My Life Outside the Ring (15 page)

I think I was also drawn to the fact that she didn’t really know anything about wrestling. Or at least that’s what she let on. I think it was two weeks after we’d met that she and her mom went to see
E.T
. at a movie theater near their house. As the story goes, the lines were so long they skipped it and went to see
Rocky III
instead. Once she saw me pop up in that movie she started to connect the dots on how famous I was.

My boy Nelson couldn’t understand what the hell I saw in Linda. “There’s a million girls out there. She’s just a Valley Girl! They’re all the same,” he said.

She certainly wasn’t “the same” to me. Everything about Linda seemed a million light-years ahead of the hard-edged Florida girls I’d dated. To me, she was a blond California dream. I was completely hooked from day one.

In the early
days of our relationship, finding time to see Linda was tough because of my schedule. We’d talk on the phone every day, but I’d only be able to catch her in person for a day or two at a time when I hit L.A. between flights back and forth to Japan. I’d asked her to come live with me in Minnesota, but she just wasn’t into the whole idea of up and leaving her California lifestyle behind.

The funny thing is, if she had said yes and gone with me to Minnesota, then I probably never would have reconnected with my brother Alan, whom I hadn’t seen since he split Port Tampa after getting shot in the back.

Linda and I had only been dating a little while when he suddenly showed up outside of the Gold’s Gym on Sherman Way, the gritty main thoroughfare that cuts east to west across the Valley. I’m always kinda slow getting out of the gym—it takes me a little longer than everyone else to quit sweating, get dressed, and come out of the building—but I was finally on my way out that day when Linda came running in with her eyes as big as saucers.

“Terry, there’s this real big guy outside. He’s bigger than you are! I can’t even see his skin he’s got so many tattoos,” she said. “He’s sitting on the hood of the car. He’s got a big, black beard and long black hair. He says he’s your brother!”

“Yeah, that’s my brother,” I told her. “Tell him I’ll be out in a minute.”

I hadn’t talked to Alan in years—since he was living in Houston under an assumed name. During that period I heard that he beat a guy real bad and threw him in a dumpster. When I asked him about it over the phone, he said, “Oh yeah, he was cheatin’ playing pool!” As if that was a good excuse. It was just ridiculous to me that he was still doing crazy shit like that, so I said, “I don’t ever wanna talk to you again.” And that was that.

Now all of a sudden he’s sitting out on my car. I have no idea how he knew that I was working out at that gym that day. I don’t even want to know. But the only reason he stopped by was to say hello, and I have to say: It was great to see my brother again.

Alan was riding with the Hell’s Angels at that point. He became vice president of the San Francisco chapter, and after our Gold’s Gym hello he started to show up with like twenty or thirty Hell’s Angels in tow every time I’d wrestle at the Cow Palace or the Oakland Coliseum.

I can’t even tell you how much that would freak the other wrestlers out. These Hell’s Angels were huge wrestling fans, but they all treated it like it was real and they wanted to come in and kill the bad guys! Mr. Wonderful and some of the other wrestlers would all hide whenever my brother and his Hell’s Angels buddies came around. I think some of them were just as scared of a real confrontation as I’d always been.

Whenever all these Hell’s Angels came around and I’d hug them hello, I could feel the metal on them. They were packing guns everywhere. The other wrestlers had a right to be scared. But it was also kind of cool, you know—it was such a macho thing to have a brother who was a powerhouse with the baddest biker gang around. It brought me that old sort of “SOG” respect from some of the other wrestlers. They just assumed that they’d better not mess with me.

Still, it scared me to death. I could tell my brother was high as a kite every time he came to visit me at those arenas—and to think of him riding around like that with these guys and all these guns? It just scared me.

I never really spent much time with him at all. I’d always say hi and then tell him I had to get ready for the match, and once the match was over I’d start saying I had to get ready to go to the next city, you know?

Over the next couple of years he met a lady named Marsha, and they got married and moved to L.A. He had another child with Marsha, David Bollea—who’s actually a mixed martial arts fighter now—and they opened a carpet-cleaning business. It really seemed to me like he was getting his life a little bit more on track.

Even though I didn’t spend much time with him, it was nice to feel like I had a brother again.

Wedded Blip

Linda and I dated for about a year and a half before I finally asked her to marry me. Having learned a few lessons from my failed engagement to Donna, I knew for sure that this was the real deal. I never felt happier than when I was with Linda, and she seemed to spend every moment with me smiling like I’d never seen a girl smile before. The engagement was enough for her to make the leap, and she moved to Minnesota with me into a brand-new townhouse I’d just bought—the first piece of property I’d owned my whole life.

My schedule didn’t let up, of course, and that didn’t leave much time for a wedding. So we simply made the best of it. On December 18, 1983, I flew back from Japan for one day, we got married in L.A., and I went back to work the very next night. There was no slowing down.

The wedding was great, don’t get me wrong. The party was awesome. The entire crew from Japan flew back with me, and all these wrestlers were there, and it turned into an all-night blowout. As the story goes, I got so drunk that I woke up the next morning still in my tuxedo. So Linda and I never consummated the marriage on our wedding night.

It didn’t matter, of course. Linda knew she had me for life. And I guess for her, the Valley Girl, it was a big, big deal. To catch a guy as famous and quickly-becoming-rich as Hulk Hogan meant she’d caught herself a big fish.

In retrospect, Linda and her whole family probably thought they had caught themselves a sucker fish.

My first clue was right there in front of me that night. Apparently the wedding guests ran up a huge bar tab—like twelve or fourteen thousand dollars. So Linda’s mom came up to me and asked me to pay the bill. And I did.

The parents of the bride usually pay for that kind of thing, right? I didn’t care. I had the money on me, and I was having such a good time, I just handed it over. That’s something I would wind up doing a lot of over the course of my marriage.

For the time being, though, Linda and I were off and running. A blissful husband-and-wife team, out on the road and living large. We didn’t have time for a traditional honeymoon, but as we traveled around for my matches, staying in different hotel rooms and partying every night, those first few years felt like a honeymoon that never ended.

The Man in Plaid

Verne Gagne had big, big plans for me by the time I got married. Nick Bockwinkel had emerged as the champion in the Minnesota territory, and they started booking me in Steel Cage Matches as his primary opponent in every big city from Salt Lake to Chicago. We were also putting our forces together with all these big wrestlers to buy time on Channel 9 in New York. We knew we had the talent to go head-to-head with the WWF, and with TV time setting us up, there was no telling how quickly we could take over the New York territory.

Oddly enough, that’s exactly when I got a surprise phone call from Vince McMahon. Only this time, the call came from a very different Vince McMahon—it was Vince McMahon Jr. on the line.

When I was working for Vince Sr., his son Vince Jr. was acting primarily as a commentator and ring announcer. When André the Giant came out of the ring all bloody from taking a Hulk Hogan beating, Vince was the guy in the suit with the microphone getting the ringside interview. But something sure had changed, because now Vince Jr. was a guy with bigger ambitions than I’d ever encountered in this business.

“Hey, I know my dad fired you,” Vince said, “but my dad’s gonna retire, and I’m takin’ over the business. We’ve been watchin’ how great you’re doin’ in Minnesota. We want to bring you in and make you our champion.”

I was flattered, I guess, but I had also been burned by the McMahons once before.

“Look,” I said, “I’m going on three years here and I’m doing really well, I only work four days a week, and I just bought a townhouse—”

He kept interrupting. He didn’t want to hear my excuses.

“What I’m saying is we want to give you the biggest push of all,” Vince said. “I’m gonna take over this business. I have plans to change the wrestling business and make you the biggest star in the world.” The McMahons only controlled wrestling in that New York–Connecticut–Massachusetts corridor, but he was talking about going everywhere. Worldwide!

Vince recognized how popular I’d made this Hulk Hogan character, and he shared the same vision I had—that I could take this character anywhere.

He insisted on meeting me in person, and a few days later he flew into the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. I had Linda go pick him up. “All I can tell you is you’re gonna see a guy in a plaid tweed suit with big shoulder pads,” I told her. He was a pretty geeky-looking guy back then.

Sure enough, she picked him right out at the airport. Linda brought Vince back to my townhouse, and we sat around drinking wine and eating pizza, talking about his vision. The idea was to take the WWF to venues all across the country and around the world, with Hulk Hogan leading the charge, and to go national with big TV events. I don’t think we talked about it that first night, but Vince Jr. is the guy who spearheaded the whole concept of pay-per-view TV. Before cable was everywhere, he had the idea to simulcast Madison Square Garden events on big screens in stadiums in other markets—instantly doubling, tripling, quadrupling the audiences for every big match.

With all the fly-by-night promoters and even the great promoters I’d worked with in this business, I had never encountered a vision as big as Vince’s. It lined up with all I had in my head about how big this thing could become—the monstrous vision I had when I first realized that wrestling was as much a performance as it was a sporting event, when I knew that I could be great at it.

Vince’s passion got me so fired up, there was no way I could say no to the guy.

Right around four o’clock in the morning, we shook hands.

Two days later, I locked the door of that townhouse and walked away from Minnesota, knowing I’d never be back.

Beating the Sheik

Linda and I settled into an apartment in West Haven, Connecticut, and I immediately started going back and forth to wrestle again for the WWF TV tapings in Allentown.

There was just one problem: Vince Sr. hadn’t retired yet, which meant that he was still calling the shots even as Vince Jr. was starting to step in.

As soon as I arrived I could tell Vince Sr. was a little uncomfortable having me around—partially because of the way things ended between us, I figured, and probably because the other wrestlers were so pissed off about my sudden arrival. They knew this Hulk Hogan thing was about to eclipse whatever fan base they had built for themselves.

Bob Backlund, who was supposed to be my tag-team partner, wouldn’t even get in the ring with me. It was all that sort of small-time crap that Vince Jr. and I were ready to put behind us.

In fact, our plan for world domination was already in motion. Just a few weeks after my return, we were gearing up for this massive coup in Madison Square Garden.

Not long before that, the Iron Sheik had won the championship belt from Bob. It was all part of a story line that would have Backlund back in the Garden to win that belt back from him on January 23, 1984. That was Vince Sr.’s plan. Vince Jr. decided to put me in that ring against the Iron Sheik instead, to give Hulk Hogan the world championship belt and start building this thing into something much bigger.

The obstacle was Vince Sr. A short time before the big match, he took me aside and said, “You know, Terry, we may have to put this off for a while. We may change our plans.”

I couldn’t believe it. I knew he was just caving in to Bob Backlund, who had been whining and complaining ever since he heard that I was gonna win the belt. He didn’t think it was right that somebody who wasn’t a “real athlete” would hold the belt. That was his excuse: that I hadn’t been a real amateur wrestler like he had.