Straight from the Hart (23 page)

By the fall of 1986, the territory seemed to almost be overrun with them, including Ted Arcidi, the reigning world record holder in the bench press; Bill Kazmaier, who’d won the world power lifting championship several times and was considered to be the Babe Ruth of the power lifting set; Dave “The Barbarian” Barbie, another big juice freak who was nearly as big and impressive as Kazamier; and last and probably least, the one and only Outback Jack, who was big but decidedly lacking in every other element.

Making matters worse, for some reason my dad had been coerced into paying all the power lifter types more than damn near anyone else in the territory,
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which would become a serious bone of contention among the rest of the crew when they found out.

Because my dad had invested a lot of money in them and also because he was trying to appease Davey and Dynamite who’d sent them our way, he kept admonishing me to push the muscleheads, which proved to be an exercise in futility as their work was the shits and they were also routinely injuring the smaller guys, including Pillman, who sustained a separated shoulder that would keep him on the shelf for several months.

After a while, with most of our smaller guys reluctant to work with the muscleheads, I had to eventually begin pairing them against each other — which was kind of like watching those godawful Godzilla vs. King Kong monster movies from the 1950s.

Since that wasn’t working and my dad was still insistent on keeping them around, it was back to the drawing board. I figured that since Kazmaier and Arcidi were bona fide legends in the weightlifting realm, perhaps we could have a weightlifting contest, which might garner some interest and, from there, we could perhaps shoot some kind of angle, for them to start a feud.

My dad, Kazmaier and Arcidi all seemed to like the idea, so we had Arcidi, a heel, challenge Kazmaier, a face, to a weightlifting contest to determine once and for all who was the strongest man in wrestling. Because both of them were legitimate legends, at least among weightlifting aficionados, we drew a pretty good house to see the big showdown. Unfortunately, the weightlifting contest — which for some reason has since come to be called “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Adventure” — would turn into a comedy of errors, with almost every conceivable thing that could go wrong, going wrong, including Kazmaier fainting. If you ever get a chance to watch that abortion, perhaps on YouTube, you’ll know what I mean.

In its own way, that skit actually had a positive effect, as it seemed to open my dad’s eyes to the folly of pushing the muscleheads. He soon sent Arcidi, Kazmaier and the rest of the musclehead misfits packing. We were finally at liberty to begin really concentrating on the young up-and-coming guys in the territory — much like in the early ’80s, when guys like Bret, Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy had been given the ball and allowed to run with it.

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Around May 1987, after undergoing exhaustive rehabilitation on my injured left knee with the Calgary Stampeders’ physiotherapist, Pat Clayton, I was finally given medical clearance to return to the ring. Before I started back on the main circuit, I wanted to do a few test matches in spot shows, just to get rid of some ring rust and to see how the knee held up. On one of those cards, in Claresholm, a small town about an hour south of Calgary, I tag teamed with Brian Pillman, who was just returning himself from a shoulder separation.

The match went surprisingly well and afterward, on the way home, Brian and I kicked around the possibility of forming a tag team.

For years, I’d come up with this concept, along the lines of Dirty Harry or Rambo, in which the babyfaces were badder than the heels and used whatever tactics they felt were necessary to see that justice was served. I mentioned this to Pillman — who enthusiastically threw out the name Bad Kompany and, after a few more beers, we’d even come up with this radical look for the team, which called for wraparound sunglasses, biker jackets and bandannas. We even came up with a distinctive new color scheme — black tights with pink lightning bolts. A few years later, my brother Bret and my brother-in-law Jim Neidhart
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would adopt the same look, which brings to mind that old saying: “imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.”

A couple of weeks later in Calgary, we were having a tournament to determine new tag team champions and Pillman and I unveiled the Bad Kompany concept.

Since I’d always been kind of an understated babyface type in our territory and had never really manifested my heel alter ego before, I was a bit apprehensive how the crowd might react. Pillman also had some apprehensions, but as anyone who later saw him in the WCW and WWF during his legendary loose cannon days can attest, he seemed to have a natural affinity for being a heel.

Our biggest concern was that we might make fools of ourselves, but we decided to throw caution to the wind and see how it went.

Though our heels in faces clothing persona was a radical departure from what the fans were accustomed to, they immediately embraced us, and Pill and I would become one of the hottest face teams in the history of our promotion.

A few years later, while he was in the WCW, Pillman tagged up with an unproven newcomer named Steve Williams as the Hollywood Blondes, and he would later impart the ass-kicking bad guy under the guise of being a face concept to Williams and he’d take it to new heights in the WWF as the Texas Rattlesnake, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

With Bad Kompany starting to get over, I was on the lookout for some dancing partners: a heel tag team to work with. In June, I received a phone call from Butch Moffat, a big heel we’d broken in a couple of years back. He told me he’d been testing out a new persona in Puerto Rico called Jason the Terrible, which was modeled after the hockey goalie mask wearing psychopath from the
Friday the 13th
movies. He said he’d like to give it a shot up in Calgary. I was a bit dubious, but I’d always liked Moffat’s work ethic and told him I’d give it some thought.

The next day, I got another call from former WWF midcarder Barry O, whose older brother Bob Orton Jr. was then one of the WWF’s top heels. He told me he was looking for a new start and mentioned this persona he wanted to try: a masked heel with dark overtones named Zodiak. I’d never been a big fan of witchcraft, hocus-pocus or that kind of thing, but as Barry was running things by me, I got to thinking that perhaps Barry’s Zodiak character could
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be tied into the Jason the Terrible
persona that Moffat had been pitching me the day before. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it and I ended up putting Moffat and Orton together — which would prove to be a match made in heaven, or should I say, hell.

Their success, combined with Owen, Makhan Singh, Chris Benoit, Ben Bassarab and Keiichi Yamada (Jushin Liger) as well as Bad Kompany, all contributed to a remarkable turnaround and our business that summer was the best since the glory days of the early ’80s, when a similar crew of dynamic young stars, like Dynamite, Davey, Bret, Schultz and Honky Tonk, had ignited the territory.

Overall, we probably drew more back in that earlier era, but the summer of 1987 has to rate as the most satisfying stretch of my career — mostly because we’d overcome so many seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to finally get back to the top of the mountain again. As an added bonus, my wife gave birth that year to our first boy, Bruce Jr. — all of which made that year probably the best of my life.

Things appeared to be in great shape heading into the fall, especially since we were able to add a few more useful pieces to the puzzle, including Corporal Mike Kirchner and Garfield Portz (a.k.a. Scotty McGee). Corporal Mike Kirchner was a kind of cross between Sgt. Slaughter and John Cena; he wasn’t a great worker but had a ton of fire. Portz was a Dave Finlay type heel from England who fit in nicely as well.

I fondly recall one story from 1987 that probably best reflects that memorable run. In November, we had a ten man elimination tag team match in Edmonton with Pillman, Owen, me, Benoit and Kirchner taking on Makhan and Gama Singh, Jason the Terrible, Barry Orton and “Champagne” Gerry Morrow. Most times when we wrestled in Edmonton, the boxing and wrestling commission, which was quite anally retentive, didn’t let us get away with much but for some reason none of the commission members showed up that night — which kind of inspired this “when the cat’s away, the mice will play” mindset among the boys.

Since we had more than half of our roster in the ten man tag match and only had three other matches on the card that night, we needed to put in some time.

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The match was supposed to go about fifty minutes or thereabouts. Before the match, as I was giving the boys their finishes, I was addressing Barry Orton, who was supposed to be the first guy eliminated, and I told him that we’d probably put him out around twenty-five to thirty minutes.

In most cases, whenever you have battle royals, elimination matches and that kind of thing, most of the boys are eager to get in and get out as early as possible and I initially figured that might be the case that night. As the match began to unfold though, an incredible pace was being set, with every guy out there doing awesome moves and things snowballing from the get-go.

When I heard the timekeeper announce that we’d reached the fifty-minute mark, it dawned on me that no one had even been eliminated yet and since I was in at the time with Barry Orton, I asked him if he was ready to be eliminated.

He gave me this kind of reluctant look and asked me if he had to leave so soon.

I told him that since we’d gone past fifty minutes and hadn’t even eliminated anyone yet, it was about time and he gave me this kind of sardonic smile and replied, “I’m not ready to leave yet; I’m having too much fun!” In retrospect, we all were; no one wanted to leave.

As l987 drew to a close, the prevailing feeling was that we’d only just scratched the surface and we were confident 1988 would be even better, as most of our young guys had improved by leaps and bounds and things were just starting to really mesh.

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