Have a Nice Day (31 page)

This condition did lead to a somewhat humorous situation in Baltimore, however. I was teaming up with Paul E. and Bobby Eaton against the Steiners in a four-and-a-half-man tag bout. I guess Paul was considered half a man. We went about a minute, and Scott threw me around in his usual sensitive style. I started to cough. Then I started to dry-heave. Bobby Eaton may have, other than Gerald Brisco (one of Vince McMahon’s famed stooges, along with Pat Patterson), the weakest stomach I’ve ever seen. Bobby took one look at me and started to heave too. It was a pretty pathetic sight, as these two despicable heels stood in center ring taking turns attempting to throw up.

It was at about this time that Kip Frye stepped down as president of WCW. His replacement was the legendary Bill Watts.

I’ve written a little bit about Bill Watts before. To do him justice requires a lot more writing. The Cowboy was either loved or hated depending on whom you talked to. Jim Ross loved the guy. So did Scandor Akbar, my old Devastation Incorporated boss. Grizzly Smith rubbed his hands in anticipation upon hearing the news. “The Cowboy” he said, “is going to turn this place around.” Watts was revered by many for the success and excitement of his old MidSouth wrestling group. At the time he sold it to Jim Crockett, whose NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) would in turn be sold to Ted Turner to become WCW, Watts’s television show (renamed UWF) was the best in the country. His was the forerunner of episodic, cliffhanging wrestling, and his music videos and editing were state-of-the-art. The World Wrestling Federation later went on to perfect these same qualities, making Monday’s Raw Is War the hottest show on cable TV. Unlike the Federation, though, Watts didn’t portray his show as sports entertainment, or his performers as entertainers. He ran a wrestling show, dammit, and his guys were wrestlers. If you respected the business, like I did, it was easy to see why people loved him.

It was just as easy to see why people hated him. They thought he was a bully and a tyrant, and a dinosaur, and a cheapskate. Let me put the emphasis for now on cheapskate. Almost immediately, Watts began cutting costs. On his first day in, he did away with the catered meals at television tapings. Forget that we were often at the building for ten hours on TV days. Bring your own food or starve! Away went the coffee at all house shows. Take that, all you caffeine addicts! But more important, down went the contracts. Guys who were negotiating with Kip Frye for large raises were screwed. Terry Taylor went from looking at a hundred grand raise to looking for a job. Arn Anderson had his contract cut in half, and several other guys were put on nightly deals. Watts must have loved me, though. Thankfully, he resigned me at exactly the same money I had made the year before.

Watts even made a special call to my house to see how I was feeling during my coughing illness. The Cowboy concluded his call to me with these thoughtful words-“Goddammit, Jack, take care of yourself. You’re a goddamn crazy son of a bitch, and you have no regard for your body, and I gotta tell you, I get off on that.” I’m damn near tears now as I write this, thinking about the compassion in his voice.

Once on a Clash of the Champions, Scorpio caught me with a kick and I went down. Apparently, Bill didn’t think it had looked good, and he let me have it when I got in the dressing room. “Sorry, Bill,” I said, “I thought he caught me pretty good.”

“Dammit, Jack,” Watts shot back as I waited for the verbal assault. It never came. Instead, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Dammit, Jack, that’s okay, I know you’re trying your best.” It was almost like I was the teacher’s pet.

Now, wait, don’t think I’m going to go easy on the Cowboy, just because he wasn’t too bad to me. Because I’m not. Bill Watts had some of the most dated, useless ideas and senseless rules that I’d ever heard. In a meeting one day at Center Stage, he let us have it. Within one hour, Bill completely changed not only our professional lives, but our personal lives as well. Let’s call them Bill’s commandments.

Thou shalt not jump off the top rope.

Thou shalt not play cards in the dressing room.

Thou shalt not land on protective mats outside the ring.

Thou shalt not bring your children into the locker room.

Thou shalt not bring wives to the television tapings.

Thou shalt not use sleeperholds.

Heels shalt not travel with babyfaces.

Thou shalt not talk to each other outside of the arena.

Thou shalt not stay in the same hotel together.

Thou shalt not train in the same gym together.

And the biggest commandment of them all

Thou shalt not leave the building until the final bell of the final match.

The last was the one that angered the boys the most. Nikita Koloff questioned this commandment at a meeting a short time later. Bill addressed the boys and then asked if there were any questions. Koloff raised his hand and when called on, made a plea for sanity.

“Yeah, Bill, I know that it’s important for the guys to stay until the end, but sometimes, when we’ve been away from our families for a few weeks, we might have a chance to catch a night flight home. Do you think in those situations, we might be able to get out a little earlier?” Bill thought about it for about a second and a half, and then with all the warmth and sensitivity of an IRS auditor, shot forth, “Yeah, it’s a tough business on families. Any more questions? Okay, let’s go.”

This whole staying till the end thing resulted in one really humorous situation. We were wrestling in a minor league baseball stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the last day of a ten-day tour. A lot of the boys still lived in Charlotte, dating back to the days that Jim Crockett ran the NWA out of Charlotte. Most of the boys now lived in Atlanta, which was only a four-hour drive. Either way, everyone was going to get home. But not until the final bell of the final match. I wrestled Ricky Steamboat in the third match of the night, but had to wait until the end. Steamboat lived in Charlotte, and he couldn’t go home. And remember, in honor of the fourth commandment, his son wasn’t allowed in the dressing room.

Vader and Sting were in the evening’s main event. As that match started, all the wrestlers got into the cars and lined up single file, pointing toward the exit. As the match was winding down, we all started our engines. At the finish, the boys all made their move, and before the referee even finished the three-count, we turned the Charlotte baseball stadium into the Charlotte motor speedway.

I don’t know why Bill loved to keep the guys on the road, worn out and miserable. I think he found it romantic.

About this time, my health started to improve. It turned out that both Dewey and I were diagnosed with whooping cough. Pertussis, its technical name, was something that I thought was extinct, but it turned out that we both caught this very rare condition. Dewey improved before I did, and I slowly came around, finally feeling better right before one of the biggest matches of my life-a “falls count anywhere” against Sting at the June 1992 Beach Blast. The match took place at the Mobile Civic Center-not what most would call a tropical paradise, and in truth, we were several miles from water. I had trained hard for this match and in doing so, I had lost most of my “Abdullah” weight. (Sadly, Abby had quit the company shortly after Watts arrived.) Also, I had immersed myself in mental visualization for this match-I had seen it in my head a thousand times.

The match turned out even better than I’d hoped. The Stinger was up for it, as it had been a while since we’d wrestled against each other. The timing was on, the pacing was great, and some of the transitions were breathtaking. Even Ross and the new color man Jesse “The Body” Ventura were on top of their game. I lost the match, but didn’t give a damn. As George Costanza might have said, “Baby, I’m back!” Even Watts was happy. “Gentlemen,” he told us, “it just doesn’t get any better than that.”

For years I considered that to be the greatest match of my career. Sting was genuinely flattered to hear me say that, and he’d occasionally ask me after other big matches, “Was mine still your favorite?” I think he was actually saddened when he heard that another one replaced it. It was almost as if he were the queen in Snow White and the magic mirror broke the bad news.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that match all the way on the 400-mile drive home. I had the top down on my ‘84 Chrysler and life was good; my health was good, I’d just torn the roof off the Mobile Civic Center, I had a beautiful wife and son, and I was still making six F’ing figures a year. A month later, we bought our first house-a beautiful little Victorian with a wraparound porch in Acworth, Georgia.

Despite all his faults, Bill did have a gift for exciting television. There was one taping in particular that showed me Watts’s gift for creating great human drama. Now, Dusty was still the booker, but Watts was definitely in charge, and one of Bill’s trademarks was creating a black babyface and building the company around him. When the Cowboy saw Ron Simmons, I think he heard cash registers ring. Ron had all the qualities that Watts loved; he was big, he was black, he could talk, he had a legitimate sports background, and he was a legitimate tough guy.

Bill started the ball rolling by doing a great angle with Sting. I honestly can’t remember all the details, but it culminated in the return of Jake “the Snake” Roberts as he appeared from the crowd, and left the Stinger lying. This left Sting unable to wrestle Vader in the evening’s main event. A lottery was held in the ring instead, with the winner to face Vader. Simmons won, and later defeated that ear-tearing bastard to become the new WCW heavyweight champion. People were actually crying in the arena-they were so damn happy. I really thought the Cowboy had helped the company turn the corner.

I’m often asked about my most painful injury. The answer usually surprises people. They ask about the ear in Germany, the barbed wire in Japan, and the fall off the cage at the 1998 King of the Ring. All worthy contenders, but the most painful injury I ever had was a torn abdominal muscle that I suffered against Ron Simmons at the September 1992 Clash of the Champions in Atlanta.

I couldn’t honestly claim to be the number one heel in the company anymore. Actually, I hadn’t been in a long time. Rick Rude had come in about ten months earlier, and he had become a hotter heel than I ever had been. Still, I was a valuable guy to have around, and when Simmons became champion, I drew the assignment of being his first challenger. I was flattered to draw the assignment, but I was puzzled by the promotion of the match. Watts had this idea that it was important to turn the Atlanta Omni into the “Madison Square Garden of the South,” and as such, spent an inordinate amount of time promoting that one building. On the Saturday before the Clash, Ron Simmons had a live interview, but was instructed by Watts to concentrate on his upcoming Omni match with Rick Rude, which would be seen by a few thousand, instead of his Clash match with me, which would be seen by millions. I always felt that this strategy made WCW look like a bush league regional promotion instead of a national powerhouse.

The Clash special was actually celebrating the twentieth anniversary of wrestling on TBS. Ted Turner had always stayed loyal to his wrestling shows, because his Georgia Championship Wrestling was one of the shows that kept his “Superstation” afloat in the 1970s. Several celebrities were in attendance, and video tributes were paid throughout the night to many of the stars who had wrestled on the station over the years.

Inside Center Stage, I joked that there might very well be a new champion crowned. Arn Anderson overheard me, and put me in my place with a classic Arnism. “Jack, I don’t care if that son of a bitch has a heart attack and dies,” Arn began. “You will roll him on top of you.”

The match had one thing working against it. Watts had brought in my old buddy Ole Anderson to be, of all things, a troubleshooting referee. You would have thought that after all the years he had spent in the business, Ole would have absorbed through osmosis some understanding of what a referee does. He didn’t seem to have a clue. He didn’t know that a wrestler who rolls back into the ring and out again breaks up the ten-count, his mannerisms were stiff, and he counted pinfalls as if he were trying not to break a fingernail.

Yeah, Ole was hurting our match all right, but we tried to make up for it. Ron was throwing forearms as if he were trying to make his wrist go completely through my jaw bone. I later told Ron that I could take as stiff a forearm as he wanted to give, but that he would have to keep them up over my ears, or else I wouldn’t be able to chew for a week. You’ve got to understand that a world title around your waist puts a great deal of pressure on you. Pressure to perform, pressure to draw, and in this case, pressure to garner television ratings. The pressure took a naturally intense guy like Simmons and made him almost impossible to control. It was like holding a tiger by the tail. I finally stopped big Ron and prepared to dive off the ring apron with the big elbow onto his prone body. Because there were no protective mats, he was on the cold, hard concrete floor. I landed on the concrete, and pain shot through my body, the likes of which I’d never felt before. I swear, I thought I’d broken my pelvis. The pain was so bad, I thought I was going to pass out.

I couldn’t understand it-it hadn’t even been a real big leap. Maybe six feet. But I’d dropped so many, for so long, that maybe it was just a matter of time before something gave out. Unfortunately, I still had a live nationally televised match to continue. It would have been nice if Ron had beaten me with a simple roll up or small package (painless finishing moves), but that wasn’t quite his style. Instead he shot me in the ropes and BOOM! Spinebuster. Not enough. Another Irish whip-another BOOM! Powerslam. One, two, three, thank God it’s over.

It wasn’t over, however. When I got to the back, Watts asked me to go out and contribute commentary to the next match between the team Barry Windham and Dustin Rhodes, and my new stablemates, the Barbarian and Butch Reed. The videotape showed my face as almost completely white from the pain I was in, even though, to my surprise, I did a good job keeping up with Ross and Ventura on the commentary. At the end of Barb and Reed’s victory, the camera showed Jake Roberts nodding his head in approval-as if he were the mastermind of the whole plan. That was the first and last time that our foursome was ever together. Butch Reed was fired a week later for missing a flight, and Jake left the next month.