Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World (86 page)

I slammed the phone down hard, then sat with my hands trembling as my kids all gathered around to comfort me. Then I actually called my mom to tell her the vicious, biting words that Ellie and Diana had said to me, as though I were a little kid again. She told me that she and Stu were firm in their decision to support Martha; it was the only thing to do; it was their decision; and it had nothing to do with me at all.

“Why do they all hate me so much?” I asked, and she broke down. “Dawling, they’re all just so damn jealous of you. Jealousy is an ugly thing, and some of your brothers and sisters are infected with it.

They don’t mean it, they just wish that they could all be like you and have what you have.” And then she comforted me as best she could.

In Kansas City the next day, Martha and I and her Calgary lawyers met Garry and Anita Robb, highly respected Missouri counsel who hoped to be hired to handle Martha’s case. At noon we all went to a Kansas City police station where they showed us the flimsy sailboat clip the riggers used to attach Owen’s harness to a single cable. The chief of police and a room full of detectives explained what they thought happened. Some of the cops in that meeting had been in the ring with Owen less than forty seconds after he hit the mat and they did everything they could to try to save his life.

I had heard that he was supposed to do the stunt with the same Mexican midget they paraded out as me after Montreal scissored between his legs, and was shocked when the cops confirmed it. The midget had only been nixed that afternoon. The officers calmly explained that Owen had been alive after he hit the ring and that he lay there for eight minutes with a severed aorta, his lungs filling with blood until he drowned. He had tried to sit up, to reassure the fans, but he couldn’t. The impact when he hit the ring smashed almost all the heavy wooden ring planks and loosened all the ropes like they were rubber bands.

We were also told that criminal charges weren’t likely to be laid but hadn’t been ruled out.

Afterwards, the Robbs took us to Kemper Arena. As we headed up to the catwalk, Ed Pipella noticed a creepy insurance adjuster tagging along with us. When Ed quizzed him about who he was and what he was doing there, it turned into an ugly scuffle until security dragged the adjuster off.

It was a long climb to the top of the building. I wanted to get to the exact spot where Owen had fallen and started up a steep ladder to the catwalk. My stomach was queasy as I thought of a line from The English Patient, “If I gave you my life would you drop it?” Then it was a long, nerve-wracking walk along the catwalk to the score clock—and this was with the lights on. I could just imagine Owen having to race all the way up here as fast as he could in the dark, dressed in bulky coveralls, with a baseball cap pulled down to hide his face from the fans. Climbing over the railing of the catwalk must have been a terrifying moment. Standing next to the score clock, I looked out to where he would have hung. I pictured him fidgeting with his cape, breathing hard from the sprint up and then—ping—the sailboat clip holding his full weight released prematurely: the deep breaths he was taking would have provided more than the eight pounds of pressure the clip was designed to take. The riggers happened to be looking away at that moment, and when they turned back they were aghast to see that he was already falling, clawing at the air with his hands. I looked down and a chill went up my back wondering how in hell he let himself get talked into this. If Montreal never happened, I thought, and I had still been in the WWF, I would’ve stopped this from ever happening to Owen!

By the time I got home, I was even more distraught and wildly confused. Owen had been so straight and so good, whereas I had always broken the rules, always been a bad boy, drinking, doing drugs and cheating on my wife. Why would God take the best one? Owen once said, “You can be a good person and do everything right and it doesn’t guarantee you anything.” Since his death, the Harts were forming into backstabbing cliques of their own, with Ellie and Diana fiercely demanding that Martha and my parents settle with Vince immediately, extolling the head of the WWF as some kind of saint who loved all the Harts.

Not surprisingly, a desperate Bruce, with his wrestling school and the broken-down vestiges of the Stampede Wrestling promotion, was looking for Vince to fund him in some way. Smith was talking about suing Vince because, he claimed, he and Owen were going to open a wrestling school together. Owen wouldn’t have opened up a lemonade stand with Smith! Every time I encountered them at Hart house, Ellie and Diana demanded that I fill them in on the details of the lawsuit, yet every time I tried to make Martha’s case, it turned into a shouting match, which only upset my parents and the grandkids. If Martha could’ve been a little kinder to them, instead of propping me up to take the heat, she might have avoided a lot of heartache, for herself and everyone else. But really, this whole thing should have had nothing to do with the other Hart siblings, or me.

In one of her many curt phone messages, Ellie implored me: “I’ve got the right to feed my family, and my dealings with Vince McMahon don’t have anything to do with you, and nothing to do with Owen’s death. Not everyone wants you to be their spokesperson.” Ellie and Diana soon had Vince convinced that I was the driving force behind Martha’s lawsuit. After Owen died, we had reached a delicate détente about my archive of matches for the WWF, which Vince totally controlled, and he had been on the verge of agreeing that I could have access to them. Now the WWF’s in-house lawyer told my lawyer, Gord Kirke, that Vince simply had no recollection of any conversation with me on the subject. Vince now saw me as the enemy and seemed determined to make me suffer, as if I hadn’t suffered enough.

Eric asked me to fly down and meet him in Chicago on June 25 to talk about where I was at. It was still nearly impossible for me even to think about getting back into the ring, but as the days passed, I realized that it wasn’t right for me or my fans to let Owen’s tragic death be the end of my career.

Eric had been incredibly kind after Owen’s death, telling me to take all the time I needed, and I didn’t want to leave him in the lurch either.

At our meeting, Hulk was friendly and told me that he was anxious to finally work with me in the fall that year. Eric talked about putting the World title on me, but he understood that I wasn’t ready to commit to anything yet and that I still needed time to heal physically and emotionally. Both of them listened empathetically as I told them about the problems in the Hart family since Owen’s death and that Vince had offered jobs to both Jim and Davey, in effect bribing Ellie and Diana to be on his side against Owen’s widow. Eric kindly said if it would help the situation, he’d hire Jim back and told me to have Jim give him a call. I left, shaking both their hands, content to show up at the Georgia Dome on July 5 for an in-ring interview on Nitro. Eric told me I could say anything I wanted wrestling fans around the world to hear. For the next ten days I thought about it almost all the time. I really didn’t know what I’d say. Maybe it would be good-bye.

44

“WATCH THE KICK!”

WHEN I WALKED INTO THE DRESSING ROOM at the Georgia Dome, the boys rose from their chairs, one after another, to offer heartfelt condolences. In that moment, as in too many others, I felt more support and unity from my wrestling brothers than from my blood siblings. It meant so much to me when Randy Savage gave me a hug, with tears in his eyes. “Brother, I’m so sorry.” Jim Duggan put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry man!” (Hacksaw had beaten the cancer and was now back at work, minus his right kidney.)

Before I knew it, I was caught up trading Owen stories with Randy, Hacksaw, Crush and Brian Knobbs. I felt safe being back with the men who truly understood this life. These were my brothers from other mothers.

Suddenly, I was called out to do my interview. My terrible WCW entrance music rumbled and the crowd cheered as I made my way up the aisle, still having no idea what I was going to say! This was going to be a shot from the heart. Without even thinking about it, that day I left The Hitman behind and for the first time came out to the ring as Bret Hart, as real as real can be. No Hitman shades, leather jacket, ring gear, hair gel—not even the strut and the attitude. I did all I could not to break down as twenty-five thousand fans grew still for me, and for Owen.

And so, I learned at the same time as the fans did what was in my heart and on my mind. I told them what Owen meant to me and that I was at a crossroads in my life and I just didn’t know if I’d ever be back. “I’m gonna take some time, put things in perspective, but if I never get the chance to ever say it again, I just want to thank all my fans everywhere that I ever had and still have. You’ve been with me from the very start and if this is the last chance I ever get to talk to all my fans all over the world, thank you very, very much. I wanna thank all the wrestlers in dressing rooms all over the world, it was a pleasure to work with each and every one of you. I hope I wasn’t too stiff!”

I returned home to find another phone message from Ellie: “I want to know what’s going on with the lawsuit. I want to find out what options Mom and Dad have. If you want to go through with this five or six years down the road, even two years, it’s taking its toll on Dad and we need to discuss this. It’s not the only way to go. Enlighten me a bit. Di and me haven’t done anything yet. We’ve got a bad rap. No more stress on Dad.”

What was I to make of that?

When I called my mom, she said, “I just wake up every day and try to live with it all day long all over again.” Stu was never the same after Owen died. My mom wept, a few weeks later, when I confided to her that I’d been talking to Senator Harry Hayes’s office in Ottawa and that they were in the process of nominating Stu for the Order of Canada, the highest civilian medal of honor in the country, in recognition of the lifetime of charity work my dad had done.

My mom said that I needed to remember that she and Stu were with me 100 percent, and that they were suing the WWF along with Martha. In an attempt to ease the family tension, Martha’s lawyers were trying to work out an agreement that would allocate a portion of my parents’ settlement to each of the remaining siblings if Stu and Helen died before the suit was settled. But Ellie, Diana and Bruce refused to sign any such agreement. Before long, Ellie was calling Martha’s lawyers names again. The idea was scrubbed and the potential truce was quickly forgotten.

On July 27, Vince coolly stated on Off The Record: “Out of respect for Owen, I met with Bret. Bret carried the entire conversation. I really thought he wanted to talk about Owen. . . . It was looking into the eyes of a skeleton, in some respects. It seemed like he wasn’t human. It was a very weird experience.” Vince went on to pretty much blame me for everything related to Martha’s lawsuit. I was already mad that he’d reneged on his promise to give me access to my footage, but when he referred to me as a skeleton and to my not being human, my anger flared into real hatred. But as far as criminal responsibility for Owen’s death went, four days later he was in the clear. After two months, on July 31, then and only then did the Kansas City Police determine that there wasn’t enough evidence for criminal charges against Vince.

WCW called me out of the blue to come work some house shows with Hogan; I actually looked forward to going back on the road. At the Cow Palace in San Francisco, Hogan did all he could to show me he could work a realistic style. It’s fair to say that nobody, especially Terry, wanted the boys to come back saying how bad it was, because almost nobody ever had a bad match with me. It seemed to loosen everybody up when I took to the blackboard again, drawing Knobbs with ten penises and a speech balloon that read, “Now you know why they call me Knobbs.” A lot of the WCW boys had only heard about the cartoons I used to draw in the WWF dressing rooms, and it was nice to see Sting and the rest of the boys crack up laughing.

I wasn’t the only Hart-affiliated wrestler to return to the ring. Flying the couple in to New York City so that Davey could do an interview with the WWF magazine, Vince put Davey and Diana up at the Waldorf Astoria. In the interview Davey again did what Martha asked him specifically not to do, declaring that Owen’s death was nobody’s fault. He also garnered headlines in the Calgary papers about his courageous comeback.

I did some Florida dates leading to Nitro in Miami on September 6. Eric said he wanted me to work a hero-versus-hero concept for a couple of months, leading into Halloween Havoc. The hope was that the good reaction at the house shows with Hogan might help turn WCW’s sagging business around.

When I walked into Eric’s office at Miami Nitro, I hadn’t been seen on TV since the interview in which I’d said I wasn’t sure if I’d ever wrestle again. I waited around all day until Eric finally broke the news that I would be part of a heel run-in. I said, “After all these months I’ve come here to do what?” Given all that had happened, having me do a run-in on someone else’s match would have been an incredible waste, and really dumb booking.

At 7:59, one minute before the live show started, Eric decided that I should do an interview, and then walked alongside me to the TV entranceway inventing what he wanted me to say. I walked out to a good pop from the crowds but went into the ring and cut a shitty promo, talking about how I was coming back soon but I didn’t know when. What should’ve been a huge kickoff for my return was just terrible.

I think Eric knew his days were numbered. First his boss, Harvey Schiller, was gone, then on September 10, Eric was too. Bill Bush, who’d been WCW’s head accountant, took over from Eric, and the first thing he did was hire Vince McMahon’s now-former scriptwriter, Vince Russo. Russo, a thin New Yorker with a black beard and mustache, liked to dress only in black and had the air of a carnie magician. It was Russo who’d come up with the idea for the Blue Blazer to descend from the rafters in Kansas City. As soon as Owen landed in the ring, he was supposed to trip and fall as a spoof on wrestling superheros. That’s why there had been no safety line—Owen had to release himself quickly so he could deliver Russo’s pratfall. I’m not laying blame here. It’s punishment enough that Russo has to live with the knowledge of his role in Owen’s death.