Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (52 page)

As Davey draped an arm over me for the one . . . two . . . I kicked out again at the last possible second. The crowd was stunned, but they’d only seen the appetizers; the best was yet to come!

After a double clothesline, both Davey and I lay writhing in a heap as Joey started a ten-count. If the fans only knew that I had come up with this move one night at about three in the morning. I had woken Julie up and somehow managed to talk her into lying on the floor next to the bed to see whether it would work. Now I entwined my leg through Davey’s, and before anybody quite knew what I was up to I twisted him over into my sharpshooter with no escape . . . right in the middle of the ring!

The crowd went nuts as I fought with all my strength to stop Davey from crawling to the ropes, dragging me behind him. When he reached them, there was an explosion of relief. Nobody had ever escaped the sharpshooter before! As I dragged myself to my feet, exhausted, I could see my invisible banana peel lying in the middle of the ring. Joey kept muttering, “Unbelievable!”

The time had come to break the hearts of all my fans and forever change my destiny. “Let’s go home!” I called as I slammed one last lifter into Davey’s chest, rocking him hard enough to send sweat flying into the air. I squeezed his wrist as the cue to reverse me into the ropes, and I dove over him for a sunset flip, the simplest move in wrestling. But instead of falling backwards, we did the old Leo Burke finish: Davey fell forward, hooking my legs with his arms, collapsing on top of me and pinning me beautifully. One . . . two . . . three! We did it! I did it!

There was a deafening roar as “Rule Britannia” played and Joey gave Davey the IC belt. After thirty-seven grueling minutes, I lay on the mat feigning being heartbroken, but in fact I was elated. I was also exhausted and in considerable pain, but I knew that the handshake at the end would top it all off, the last detail in this drama.

I made out that I was too pissed off to shake Davey’s hand. I’d planned all of this with Davey, but it became painfully obvious to me that he’d forgotten all about it. I desperately tried to make eye contact, but he was oblivious as Diana climbed into the ring crying, I can only assume for real. I’m thinking, C’mon, Davey, look at me and we’ll make them all cry, but Davey never caught on. Instead he was trying to milk the crowd. I was thinking, The drama is with me, not them, for fuck’s sake please look at me, Davey! After too many attempts I gave up and just walked over and shook his hand. He’d completely missed one of the tiny moments that can make it all more real. But what could I do? The torch had been passed.

Everything hurt, even my fingers were sore.

When I got back to the dressing room most of the boys had already left on the bus, but the ones who’d seen the match seemed blown away. I understood the art of losing and the power of sympathy. I knew that in the weeks to come, it would be me who was over; over more than Warrior, Savage, Flair, even Davey. All of them had been excellently executed!

I’ve always believed this was my greatest match, especially because I’d carried Davey all the way through it without anyone being the wiser. My dad would tell me later that it’s one thing to have a great match, but it’s another thing to have a great match in front of eighty thousand people.

Despite knowing it was all a work, and one that I had orchestrated, a deep sense of sadness came over me hours after the match. Losing the IC belt seemed all too real to me.

Later that night, I limped into the crowded hotel bar where most of the wrestlers, fans and office were celebrating after the show. Vince came up to me and told me I was the greatest athlete he’d ever seen and that he only wished he had one ounce of the athletic ability I had. Jack Lanza and Shane McMahon told me that I had the greatest match of all time and that they’d both had goose bumps up their arms watching it. I was surprised to see Pat Patterson back, but there he was gushing all over at what a masterpiece it was, especially as I’d pulled it off without any help from him. I told him that I was glad to see him back, and that I’d felt he was unfairly railroaded during the sexual misconduct allegations.

By the time I limped to my room and called home, the pain of the match was setting in. Julie barely spoke to me, handing the phone to Blade, whose voice lifted my spirits, but only until he said he missed me, which made me feel sadder. Dallas and Jade were both very emotional while Beans, probably the luckiest of my children because she cared the least about wrestling, consoled me for losing. Julie came back on the line and said she was sorry. I wondered whether she even knew what for. Sorry for the loss of income or for how she’d treated me for the last year or two . . . or three . . .

or four. I loved her dearly, but as we talked I couldn’t deny that my heart was broken and empty.

The next day I flew to America and ended up at the usual Holiday Inn in Baltimore watching the match on tape in my room. There was a knock at the door, and I was surprised to see Randy Savage and Ric Flair come strutting in. Randy grabbed my hand and told me, “Brother, that was the mother of all matches!” Flair said, “Hitman, let me shake your hand!” A couple of hours later, Shawn Michaels came by. He said he heard I had a tape of the match and he wanted to watch it, and so we did. He stared at the screen with a look of amazement, and when it was over he stood up, shook my hand, looked me in the eye and said, “You are the best, man. In-fucking-credible.”

With the help of a local framing shop, I was able to give Vince his drawing at TVs the next day, along with a letter. Given all that was to happen later between us, I now have to remind myself that at the time I really did mean it.

Dear Vince, It has often been difficult for me to express to you my sincere gratitude for everything you’ve done for me . . . I wanted to thank you for giving me a chance and I will forever appreciate all the faith and trust you’ve put in my ability. Over the past eight years, and in particular this last year, it has been an honor and a privilege to have played such an important role, to fulfill my wildest dreams, to create works of art on a ring canvas. I created this little masterpiece for you. I hope it makes you laugh and that it brings back fond memories of what has been an incredible eight years. I thank you, my family thanks you and I look forward to another eight more. It’s been a blast. Bret.

I worried that it reeked of opportunistic suck-holing, but I still handed it to him, and he seemed quite moved. By the time I left Vince’s office, I’d somehow managed to get Bruce sort of hired again.

Unfortunately when Bruce called Vince he was conveniently unavailable and Bruce was handed off to J.J. Dillon. When I spoke with Vince afterwards, he no longer seemed interested in Bruce, who, he told me, had told J.J. that he was going to be some kind of savior of the WWF and that all of Vince’s current storylines were horrible. According to J.J., Bruce said he was going to single-handedly turn things around for the WWF. Of course Bruce blamed J.J. for the misinterpretation, but I doubted that I’d ever be able to get Bruce a chance again. If Bruce didn’t have bad luck he had no luck at all.

On the last day of September, I sat on the balcony of a huge hotel suite looking out over the historic landscape of Berlin. Earlier, I’d posed for a WWF photo shoot at the Brandenburg Gate. I stood where the Reichstag once was, buying tiny chunks of the Berlin Wall to take home as souvenirs.

That night I left them standing and cheering at the Deutschlandhalle after a terrific match against Papa Shango. Everything I hoped might happen after SummerSlam was happening, and I felt almost out of control as I rocketed ahead.

There wasn’t a ticket to be had for Sheffield, Birmingham, Hamburg, Munich, Dortmund, Kiel or Berlin; in fact the entire tour was sold out months in advance. The European fans were watching American-style pro wrestling for the first time, and it was like another wall coming down. Germany loved me as I loved it, and I actually enjoyed the long scenic bus rides from city to city, usually sobering up from one wild night to the next. I had my headphones on listening to Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder yelling about running away and seeing the world. Every day mobs of screaming fans, mostly teenaged girls, waited for me at the hotels. I was more over in Germany than any other wrestler I’d ever seen anywhere in all my years in the business. I wondered about a conversation I’d had with Chief at the Winnipeg TV tapings. Chief told me that Vince was looking for a new world champion and there was a list with six names on it, three of them circled, and mine was one of them. “You’re on it, Stu, so don’t fuck up! They’re thinking of putting the big belt on you!” I was flattered, but I’d learned not to get my hopes up because nothing is ever for sure in wrestling.

If I wasn’t wrestling Papa Shango I was working with Ric Flair, who had taken the title from Savage on September 1. Every night the crowd stood and cheered while Flair staggered past them dragging the World belt on the ground behind him. In the eyes of my fans he was lucky to still have it. Flair and I had our best matches over there, while I took such a good beating against Papa that when I heroically battled back and put him in the sharpshooter, German fans wept with joy, chanting

“Hitman” over and over. Every night the barricades were stormed, and more than once I was knocked flat, sometimes with security lying next to me, smiling at the mass of tangled, sweaty arms pinning us down while I was flooded with kisses and hands squeezing my butt and crotch. I couldn’t help but think, You wanted it, you got it!

I was Vince’s brightest hope now, and I finally understood that he needed me as much as I needed him. Life was great.

When I got home from Germany, I found myself in a dressing room in Red Deer, Alberta, to work a sold-out show with Ric Flair. Chief pulled me aside to tell me that on Vince’s direct orders I was to catch the very first flight the next morning to Saskatoon TVs and go straight to the building to see him. When I arrived in Saskatoon and saw the WWF’s always immaculately clean ring trucks and the stagehands all wearing matching blue coveralls unloading state-of-the-art TV production equipment, I was struck by the contrast with the old days, when one of Stu’s dilapidated vans and a rusty old ring trailer would have been parked out back.

I patiently sat in a chair at the end of a long backstage hallway waiting to see Vince, who was having a closed-door meeting. After a few minutes the door opened and out came Flair, who turned around and shook Vince’s hand in the doorway. Neither of them saw me waiting at the end of the hall as Flair briskly walked away in the other direction. Then Vince turned and saw me and waved me over.

He shut the door behind us. I could detect neither good nor bad as I tried to read his face. He took his seat, tenting his fingers as he looked at me.

“You’ve been with me now for how many years?”

“Eight years,” I replied, realizing that I’d been with him longer than any other working wrestler left in the company, with the exception of Mr. Fuji, who was a manager now. Everyone from the early days was gone.

“And how many towns have you missed in that time?

“One.”

Vince praised me for my dedication. Then he said, “I’ve done everything I could think of, put the Tag belts on you, and the Intercontinental belt, and I finally reached the point where I don’t know what else to do with you.”

I wondered if this cold-hearted son of a bitch was actually firing me the very same day that he was supposed to be flying my dad up to be in my corner! I envisioned trying to explain all this to Stu. The blood going to my heart began to churn thick as mud, when suddenly Vince broke into that goofy grin and said, “So that’s why I’ve decided to put the World belt on you tonight!”

Dead silence. I simply did not grasp what he’d just said.

“Hell, aren’t you going to smile or something?” He laughed that famous Vince McMahon yuk-yuk-yuk. I promised him I wouldn’t let him down.

He said he wasn’t worried about that. All I had to do was keep on being the best worker in the business, and he’d take care of the rest. “Nothing’s ever written in stone, but my plans are to keep the belt on you for at least a year. Congratulations, Bret!”

We talked a little longer about what this would mean. “From now on you’ll fly only first class,” Vince said. When I asked him if that meant the customary limo every night in every town, like all the champions before me had had, he said no, and that he was also cutting out the private dressing room complete with fruit basket. I told him I didn’t mind because I preferred to be one of the boys anyway.

I was in complete and total shock as I shook Vince’s hand, promising him that I’d do the best I could every night for him and the company. I left the office like I was walking on air, called Julie to tell her what was going on and asked her to pull Jade and Dallas out of school so they could fly up to celebrate the big moment; it would be easier without the two little ones. Then I called Stu and Helen.

As the day went on word got around to all the boys, and I was congratulated by every one of them, even Warrior. Vince had also told me that Flair was fine with it, that he had great respect for me and was honored to put me over. So on October 12, 1992, I came out to a sold-out crowd in Saskatoon, where I’d had my very first pro wrestling match fourteen years earlier. Saskatoon. Who’d have ever guessed!

As Flair made his way to the ring, with his manager, Mr. Perfect, I hoped this would be one of the last times that Flair called the match for me. I was going to be the king now.

We had the usual tight, repetitive match. Early on, when I had Flair locked in an arm bar, he told me to climb up to the second rope so it would appear to put more pressure on his arm. Somehow, when he jerked me down, I rolled my ankle, injuring it. I had no choice but to keep going.

Minutes later he called for a figure-four leg lock. I scooped his legs and limped around to lock it in when he unexpectedly kicked me off sideways. I fell backward and jammed the middle finger of my left hand on the taught ring rope, snapping it at the knuckle. I sat looking at it and realized that it was bent rather oddly: It felt like I couldn’t uncross my fingers. I calmly reached up and grabbed it with my right hand and snapped it back, hearing Curt groan from the ring floor right behind me as he watched me do it. Nothing was going to ruin this moment!