Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (69 page)

I’d been gone since I met her.

Then I got a call from a documentary filmmaker by the name of Paul Jay, who’d seen my interview from Bonn and was so intrigued by the sincerity of it that he wanted to make a film about me and my life. I drove to Banff to meet him at the Banff Film Festival and immediately felt comfortable with him. I was interested in doing the project because, in wrestling, history is too often forgotten or rewritten. The only history pro wrestling sells you is what works for the business.

Vince had finally realized that I was a free agent. He was threatening to fire the other wrestlers who had doubts about signing their new contracts, but with me, he tried to gently coax me back. In New York for a couple of days taping on a WWF-approved video game, I went by limo to a meeting at Vince’s house in Greenwich, Connecticut. I sat with Vince and Jim Ross on Vince’s back deck, ducking their offers by telling them that things were looking good on the acting front. Of course I was lying. I told them I saw myself coming back to the WWF eventually and that I’d behave like I still had a chip on my shoulder over losing to Shawn. We’d work a rematch where I’d narrowly regain the title in another epic babyface contest. This could set up a third match, where I’d put Shawn over clean, but this time I’d shake his hand at the end of it and endorse him. Vince and J.R. told me they liked it.

When Vince walked me out to my limo he said, “You’re much smarter than people give you credit for.” Having worked for the man for twelve years, I didn’t know what to make of that, but I left him with the firm conviction that I was, as always, a team player.

On the first leg of my trip home I was surprised to find myself sitting next to Shawn on the plane. We smiled at each other and passed around the bullshit, and then I thought I should be up front with him about how we could work our eventual rematch. It was to our advantage that everyone thought we hated each other, including the boys, and best of all, nobody would know we’d even spoken. I told him I’d start building heat by making some remarks about his ring character, but it would all be a work. When I came back I’d beat him in a return match, probably around the time of WrestleMania XIII.

I saw the color drain from his face. He clearly didn’t like the sound of any of this.

I went on to explain that he’d win the belt back in a third return match, and then I’d endorse him, but I got the impression they’d promised him a really long run, like they always did, and he wasn’t expecting any interruptions. I told him that our rematch didn’t have to be right away—we could wait awhile. I wanted him to know that I understood, better than anyone, that Vince needed him to be WWF’s next big star and that he could trust me. In the end, nobody could make him like I could.

On my thirty-ninth birthday I went to visit my mom and dad. Out the kitchen window I could see Ted, Matt and T.J. wrestling in the ring that was always set up on the grass. I was amazed to see Matt doing standing backflips off the top corner and landing perfectly in the middle of the ring, which at that time was something few wrestlers in the business could do. Ever since WrestleMania X, Ted, Matt and T.J. had done everything they could to emulate Owen and me, practicing their moves all day long. Davey’s son, Harry, would be up from Florida soon to team up with T.J. against Ted and Matt for their big rematch at the Rockyford Rodeo. For a year they’d talked about how they would top last year’s outing. To my knowledge, the Hart grandkids were the youngest pro wrestlers ever to perform in front of a crowd.

But just two days later, Matt lay dying at the children’s hospital in Calgary. It was July 4, wrestling’s cursed day. A barely pronounceable infection, necrotizing fasciitis—caused by a flesh-eating strain of streptococcal bacteria—may have entered Matt’s body through a small cut on his thumb. He might have picked it up from the unwashed ring canvas. Georgia and B.J. were bleary-eyed, shocked and exhausted, yet they carried themselves with a dignified calm that amazed me.

Matt was spread out on a bed, tethered by a tangle of tubes and wires to life support. He looked really angry lying there, as though he was pissed off at God for putting him through this hell. His handsome face was puffy, his toes were a brownish purple-black and his vital signs were getting weaker. Julie and Georgia left me alone with him, and when I kissed his moist forehead, he was literally burning up. I rubbed his cold, blackened fingers, brushed back his damp hair and had a long conversation with God.

For almost two weeks Matt bravely clung to life while his body was ravaged and cooked from the inside. It became a national news story as Matt was given the dubious distinction of being the sickest boy in all of Canada. He fought on, but the only hope was to amputate all his limbs—and, if he survived, he’d surely have brain damage. Of course I wanted him to live, but I couldn’t help but think what a tormented and frustrated life that would be for such a bright, athletic boy.

Matt died on July 13, 1996. And the grim reaper of wrestling wasn’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.

On July 22, Vince was in Yakima, Washington, for a TV taping and decided to charter a plane to come to see me in Calgary. At a WCW pay-per-view two weeks earlier, the unthinkable had happened: Hulk Hogan had turned heel. Eric Bischoff had completely stunned the wrestling world, and Vince was getting his ass kicked, which was forcing him to rethink everything.

He put a contract in front of me and told me to name my price: “Whatever you want!” He told me Taker and Shawn were making around $700,000 a year. But I was in no hurry to sign. He left my house with nothing but my vague assurance that I’d come back in the fall.

Barry Bloom got me a role as a Viking on an episode of a kids’ show called The Adventures of Sinbad, being filmed in South Africa, which would coincide with a WWF tour there that I had promised to make. In fact, the South African promoter threatened to cancel the tour if I wasn’t on it. During the thirty-six-hour journey to Cape Town, with connections in London and Johannesburg, I all but made up my mind to go back to Vince. I wanted to help him turn the tide against Ted Turner. As an artist I still appreciated Vince’s canvas, literally—his rings were the best, even his ring trucks were immaculate. I had to believe that his marketing savvy would, sooner or later, rear up and overtake Turner and WCW. But for now, Vince could do little but hang on. The WWF had become a cartoon with its hokey clown and pirate gimmicks; my intense rivalry with Shawn could bring back realism and turn the tide.

Cape Town has to be the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. Everywhere I looked, whichever way I turned, there was another stunning view: black mountains, endless shoreline, spectacular foliage.

The houses had a quaint charm, a legacy of the Dutch who’d settled there some three hundred years ago. Every afternoon in summer a cloudy mist, like thin white cotton, bubbles over Table Mountain, pours over the edge and hangs over the city until it vanishes again. It’s some quirky manifestation of the weather and the lay of the land, but I was far more interested in its ethereal beauty than where it came from. And I was struck, of course, by the contrasts of the poor black townships that circled the city like the rings in Dante’s hell, where nothing much had changed despite the end of apartheid.

I flew to Johannesburg for two huge outdoor shows. Of the whole lineup I got the best reactions from the crowd every night, and in a big TV special being filmed in Sun City, I’d headline against Steve Austin, who was now going by the name Stone Cold. Johannesburg was a sprawling place where black-on-white crime was rampant. Most whites I knew there carried pistols. I learned this while following them through the necessary metal detectors at local nightclubs.

After the first show in Johannesburg, I stopped to have a beer with Davey and Owen in the hotel lobby bar, and they told me they were getting the Tag belts. Just after midnight, Jake Roberts stumbled through the front doors whacked out on something with three black prostitutes leading the way. The Preacher Man had finally cracked, his Christian values tossed out the window. He gave me that old, sinister smile—a look part reptile, part devil. I could have sworn a forked tongue darted out between his lips. I couldn’t help but come as close to feeling sorry for him as I ever would. Davey snickered and said, “Those are the same prostitutes ’e ’ad with ’im last night. So much for ’im being born-again!”

I spent the last two days of the tour at the Sun City resort in a hotel bar packed with wrestlers, fans and beautiful women. I was overdue for a good time, and had numerous phone numbers crammed into the pockets of my jeans. I had to smile when I saw long-divorced Yoko with his tongue down the throat of a comely white South African lady who was helping with the PR work. She was very drunk.

So was he. She’d be in for a big surprise when she woke up in the morning.

On the long flight home I had a lot to think about, not only about my future but about betrayal of trust in other areas I was involved in. While I was away, criminal charges had been laid against Graham James, coach of the Calgary Hitmen, for the sexual abuse of young hockey players under his charge in earlier jobs. He was later convicted.

On September 25, I headed to Los Angeles, where I’d been asked to do a guest spot on The Simpsons. Barry Bloom knew Eric Bischoff, of course, and he called before I left to tell me that Bischoff was eager for a meeting. I said we’d talk about whether that was a good idea once I had landed in L.A., but when I got to my hotel, Bischoff was already on his way up to my room.

He was a small, middle-aged guy with shaggy black hair and dimples. We talked for nearly an hour about, of all things, our mutual love of Western gunfighters, such as Wyatt Earp, Jesse James and Butch Cassidy (who hung around the streets of Calgary in the 1890s before going to South America, where he was killed). We got on so well I almost forgot why he had come to see me. Then he asked,

“So, what’s it gonna take to bring you to WCW?”

“I would want the exact same contract as Hulk Hogan, plus one penny,” I calmly replied.

That flabbergasted him. “I can’t do a deal anything like that, not right now.”

“That’s fine, I’m not really looking to go anywhere. I’m happy where I’m at.”

“C’mon,” he said. “At least give me something that I can go back to my people with. Anything.”

I thought about it for a minute. “I’d think about coming to work for you guys for $3 million a year and a lighter schedule.”

He said he’d take that home to the Turner folks in Atlanta, and we went right back to talking about gunfighters.

The next day I was picked up by limo and taken to a sound studio where it took me all of five minutes to do my voice on The Simpsons. The idea was that The Hitman had bought the evil Mr.

Burns’s mansion after Mr. Burns went bankrupt, and was now living in Springfield. I’d long felt that there were many similarities between Montgomery Burns and Vince McMahon.

On September 27, Bischoff offered me $2.8 million a year for three years if I came over to WCW. I told him I’d think about it, but now it was me who was flabbergasted!

Soon Vince was hearing rumors that I’d already signed with the competition. I called him on October 3 and alleviated his worries, telling him I wouldn’t do anything until I had a long talk with him. We left it that he’d call me over the weekend. When he did, he asked me directly what the WCW offer was.

“Three million dollars for a lighter schedule, 180 days a year . . .”

He cut in: “I can’t match it.”

I told him I wasn’t asking him to match it, just to make me the best offer he possibly could. We both knew that I didn’t want to end up in WCW. I hated the thought of being used as an assassin against him and a company that I’d devoted my life to. “But, Vince,” I said, “I’m in a position to make $9

million in just three years. I don’t want to leave, but I don’t want to be stupid. I have to think about my family. What would you do? Saying no to this is like tearing up a lottery ticket.”

He seemed to understand my predicament but said, “WCW would never know what to do with a Bret Hart.” He told me he needed a couple of days to think about it and then, just like Don Corleone, he said he’d get back to me with an offer I couldn’t refuse.

After we hung up, I turned the world off and took off on my mountain bike, pedaling anxiously up and down the bike paths of Calgary. Bischoff was offering so much more money than I could have ever dreamed of that I couldn’t help but think what accepting his terms would mean to my family. I was in a perfect position to set myself and my family up for life. I thought of the old, big-name wrestlers, legends from the past, who would show up in the dressing room from time to time having fallen on hard times, broke, crippled or close to it. Nobody in the dressing room cared about how many belts a guy had won, where he’d worked or how tough he was. In the end all that mattered was what he’d saved. Very few wrestlers ever made it outside the business, not in a big way, anyway. Now I was in a position where if I wanted to, I could pound out three more years and go home with no worries, at least not financial ones. But could I kiss my entire legacy good-bye in order to end up in WCW?

On October 9, Vince flew to Calgary to present his offer in person. We settled down for a talk in my dining room. As an opening act to the main topic, I brought up the Paul Jay documentary. He said he liked the idea and had no problem giving Paul access to the matches and the backstage area. Then we got down to it: Vince said he had a better deal for me than WCW. He wanted to sign me for twenty years, for a total of $10.5 million. The breakdown was $1.5 million a year for three years as a wrestler; $500,000 a year for the next seven years as one of his senior advisers; and then $250,000 a year for ten years thereafter, to be on standby as that Babe Ruth of the company Vince was always looking for. It was a satisfying feeling hearing him say, “I’ll never give you a reason to ever want to leave.”

WCW was offering almost as much for only three years, but when it got down to it I couldn’t leave Vince, or our history together. I accepted the deal and we shook on it. His eyes glistened and he gave me that yuk-yuk smile as we agreed that all we had left to do was iron out some minor details. At Raw in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 21, I’d announce I was coming back to face Stone Cold Steve Austin at Survivor Series.