Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (82 page)

Hennig, Rude and Duggan looked out for me like big brothers. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were plotting and scheming, trying to pull me to their side to help them get rid of Hogan. Every-where, there were little factions of backstabbers. Many of the WCW boys despised Flair, especially Hall, Nash, Macho, the Steiners and Hogan. The only guys who didn’t stir up shit were the Mexicans and some of the young talent—Chris Benoit was having some of the best matches in the business at that time with Booker T. Some of the best talent were the smaller wrestlers, such as Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko, both second generation, and young Billy Kidman, who reminded me a lot of myself when I was starting out. These were the unsung heroes of WCW, and they worked really hard at keeping everything going.

When I packed my bag to leave my house on January 23, 1998, for my first WCW pay-per-view match, against Ric Flair, Blade was the only one to wish me good luck.

I was worried about how Flair would work with me—with my still-injured hand, I needed to keep a close eye on him. Flair appeared to be trying to get along in this den of wolves and multiple wolf packs, but as hard as he tried, nobody liked him except his old cronies, such as Kevin Sullivan, Arn Anderson, J.J. Dillon and Mongo McMichael. Hogan took every opportunity to try to stir me up about Flair, but I said nothing. I let Ric do the match his way, even letting him chop me to his heart’s content as he tried to show me how good he really was. I offered no resistance in what was, as usual with Flair, twenty minutes of nonstop non-psychology.

On January 25, Vince’s mother, Juanita, passed away. She’d always been nice to me, and so, despite everything, I sent a card of condolence to Vince’s house. I didn’t expect a reply, and I never got one.

I couldn’t find any way to be at peace with what I had. When a soul gets bigger than a mind can comprehend, it becomes easy to give up on trust and judgment. I heard two voices in my head, talking loud and fast, contradicting each other. Go left! Go right! Look out! I now measured time by how many more trips I’d have to take before I could say, “Fuck you, I’m going home” to the whole business—whatever “going home” meant. Would the day ever really come when I could walk away and not be another wrestling tragedy? I was forty-one now, and Harley Race was right about getting to the point where you were feeling every damn one of those bumps. My knees were running on borrowed time and so was the rest of me. I’d do whatever they asked, yet I’d be careful and work safe. Pedro Morales had told me, “There are only three things in this business—you, you and you.”

What he meant was that at this stage of the game it was imperative to protect myself, especially in the ring. So I did my job and waited for a much-anticipated storyline between me and Hogan to start. A Hitman-Hogan match clearly had the potential to be the biggest match of all time.

Meanwhile, back in the WWF, Vince converted Papa Shango from a gangsta into a pimp, whose line was “Pimpin’ ain’t easy!” Raw was becoming more about bra-and-panty Jell-O matches than about wrestling, with Jerry Lawler’s commentaries going on about all the girls showing their puppies.

Still, the hype about Tyson refereeing the main event title match between Shawn and Austin at Wrestlemania XIV ignited the WWF into a roaring fire. The fire that Vince tried to put out, but couldn’t, though, was the one raging in the hearts of my fans. At the Wrestlemania XIV press conference, a fan angrily shouted at Shawn, “You screwed Bret!” until he was dragged away. Shawn had to realize that screwing me would haunt him for the rest of his life; more than it would haunt me, which is saying a lot.

I was more than eager to see Shawn drop the belt to Stone Cold, whose character had become a gun-waving, beer-guzzling antihero perfectly suited to punishing the prima donna asshole who screwed over Bret Hart.

I often reflected on the five of us who had started out so long ago, galloping free like wild stallions: Dynamite, Davey, Jim, Owen and me. Dynamite was now stuck in his wheelchair, drunk and bitter, everything gone. It seemed to me that now Davey was falling lame like Dynamite, his drug problems getting worse, and Jim wasn’t much better. Despite my broken heart, I was strong and free, and still at the front of the herd along with Owen. I fantasized that my brother and I were literally stallions, lathered with sweat, galloping up a Rocky Mountain foothill, steam coming out of our nostrils in snorts. We reach a ledge wide enough to stop, where two clear paths lead in two different directions, and we stare at one another with eagerness and apprehension, long tails swishing. Which way should we go? The dark horse shakes his head, then carefully picks his way south up the cliffside. The palomino prances to and fro, wanting to follow, but then takes the path to the north, and they part ways forever.

A lot of pro wrestling’s old horses were falling away or dying off. Britain’s Big Daddy Crabtree had died in 1997, Loch Ness was failing and then the legendary wrestler BoBo Brazil died at seventy-three. But the Grim Reaper of wrestling wanted more young bones too. On February 15, 1998, a drunken Louie Spicolli downed twenty-six Somas and died at the age of twenty-seven, drowning in his own vomit. The sad thing was that more guys were worried about drug testing being introduced as a result than about dying like Louie did, or like Brian Pillman had. Eric Bischoff was pissed off after the news hit the dressing room about Louie, and said to me: “Man, these guys are just getting dressed and nobody gives a shit.”

Dave Meltzer wrote a scathing piece about how Louie’s death should finally be the wake-up call for all wrestlers, but nobody was listening. The industry was too caught up with stunts such as Shawn Michaels jerking off a wiener on camera as Hunter wore a SUCK THE COOK T-shirt.

Vince appeared on Off The Record, a Canadian sports talk show, where he claimed that before I left, I’d become a real pain in the ass with a bad attitude; that I was disruptive in the dressing room; that I was breaking down physically; and that I was starting to miss dates. I guess that last one was my thanks for having shown up at Omaha Raw in a wheelchair only five days after surgery. But the determined interviewer, Mi-chael Landsberg, finally got Vince to admit, after considerable squirming, that he had lied to me.

Owen had become the Intercontinental Champion, and was working with Hunter and Rock, while I was working with Hennig and Rude. Then Shawn came down with another “career-ending” injury, four days before the lead-in pay-per-view for Wrestlemania XIV. Now he wouldn’t have to put Steve over. I just shook my head. In the end, Wrestlemania XIV was a huge success, but it took Vince right up until match time to coax Shawn into dropping the belt to Austin. (On another note, Earl Hebner wasn’t at WrestleMania at all, having been hospitalized with a brain aneurysm that could easily have been fatal. When I called to wish him a speedy recovery, he broke down on the phone.) In the face of relentless competition from Vince, Eric Bischoff seemed to be burning out, and as a result, the disorganization at the WCW was getting worse. Though the house shows were still selling out, by March his TV ratings were beginning to slip. The WWF had figured out that the way to beat WCW was to get raunchier and sleazier every week. Vince’s shock TV pushed the envelope of what the censors would allow, and Bischoff looked more lost and confused every day: He had to put out a product that fit within Ted Turner’s squeaky-clean guidelines, and Vince knew it. Maybe it’s a good thing that Eric couldn’t go that way, even if he’d wanted to. I liked Eric and often offered him ideas. I don’t know if it was pride or politics that made him shoot them down one by one; his own angles rarely made sense. They’d fly me to TVs—paying for first-class air fare, hotel and a lux-ury car—only to leave me off the show. At the end of the day, in the WWF I got screwed for money, while in WCW

I got paid well enough for so little output that I felt a bit too much like a whore.

I saw a rough cut of Paul’s documentary, which was set to air in the fall, and now I understood what he’d been trying to tell me: The story of what had really happened to me in Montreal was going to be told, and it would be a vindication.

Eric had me turn heel by double-crossing Sting and revealing that, all along, I was part of the nWo.

Vince’s radical new direction was as brilliant in the ratings war as Eric’s was weak. Aside from Stone Cold being one of the most popular TV characters in the world, Sable, Taker, Mankind and Rock were all coming into their own. On April 13, Austin wrestled McMahon to a DQ on Raw (because of interference from Mick Foley as Dude Love), the WWF shot out in front and never looked back. The ratings war was essentially over. I was the greatest weapon Eric had at that time, and why he never deployed me, I’ll never know.

With my marriage and my career both falling apart, I felt darkness from all sides. I kept to myself more than ever, which wasn’t a good thing. One day Julie summoned all the kids into the living room, against my protests, and told them we were divorcing. She then asked them to pick who they wanted to live with. The kids and I had been through this before, but when seven-year-old Blade broke into tears and cried, “I’m going with Dad!” it hit a powerful nerve in me. It had been six months since Vince had broken my heart, and neither Julie nor I knew how to fix it. This time I took Julie at her word. We officially separated on May 15, 1998.

Meanwhile, Stu and Helen had their own misery to deal with, being in a deep financial hole. I gave them $70,000 to get them through, making them promise me they’d use the money for themselves and not for those Harts who always had their hands out.

On May 17, I worked a good hard match with Macho at the Slamboree pay-per-view in Worcester, and that set up a tag match: me and Hogan versus Piper and Macho at the Great American Bash in Baltimore, which was a month away.

Death took yet another wrestler on June 2. The Junk Yard Dog, Sylvester Ritter, fell asleep at the wheel and rolled his car. He was forty-five.

I was worried about Davey, who told me that he and Diana were on the rocks too. He again confided to me that he needed help with his drug problem. I went to Eric on his behalf, and Eric said that if Davey got help, he didn’t have to worry, his job would be secure. Sadly, even though Davey freely admitted he needed help, he wasn’t yet ready to accept it.

At the Great American Bash, Macho and I cut a good pace, but Roddy and Hogan showed their age.

Hogan was starting to remind me of Giant Baba, who was old, phony and uncoordinated, but whose fans loved him anyway. The whole storyline didn’t make sense to me, or to the fans, but to Eric and Hogan it was all great work. My heel character had become a deranged, angry bad guy. My fans didn’t like him, and neither did I. My original following was now outnumbered by a new breed of fans, who were like cartoon characters themselves. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw younger kids or a family at ringside. Even The New York Times proclaimed that pro wrestling was no longer suitable for kids.

On July 20, I won the U.S. title in Salt Lake City when I beat up Diamond Dallas Page with a steel chair. Page was a close friend of Eric’s, a scruffy, wiry older rookie who resembled a Scottie dog. He was playing the part of an old veteran, even though he’d only been wrestling a few years. He was a good hand who was always trying to improve. We had a kind of chemistry and got on well in and out of the ring.

I’d brought Blade with me to Salt Lake City, and he sat watching the monitor in the dressing room as Scott Hall took some kind of phony-looking bump into a TV production trailer while wrestling Kevin Nash. Minutes later, when Scott walked in, my eight-year-old son called out, “Hey, Razor, that was pathetic,” cracking up the whole dressing room. During these sad and empty days, the only real joy in my life was Blade.

On August 4, I boarded a plane home after a Nitro in Denver and was happy to find Owen in the seat next to mine, smiling as if he’d been waiting for me. For the next couple of hours, we talked about the state of the business. He was disgusted by a recent angle on Raw that featured wrestler Val Venis and special guest John Wayne Bobbitt, where Venis put his penis out on a chopping block.

Owen didn’t like the guns, sleazy sex and female fans taking their tops off in the audience. He told me he wanted to resurrect his old Blue Blazer character just to change things up: Perhaps becoming a masked superhero was a way to avoid involvement with the vulgar aspects of the show.

I had just moved, alone, into an old stone ranch house planted on the edge of a hill in the west end of Calgary, overlooking the Rocky Mountains; because I had to travel so much, it made the most sense for the all the kids to live with Julie. I took the opportunity to invite Owen to come over to see my new place as well as watch a rough cut of Paul’s documentary, now titled Wrestling with Shadows. I was worried that my dad came across as too harsh in the doc when I talked about him often stretching me hard enough to pop the blood vessels in my eyes and about my life passing before my eyes while he smothered me in various submission holds. I wanted Owen’s honest advice because the last thing I wanted to do was hurt my dad, and I was relieved when he told me not to worry because it was all true. The thing that upset Owen was when, in the documentary, I compared losing to Shawn with blowing my brains out. My brother admonished me, reminding me,“We always said there’s nothing in wrestling worth dying for.”

The next day I got a script to do a Disney series called Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, in which I’d play myself. There was also a part for a Hart brother and I got Owen the job so we could spend some time together. Owen couldn’t have been happier.

I lost the U.S. title to Lex Luger on August 10, only to win it back from him three days later. Titles didn’t mean anything anymore; they changed hands almost as many times as the WCW senselessly turned me from heel to babyface. At that time, Eric was pinning his ratings hopes on the return of The Ultimate Warrior. But within days, Warrior tore a biceps muscle and that was the beginning of the end for him, not that he could’ve been Eric’s savior anyway.

I’d given Eric and Hogan advance dubs of Paul’s documentary, and they both called to tell me they loved it. I thought perhaps it would encourage Eric to keep me baby-face, seeing as how wrestling fans would soon see me looking like a real hero in Paul’s movie. I was baffled when Eric wasted Hart versus Hogan on a free match at Nitro, on September 28, throwing away a guaranteed moneymaker that the fans had been waiting years for. The plan, in my view, was insane. He wanted me to turn babyface during an in-ring interview, challenge Hogan, then get injured and have Sting take my place. When Sting twisted Hogan into his scorpion death lock, I would limp back out and double-cross Sting by DDTing him headfirst into the mat, turning heel again. To turn me heel at this point was so stupid it felt like sabotage.