Have a Nice Day (32 page)

After the Clash, I was taken directly to the hospital, where I was X-rayed and examined and even, for some strange reason, given a rectal probe. When I received the diagnosis, I felt like the world’s biggest wimp. No, said the doctor, it wasn’t a broken pelvis or any break at all. I had torn a muscle in my lower abdomen. What? How the hell can something like that hurt so bad? I felt humiliated, because I just didn’t understand how devastating an injury like that could be. Hell, it was the same injury that forced Bill Goldberg out of football. Still, I got home at two and woke up at seven, confident that I would wrestle that evening. I was wrong. I could barely walk and needed a wheelchair to get around the airport. In the afternoon, I bumped my toe on a crack in the sidewalk and almost cried. I got to the matches, and after taking one look at me, Grizzly Smith told me that I wouldn’t be wrestling. I put up a very small protest, but I knew he was right. My streak was over. After eight and a half years in the business, I had missed a match because of injury. The next morning, I got an idea of how seriously I was hurt when I looked down and saw that my entire penis had turned black and blue. Unfortunately, even though my penis was now black, it remained the same size.

While I was hurt, Cowboy Bill made me the Barbarian’s manager. I’ve got to hand it to Bill-he kept me in the mix. The Barbarian was getting a shot at Simmons on the next Pay-Per-View, Halloween Havoc 1992 from Philadelphia. The main event of that show would be the illfated “Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal” match between Jake and Sting. To pump the Pay-Per-View, we shot a series of training clips showing the Barbarian to be impervious to pain-kind of like he is in real life. Jake and Sting shot a tremendous mini-movie that turned the show into a huge success … financially (it was WCW’s highest-grossing Pay-Per-View for a long time). Artistically, it was a bust, with Jake and Sting being especially hard on the eyes. A couple of days later, Jake was gone.

Jake was and still is one of the unique characters in the business. A strange mixture of a hell of a guy and Satan, Jake is a guy I both genuinely like and am troubled by. As a wrestler, he was one of he best, or at least until the Hanky Tonk Man hit him so hard over the head with a guitar that it nearly crippled him. These days, Jeff Jarrett hits a guy with a cheap-ass guitar, the thing explodes upon impact, a cloud of smoke adds to the effect, and nobody gets hurt too bad. Back in 1987, Hanky hit Jake with the best guitar money could buy, the only thing that broke were Jake’s vertebrae, and he went down in a heap, never to be quite the same man again.

His psychology and interviews were among the best in the sport. Without ever raising his voice, he was able to spellbind the audience, and I was not the only one who felt like I was going to school when I was in his presence. On the other hand, he could be a devious S.O.B. He would often go out of his way to make other people look bad. He was known to take somebody’s best shot and stand there daring him for more. Hell, he even did it to Muhammad Ali in the Superdome when Ali was a special guest there. This was back in Watts’s old MidSouth territory, and Bill had brought Ali in to be in the corner of one of his big stars. When the time was right, Ali climbed up on the ring apron, and the heels fed “the Greatest” for the big punch. BAM! went Ali, down went a wrestler. BAM! went Ali, and down went another. Now it was Jake’s turn. BAM! went Ali, and Jake just stood there. BAM! went Ali again, and Jake once again refused to move, this time doing Ali’s own shuffle and saying “C’MON, C’MON,” and trying to goad Ali into the ring. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in his shoes when Watts got a hold of him, even though Jake’s rationale was simple. “Hey, he didn’t have to get up and work here the next day-I did.”

Actually, it was a performance just like that one that changed the course of Kevin Nash’s career. Nash took a look at Jake no-selling some punches, turned to me, and said, “I know one thing, if Jake can get away with doing that with those skinny legs and that pot belly, than I sure as hell can do it too.” Nash’s improvement was immediate.

I really got to know Jake a lot better when we traveled together in the World Wrestling Federation. Jake had become a born-again Christian and had been preaching around the country. Upon his return to the Federation, Jake used the television exposure to continue preaching the word of God. It was this preaching that led to the most famous slogan and bestselling T-shirt in wrestling history. After defeating Jake at the 1996 King of the Ring, Steve Austin was interviewed and said of the Snake, “You come out here and you talk about your Psalms and you talk about your John 3:16-well, Austin 3:16 says I just whooped your ass!” The rest is history.

I enjoyed traveling with Jake because he was funny as hell, had great road stories, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the business, and most important, because I thought I was traveling with a man of God. Jake Roberts made me feel good about myself. Over time, however, chinks started appearing in Jake’s religious armor. For one thing, he told his stories about the bad old days with just a little bit too much gusto-as if he wished those days weren’t really over for good. Also, some of the things he did appeared to be not exactly divine.

I was on a road trip with Jake, Ron Simmons, and Justin Bradshaw in the winter of ‘96. Jake was chugging down brews, and felt the need to relieve himself. “Pull over,” slurred Jake, who promptly got out of the car and whizzed all over the tire of a parked car.

When he reentered the vehicle, I questioned Jake’s urinary decision by saying, “Gee, Jake, do you imagine the Pope pulls over the Popemobile so he can pee on parked cars?”

It was not the only time that Jake’s urine would play a part in my life.

Jake opened the door to the Fairfield Inn late one night in Detroit. I don’t want to jump to conclusions and say that Jake was drunk, but he was staggering and cursing, and he did smell like a strange mixture of barley, hops, and yeast. Later that night, actually in the wee hours of the morning, I awoke to a strange sound. The sound of water running, or more correctly, the sound of Jake pissing between our beds. “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at Jake, who simply replied “Uugh” before passing out in his bed.

I lay there for a little while, before the potent potpourri of Jake’s farts, piss, and beer breath really started to bother me. I actually went down to the lobby and inquired about getting another room. The lady at the desk told me that if I checked in now I’d have to pay for the whole night, but if I waited until 6 A.M., I would pay only for the day. I looked at the clock-it was 4:20 A.M. For the next hour and forty minutes, I watched reruns of Kung Fu and thought about what a great guy Jake was. When I woke up in the morning I headed for the gym. Apparently, the evening news was already out, as Dennis Knight (or Midion) was there to greet me with his dead-on Mankind imitation. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he squealed to an imaginary hotel receptionist, “I thought I’d specifically asked for a nonsmoking, non-urine room.”

Eventually the chinks in Jake’s religious armor became huge dents and finally gaping holes. On a road trip from Boston to Newark, Jake was going into detail about his preaching experience. I was really moved. I asked Jake if he felt he got a lot out of doing this. “Brother”-Jake grinned in his best weathered Sam Elliott voice”$ 1,500 a shot, plus gimmicks.” Apparently, Jake misinterpreted my meaning of “getting a lot out of it.” Many of the guys liked to tease Jake about his religious gimmick. One night in Calgary, Paul Bearer (my manager at the time) tore out a cartoon from Hustler magazine and taped it to Jake’s locker. The cartoon depicted a Catholic priest walking into an adult store and pointing to a blow-up sex doll dressed as an altar boy, while saying, “I’ll take two of those.” Paul then wrote Jake’s name on the cartoon and waited for Jake to arrive. When Jake did, his reaction was classic: He simply looked up at the sky and in a line right out of Luke 23:24 said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” What happened next truly shocked me as Jake healed two lepers, turned water into wine, made a blind man see, and upon leaving the room, walked across the water.

Guess who became a good guy. I’d been getting cheered quite a bit anyway, and WCW was badly in need of a guy whom fans could actually like. I was told by the company that they were happy with their number one guy, Sting, but that nobody else was even close. I knew I could be that guy-close to Sting in position, if not salary. I’d been with the company for a year and a half and unless the fans were blind or stupid, it was pretty obvious that I’d been going above and beyond the call of duty for a long time.

The idea to turn me was set in motion when Rick Rude became injured, and as a result would be unable to wrestle in the upcoming Clash’s ten-man steel cage main event. A match was set up in Montgomery, Alabama, between me and Mr. Wonderful (Paul Orndorff). Orndorff had five years earlier been one of the biggest drawing cards in wrestling. His run with Hulk Hogan had set attendance records throughout the country, but in working such a hectic schedule, at such an intense pace (as was his style), he had come down with a serious nerve injury to his neck. Because the money on top with Hogan was so good, Orndorff never slowed down until he found himself one day unable to lift his arm. He left the sport for a few years, but had been on the independent scene for a while, and with great determination had built himself back up to tremendous physical condition. One arm was noticeably smaller than the other, but his determination was such that the smaller arm actually became the stronger of the two. It was this same determination that Orndorff brought to this match.

Harley Race was the manager at ringside-he would be making the determination of who the tougher man was. Paul and I had a real good match, while Harley yelled encouragement from the outside. Harley’s enthusiasm turned to aggression as he tried to roll me back in the ring to continue. I took exception and knocked Harley on his ass, a move that prompted Vader to come out and exact revenge. With my sweatpants halfway down my butt, the Mastodon splashed me twice and left me lying. I guess Paul Orndorff was judged the winner by process of elimination.

In the locker room, I thought about my revenge. I was planning on coming through the crowd to attack Harley’s new duo from behind while they cut an interview in the ring. Someone suggested using a shovel as a weapon, and I began practicing half-speed shovel shots on the wall-after all, this wasn’t a class that DeNucci had offered. I was scared that I might seriously hurt someone-this wasn’t a plastic or even an aluminum shovel, it was solid steel. Harley saw me practicing these wimpy blows and came over to me. He pointed to Vader, and with his weathered, gravelly, thirty-years-in-the-business voice said, “If you don’t hit him, I’m going to come back here and hit you.” He had put the fear of Harley in me.

Harley was like that. He was an eight-time world champion, who had overcome polio as a kid, and nobody was more respected. He was known both for his classic matches in his prime and his classic Kansas . City barbecues in the present. One time in Baltimore, I had split my eyebrow right down to the bone on the guard rail outside the ring. The Maryland State Athletic Commission was required by law to pay for any injury that occurred inside the ring, but was not so required on injuries that occurred outside the ring. Back in the dressing room, Harley called over the doctor and said, “He was split by a headbutt, inside the ring.”

The doctor disagreed, saying, “Oh, come on now, Harley, I think it happened on the guard rail.”

Harley waited about a second and answered back, this time in a much firmer tone, “I said it was a head butt and it happened inside the ring.” I was brought to the hospital immediately. That doctor had the fear of Harley put into him too.

In the backstage area, I could see Vader, Orndorff, and Harley in the ring. I knew this was another big moment in my career, and I was nervous as hell. I kept thinking of my son’s tiny blue and green shoes, and repeating, “I love you, my little monster man.” It’s strange how often in this business I juxtapose beautiful images with brutal acts and a brutal act was about to take place.

I made my move and came through the crowd with my newfound steel friend. As I hit the ring, I could hear Vader deliver one of his standard lines, “I fear no man, and I feel no pain.” I swung for the fences, and Vader sure as hell felt that pain. Whack! “Owww!”-in an un-Vader-like high-pitched shriek. Orndorff was next, and I swung for his head, although he helped cushion the blow with his hands. Harley even fed me for one-the tough old bastard. What happened next was spontaneous, because the original plan had fallen through. About five of the underneath guys were going to come out as I continued my assault, but upon seeing how ugly it was getting, they literally ran away. Instead, Kevin Nash, Mark Canterbury, and Dennis Knight hit the ringside area, where by now I was waiting. These guys were my friends, but I was running on adrenaline and fear of Harley, a very powerful fuel. There were six hits; three shovel hits and three guys hitting the floor. When it was over, Vader had a burst bursar sack on his elbow, and Canterbury had a major concussion. I felt bad about it, but hey, I’d suffered a lot over the years, and besides I was a good guy now, a fan favorite-a babyface.

A few days later, Orndorff approached me in the shower area. He said he knew coming in that this was probably his last shot at getting a good run with a major company. He told me that he’d just signed a contract with WCW, and he told me that he thought our match had had a lot to do with him getting an offer. He wanted to say thank you. I thought that it was an incredibly classy thing (and I’m getting goose bumps writing about it now) for a guy of his magnitude to say. Orndorff still works for WCW as a part of their front office staff, and if I really did play a part in getting him there, it makes me very proud.

Ding Dong, the witch is dead came the voice over the telephone. It was my old friend DDP, and it was his way of saying that Bill Watts had been let go.

“That’s great,” I said, not really meaning it, but not wanting to be ostracized as a Bill Watts supporter. “But who’s taking his place?”