. I had never wrestled before in my life. It was awkward. But Chris was cool with me. He kept his eye on me, because he knew I was going to be his guy. I was the only guy in the class who had a marketable physique and a “look.” He realized that to push his school, he needed a guy who would eventually be ready to do it and succeed, and that was me. Anyway, that was how I learned to wrestle—at Chris Adams’s school.

Finally, things started coming along for me. I began to look like I knew what I was doing and Chris said, “Steve, we’re going to have your first match pretty soon.” I said, “Let’s do it.”

So after five months of training, I was going to have my first match on
World Class Championship Wrestling
television against a journeyman Cajun wrestler, Frogman LeBlanc. The date of the match was May 11, 1989. It’s not a date I’m likely to forget anytime soon.

Was I ready? Not really. I had just been going to this wrestling school, learning a couple of reversals and a couple of moves. You need to know a lot more than that to be a professional wrestler.

Chris Adams had been real nice to me up until that point. Later, I would learn that he hadn’t prepared me the way I should have been prepared. At the time, Adams seemed charming and very intelligent to me. I look back at him now and I realize that he was a con man deluxe.

When I broke in, hell, I didn’t know what kayfabe was. Now I know it’s a signal for wrestlers to close ranks when a fan is approaching, but back then it was just gibberish to me.

Chris Adams didn’t try to smarten me up or teach me the “real deal” when it came to pro wrestling. He was just teaching me some moves to use in the ring. I didn’t know I wasn’t really supposed to go out there and beat the hell out of somebody, or have somebody beat the hell out of me.

Chris didn’t tell us, “This is a work, a performance, and you have to protect your partner.” No, we were just learning to wrestle. He wasn’t exposing the business, he was just teaching us the basics of how to apply one hold or another.

I knew something was up, but no one would come up to me and say, “Hey, here’s how we do it.” I didn’t know how it was going to work. I knew there was something to it, I just didn’t know what.

But back then, Chris Adams was my teacher and I was his student, and I trusted him to take care of me. I thought he was a really good guy who had my best interests at heart. I even did a little promo standing beside Chris to advertise his wrestling school, the first of many wrestling promos I would do over the next fourteen years.

Anyway, I had my first television match against Frogman LeBlanc on a Friday night at the Dallas Sportatorium, the place where I had been watching matches as a fan for years. I wrestled under my real name, Steve Williams.

But I had to dress in the janitor’s closet. I couldn’t dress with the other wrestlers, because I wasn’t smartened up yet. I wasn’t one of “the boys.” I was nervous as hell. The whole experience wasn’t shaping up to be what I thought it would be.

As it turned out, I gave Frogman LeBlanc a beating. I must have arm-dragged the poor guy six or eight times in that short match. I put a bunch of armbars on him, and believe me, it was brutal. It was horrible. I had these pretty neat-looking long tights on. I didn’t wear short trunks back then. I had good legs, but I always wanted to wear the long tights for some reason.

I was just out of wrestling school, so I was an unknown, but I thought the crowd could have gotten behind me a little more. I was a little disappointed with that aspect of the match. I can’t remember what
the finish was, but I beat Frogman LeBlanc, one-two-three. It was a green match, but I got through it.

I remember the referee of the match was Tony Falk, and a couple of times I was a little lost out there. Tony was actually a real good worker in his day. He didn’t have a great body, but he was a good worker. He helped me out a whole lot during that match. He called a few things for me and helped me get through it.

After I got out of the ring, Chris Adams came up to me and asked me why I did some of the things I did.

I said, “Well, Tony told me to.”

So I think he ended up bitching Tony out a bit, but Tony was just trying to help me. Tony’s always been a great help to me. Frogman didn’t call anything. He might have said this or that, but he had that really heavy Cajun accent and I’ve always been half-deaf anyway, so I was probably like, “What?”

But we got through the match. It wasn’t anything to be proud of, but it wasn’t a disaster either. I got paid forty bucks for it. I had no inkling of what you were supposed to make for a wrestling match, as that had never been discussed with me, but I thought forty bucks was a little light. It turned out that was pretty much the standard pay for Dallas. After I beat Frogman LeBlanc, I went on the road and made even less—twenty-five bucks a match, more often than not.

So it was not bad, as I was still a student. But that first time, my perception was, “I’m on TV. I’m supposed to be making some money for this.”

I was a mark, a straight-up mark. I didn’t know any better.

“Gentleman” Chris Adams trained me and got my foot in the door in this business at a time when you
had to know somebody
to get in. He was a pile of crap though. That’s why I didn’t comment when Chris died and the
Dallas Morning News
called me. I wasn’t going to run him down in the paper because the guy was dead, but I didn’t think a whole lot of him.

I liked him well enough when I first started, but once I got going, he screwed me over too many times. He was just such a picture of insincerity
to anyone he ever met. Nobody liked the guy. He was a con man, period.

Anyway, after that match with Frogman LeBlanc, I figured I had started paying my dues in the wrestling business. I wasn’t off to a real “stunning” beginning, but I was on my way. I just wanted to learn the business and become the best talent I could.

Then I started getting booked on a regular basis, and they beat the hell out of me every Friday night and Saturday morning for two months. RY. Chu-Hi and those guys in Dallas were beating me up with the kendo stick and weightlifting belts, and I still wasn’t smartened up all the way. In other words, nobody told me this business was as much showbiz as it is.

When I was breaking in, I used to ride from town to town with Skandor Akbar and Bronco Lubich. Akbar was the evil Middle Eastern wrestler-turned-manager who was born Jim Whebbe, from Vernon, Texas, and Bronco was the longtime
World Class
referee and former tag partner of Angelo Poffo, Randy Savage’s father.

Both of these men were former veteran wrestlers who knew a lot about the business and had been all over the world. I was so lucky to be talking with them, learning the psychology of pro wrestling. Their talking to me, telling me how to do things, as we were going up and down the road, was a terrific education in the wrestling business.

We’d be together in one of their cars, and they’d be up front smoking big, smelly cigars and I’d be in the backseat asking them questions and soaking up everything they were telling me. That was a college degree in the old-school ways of doing things. I loved those guys.

Sometimes they’d tell me old wrestling stories. I’d always enjoy hearing those. I didn’t have any money then, and they wouldn’t charge me for transportation. I’d just sit in the back and ask them questions. Those guys were cool. They knew I was genuinely interested in learning, and they both took me under their wings.

Both Akbar and Bronc were excellent storytellers. When one of them told a story, the way they laughed made me want to laugh too. It was a real good time in my life. Those guys and their wealth of knowledge about ring psychology were tremendous influences on me throughout
my whole career. They also furthered my respect for the wrestling business.

6/27/90

Dear Mom,

Hi! I hope this letter finds everyone in Edna doing fine. Kath, Abby, and myself are scraping along as usual.

We’re trying to move into a bigger house in a few months. This one’s just too small.

Wrestling is going real good. They’re just not keeping us busy enough. I’ll send another video tape soon.

Sorry to here about Jenny’s misfortune at the pageant. Those dumbasses are so fake (the judges etc) and ignorant they don’t know a talented, beautiful, sweetheart, homegirl, when they see one—which is Jenny to a T.

I love you all,

Steve, Kathy, Abby

But the guy I came to respect less and less as I pursued a career in wrestling was Chris Adams. Here’s a story that young wrestlers can learn from …

There was an old, silver-haired guy who booked wrestling shows out of Dallas named Ed Watt—no relation to Bill Watts, the owner and promoter of
Mid-South Wrestling.
Ed was a nice guy. He booked the United States Wrestling Association talent shows and Chris Adams ran his own independent shows. Ed was going to pay me a hundred and fifty dollars a night. This was my second go-around in Dallas after coming back from Tennessee, so I was “known” and could command a bigger paycheck. He booked me for three or four shows.

All of a sudden, I got a call from Chris Adams. He said, “Steve, I need you for some shows on these dates.”

I said, “Hold on, Chris, I’m already booked with Ed.”

He said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “Chris, I’m already booked with Ed.”

He said, “You’re not going to work my shows?”

I said,
“I’m already booked with Ed!”

He goes, “Well, you know I did get you into WCW.”

That was crap. I hadn’t gone to WCW yet and they hadn’t even called me. He was just saying, “Hey, I think they’re going to call you,” implying that he did something for me. They called me way later, and when they did it had nothing to do with Adams.

But he repeated, “Hey, I did get you into WCW.” And I was like, “I can’t believe you’re holding this crap over my head!” He did train me, for what it was worth, and now he was putting a guilt trip on me.

Then he said, “Look, Steve, if you work my shows, I’ll pay you double what Ed Watt was going to pay you.”

Money wasn’t the thing. It was that he made me feel guilty. So I called Ed up and said, “Ed, this is Steve. Man, Chris Adams is really giving me a hard time about working these shows for you. Do you mind if I work his shows?”

It was clearly something I wasn’t comfortable doing, but I was being blackmailed into doing it. So the time came and I worked Chris Adams’s shows. But when I got his check in the mail, it only had a hundred and twenty-five dollars written on it.

I called him and said, “Chris, what’s the deal?”

He said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “You told me you were going to pay me double what Ed was paying me. Ed was going to pay me a hundred and fifty.”

All of a sudden, I heard a click. Chris Adams had hung up on me, like a little chicken.

I couldn’t freakin’ believe it. I broke my word with Ed Watt, who was always real nice to me, and it wasn’t about the double money. It was Adams putting the guilt trip on me. That pissed me off.

I’m sorry he got killed, but the guy did not have good karma. He got shot by a guy, who was supposedly his friend, while having a heated argument that Adams would not back down from. When the case went to court, Adams’s friend was found innocent by reason of self-defense.

8
A “Stunning” Revelation