Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (39 page)

Early one morning in February, I was awakened by a call from Vince. He was interested in Bad News and asked me whether I thought he could do any business with him. He also said he wanted to try Owen out again, with the mask gimmick I’d suggested.

As I cleared the sleep from my head, my immediate thought was to denounce Bad News, my old nemesis. But Ross had recently asked me whether there was any way that I could get News booked in the WWF because Owen was having the exact same problems with him that I used to have, being eaten alive and cut short on his comebacks. Also, News was overpriced, and they couldn’t afford him anymore. So I praised him to Vince. As for Owen, Vince laid out some big plans, telling me he’d spare no expense: His art department would design Owen a costume with a cape, and he himself wanted to come up with some kind of high-flying name for Owen, featuring a bird or a rocket.

I called Stu and cleared the way for Owen to come to the WWF. Then I called Bad News. He was shocked that it was me, of all people, calling to tell him that they wanted him in the WWF.

Topeka TV on February 17 was Bad News’s first day. They had big plans for him to be a top heel working against Hogan. I thought, Good for him, just as long as he doesn’t work with me!

Coincidentally, that same day, The Cuban Assassin was finally set to have his long-awaited WWF

tryout. It would be the biggest break of his long career—God knows, he’d earned it. They wanted to pair him up with Nikolai Volkoff, billed from Moscow, because he was a legit Cuban and his hard work would carry the team.

When we passed Bad News out back by the ring trucks, Jim gleefully remarked to him, “It’s great to have the old gang here! You, and now the Cuban!”

Bad News picked up a lead pipe and shouted, “If that mother fucker’s here, I’ll kill him!” It turned out that despite the fact that Cuban had been the best man at News’s wedding, their wives had a falling out. Somehow News and Cuban, once the closest of friends, had now sworn to kill each other on sight. News took off and, seconds later, chased Cuban out of the building, swinging the lead pipe while Cuban slashed away at the air with his knife. Chief and a bunch of the agents broke it up, and then Vince summoned them both to his office: He fired Cuban before he’d even had a chance to step foot in the ring. He had bigger plans for News. So much for Cuban’s break of a lifetime.

I went home to celebrate Julie’s birthday in March. Afterwards I was planning to take three-year-old Dallas on his first big trip with Dad, to WrestleMania IV. As I stood in the kitchen, watching Julie pack Dallas’s small suitcase, the phone rang.

“Hitman, it’s Vince. I wanted you to hear it from me first,” he said. “Damned if I can figure it out, but we receive more mail here at the office for you than for any other wrestler in the company—I don’t know if it’s that greasy hair or what. So I’m turning you babyface.”

I was totally caught off guard.

“You get even more mail than Hogan,” Vince continued. “I’m going to split The Foundation up! I’m going to give you that big push that you’ve deserved for so long.” At WrestleMania IV, he explained, Bad News and I would team up at the end of the battle royal to eliminate Junkyard Dog, but News would double-cross me and throw me out. When he was presented with a giant trophy, I’d attack him and smash the trophy to pieces.

I asked how this would affect Jim.

Vince chuckled and said, “One angle per person. Jim will have to wait.”

He had said that I got more mail than Hogan. I just kept repeating that to myself in disbelief. I got garbage bags full of mail addressed to me at every TV taping, but I never imagined it was more than what Hulk got.

The next day I carried a mesmerized Dallas off the plane in Philadelphia, rented a car and strapped him into his child seat for the drive to Atlantic City. For the next two days, Dallas had the time of his life, playing with all his favorite wrestlers up close. All of his action figures had come to life; he recognized everybody instantly. Hogan was especially nice to him, as was André, who called him over with his booming voice. Dallas was awestruck as he approached the giant, who hoisted him up onto his knee.

As the pay-per-view was about to start, I couldn’t find Dallas anywhere: My heart jumped when I saw him, fifteen feet up, leaning over the edge of a scaffold! He had a big grin on his face as I took the steps two at a time, stretching to catch him by an ankle as he tried to scamper off on me! Thank God!

Macho and Liz were nice enough to babysit while I dressed and went over the battle royal with Pat and the newly renamed Bad News Brown, who was now acting like my best friend. The battle royal went as planned, and when I broke the sturdy trophy into pieces, I got a rousing cheer and, just like that, became a babyface.

In the main event, with a little help from Hogan, Macho Man won the world heavyweight title.

After the show I did my first solo interviews backstage, until nearly 3 a.m. I was getting better at talking, and for the first time I made reference to having survived Stu’s dungeon. Eventually I carried a conked-out Dallas in my arms, through the fans in the lobby and up to my room.

On the way home my bag was bulging with Ghostbuster toys. On the stopover in Denver, I put Dallas on the phone with his mom, and he happily told her all about his big trip. After a few minutes he handed me back the phone. I didn’t want to alarm Julie, so I never mentioned how he’d locked himself in the bathroom, let alone how he’d climbed the scaffold. When I hung up and turned around, Dallas was gone! I frantically searched everywhere for him. What if he’d gone into the ladies’ room? Or got on a plane? I soon had gate agents searching too. Finally, way down in the distance on the moving walkway, I spotted him gliding toward me with a mischievous grin on his face, holding the hand of a smiling security guard. I was so relieved to see him I just smiled back. I don’t know what wore me out more, Dallas or WrestleMania IV!

As a babyface I found myself doing jobs for Bad News at the house shows almost every night. They were building him for Hogan. I wasn’t happy being a babyface, especially a losing one. Some push!

Bad News still had no psychology or charisma. One night after a long, boring brawl at Madison Square Garden, Vince remarked to me, “Bret, you could have a great match with a broomstick!” I replied, “It’s hard when the broomstick is mopping the floor with you.” He laughed, but I didn’t.

I just happened to be home on May 17, when Julie delivered a beautiful, seven-pound, fifteen-ounce baby girl. We named her Alexandra Sabina. With my heart full and empty at the same time, I boarded a plane the next morning. Back to work.

On June 22 at the TV tapings in Binghamton, New York, my solo career was suddenly over. Vince decided to reform The Hart Foundation as babyfaces, he said, because we were too good to keep apart. Yet we immediately started doing jobs for The Rougeaus, who’d just turned heel. They even had Jimmy Hart as their manager now. All in all, I was just glad to be back with Jim.

Noticeably missing after WrestleMania IV was Harley Race, who’d ended up in emergency surgery having a foot and a half of his intestine removed. And then he got served with divorce papers. Honky made a big mistake when he joked in the dressing room that Harley didn’t have any guts anymore.

Honky was one of those wrestlers who never had an ounce of real hardness in him. When one of the least tough disrespected a legendary tough guy like Harley, several of us took exception, and Dynamite got up and backhanded Honky right off his chair. Honky wept like a baby after that, pleading for forgiveness.

With Harley gone, Tom needed a new drinking partner. He latched on to Jos LeDuc, the French-Canadian lumberjack whom Vince renamed The Maniac. The moniker suited Jos perfectly. Every night for over a week, Tom and Jos drank and took dangerous amounts of pills. Jos was no stranger to pills, but Tom was also spiking his drinks. Still, it was Jos who carried Tom back to his room every night. When it came to taking pills, Jos wasn’t human.

Then Tom vowed that this would be the night that Jos went down. I sat and watched them drink. At one point Jos was slumped in his chair, halfway to la-la land, when Tom flattened his lit cigarette with his fingers and carefully set it atop Jos’s big, bald head. When it started to burn, Jos sat up, and the cigarette fell down the back of his shirt. Without saying a word, Jos flexed his back and squeezed the cigarette out on his chair, then staggered off to his room. This was all amusing to Tom, but the next day Jos was fired. The pills didn’t bring him down. Tom did, in less than a week!

On my thirty-first birthday, my mom and Georgia threw a surprise party for me up at Hart house. I looked around at the herd of grandkids. Tom, sporting a nice dress shirt, jokingly rolled his eyes at me as he joined in singing “Happy Birthday.” Numerous young wrestlers who worked for Stu were there, including Brian Pillman. He sang with a smirk, and a rasp in his voice, a reminder of the esophageal cancer he’d overcome as a child. Dallas and Jade’s eyes were big and bright, lit by the flickering candles on my cake. My mom was the only one who noticed that my eyes were wet when Dallas helped me blow out the candles.

There was clapping and the tune of forks clinking on glasses. All eyes were on me. I think it was that night when I realized that some members of my family were waiting for me to trip and fall. I also had to face the fact that chances were that I would: The world was littered with wrestling tragedies.

Bruce was despondent because Stu had finally sacked him as booker; Stu could no longer afford to tolerate Bruce’s way of running the show. He replaced him with Keith, which meant Leslie was in charge too.

I glanced over at Jim, who was his own worst enemy and a bad gambler in life. Money burned a hole in his pocket; the more money, the bigger the hole. He lived as if tomorrow was never going to come, spending lavishly on himself, buying custom-made jewelry, jet skis, fishing boats and motorcycles. Ellie rarely saw a penny of it because, for reasons known only to him, he kept her and their kids on a strict allowance.

Of all of us, when it came to finances, it was Tom who seemed to be in the best shape. He was the only one who’d paid off his house. Both he and Davey were beyond cheap on the road, but at home they lavished their wives with cars, fur coats, jewelry and cash. It seemed like nobody worried about tomorrow except for me.

The person I wanted to talk to at my party was Owen, because he’d be starting with the WWF in a few days, but Martha dragged him out of there early. Owen was about to join the rest of us young stallions, ever racing. The adventure was in not knowing where we were going. The danger was in not seeing that our destinies were not ours to control, no matter how hard and strong we ran.

More deaths added to my sense of foreboding. On July 4, while driving to a match in Gander, Newfoundland, Mike Kelly swerved to miss a moose and lost control of the van. It rolled, killing his brother Pat Kelly, Dave McKigney—and Adrian Adonis. Pat’s brother Mike survived, though the crash badly injured his leg. I flew down to Bakersfield, California, for Adrian’s funeral. His wife said to me,

“He was so big, nothing could ever hurt him. Now he’s dead.”

Then Bruiser Brody was stabbed to death. I had always been grateful to Brody for bucking me up with some kind words during my first months on the road with the WWF, when Chief was riding me.

The last time I’d seen him was during a chance meeting at the airport in Detroit. André rode on those airport trolley carts that zip around inside the terminals, so Jim and I hopped on. Coming around a corner, we ran into Brody, who laughed at the sight of us. My last memory of him was his wave and his smile. On July 17, Brody had been called into a dressing room in Puerto Rico by the booker, Jose Gonzales, who also wrestled under a mask as The Invader. Gonzales, whom I remembered from my time in Puerto Rico as an easygoing guy, stabbed Brody with a butcher knife and left him to die on the dirty bathroom floor. Supposedly, Brody had been a bully to Gonzales in the ring one time too many, and Gonzales snapped. All the wrestlers were too scared to help Brody, so they sat there for over an hour while he died. No wrestlers would testify against Gonzales because they were afraid that if they did they wouldn’t live long enough to get off the island!

Gonzales used self-defense as an argument and was acquitted. This was one of the most horrible things that ever happened in the wrestling business.

It’s strange, but wrestlers often die in threes. On July 24, I heard that J.R. Foley passed away. Lung cancer came and took him quickly, too quickly for me to even visit him one last time. “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.” J.R. was an indelible character who, despite his shortcomings, made the world a better place. At his funeral in Calgary, they played all his favorite songs from the van. I know he’d have been proud of the nice turnout at his service.

22

EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY

VINCE ADDED A FOURTH PAY-PER-VIEW to the annual rotation, SummerSlam, the first one scheduled for August 29, 1988, at Madison Square Garden. Despite losing every single night in singles and tags for the past ten months, oddly enough The Hart Foundation landed a title shot against Demolition. Bill Eadie was now known as Axe, Barry Darsow was Smash, and together as Demolition, they’d trounced every team in the WWF. Clearly The Foundation wouldn’t be going over at SummerSlam, but once more I saw a golden opportunity to have a great match and maybe even steal the show.

After I’d been brutalized by Demolition, both of them big, strong, realistic workers, I tagged Jim, who cleaned house, smashing into them with flying football tackles and high drop kicks. Suddenly we had the whole building standing. There was a deafening roar as I pulled back on the top rope as if it was a giant bow and launched the 280-pound Anvil right on top of Axe and Smash, who were standing out on the floor. For the finish, Axe whacked me across the back of the head with Jimmy Hart’s megaphone. We lost the match but stole the show.

Later that day, Ultimate Warrior dethroned Honky Tonk Man for the Inter-continental belt in fifteen seconds. Hogan shared some of his glow with Macho Man when they teamed up against The Million Dollar Man and André. For a cartoonlike finish, Miss Elizabeth stripped down to her bathing suit as a distraction so that Randy and Hulk could regroup and win the day. There was nothing sleazy about Miss Elizabeth’s move—it was tasteful and funny. At that time, the WWF was all about family entertainment and marketing to kids.