Straight from the Hart (17 page)

10/8/10 5:09:01 PM

♥
BRUCE HART
♥

window and climb out and just after I’d done that, I felt something brush by my coat sleeve and then heard a huge smash. I turned to see that a pickup truck had nearly hit me and had then smashed head-on, as well, into the semi. Though I was half dazed, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d escaped death, twice, in a matter of seconds. I quickly got my ass off the highway, but was definitely counting my blessings afterward.

Because of the injuries I’d sustained in the car wreck, the doctors told me that I’d be on the shelf for an extended period of time: a mid-winter break might be advisable. I headed to Kauai for a few weeks, with my brother Dean, to recuperate. While there, I had a chance to collect my thoughts and reflect on things with Dean — who, along with my brother Owen, was the sibling I’d always been closest to. In sharing perspectives with Dean, out on the beach, I related that my brush with death made me realize how precious life really is and that there was a lot more to it than merely the wrestling business. I told him that I’d been putting a lot of important things on hold, including starting up a family and other things, but the accident had served as a wake-up call. From then on, I resolved to not put things on hold but to seize the day, as some wise man once said.

A few days after I got back from Hawaii, I was getting ready to head to Saskatoon, where we had a wrestling show that night. Even though I wasn’t in the ring, my dad still had me looking after the shows. When I went out to start my car, I found that my battery was dead. I was kind of cursing the situation, as I was running late, when suddenly these two girls pulled up and politely inquired if they could be of any help. One of the girls, Andrea, was really stunning — so much so that I was almost in disbelief. After getting a boost, I was about to pull away when suddenly the other girl nervously inquired if she could get my autograph — “for her little brother.” I was more than happy to oblige and, even though I never thought they’d see fit to show up at the wrestling matches, I nonetheless invited them to come down to see wrestling sometime.

As I drove away, I was trying to wrap my head around what had been happening. First, I’d had this near fatal car wreck, then the seemingly prescient conversation with Dean in Kauai about how I’d always wanted to start a family and whatnot, and now, like some kind of angel, this stunning blond had dropped
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♥
STRAIGHT FROM THE HART
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in, from out of the blue. As I said before, I’m not what you’d call a religious type, but I found myself thinking that the stars seemed to be definitely lining up in my favor.

That Friday night, I heard a few of the wrestlers in the dressing room discussing — as they’re often prone to — this blond in the ringside audience who was unusually hot, a real eye-catcher. Intrigued, I decided to see for myself what was causing so much attention. I was pleased to find it was the girl I’d seen earlier that week. Much to the amazement and chagrin of the other wrestlers, I strolled up, kind of nonchalantly, and picked up where I’d left off with her.

Andrea and I went out that night for a drink after the matches. Soon, we were inseparable — we were married fifteen months later.

As for the wrestling business, at the time of my car wreck, things had been on an unprecedented high, but with me, Neidhart, Hito, Morrow and Davey Boy all out of action, that left us really short of faces, with Bret being about the only marketable good guy left.

As a result, it was obvious we might have to switch one of our heels to a face.

Some tend to think that switching a heel to face or vice versa is just a matter of changing roles, whenever and wherever, but, contrary to what they’d have you think, there’s actually a method to the madness.

The first thing is the element of surprise, in that when you orchestrate a switch, it should catch everyone completely off guard — if they see it coming, it won’t amount to anything. The other key premise to a good switch is the love/hate element. If the fans really love a face — as they had when Dynamite switched to heel — or, if they really despise a heel, chances are they’ll get over much better upon switching than if they were only half over before.

I got together with my dad and my brothers Keith and Bret — both of whom still regularly gave me input — and we discussed which heels might be best to switch to face. Keith, Bret and my dad were all leaning toward switching Duke Myers — a heavyset big heel, along the lines of Buddy Rose or Adrian Adonis.

I had respect for Duke as a worker, but was of the opinion that the heel we should switch was David Schultz — in part because he was a hell of a talker and had a ton of charisma, which I figured would make him more far more appealing as a face than Myers would have been.

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♥
BRUCE HART
♥

Initially, Bret, Keith and my dad were dead set against it and expressed apprehension that Schultz — who was our most hated heel — was almost too despised to get over as a face. I shook my head and told them that was precisely why Schultz probably would get over — because the fans did hate him so much.

In the past, I’d come to find that the emotional pendulum tended to swing back all the way in the other direction, so that if a guy was really loved and you perpetrated a switch, they’d hate his guts, or, by the same token, if they hated his guts and you orchestrated a plausible swerve, they’d become his biggest fans.

When I put it in that context, they seemed to get the point and we ended up switching Schultz that Friday night. He would, of course, go on to become one of the most popular and iconic faces in the history of our promotion — very much like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin would later become in the WWF.

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Mr. Hito, who was still laid up with the injuries he’d sustained in the car wreck, asked me if I could do him a favor and book a couple of young Japanese guys, Hiro Saito and George Takano, who’d been working in Mexico. In his words, they were starving over there. Since we were still short of talent, I told Hito I’d be happy to oblige.

The next Friday night when I walked into the dressing room in Calgary, much to my surprise, Hito had nearly a dozen Japanese guys with him. He gave me a sheepish grin and told me that since business had been so bad in Mexico, the other Japanese guys had all decided to jump ship as well. He assured me that they’d work for whatever we could pay them and promised me that they’d be no problem either. I kind of heaved a heavy sigh, as I contemplated what was I was going to do with the biggest Japanese invasion since Pearl Harbor.

I introduced myself to the new recruits who turned out to be the aforementioned Saito and Takano, Junji Hirada, Shunji Takano (brother of George), Mach Hayato, Itsa Wakamatsu, Rusher Kimura and Toru Tanaka.

Even though my dad had employed some excellent Japanese guys over the years, including Kinji Shibuya, Mitsu Arakawa, Chatti Yokouchi, Yasu Fuji, Tokyo Joe, Kim Sakurada, Higo Hamaguchi and Mr. Hito, for some reason,
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BRUCE HART
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they’d never really appealed to Japanese or Chinese fans in Western Canada —

very few of whom ever seemed to come to our shows. By that token, I figured that there wasn’t a lot of point in trying to appeal to that market. With my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, as any good booker should be inclined to do on occasion, I decided that a few modifications might be in order.

I quickly got on a creative roll and within the next few minutes George Takano was transformed into the masked Cobra from Uganda; his brother Shunji had became a Cambodian refugee; Mach Hayato — who also wore a mask — became a Filipino; Junji Hirada was given an Iroquois haircut and renamed Sunni Two Rivers. Toru Tanaka was converted into the heinous Ho Chi Lau — supposedly an insidious North Vietnamese insurgent; Hiro Saito, courtesy of Lady Clairol, was transformed into a platinum blond Singaporean playboy; while Wakamatsu became this dastardly Dalai Lama type monk from Tibet who preached love, peace and humility but, of course, refrained from practicing what he preached like some kind of deranged kamikaze throwback to the Second World War.

When my dad walked into the dressing room later that night, he almost did a double take and grunted, dubiously, about what the hell we were going to do with nearly a dozen Japs masquerading as fucking cowboys and Indians — as he put it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure myself, but as it turned out, the Japanese newcomers added one more dimension to our promotion and they would all go on to become valuable additions to our roster.

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By the late spring, Stampede Wrestling was again firing on all cylinders. That may well have been our high-water mark, artistically speaking. Around that time, an
Edmonton Sun
sportswriter named Terry Jones, who covered the Edmonton Oilers hockey team and the Edmonton Eskimos football team, wrote a column in which he claimed there was something wrong with the mindset of sports fans in Western Canada when an illicit endeavor like Stampede Wrestling was garnering higher television ratings than the Oilers — who, at that time, had the likes of Gretzky, Messier, Anderson, Kurri, Coffey, Fuhr and Lowe and are still considered by most to have been the most prolific offensive team in hockey history.

Quite a few of the wrestlers were up in arms and wanted my dad to call Jones and demand a retraction. My dad though was quite pleased with the article, so much so that he was thinking of sending Jones a thank-you note and perhaps a bottle of Crown Royal instead. I tended to agree with him; father knows best.

In May, my dad called me and told me he had some visitors up at the house who’d just flown in from the Caribbean — he couldn’t remember the name of the country. They claimed they wanted to bring a wrestling show down there and wanted to know if I could drive over to meet them.