Straight from the Hart (20 page)

In February 1984, things were not going well with me and Sam when I got a phone call from a promoter in Singapore named Terrence Priest. He told me he was organizing what he called “the world championship victory tour” in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore in March and April. He’d already signed NWA world heavyweight champion Ric Flair and number one contender Harley Race as part of his main event and, since Stampede Wrestling was syndicated in that part of the world, he was hoping he could get me to defend my world mid-heavyweight title on the same tour.

Given that I was the booker in Calgary, in the midst of our peak season, I would ordinarily have turned Priest down, but since I was sick of being Menacker’s fall guy, I eagerly took Priest up on his offer and was soon winging my way to the land Down Under.

The tour was interesting, to say the least. Ric Flair and Harley Race were supposed to be the main event every night — wrestling for the NWA heavyweight strap — while I was just under them, defending my world mid-heavyweight belt against the local challengers. Since most of the fans over there didn’t seem to know either Flair or Race — both of whom were cast as arrogant American heel types — their matches never got over the way they should have.

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♥
STRAIGHT FROM THE HART
♥

I was cast as an obnoxious egomaniacal American heel type as well, but since I was defending my title against the local champions — most of whom were faces — there was a lot more interest in the outcome of my matches than in Harley’s or Ric’s.

I hadn’t worked heel since my stint in Hawaii with Peter Maivia and company a few years back, but it didn’t take long to get back in the swing. I soon had fans hating my guts and cursing me out and all of that — which is, of course, music to your ears if you’re a heel.

The fans in New Zealand and Australia were much like the Samoans I’d seen in Hawaii. In Singapore, the promoters had me working with some local favorite and on the finish I was supposed to perpetrate some typical heel skullduggery in order to get my hand raised — no big deal, or so I thought. But as I was making my way through the crowd afterward, I felt something jab me in the ribs and looked down to see that I was bleeding. I made it back to the dressing room and found that I’d been stabbed. Fortunately the blade had hit my rib and I’d only sustained a superficial wound. The wrestlers informed me that the marks in Singapore perceived wrestling to be on the same level as boxing and, by that token, they bet heavily on the outcomes and that whoever had stabbed me was probably pissed off that I’d cost him a bundle.

I managed to laugh and say that if I’d have known that, I would have bet a bundle on the outcome myself.

Aside from nearly getting killed, the world title victory tour went pretty well and proved to be a welcome respite from all the turmoil back home.

There was one aspect of the whole tournament that didn’t sit well with me though. Nearly every night of the tour, Flair and Race would drop the coveted NWA world heavyweight strap — which was
the
belt in wrestling at the time —

back and forth to each other. I was taken aback because in nearly forty years, the NWA belt had never been dropped even once in my dad’s territory and, in fact, since the 1940s there had been less than a dozen title switches. Now, in a month or so, they’d dropped the strap that many times in front of a bunch of marginal fans who seemed to have no clue about the magnitude of the belt. Putting it another way, it would have been about like two NHL teams taking the Stanley Cup to, say, Africa and then switching it back and forth every night.

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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

One night halfway through the tour, I was having a beer with Flair and Race and told them that it almost seemed sacrilegious to see the hallowed NWA world title, which dated all the way back to Frank Gotch, being switched nearly every night so frivolously. They both told me that they agreed, but that since the powers that be in the NWA had authorized it, there wasn’t much they could do.

To me, it wasn’t a good sign. A year or so later, the NWA began to crumble from within. It would soon be replaced as the preeminent organization in wrestling by the WWF. I can’t say I was all that surprised.

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When I got back from the Far East, I was informed that Sam the Sham had been canned. I was handed the reins again; in retrospect, after all the bullshit we’d endured the past year or so, I don’t think anyone else wanted the unenviable task.

I was chagrined to find that Sam had switched Dynamite — who’d been one of the hottest heels in the history of the promotion — to a babyface. Other than Bad News, who was still being retained even though he hadn’t drawn much, our roster of marketable heels was pretty sparse. In sizing up what we had to work with, I decided to try out a recent arrival from Louisiana named Rotten Ron Starr. He was nowhere near as dynamic as Dynamite but had good ring presence and psychology. Not long after I’d taken the book again, Davey Boy and Dynamite told me that on a recent tour of Japan, they’d run into a rock concert promoter from Vancouver named Bruce Allen, who happened to be a huge Stampede Wrestling fan and said that he might be interested in helping with the promotion on the West Coast. I was intrigued, because Allen was considered a legitimate heavyweight in the rock music business, having launched major Canadian bands, such as BTO (Bachman Turner Overdrive), Loverboy and Bryan Adams.

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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

I gave Allen a call and we had a pretty good chat. He was one of those no-nonsense, cut to the chase types and told me that our marketing and presentation left a lot to be desired, but that he, nonetheless, thought we had an awesome product and with a bit of re-tooling we could be huge. He told me that several of his acts, including Bryan Adams and Loverboy, had come to him as relative unknowns and under his tutelage, they’d seen their careers take off. He was confident the same could be the case for Stampede Wrestling, which was good to hear.

Allen was so confident in his ability to do the job and also in our product that he proposed he handle the hype for our next show in Vancouver out of his own pocket with no obligations. If we were happy with how things went, we could cut a deal and, if not, then that was fine, too; we could go our separate ways, no problem.

Seeing as our gates in Vancouver hadn’t been very good thus far, with my dad’s old crony Gene Kiniski handling the publicity, I told Allen to go for it and we’d see how it went. With Allen handling all the hype, the attendance for our next show nearly doubled. Even more important, he secured sponsorship deals with outfits like Coca-Cola, Canadian Airlines, Nike and Rainier Breweries —

all of which was cause for excitement.

After the show though, Kiniski — who my dad was still giving a percentage of the gate — had some kind of altercation with Allen and even tried to have him thrown out of the building by security. Allen was steamed and leaving when I ran out and persuaded him to come back. He then told my dad that if Kiniski remained part of the promotion, then he wouldn’t. Since most of the wrestlers, including Dynamite, Davey Boy, Ron Starr and myself were in Allen’s corner, my dad had no choice but to dump Kiniski. It was no big deal, or so most of us thought, as he’d been getting paid twenty percent of the gate for doing virtually nothing but blowing smoke up my dad’s butt.

The week after Kiniski had been shown the door, my dad got word that his old friend Vince McMahon Sr., with whom he’d been friends since the 1940s, had passed away. My dad flew down to the States for the funeral — at the time, no one attached much weight to it, but McMahon’s passing would soon prove to have major implications for the promotion.

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♥
STRAIGHT FROM THE HART
♥

For the rest of the summer, with Bruce Allen now handling all our publicity and hype, our gates improved dramatically. That August, we set up an angle that had me teaming up with the Vancouver Canucks’ resident tough guy, Tiger Williams, and taking on Rotten Ron Starr and the “Great” Gama in a big grudge match.

The match seemed to capture the public’s imagination and we drew one of the biggest houses in the history of the promotion. The match went great and the crowd reaction was awesome with the fans all demanding more after the main event had ended — kind of like when fans at a rock concert demand an encore.

Afterwards in the dressing room, the boys were all pumped and with Allen and his rock music friends onboard, we had a feeling that the promotion was about to take off, like never before.

There was one thing that seemed a bit disconcerting to me though: in the past, whenever we’d drawn a huge gate, my dad was always visibly buoyed, but this time around, he seemed subdued. About all I could figure was that he was still pissed off at having to get rid of his free-loading crony, Kiniski, and that he’d soon get over it.

Two days later, back in Calgary, I was heading down to the Pavilion for our weekly Friday night card, which was sold out, when I heard on the radio that tonight was going to be the final show for Stampede Wrestling because my dad had sold out to the World Wrestling Federation. I did a double take and was wondering what the hell was going on. When I got to the Pavilion, I made a beeline for my dad, demanding to know what was going on and why I hadn’t been told.

My dad was quiet and then divulged that the deal had been finalized while he was at Vince Sr.’s funeral. He said that, at the time, he was pissed off with having been given the ultimatum to get rid of Gene Kiniski and also hadn’t liked the way things had gone with the likes of Sam Menacker and Archie Gouldie. So he’d decided to dump the promotion. He conceded, kind of ruefully, that with the territory suddenly taking off again, with Bruce Allen, Tiger Williams and company, he was having second thoughts about the deal, but that he wouldn’t go back on his word.

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