Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (24 page)

In the end, Stu did have to pay us. The local fans had pulled the fences down, and no one had been able to collect the gate. It had turned into a free show.

Bad News had done good business for the territory all summer long, working his way through the entire roster of babyfaces, eating them up and spitting them out. When I got back in late August, we worked a three-week program; I dropped the North American belt to him on September 3 and won it back two weeks later. He ate me up so badly that I was seen as a guy who was lucky to be alive, let alone be the champion. He left me in a bloody heap every time. I was Stu’s top babyface now. When News left, there weren’t any big heels for me to work with so, once again, I found myself holding the North American belt yet only wrestling tag matches.

By the end of October, Smith had put together another tour to Antigua; this time Smith’s old pal, Dick Steinborn, was helping him out. And he talked Stu into coming along. I couldn’t believe Stu was going along with it. Tom refused to go this time because he didn’t want his check coming from Stu again. But Bruce, Big Jim, half the crew from Calgary and even Ed Whalen decided to go, while the rest of the boys stayed behind to cover the Friday-night show in Calgary. I went too, thinking the trip would be a good chance to get my dad alone and tell him not only that Julie and I were married, but also that we were going to make him a grandfather.

We stayed at the same hotel as last time, with the open bar, and Big Jim decided to play bartender, doling out rum and Cokes as if they were water. Well, after all, we’d been warned against drinking the water—so we drank everything else! A catchy local reggae number called “Stampede Wrestling”—written to celebrate us—played on the radio in the bar; in my head I saw the strange band of wrestling characters I usually associated with freezing snowstorms wrestling to a tropical beat. Ed Whalen was a bigger star down here than any of the wrestlers, and he couldn’t get over being mobbed for autographs everywhere he went.

Jim insisted to Stu that there was no alcohol in the drinks he kept handing him. Stu thought he was downing Cokes—until he stood up and swayed out into the steamy tropical heat. When he came back into the bar sunburned and not in a very friendly mood either, Jim offered to fix him a cold one, and Stu barked, “Go to hell, you bastard! I’ll get my own!” and wandered off to his room. It was the first and only time I ever saw my dad tipsy.

One afternoon I seized the opportunity to take Stu for a walk on the beach and tell him about me and Julie. My plan was foiled when two girls walked by. Stu’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. He’d never in his life even heard of a topless beach, and in his wildest dreams he couldn’t imagine what had got into these women. But it turned out he didn’t mind it any more than I did. Somehow it didn’t feel like the most appropriate time to mention that I was married.

Stu ended up not making a dime on Smith’s adventure. He ended up having to pay for everything, including the bar tab. Smith and Steinborn had both gone on to Puerto Rico, taking the proceeds with them, where they were planning to invest in a questionable deal together. By Smith’s way of reasoning, he would turn a nice profit and no one would be the wiser. The problem was that Steinborn ended up with all the money. Smith called the police to get it back. No such luck, and Smith returned home empty-handed.

By November, Julie was four months pregnant and beginning to show. I cautiously penned a letter to my mom and dad that included these lines: “I hope you’ll forgive me for going about this the way I have. I never intended on hurting you or disrespecting you. On July 8th Julie and I were married.

Sadly, I never felt anyone in the family would be too thrilled with that announcement so therefore they didn’t need to know. If the bases were loaded, with Ellie and Jim on 3rd, and Georgia and B.J.

on 2nd . . . I guess I’d have to be on 1st. Julie is 4 months pregnant.” I taped the letter to my mother’s pillow. Unbeknownst to me, my mom went to bed in the dark that night, turning her pillow over, and didn’t find the letter for six days! When she found it and told the others our news, Georgia was the first to call to say congratulations. My mother said she understood. Stu never brought it up with me.

That New Year’s Eve, Keith and Leslie got married at Hart house, the first of a long line of can-you-top-this weddings. Five hundred guests we hardly knew stubbed out their cigarettes on the oriental rugs and slapped Stu on the back offering him drinks, which he refused. I was glad I had eloped! At Keith’s wedding, Alison and Ben announced that they’d be getting married in May. Bruce had brought as his guest his new young girlfriend, Andrea. A few days later my mom suddenly announced that they’d be getting married too, in June.

Being the North American champion but never once defending the title didn’t sit well with me, especially since, as of January 4, 1983, I was set to drop it to Leo in a few weeks. I got the idea that it would be a terrific opportunity to have a match with Davey. He and I had spent a lot of time in my living room during the past year watching videos of our matches: a teacher and his student. Davey could copy any move and was great at doing what he was told, but, unlike Tom or myself, he had little clue how to call a match on his own. He desperately wanted to work in Japan, and I thought I could do for him what Leo had done for me.

Davey and I were both very popular in Regina, which I thought would be the perfect setting for our match. I gave Davey the finish and worked out six complicated high spots that I’d call out by number only and drilled them into his head.

In the ring, wearing a red singlet, Davey stood nervously staring back at me while I took in the cheering crowd. With no real issue between me and Davey Boy, it was beginning to dawn on the fans that they really weren’t sure who would win. I outweighed Davey by fifteen pounds, so he’d surely be the underdog. The match built slowly. At one point, after breaking on the ropes, we erupted into a heated scuffle that grew tense after I gave Davey a hard slap. Some of the fans thought it was a cheap shot while others thought he needed it. A minute later, by design, Davey hauled off and slapped me right back. Then we got serious.

Fifteen minutes of heavy action later, Davey had to hide his head under the ring so he could throw up, while I covered for him by breaking the count. I eventually settled him down, and soon we had everyone standing. Davey tore into the ropes and dove out onto me, on the floor. The fans popped at the high-speed collision. Cedrick Hathaway, the ref, began to count, and the fans assumed it was all over, so they circled around us. I pulled Davey up and we cut a swath through them, and then I rolled him back into the ring. The fans stayed, pounding their hands on the mat, cheering us on. I held Davey in a rear chin lock, glancing out to Gil, who was trying to maintain security. He looked back apologetically because now it would be impossible to get the fans back in their seats. But I wasn’t worried, it was a babyface match.

But I was glad I’d worked out all the high spots by number—instead of having to blab a long sequence of moves with the fans so close, all I did was hiss out the next number. It worked like a charm. I got a rush from the realism. For a moment it felt like I was wrestling Davey in the dungeon at Stu’s house, and then I thought that this must be what it was like fifty or even a hundred years ago, wrestling in mining camps, at rodeos and at carnivals. I could see the faces of the fans I’d known for years pressing in around us, not knowing which of us to root for.

With less than a minute remaining, Davey rifled me into the corner, following close behind me, but when I got to the corner I jumped up, dropped behind him and waist-locked him with a perfect German suplex for the one . . . two . . . three.

As the drama had unfolded, I could feel Davey’s heart break. But I understood the art of losing: What he didn’t know was that this match would make him. The claps turned to thunder as we hugged and shook hands. These were some of my most treasured moments in the ring.

An hour later, at the Plains Hotel bar, Davey and I clinked beer bottles to one beautiful match: a great and total work. Smiling that toothy grin, he said, “Err, it was fookin’ good un, Bret. Thanks.”

“My pleasure, Dave.”

Much to Alison’s chagrin, Hito and I began breaking in her fiancé down in the dungeon. Owen would come downstairs to watch. Following in my footsteps, he had won the provincial amateur wrestling championships, and he’d started coming around my place a lot because his new girlfriend, Martha Patterson, lived a few blocks from me in Ramsay. I was glad to hear him talk of going to university and a world as far away from pro wrestling as possible. Maybe Owen would be the one Hart to escape.

I dropped the North American belt to Leo, who was now our top heel. My mind was a million miles away. All I could think about was the baby. As far as Julie and I were concerned, it was still part prayer and part promise that ours would be a love that lasts. She had grown huge and had ruddy-red cheeks. I’d lie with my head on her belly at night and hear the beating of our baby’s heart.

At 7 a.m. on March 31, 1983, Michelle woke me in the waiting room at the hospital holding a tightly wrapped bundle in her arms. I turned back a fold of cloth and saw a pair of beautiful dark eyes blinking back at me. My heart filled with joy. We named our little girl Jade.

“This is it, the night of nights. No more rehearsing and nursing a part. We know every part by heart .

. .” the boys sang in the van as we pulled up to the Saskatoon arena. It would no doubt be cold and empty like it was every week. The gate was never more than a few hundred bucks, and it made me wonder why we kept going back. But “on with the show, this is it.”

The usual Saskatoon crowd consisted mostly of mentally challenged fans who were brought to the matches by bus every week and then left unsupervised. They bragged to us that they often went high up into the dark seats and fornicated; the proof was that several babies were born, and named Bret or Bruce in what was intended to be a compliment.

Ben was along for his first road trip. He’d already fallen for the statue of Stu in dinosaur land, but we were only just getting started. Since it was such a dead town, more thought went into the ribs than the matches. We all smiled and winked as Ben nervously laced up his boots for his first match, with Animal Manson, a dead ringer for the scruffy little drummer from The Muppets. Manson was an excon with a rap sheet as long as your arm, and I suspect it would have taken all of ten minutes to talk him into robbing a bank. As planned, Ben went for a leapfrog and “accidentally” got clipped by a shoulder to the groin. Three or four goonlike ushers and a storklike St. John’s Ambulance attendant, who seemed to be mentally challenged too, helped him back to the dressing room. They entered to shouts of “make room” and “kayfabe” as Ben was laid out on the floor, still writhing. The medic, who had a tendency to pop his false teeth in and out when he got excited, crouched down to tend to Ben.

“Let’s have a look, son,” he said as he jammed his hands down Ben’s trunks and gently squeezed his balls. “Easy boy!” All Ben could do was keep selling as we all struggled to keep from laughing. Ben wasn’t the first to be ribbed this way—and he wasn’t the last.

Ben married Alison at Hart house on May 21, with Davey as best man. He and Diana got caught up in the romantic atmosphere and promptly announced their own engagement. My poor mother, another daughter lost to a wrestler!

After a party that went all night, the whole crew flew to Vancouver the next morning to do a couple of shots that Stu had put together with music promoter Bruce Allen. On the ferry to Victoria, Stu and Gene Kiniski reminisced, while I was mesmerized by blue whales that raced alongside us. The Stampede Wrestling style was much more real than what the fans in B.C. were used to. We sold out Victoria, and for Vancouver I booked myself, with Davey as the main event, knowing we’d steal the show. In Vancouver, Bruce Allen came into the dressing room and Kiniski threw him down a flight of stairs. Gene was old school: no outsiders allowed.

That night when I slapped Davey across the cheek and he slapped me right back, he broke my eardrum. It hurt like hell. My balance was off, but we kept on. Then when Davey dove out on top of me, on the floor, he cracked his ribs and sprained my ankle in what turned out to be an extremely painful match.

Later that night I once again carried Davey into an emergency room. When the nurse asked us what was wrong, he groaned, “It’s me ribs!”

She looked at me, “And you?”

“I think my eardrum is broken, and my ankle is sprained.”

“Who did this?” she asked with a concerned look.

We pointed a finger at each other and in perfect unison replied, “He did!”

Then we flew back to Calgary, which was no fun with a busted eardrum either. Stu gave Davey some time off because of his ribs but asked me, “Can you make it? It won’t be much of a show if you’re both off.”

I limped into the van. Anything for the business. And for Stu.

The old bus had been resurrected, and in June Wayne steered it east out of town for the run to Saskatchewan. With us were two newly arrived midgets, an adorable Hawaiian called Coconut Willie, who was as agile as a monkey, and Kevin, a scruffy, troll-like kid who had long, jagged teeth that looked like spikes that’d been pounded through the top of his head. Kevin liked to perch himself on the front steps of the bus and sing hit songs from the 1960s. I guess in any other circumstance a bongo-playing midget singing “do wah diddy diddy” would be considered unusual; to me this was normal.

I found myself staring out the window at a road that had become all too familiar. I also knew big changes were ahead. Tom had given his notice, and he’d be leaving in July, this time for good. New Japan had called him to work with Tiger Mask at Madison Square Garden for just one show; a blown-away Vince McMahon Jr. did the commentary. The wrestling world in North America was catching on to what I already knew: The Dynamite Kid was ahead of his time.

We turned Tom babyface so he could work with Bad News, building News up for a feud with me that would climax with a blow-off during Stampede week. I was trying to find the right time to approach Bad News about giving me a little more in our matches. News was a decent worker and a hard one, but he had no psychology: He just ate up anyone in his path. He refused to cut himself, while I stupidly cut myself freely for him. Most nights, in the middle of my comeback he’d scoop my legs out from under me, grab me by the throat and tell me, “If you touch my head again I’ll kill you, mo’fucker.” Every match, I went in looking like a nine and, after he was done, came out looking like a three.