More Than Just Hardcore (35 page)

Dennis was also an excellent referee for my match with Bret. He was in perfect position for everything.

I worked hard promoting this show. I went to one of the TV stations in town and got ECW on the air, for about six weeks before our show. That wasn’t a lot of lead time, but it helped to establish who those guys were, so people would know them a little when they came here.

I had well over $35,000 invested in the show, and we ended up grossing about $45,000 on it. As you can see, even under the best of circumstances, an independent promotion is not an easy row to hoe. I think a lot of people who try to become independent promoters have no idea about the expenses involved. As time goes by it gets more expensive. The expenses are unbelievable, especially when you’re running spot shows, as opposed to a regular territory, because of the costs of transportation for the talent.

Thirty years ago or more, a promoter would never want to drive a nice car up to a newspaper building. He wanted to drive an old, beat-up car and go in and beg for what he could get for free.

You have to think about your venue. Nowadays, you look at these independent guys running spot shows. It seems like they all want to run Philadelphia. How are you going to buy advertising in the newspaper for your show? It’ll cost an arm and a leg!

On the other hand, there are plenty of good-sized markets that aren’t the biggest cities in the country, but they’re places where WWE hasn’t run too much and where you can go and beg to the newspaper, because you can afford their ads. You can afford the radio spots. Amarillo was a pretty good-sized market that fit that description at that time.

And I was very pleased with the 50 Years of Funk show. One of the things I was most pleased with was that I got to work with Bret Hart.

Bret Hart was my first choice for an opponent at the show, because of his in-ring talent and because of his status in the business. I also wanted him as an opponent to make him a part of it because I loved that family.

When I asked Bret to do the show, he said, “OK. Just send me an airplane ticket.”

It was just that simple. Bret was another second-generation wrestler, and he was a very good businessman and a very sharp wrestler. Sometimes younger guys forget that having knowledge of the business and working smart means more than all the tanned muscles in the world. In order to be someone who consistently puts people in seats, you have to be sharp.

And I should stop again here and respond to something from Ric Flair’s book, where he called Bret a mediocre wrestling talent.

I think Bret Hart was an excellent worker. He had a great feel for the crowds and had as much athletic ability as anyone, and he had a good mind for the business. Bret was a creator of moves and a real innovator. I think his and Jim Neidhart’s matches against Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith were some of the best tag-team matches I’ve ever seen in the States. Again, I’m totally at odds with Ric in his assessment of Bret Hart.

For 50 Years of Funk, Bret, the WWF champion, was open to anything— including me beating him! That right there should tell you what kind of a guy Bret Hart is. However, I thought it would be ridiculous for an old fart like me to beat the champion.

I said, “Let’s do something no one is expecting.”

And I think the match was accepted better with Bret beating me in the middle of the ring than it would have been if I’d beaten him, because it was “50 Years of Funk.” It was known that I was promoting it. It was known that this would be my last match in Amarillo. So what are you going to think as a fan?

You’ll think, “Oh, it’s his show, so you know he’s going to win the thing.”

Our match was actually the first time I had ever worked with Bret. His dad, Stu Hart, and much of the Hart family came down for the match, too, and I really enjoyed seeing them again.

We had a moment of silence on the show for Fritz Von Erich, who had passed away the day before. Fritz had brain cancer, and so we all knew it was coming. It was a still a sad moment on the show, though, especially for me, remembering that Fritz was the guy who put himself in the hot seat by picking me to be world’s champion, after it was a tie among all the other members.

Just about two months after the show, Bret’s tenure with the WWF came to an ugly end in Montreal. Vince had told Bret he couldn’t afford his contract and freed Bret up to go to WCW The only problem was, Bret was still Vince’s champion. Bret was willing to lose the belt before he left, but the two of them couldn’t agree on a scenario, so Vince finally came up with a deal where Bret would go on TV and just give up the belt, say his farewells and go to WCW.

Of course that’s not what happened. Vince had Bret and Shawn Michaels (his real-life enemy, not just a foe in the ring) in a match in Montreal, as part of the WWF’s 1997 pay per view “Survivor Series.” At about what was supposed to be the halfway point of the match, Shawn clamped Bret’s own sharpshooter hold on him, and before Bret could react, referee Earl Hebner called for the bell, as if he’d given up. Shawn got the belt and ran off, and Bret was furious.

I thought it was a lousy deal, the way it came down, but it was nothing that I didn’t expect. Vince was looking at WCW getting one of his top guys, regardless of how that came about, and Vince wanted to protect his company.

It just goes to show, you’d better be leery in this business. Anyone in as strong a situation as that one was has got to be ready for the worst, and not put himself in harm’s way. Bret trusted the wrong people, and he probably should have known better. He gave them his trust, and he expected them to keep it, because he had always kept their trust. But they didn’t keep his, and that was wrong.

But you have to understand, Vince and his crew were also going to do everything they could to protect their livelihood. When all that comes together, trust is sometimes lost, but it’s lost out of a perceived business necessity. Trust, honor and integrity all go down the tubes when you’re talking about the lifeblood of your organization.

As close as Vince and Bret had been, I think something should have been worked out ahead of time. Maybe it just couldn’t have been.

But you have to look at it through two sets of eyes—the wrestler’s and the promoter’s. From Vince’s point of view, there was a fear that if he didn’t do something drastic he could end up in worse trouble than he already was in. I guess he figured that protecting his company was worth breaking his word to Bret.

In the end, businesswise, it might not have been a bad decision on Vince’s part, but I think Vince was totally wrong in what he did to Bret. Shawn Michaels was also wrong for his part in it. Bret might not have been 100 percent in the right, but I have to go with Bret on that one, and not just because he is my friend. Bret got done wrong because he tried to do right. He could have just walked out on the company as soon as he signed with WCW, but he wanted to work through his notice, because he felt like that was his obligation.

That’s the thing about giving notice. You’re leaving yourself wide open for someone to take a shot or do something to damage your credibility.

But if I was in Shawn Michaels’s shoes, it would have been a tough decision to make. Hopefully I would have made a different decision, and I think I would have, but I can see where Shawn made the decision he did, because not going along with the plan might have meant the end of his career, at least in the WWF. At least 10 other guys on the card that night probably would have done the same thing Michaels did. I guess I’m just from a different era.

Ironically, a documentary crew following Bret around caught all of this on tape, just as Barry Blaustein was filming the rest of the wrestler segments for his documentary, Beyond the Mat. The documentary about Bret was released about a year later and was called, Wrestling With Shadows.

It was a hard time for Bret. A month earlier, he had lost a friend, as I had, when Brian Pillman passed away. Brian was found dead in his hotel room, the day of a WWF pay per view, October 10, 1997.

I was shocked at the news of Brian’s death. I still feel sad when I think of Brian, because it was such a surprise. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t see it coming. He had crushed his ankle in a car wreck, but it never occurred to him that he wouldn’t come back. He always had in mind that he was still in the business and that he’d be getting back in the ring.

In addition to the 50 Years of Funk show, Barry Blaustein’s cameras caught me at a banquet, at my daughter’s wedding, at the doctor’s office, even getting out of bed one morning!

The strange thing was, the camera started out intrusive, but they followed me around for such a long period of time that, eventually, it just became part of the scenery. At first, I was doing things that weren’t my normal things, acting in a way that wasn’t natural. In other words, I was performing. But after a period of months, I got used to Barry and his camera being there, and there was no performance.

You might think they’d have been reluctant about having the whole thing shot for a movie, but the wedding party for my daughter Stacy’s ceremony was actually pretty excited about the cameras being there.

But my kids have always been like that. They never had to perform for the cameras. They were never shy about cheering me on at my matches, even if they were being filmed in the crowd. In fact, if you go back and watch the tape of my retirement in 1983, my younger daughter Brandee is in the crowd, crying. I guess I did something right, because those girls love their dad, and my matches would often get emotional for them.

Anyway, the wedding ceremony made it into the movie, and when I saw the finished product, I thought Barry did an excellent job with it. I understand Jake Roberts was pretty upset with it.

Jake “The Snake” Roberts had been a big star in the WWF, among other places, in the 1980s. By the time Barry caught up to him, though, Jake wasn’t doing that well. He was appearing at small independent shows and, judging from the movie, smoking a fair amount of crack cocaine.

I can’t really understand why Jake was upset with the movie. Hell, he smoked crack right there on camera! It wasn’t Barry’s fault. Barry just filmed Jake doing what Jake did.

My segment came out as me. What you see in that movie is pretty much how I am.

Every now and then, someone will come up to me and say, “You did a great job in that Beyond the Matf

I always say, “Well, thank you, but I didn’t really do anything. I just kind of walked around and was just myself.”

One time in the late 1970s, I wrestled once (and only once) in San Antonio under a mask, as “Dr. Knows It All.” I honestly thought it was a clever idea to go on one week as the mysterious “Dr. Knows It All.”

It didn’t last long. As soon as my match was over, I pulled the mask off. I knew it wasn’t working.

Another one that didn’t work was Chainsaw Charlie.

The WWF was in trouble in late 1997. Eric Bischoff and WCW had recruited away a lot of Vince’s stars. Vince damn near lost it all. If WCW had been smart and hadn’t gotten complacent in the late 1990s, they could have finished him off. They thought they were smart, but he was the one left standing.

And he was left standing because he was forced to push some new names, and a lot of them clicked with people. One of the ones who clicked was my Japan and ECW running buddy—Mick Foley, a.k.a. Mankind, Dude Love and Cactus Jack. And Mick was about to get a tag-team partner. He hadn’t yet reached his peak as a superstar, but he was definitely getting there.

Jim Ross, the great announcer who had come to the WWF and had become Vince’s right-hand man, was the one who gave me the call. I’m pretty sure Cactus had promoted to him and Vince the idea of us working together, but hell, if they didn’t want me at all, they wouldn’t have called.

I agreed to come in because I wanted to help that company. There’s just a challenge to going to a company that’s an underdog and trying to make whatever changes you can, to be a part of its improvement. And I think I was part of it. I wouldn’t say I was the swaying factor, nor did I ever expect I would be, but I pitched in my two cents.

I also wanted to go for Cactus. I wanted to do anything I thought would help Cactus. And I still would. Now, why I would want to do something for the big goof, I’ll never know. I guess I just like the guy.

I was actually supposed to work in the WWF in late 1993. They had called me about becoming head booker. They were doing their big Survivor Series show in Boston, and they wanted me to wear some silly outfit with a blue mask, to be one of Jerry Lawler’s knights, taking on Bret Hart and three of his brothers in a big tag match. Their plan was, Bret was going to beat me, then take my mask off and put his finishing hold, the sharpshooter, on me and beat me again. After that, “they” said, I would become the creative head of the company, replacing Pat Patterson, my old friend. Patterson had gone from being Ray Stevens’ tag partner to being the WWF’s booker, but Pat was looking to step down and take it a little easier.

I went to meet with them about it, and going from my ranch, with all the open space, to New York City, with the cabs and people, the hustle and bustle, was culture shock. It was an hour to get here, an hour to get there. There was no place to go that I was going to get to very quickly.

I met with them and then had dinner with Pat. It was great—we laughed a lot and told old stories. Then, I went up to my hotel room and went to bed. As I lay there, I got to thinking, “I’m not sure if I want to follow through with this deal.”

I got up the next morning and left a note for Vince. It read, “My horse is sick. I think he’s dying. I’ll see you later.”

A couple of hours later, I was at the airport, when I heard them call my name for a call on the airport paging system. I was running by that time!

And I came home. I escaped again.

As it turned out, that was when Lawler was having his legal troubles, so they replaced him with Shawn Michaels. I would have been one of Shawn Michaels’s knights!

When I came to work for him in late 1997, one of the first things Vince said to me was, “So how’s your horse?”