Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (45 page)

I flew home the following day, worn out and weary. On July 4, Jim called to tell me that Beefcake had been critically injured in Tampa. An out-of-control, bikini-clad parasailer had fallen out of the sky and smashed full force into his face with her knees. When they dragged Beefcake out of the water, his eyeballs dangled out of their smashed sockets.

Adrian had died on July 4 two years previously; Davey was nearly killed a year ago, and now Beefcake had been seriously injured. Many of us wondered whether July 4 was cursed for wrestlers.

One night I was home, the next I was at the notorious Stay Out Club in Chicago. Jim and I followed the boss, known only as Mr. Bill, to his cramped office, where a bleached-blond silicone princess wearing only panties amazed us with her flexibility by doing several backward handstands. Her huge white breasts hid her face as she arched back—and lost her balance, knocking some of Bill’s prized framed photos off the wall. Lying face up on the carpet among cracked and broken glass was an old black-and-white publicity photo of The Hart Foundation, the very first one ever taken of us. I remembered that we celebrated here the night before we won the belts the first time. As I looked down at our young faces I realized just how far we’d come.

Back on my bar stool, I looked over at Jim, remembering a scene earlier that year in New Orleans. I’d abandoned Jim in a bar on Bourbon Street and gone next door to a strange voodoo shop. Amidst chicken feet hanging everywhere and jars of mysterious ancient potions lining weathered shelves, I’d had my palm read by a portly old black woman in a black linen dress. I was silent, not wanting to give her anything to go on, as she traced her long red fingernail along my palm lines. “You have a red-haired companion, a friend; he’s trouble, not so much for you, but trouble to himself. Definitely a bad influence.” Holy cow, I thought, she hit that one right on the head. She went on to tell me that when I reached middle age I was going to have a bad accident, but I’d survive. Her eyes burned deeply into mine as she told me about a strong source of power coming from Connecticut, and how at the end of the summer, my life would change financially. She told me I was an entertainer of some kind and that I would eventually become a bigger star than I ever imagined. In life, there are a lot of strange signs on the road that go unnoticed. When I told Jim what she’d said he howled with laughter, calling it a foolish waste of ten bucks, which was far less than he’d spent drinking in the time I’d been gone.

Then Curt Hennig appeared before me with two more shots of Jack Daniels, insisting that I gargle it, which had become a ritual of his. I complied. I pulled a picture out of my wallet, which I’d torn out of a magazine, of a scruffy baby chimp wearing a cute double-breasted army jacket with epaulets. I handed it to Jim: “That’s going to be our new look, pink and black ring jackets for SummerSlam.” We all laughed, but I was serious. That’s when Curt told us that The Road Warriors were set to join us all around the end of August. Jim and I looked at each other concerned: The Demos and The Road Warriors would be a natural matchup.

I really wanted to believe the voodoo lady.

Most of us wished that Hogan would come back and reclaim his crown.

I got to see exactly what kind of champion Warrior was during a show in Omaha. Propped up on a stretcher a few feet outside the dressing room was a Make A-Wish kid who looked to be down to his last few hours. There was not a hair left on his head, and not even his Warrior face paint could mask his sad eyes. Sickly pale and barely breathing through a ventilator tube, the boy wore a purple Warrior T-shirt and green and orange tassels tied around his biceps to honor his hero. His mother and father and an older brother and sister were with him, patiently waiting for the promised encounter with The Ultimate Warrior.

I bent over to say hello, as did all the other wrestlers on the way into the dressing room. It was odd, but there was Warrior actually sitting with us: He usually kept to himself in his private dressing room. By the time the third match started, a WWF public relations rep poked his head in and politely asked Warrior if he was ready to meet the dying boy. Warrior grunted, “In a fuckin’ minute. I’m busy.” I thought to myself, Busy doing what, talking to a bunch of guys you can’t stand anyway?

As the night wore on the family waited just outside the dressing room door, the boy hanging on to his dying wish to meet his hero. As I was returning to the dressing room after my match, I was relieved to see that they weren’t there anymore; I assumed that the kid’s wish had come true.

Warrior’s entrance music played while Jim and I quickly showered in hopes of beating the crowd out of the building. We’d have to hurry since Warrior never went over ten minutes. We dressed, grabbed our bags and took off. As we rounded a corner down a backstage ramp, we came upon the boy and his weary family, who had been moved there so as not to get in the way of Warrior’s entrance. I thought, That lousy piece of shit. He’d made them wait all night, unable to summon the compassion to see this real little warrior. Hogan, Randy and countless others, including André, never hesitated to take the time to meet a sick, dying kid. My disgust for Warrior magnified a thousand times. To me he was a coward, a weakling and a phony hero.

Philadelphia had always been a WCW stronghold, so the fans were delighted when the legendary Road Warriors, who’d just defected to the WWF, appeared out of nowhere during our match with Demolition at SummerSlam that August. The Road Warriors were largely responsible for The Hart Foundation winning back the World Tag Team title; we didn’t care that they helped us and basically stole our thunder, we just wanted the belts.

As Axe and Smash brawled back to the dressing room with The Road Warriors, who’d be known in the WWF as The Legion of Doom, I crawled behind Crush just as Anvil launched himself over the top rope like a torpedo, knocking Crush toppling backward over me for the one . . . two . . . three. I’d been in the ring for most of the match, and with the temperature outside soaring to over a scorching one hundred degrees, the Philly Spectrum was an oven. As the crowd cheered I was too spent to even get up, so I lay on my back staring at the lights, taking in the moment. Jim grinned as he dropped the belt across my chest. He pulled me to my feet and we hugged each other, knowing we’d worked damn hard to regain the belts. The pink and black attack was back!

Being the pros that they were, all three of The Demolition were waiting to greet us with hugs and congratulations in the dressing room. When we walked in, Hulk called out, “New champions! Let’s give ’em a hand!” It meant so much to us to hear all the boys give us a standing ovation with The Hulkster leading the way. It felt like The Foundation’s defeats were erased in that one moment.

At TVs I had a good chat with Vince. I suggested to him that when my run with the Tag belts was over, it might be time to give my face a rest, and asked him if he’d help me get booked in Japan. He chuckled as he assured me that I had nothing to worry about: He was far from done with me. He also added that he was trying to find room for Davey, and that he’d received a refreshing letter from Bruce in which Bruce had expressed his thoughts on the wrestling business. Vince said that he not only found the letter interesting, but he also asked me to pass on to Bruce that he might consider implementing some of his suggestions in the future, and that perhaps Bruce could play an active role.

When I called home to tell Stu and Helen the news, my mom told me they didn’t have enough money to pay their phone bill and that Stu was thinking of selling Hart house. Someday when they were gone, they figured their children might go to war over the house: Selling it now seemed to them the smartest thing. They were relieved that there might be some breaks in the offing for Davey and Bruce.

My mother was upset about the way the WWF was playing off the impending war in the Persian Gulf. Vince had brought back the exiled Sergeant Slaughter, who was older, heavier and humbler than when I’d last seen him. Once the symbol of American patriotism, Sarge was now slated to be Vince’s top heel. Wartime hostilities also brought back the humbled and hobbled Iron Sheik and an ancient but real Iraqi wrestler named James Mustafa who would now be called Colonel and wear a military uniform. Wrestling had a rich history of playing up wartime animosities—but always after the war. This one hadn’t even happened yet.

I’d waited a long time to be able to ask for some days off, and I was happy to be safe, secure and free to rejoice for one full week at home. Unfortunately, as soon as I walked in the front door, I found that Michelle had left Tom the day before and she and the kids were now holed up at my house again.

Tom was knackered. His entire body was broken; his shoulders, his knees, his neck, his back and worst of all his heart. I tried to defend him, even offering to talk to Vince for him. Michelle tearfully explained that Tom had neglected to pay any of his U.S. taxes and was now unable to go back there until he paid—he owed a lot of money. The day before I got home she alleged that Tom had threatened her with a gun and actually said he was going to kill her, so she, Julie and all the kids had spent the night hiding out in a motel until I got home.

Julie was cold and distant and all the kids were terrified and ran for cover every time there was a knock at the door. Tom phoned constantly, but when Michelle tried to talk to him he threatened to come over with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a shotgun in the other. When I tried to reason with him, he hung up on me. By week’s end he was threatening to kill Julie and our kids too.

On my last day at home Jade ran in the front door looking scared and grabbed her cousin Bronwyne’s hand. “We gotta hide! I saw your dad parked in his car right down the street!” All the kids scurried off. I jammed on my running shoes and marched straight out to face Tom. Even though he couldn’t miss me coming, he seemed startled when I pulled open his car door and got in.

“That twat send you down here?” he sneered, clutching the steering wheel. He was trembling and looked unkempt. He’d never bothered to fix his teeth, even though Vince had given him the money for it, and his hair was scruffy and dark sunglasses hid bloodshot eyes.

“What the hell are you doing, Tom?” I asked. As mad as I was I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

“What’s this about you saying you’re bringing your gun over to my house to kill everybody? Tom, your kids and my kids are all terrified of what you might do, and I gotta tell ya, just lookin’ at you, you’re starting to scare me too. You don’t have a gun, do ya?”

“Nah, fook.”

This legendary, nasty little rock of a man slumped over the steering wheel and began to cry. “Fookin’

broke I am. I’ve thrown it all away. I’m done. I’m goin’ back ’ome.” Tears dripped off his chin, helplessly, and I could tell he hated himself for being weak. “I can’t even wrestle anymore.” He was biting his top lip so as to angle the tears into his mouth. I’d never seen him cry. We’d both been blessed with innate ability and passion, but his life and his choices had caught up with Dynamite. Just when my career was starting to take off, his was ending. My heart went out to him even though he was a classic example of that old adage: What goes around comes around.

A few days after I left for the road again, Michelle handed him a one-way plane ticket to England and told him to never come back.

The Dynamite Kid, one of the greatest workers of all time, broke and broken, a bona fide wrestling tragedy. He had been an untameable stallion, but now this crippled pony was on his last ride, to the glue factory.

25

THE REAL PUSH

BECAUSE I ALMOST ALWAYS WRESTLED second from last each night, finding a decent dinner was usually a hit-and-miss affair. It was Denny’s, if I was lucky. After eating (and usually drinking), when the wrestlers got to their rooms, they’d still be supercharged on adrenaline, almost euphoric. It was impossible to fall asleep in time to be able to get up to make that early-morning flight unless you took something to help. Then in the morning a lot of wrestlers would take something to help them wake up, like ephedrine, commonly known as trucker pills; with a couple of those in them, they could rush off to the gym as soon as they got off the plane in the next town. The days of wrestlers chopping lines of coke were mostly gone, replaced by amino acid pills and protein shakes, but there were still syringes loaded with steroids—the WWF was a muscleman meat factory. Then there were the pain pills that were popped like candy. All too often I can remember washing them down with coffee. Looking at Dynamite that day in his car made me realize that if I was falling apart, I wanted to know it. So I stopped taking the pain pills.

On October 9, at TVs in Springfield, Illinois, Jim and I were finishing up a photo shoot when word came that Vince wanted to see us. We headed over to his backstage office, where there had been a revolving door of wrestlers coming in and out all morning. Vince opened his door and said, “I need to talk to both of you. Bret, I’ll see you first. Jim, you wait outside.”

The first thing he said was, “Bret, we’re going with you in singles.” With the Tag belt I thought I had a rock-solid position, but now everything was uncertain again.

“This is going to be the big push,” he said. “The real push—the one I’ve always promised you. The one you’ve been waiting for. The one you deserve. You’ll be involved in all the major angles with all the top men, and it’s not going to be like all those other times where we didn’t come through. The plans I have for you are bigger than anything you’ve ever imagined.”

We studied each other. I asked, “What about Jim?”

Vince’s face grew serious. “I’ll be letting seventeen guys go today and Jim’s not one of them. I’m thinking I’ll try him at the announcing table for a while, putting him on salary with a pension and full company benefits. I can’t let him go—he owes me a lot of money from all his legal fees.”

Vince’s plan was that The Foundation would drop the belts to The Rockers at the next TVs, at which they’d also be taping -SNME.

When I left the room Jim looked like a prisoner preparing to see the warden. Afterwards, he did his best to appear upbeat, but it was easy to see he was devastated. At least he had his ongoing countersuit against U.S. Air and the hope of an eventual settlement.