1995-1999

Davey had cut his hair and now sported a flat-top that gave him a fresh, chiseled look, and he was
enthusiastic about the possibility of forming a new tag team with Lex. I enjoyed reminiscing with him
about our old Stampede days and soon had him laughing about the time Jim stuck fish eyes in the
pockets of Davey’s pants. I was happy to see him laugh, and I kept giving him little jabs in the ribs
every time he tried to order. He’d been laughing so hard, with those big dimples showing, that he
was never able to get his order in. He told me he hoped to work with me again and that he was
thinking of turning heel just so he could challenge me. “Fookin’ clique’s trying to take over now,” he
said. “Fookin’ Shawn is barely two hundred pounds sopping wet.”



“Shawn’s a decent guy, but he’s got his little hang-ups,” I replied. “Unfortunately, one of them is
being an asshole.”



I celebrated the safe end of another tour at Cookies in Frankfurt and thought about how I could blow
them away at In Your House by working two totally different matches with Hakushi and Lawler.
Diesel was wrestling Sycho Sid as a carry over from WrestleMania XI, and I doubted they could top
me. What Sid Eudy lacked as a worker he made up for as a great-looking specimen; he was well
muscled at six-foot-nine, with a big square jaw and curly blond hair. Owen and Yoko were going to
win the Tag belts at In Your House, which would help now that Owen and Martha were expecting
their second child in October. Owen and I had no idea if or when we would ever work together
again, and I kidded him, “Don’t worry, we’ll do the dance of death somewhere down the line.”



Our match wasn’t expected to mean much as Hakushi and I opened that first In Your House, on May
14, 1995, in Syracuse, but we completely blew them away with unexpected aerial moves that’d only
been seen in Japan. Then I rolled him up tighter than a sushi roll for the pinfall.



Diesel and Sid delivered the kind of sub-par match that was to be expected.



My second match, with Lawler, had a ton of heat, especially when Hakushi interfered by helping
Lawler steal a pinfall on me. At the end of the night, Vince told me that my matches saved the show.
Kevin was irritable and gave me a look as though he wanted to kick that gold belt across the
dressing-room floor to me.




Over the next few weeks I watched Sid and Diesel struggle to carry the main event while I cruised
through matches with Hakushi. Meanwhile, Lawler and I were building heat for a rematch at King of
the Ring, for which I’d obliged Lawler by letting him come up with any kind of match he wanted.



I got Chris Benoit a tryout at TV in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on June 7, working with Owen. They put
on a wrestling clinic that would have impressed any wrestler anywhere. There was another new
arrival from WCW, Paul Levesque, a hook-nosed bodybuilder who came out of Killer Kowalski’s
wrestling school. He was a decent worker who was quick to cozy up to his old pal Kevin Nash.



That night, I drove to Pittsburgh with Owen and Benoit. I could tell by the way Owen talked about
the baby coming that he relished having a second child. Benoit looked really happy for him, and I
realized then that these two were close. Like Owen, Chris was a notorious ribber, and I enjoyed
hearing of their old antics when they were in Calgary and Japan together. I thought for sure Benoit
would be hired, but both Pat and Jim Ross passed on him for reasons that nobody in their right mind
could ever understand, especially considering that Vince was so low on talent.



There was the usual fired-up Philly crowd for King of the Ring on June 25, a growing number of
whom were becoming hard-core ECW supporters, largely because the promotion was based there.
The match of Lawler’s choosing turned out to be a “kiss my foot” match. The silliness of it ended up
being just what this crowd was looking to sink their teeth into. Lawler and I delivered another
intense brawl, which ultimately ended with me propped up on the top corner, plucking my laces,
pulling off my boot, and cramming my toes into Jerry’s mouth. I even crunched Jerry up like an
accordion and stuck his own toes into his mouth.



Diesel injured his elbow, which was a real no-no for the champion, because everything was built
around him and now he couldn’t work. Payoffs were down, morale too.



On that flight home I finally found time to study my lines for my first episode of the new season of
Lonesome Dove. I’d done two shows as mountain man Luther Root and was now written in as a
semi-regular character. I saw Lonesome Dove as a sabbatical from wrestling. I’d still wrestle
weekends, but I’d finally have more time at home, where I celebrated my thirty-eighth birthday and
my thirteenth wedding anniversary. I spent time with my kids riding hard around the bike paths of
Calgary to keep up my cardio conditioning and the elasticity in my knees. My world was spinning as
fast as the blurred spokes of my wheels. Blade rode in front of me, and I had to admire him when he
said, “Don’t worry about me, man. I’m a happy little kid!” So was I.




Shawn was now the Intercontinental champ. While I’d been home, the clique had managed to
maneuver themselves into all the top spots, and it wasn’t sitting well with the boys in the dressing
room.



I showed up for Raw in Louisville, Kentucky, on July 24, where I was booked against Hakushi again. I
liked him enough to have established him as a serious heel, but, unfortunately, because of his kindly
nature, everyone who had worked with him since had made a point of eating him up. He seemed
relieved to see me and got real serious when I explained that we’d just have to go out and show
them all over again. I put together a match filled with all the aerial moves we thought were too risky
to do at our In Your House match. Midway through it, I was on the floor when Hakushi hit the far
ropes and did a cartwheel, a handspring and then back-somersaulted over the top rope, spinning
right on top of me in what Dave Meltzer aptly described as the first space flying tiger drop ever seen
in the United States. With one kick out after another, we tore the house down until I suplexed him
standing off the top and twisted him in the sharpshooter. The Louisville Gardens came unglued.



Back in the dressing room, Owen stood with a bunch of the other wrestlers clapping as he said,
staccato, “The best there is! The best there was! The best there ever will be!”



Davey Boy double-crossed Lex and turned heel. Undertaker was, once again, called upon to work a
miracle, this time with Mabel, who had won the King of the Ring crown. And Bob Backlund was
running for president of the United States. Not really, but they had a lot of people actually believing
that he was a candidate!



As an offshoot to my on-and-off feud with Lawler, the storyline continued that his mouth had
become infected from my toes so I was now to wrestle his dentist, Dr. Isaac Yankem, at SummerSlam
in August. Yankem was actually a curly-haired, broad-shouldered six-foot-eight rookie named Glen
Jacobs, who’d only just started working Lawler’s Memphis territory. He later became known as Kane.
I found it hard to get excited about working the cartoon storylines that Vince had for me, especially a
September In Your House match I was supposed to have with Pierre LaFitte because he stole my ring
jacket. I did my best to make these lame angles fly.



The night after Evansville TVs, at Mattingly’s, a sports bar owned by the New York Yankees, Taker sat
with me and confided that he didn’t trust Shawn. While I’d been away, the clique had been prancing
around acting like their shit didn’t stink.



Our attention turned to a disturbance at the far end of the bar. Shawn had made some kind of a
racial slur, and the situation was escalating because Razor stepped in and head-butted a black guy.


Diesel was there standing guard over Shawn, who’d taken a handful of Somas and was in no shape
to back up his own words. Lurking in the shadows was Paul Levesque, who was now working as a
snooty, rich aristocrat named Hunter Hearst Helmsley, eventually to be known as Triple H. With him
was his girlfriend, Joanie Laurer, a fellow graduate from Kowalski’s school, who was now working as
his valet, Chyna. She was a female bodybuilder who resembled the Incredible Hulk cartoon character
with a black wig on, but spoke with a little, squeaky high voice. Chyna was built better than most of
the boys, but as far as I know Vince didn’t steroid test the girls.



Earlier that day Vince had told me Diesel wasn’t cutting it as champion, making the excuse that it
was because of his elbow. But I’d always thought that Diesel was as good as dead after he worked
with Shawn back at WrestleMania XI. I suggested to Vince that Kevin needed sympathy, and I knew
how to get it for him. I could beat him for the belt by using an idea that came to me while watching
Sabu in ECW crashing through tables. It was a new finish designed around dropping the belt back to
Kevin at WrestleMania XII. As I explained it to Vince, he frantically scribbled it in his big black book.



Three days later, wrestling was all a strange, faraway dream. I sat on the Lonesome Dove set in a
saloon called the Ambrosia Club waiting for my next scene. I was thrilled to hear that it was all but
certain that I’d be a full-time cast member next season, playing the sheriff in all sixteen episodes.



On August 6, Vince called to tell me that he wanted me to win the belt, at Survivor Series, by
crashing through a table. I listened to Vince tell me my finish as if I’d never heard it before. The only
thing I could come up with was that he’d read what he’d written down in his black book and
somehow actually thought it was his idea. All I could do was hope that he’d write down all my ideas
from now on!



But it was Shawn he wanted me to drop the belt to at WrestleMania, not Kevin. “Do you have any
problems with that?”



I thought about it. Despite how the boys felt about him, Shawn was a hard worker and had paid his
dues as far as I could see. Of course I had no problem with it. The timing was perfect. I could go right
into my sheriff role, filming all summer long, and reappear just in time for SummerSlam ’96.



By mid-August, Pat stepped down to take a break, voluntarily making room for Vince to hire Jim
Ross’s mentor, the one-time Louisiana promoter (and more recently WCW booker) Bill Watts. I took
this as a positive, especially since Watts was a hard-nosed, in-your-face, tough guy who liked his
wrestling to look real.




I had a better match that anyone expected with Dr. Isaac Yankem at SummerSlam. I was pleased to
find that despite being green, Glen Jacobs had a willingness to listen and learn. I told him to be
proud of himself, and he was.



On September 4, WCW launched a Monday night show called Monday Nitro to go head to head with
Monday Night Raw. The centerpiece of their debut show was a surprise appearance by Lex Luger,
who, like Randy, had read the writing on the wall and left the WWF before it was too late.



Owen and Yoko lost the belts to a young cowboy team called The Smokin’ Gunns. Owen was now
the proud father of a brand-new baby girl, Athena. For all those times he’d pulled pranks on me, I’d
told everyone, straight faced, that he named her after Stu! It was kind of funny how mad he got
when everybody kept congratulating him on the birth of his daughter Stuella. I?enjoyed finally
paying him back.



I didn’t mind putting Shawn over at WrestleMania XII, but I knew that Shawn wasn’t the guy to fill
my shoes, and I was damn sure he wouldn’t draw any better than I did. One big difference between
me and Shawn, which would cost him, was that I appreciated my undercard. I always took the time
to shake the hands of even the lowest jobber. A relatively small babyface always needs the heels to
make him, but Shawn treated a lot of the wrestlers like they weren’t good enough to work with him.
The clique had managed to alienate themselves from nearly everyone, even the ring crew. Ron
Harris, one of the big, bald-headed twins called The Blues Brothers, didn’t take kindly to Shawn’s
remarks about his match. He grabbed a terrified Shawn by the neck in the shower at Madison
Square Garden and told him if he wise-assed him again he’d shove his head up his ass! Shawn had
even berated Chief, in what was the beginning of the end for one of Vince’s most loyal generals.



Bill Watts lasted only a few weeks, resigning on October 13 when he realized that Vince just wasn’t
listening to him. It got back to me that Watts quit over Vince putting the belt on Shawn. He thought
Shawn was too damn scrawny and that the belt should stay with me. Vince brought Pat back to work
with him on booking, but lessened his load by putting Jerry Brisco in charge of all the wrestlers.
Brisco cozied up to me, pretending to be an old friend, one of the boys, and as there didn’t seem to
be any choice, I tried to trust him.



The day after Watts resigned, Shawn yapped off one too many times, this time to a bunch of marines
in a Syracuse bar. According to Davey, who was there with Kid, Shawn hit on a soldier’s girl, who was
waitressing. By the end of the night the three wrestlers were loaded up on Somas, and the willing
waitress offered to drive them back to their hotel. They staggered out to their car, only to be met
by—depending on what version of the story you believe—four to nine angry marines. The three of


them were helpless. The soldiers jerked Shawn out of the front seat, and Davey and Kid fumbled in
slow motion to get out of the back. Kid made a pathetic attempt to throw some karate kicks, but he
was so out of it they pushed him over like a scarecrow. Davey was so pilled up that he was barely
able to stand, but as hard as they tried, they couldn’t take him down. He winced when he told me
how they slammed Shawn’s head in the car door and pummeled him with fists and boots, with
Shawn too drugged up to even put his hands up to shield his face.



At In Your House in Winnipeg on October 22, Shawn made a brief appearance, explaining that he’d
been jumped by nine marines and would be out of action for a while. He conveniently forfeited the
Intercontinental belt to Razor that same day, via an ECW import called Shane Douglas, so he could
go home while his face healed up. Because the IC belt was still a big money spot, the attitude in the
dressing room was that it was the clique looking out for their own again.



I was a guest announcer for Diesel’s match with Davey, and we got into a pie-face pushing kind of
thing while I was at the announcers’ table. Diesel got no help from the Canadian audience, and the
match bombed badly enough that Vince hurled his headset down in disgust and hissed, “Horrible!” It
was around this time that WCW accomplished the unthinkable by beating Vince in the ratings, which
only made things seem that much worse.



My match with Diesel at Survivor Series was brutally physical. We complemented each other,
working and building the match for more than twenty-five minutes until I dove over the top onto
Diesel; he moved out of the way and I bounced hard off the padded floor. Diesel pulled himself up
the ropes and back into the ring while I slowly got to my feet. Walking past the announcers’ table I
began to climb up on the apron when Diesel charged past Earl Hebner, using the top rope to catapult
me crashing backward into the table, which was nowhere near gimmicked enough. It didn’t break
the way it was supposed to and it was a loud, bruising crash.



As I lay hurt and helpless atop the shattered table, Diesel came out and tossed me into the ring like a
rag doll, all the while taking his time appearing to be upset about it. He raised his black-gloved fist
and pulled me up for his jackknife finish when I dropped and folded him up in a quick small package
for the one . . . two . . . three. The crowd exploded! On what was my forty-first pay-per-view, I won
the WWF World title for the third time. Diesel furiously bumped down the ref and gave me not one,
but two, very sloppy and painful jackknife power bombs that knocked all the wind out of me.
Referees hit the ring like Keystone Kops, and Diesel left them lying on the mat. In an unscripted
moment, he stood over top of me, dropped the World belt across my chest, glared down and
snarled, “Don’t forget who did you the fuckin’ favor.” This was the same guy who, two years earlier,
did nothing but suck up to me.




I thought Vince would play up the fact that I was now a three-time WWF World Champion, but I was
wrong. The day after I regained the title, Raw was live from Richmond, Virginia, but the announcers
only mentioned in passing that I was champ again, showing a brief clip of the match. It was Shawn’s
first day back since getting beat up, and he and Diesel took center stage. Diesel made out like it was
a tainted win for me. Not all the fans bought the pay-per-views, but everyone watched Raw, and for
a while Diesel’s side was all a lot of them had to go on.



Later in the show, Owen worked a dandy little match where he jumped up and delivered an Inoki-
style spin kick to the back of Shawn’s head. According to plan, Shawn carried on briefly, but then
collapsed to one knee and fell unconscious. Soon paramedics frantically worked on him and Vince
was in the ring, his headset off, looking visibly distressed. Owen played confused and left Shawn
alone. And that was how they went off the air. It was done so realistically that almost everyone
watching on live TV thought Shawn was really hurt. There were tearful girls everywhere,
overshadowing the fact that the World title had changed hands.



Two days after I won the belt, they finally had me do an interview, but it was on the taped Raw,
which wouldn’t even air until a week later. Such tactics certainly weren’t designed to make the
champ look strong. In fact, before I’d even said a word, Backlund came out of nowhere and chicken-
winged me until I was rescued by referees and agents and helped to the back.



I’d given Vince a five-star match with Diesel, but it was so quickly passed over that it was soon
forgotten. Even the buildup to my In Your House match against Davey on December 17 was
nonexistent, with all the attention being lavished on the ex-champion and the apparently seriously
injured Shawn.



Diesel continued to imply, during his live TV interviews, that I only got the belt back because I sucked
up to Vince. I now had the belt, but I didn’t have the power that usually came with it. Clearly Diesel
and Shawn were in control, and I was only carrying the belt until Shawn could dispose of me at
WrestleMania XII. What with Hogan, Lex and Diesel having failed at taking my position, Vince
seemed determined to put me in a holding pattern and make certain that Shawn became the new
king.



Vince must have realized that he had to do something with my match with Davey, so he flew Diana
to Richmond TVs with the idea that maybe Diana could turn heel on me too. I didn’t like it one bit.
First of all, I thought it took away from Owen being the black sheep, but also with so many relatives
turning on me—Owen, Jim, Davey, Bruce and now Diana, along with Diesel saying that I was a suck-
up—a lot of fans would have to conclude that I must be hard to like.




Vince suggested that Owen, Davey, Diana and I talk over what we should do. Diana said matter-of-
factly, “I’ll just tell Vince that I’ll do whatever he wants me to do.” I gasped and warned her, “Never,
ever say you’ll do anything they want! They’ll make you shave your head and walk backward out
there!”



A few minutes later, Owen and I stood talking privately in the hall outside Vince’s office. Owen had
real concerns that Diana would come off looking bad as a mother and a parent and make the whole
family look bad. Then we noticed Diana eavesdropping from around the corner. When we all went to
Vince’s office to talk about it, Diana ignored our warnings. Her very first words to Vince were, “I’ll do
whatever you tell me to do, Vince.” She so infuriated me and Owen that we shot the whole idea
down in front of Vince, who decided it would be best to leave her out of things until Davey’s
upcoming assault trial was finished.



I racked my brain for weeks trying to think of a way to make the match mean anything at all. Davey
offered nothing, relying on me to figure it all out. My mind was a big blank. It was while driving to
the Hersheypark Arena on the day of the match that I saw a pharmacy sign and it dawned on me
that a little accidental blood would change everything. I bought razor blades and scissors. As I
headed out to the ring I was determined to break Vince’s holding pattern and blow them away one
more time.



Davey and I spent fifteen minutes building a two-part story. As I’d anticipated, in the early going the
crowd was less than captivated by our storyline. After giving them an unsurprising part one, I
straddled Davey atop a turnbuckle and climbed up to attempt a standing suplex off the top rope. But
when I went to suplex him, he blocked it, and with his amazing strength he lifted me and threw me
crotch-first onto the top rope. The crowd gasped as I collapsed to the floor, where I discreetly
coughed the blade out of my mouth. When I got up Davey charged me from behind, leveling me
head-first into the steel steps. I cut high in the hairline and blood poured hot. As Davey worked me
over, my head looked like a bloody pulp and even the simplest moves popped now. People praised
Robert De Niro for his dedication when he gained 150 pounds to become Jake La Motta for Raging
Bull. How come the same compliment isn’t paid to pro wrestlers who bleed in the name of realism?



After a desperate climax of false finishes, I wrapped Davey up in an old-school Oklahoma roll for the
pin.



When I got back to the dressing room, the commission doctor declared, “It’s a cut from the stairs!”
as he put five stitches in my head. Dave Meltzer described it as “yet another five-star performance.”
Slowly, I was earning Meltzer’s respect. And I was proud of the fact that Meltzer and all the other
wrestling fans could never say for sure that I bladed intentionally.




After the TVs the next day, a bunch of us were up in Curt’s room drinking beers. Razor had taken a
handful of Somas and wilted in a slow-motion sit-up; soon he was floating off to dreamland while
the rest of us sat around telling war stories. Mabel was really bummed out, having taken some heat
for collapsing on Taker while delivering an elbow drop, shattering Taker’s eye socket. Luckily, Taker
would be able to work around it as long as he wore a protective purple mask, resembling something
out of Phantom of the Opera. Curt sang my praises while denouncing the clique to The 1-2-3 Kid.
Staring at Razor, Curt rummaged through his toilet bag, hit the switch on an electric shaver and
casually buzzed off Razor’s right eyebrow. Kid took up for Scott as Curt menaced the other eyebrow:
“Don’t do it, Curt, c’mon!” At first Curt heeded Kid, but when we all thought he’d forgotten, he
suddenly blurted out, “Fuck you, Kid.” He hit the switch and shaved off Razor’s left eyebrow. Razor
never budged, only managing a dreamy smile.



35



THE SNAKES ARE DOCILE



BY JANUARY 1996, Vince was looking high and low for talent. Just in time for the Royal Rumble he
brought in four-hundred-pound Vader, who had quit WCW after being thumped good by Paul
Orndorff in a dressing room argument. Even Jake The Snake slithered back. He’d left the business to
find God, vowing never to return, and when he reappeared in the dressing room, he seemed
weathered and humbled. He was broke and divorced and still appeared on Sunday morning
evangelical shows to tell everyone who would listen how Jesus helped him beat his cocaine
addiction. I was happy to see the arrival of Steve Austin, now called The Ringmaster, with Ted
DiBiase as his manager.



Royal Rumble marked Shawn’s first appearance since his face was mashed, and he won for the
second year in a row, dancing and twirling around the ring and pulling his tights right down past the
pubic line. Things like this made me and a lot of the boys wonder about Shawn.



That night Taker and I also worked our first major pay-per-view. He was wearing his protective mask
from when Mabel had fallen on his face. For the finish, Taker tombstoned me in the middle of the
ring and pinned me with my arms folded across my chest, just as Diesel lumbered down the aisle and
pulled Earl out of the ring, stopping him from making the three-count. The pay-per-view ended with
me bent over in the ring having injured my knee for real, lucky to still have the belt, and Taker
stalking Diesel all the way back to the dressing room. I have to say it did little to build me for
WrestleMania XII.




The following day, at Stockton TVs for Raw, I taped my sprained knee and managed to work a
reasonably good match with Dustin Runnels, son of Dusty Rhodes, who did more than look after me.
He was working a gimmick as a transgendered freak named Goldust, who wore a gold latex jumpsuit,
gold face paint and a long, blond wig that he took off just before he wrestled to reveal a white buzz
cut. Goldust was one of the better characters the WWF had come up with in some time, and Dustin
was doing a great over-the-top job of portraying an androgynous weirdo. Vince got bombarded with
hate mail and phone calls from gays and parent groups because kids were chanting “Faggot,” and he
ate up all the controversy with a confident smirk. If fans loved it or hated it, they were watching; it’s
when they didn’t care that he had something to worry about.



Vince’s latest project was “Billionaire Ted” skits, which mocked Ted Turner as a redneck and mocked
his acquisitions from WWF as over-the-hill has-beens. He had two old men spoofing Randy and
Hogan as Nacho Man and The Huckster. Vince had built them up, and now he was knocking them
down. When I went out to do a live promo with Vince, he told me just to shoot about everything. But
when I sarcastically asked him whether I should say the WWF was the Shawn and Diesel show now,
he stammered nervously and stopped me.



On January 27 I arrived at the brand-new Bryce Jordan Center in University Park, Pennsylvania, to
find a huge story breaking in the dressing room. The Road Warriors and Miss Elizabeth had shown up
in WCW, and word was that Diesel and Razor were considering jumping too. This was a shock to
everybody, especially Shawn, who looked anxious at the thought of being left behind. Despite the
overall tension between the boys and the clique, Shawn and I had never let on to each other that
there were any problems between us. He told me that he hoped Diesel and Razor would stay
because after he became champion at WrestleMania XII he figured on working with them. I
suggested he had fresh guys to work with, such as Vader and Austin. He nervously chewed on his
nail, spit out a piece and shook his head. “I think I’d rather work with Hunter and do another little
program with The Kid.” I had spoken up for Owen, Jim and Davey over the years, but I never pushed
them to the exclusion of everybody else, as Shawn fully intended to do with his clique. I realized
then that The Heartbreak Kid didn’t have the heart to be champion.



Shawn was only working a few select bookings so he could train hard to prepare for WrestleMania
XII. I thought it was odd that without even consulting me, Shawn and Pat had already decided that
we would meet in a one-hour marathon match that would go into overtime, during which Shawn
would somehow beat me with his finishing move, the big superkick. Shawn was trying to read my
face when he told me about it, and I could tell he was fully expecting me to balk at putting him over.
He perked right up when I told him that I’d put him over clean in the middle, and he thanked me
profusely.




I told Vince that after Wrestlemania XII I’d be taking six months off to do a full season of Lonesome
Dove. I felt I was due to give my face a rest in North America after twelve straight years, but Vince
said he really needed me to work the foreign tours. I told him no problem. Working the foreign tours
would keep me from getting too much ring rust, and besides, I liked seeing the world.



On January 31, 1996, I took Julie along on a tour of India. On the plane, Razor shaving-creamed Savio
Vega, a Puerto Rican black belt, then drew all over his face with hot pink lipstick. He should have
known better than to mess with a fiery Latino. Soon enough, Razor was stumbling up and down the
aisle holding his detached ponytail in his hand, asking passengers in his phony Cuban accent, “You
see who cut my hair, man?”



Owen sat talking with Louie Spicolli, a good kid who was one of very few TV jobbers to find their way
to working as a preliminary boy appearing in the opening matches for the WWF. Sadly, Louie had
developed the worst case of slow suicide since Rick McGraw, much worse than Razor, Shawn, Kid or
Davey. The day before the India tour, Louie suffered a drug-related seizure, but there he was on the
plane. I heard Owen warn Louie that the pills would kill him if he didn’t smarten up. Louie said he’d
seen the light, and I wished I could believe it was true.



The Leela Hotel in Mumbai was a fortress that locked out the poor. A hotel guide offered to arrange
a tour and, after sleeping off the long flight, Tatanka came along with me and Julie to see the sights.
The prisonlike gates of the hotel parted, and we drove down Mahatma Gandhi Boulevard past
pristine temples, shrines, churches and mosques. I found it hard to appreciate their beauty or even
their spiritual significance when they were surrounded by slums. It was Manila all over again.



Those more fortunate buzzed around in taxis and small motorized buggies called Jeepneys. They
honked and churned past the destitute, who struggled to navigate oxcarts and scooters through a
fast-moving maze of buses and trucks that billowed black exhaust into a hazy sky.



In this exotic land filled with penury, I suddenly looked up to see a giant billboard that announced
Hitman jeans. Some creep was posing as me, with long hair, a big nose and a fat gut, shirtless,
wearing the pretend name-brand item. At first we got a chuckle out of it, but the more I thought
about it the more it pissed me off that on the other side of the world someone had stolen my name
and was making money from my sweat.



I always thought it would be quite something to be able to say I’d touched every ocean, if only
because there aren’t many people who can say they have. When the guide stopped our taxi at a
beach, it was plain that he was uncomfortable just being close to the water. The Indian Ocean at


Mumbai was a scummy-green soup littered with garbage. In the air were incense, spices and cooking
oil combined with sweat, piss and shit. As we made our way to the shoreline, watching people
casually defecate in the sand, we were besieged by friendly beggars, most of whom were small kids.
Hundreds of poor walked alongside us in happy anticipation, tapping us frantically on the arms.
There was a tiny girl of about four carrying a naked baby who couldn’t have been a year old. With
bright smiles and big eyes they somehow managed to be polite and respectful in their poverty.



I dipped the toe of my hiking boot into the slimy water just as a young boy stepped into a pile of
human shit that squished through his toes.



The guide made it very clear that we shouldn’t give the beggars any handouts, but Julie broke down
and pressed American dollar bills into their grubby hands. One after another the lucky children were
brutally pounced on by older kids, who were pounced on by even older kids until only God knows
where the money ended up.



There was a young boy with a spider monkey tied to a tattered rope. He shook a small electronic toy
drum that rat-at-tat-tat-ed Michael’s Jackson’s song “Beat It” for about twenty seconds, during
which the monkey did somersault after somersault. Not to be outdone, a desperate snake charmer
of about the same age was trying to play a flute with one hand and arouse a cobra with the other.
The snake was docile, likely because the boy kept whacking it hard on the back of the head. It would
rise up swaying only to receive another crisp crack.



In India they spared the cows and the rats. We stopped at a Jain temple where thousands of rats
roamed everywhere, well fed and cared for like pets. In the department stores, I saw sacred cows
strolling down the aisles, bulls in a china shop, only they were so accustomed to roaming among the
wares that they didn’t damage anything. Clerks hurried to clean up their droppings.



When our taxi pulled up inside the gates of the hotel compound, I was accosted by five angry Indians
shouting and waving pairs of Hitman jeans. I explained rather curtly that the bum pictured on the
back pocket wasn’t me. They fiercely contested this as they surrounded me shouting excitedly,
pleased with themselves for actually having found me. Finally, I pointed at the red heart-shaped
tattoo on the impostor’s biceps. I rolled up my sleeve to show them I bore no such mark. They were
rendered speechless for just a moment and then took to arguing fiercely among themselves. I left
the bellhops to shoo them off.



That night I defended the title against Yoko, who, along with several others, was ailing from Bombay
belly. We’d all been warned not to drink the water or even get it in our eyes or noses. It was, to say


the least, a shitty night, with most of the wrestlers soiling their trunks. Yoko looked sickly pale as he
did his bonsai drop. I made extra sure to get out of his way in plenty of time. Yoko weighed more
than seven hundred pounds now and could barely get in and out of the ring. I figured that soon
Vince would see him as a liability.



The following day I was asked if I’d mind going to visit some school-kids. The girls, in their blue-and-
white uniforms with their hair neatly tied up, were the picture of courtesy, kneeling on the floor with
their hands folded. In contrast, the boys were so delirious with excitement the teachers lost control
of them and they stormed the stage. Julie was touched to see how happy they all were to see me.
When we were whisked away by a limo, I looked out the back window and made the bullhorn sign to
the boys, who chased after us with huge smiles. I wonder if those children ever had any idea that it
meant more for me to meet them that day than it did for them to meet me.



On February 3, we left for Bangalore, the computer capital of India. Bangalore was hot and dusty,
and seemed less poverty-stricken than Mumbai, yet there were still numerous people sleeping on
sidewalks.



At Martha’s urging, Owen decided he had to see the Taj Mahal, but the promoters in Delhi explained
that it was simply too far. I thought it was something that Julie would appreciate too, so I joined in
on the request. Reluctantly the promoters hired a big bus for the four-hour drive to Agra. Upon
boarding I wondered why the driver sat in a compartment encased in bulletproof glass that he
locked from the inside. Owen had talked many of the boys into coming, some of whom were still sick
with the runs; he told them they’d never forgive themselves if they missed seeing one of the eight
great wonders of the world.



The bus jerked and shifted gears, weaving through the bustling streets of Delhi. The sky was curry-
brown from pollution. Barefoot kids played soccer. Skinny, mangy dogs wished they were sacred
cows instead. Elephants working at construction sites like living bulldozers reminded me of the
woolly mammoths on The Flintstones. Workers balanced huge bricks on top of their heads three at a
time. Whenever we made a rest stop, young girls begged, with cheerful smiles.



A little way out of Delhi I noticed what I was sure was a dead body, neatly covered by a white sheet,
laid out next to the trash. After seeing three or four more such bundles I asked the guide about it
and was told that I was right: A caretaker’s wagon came around to retrieve the dead for cremation.



As we got farther into the countryside, the highway thinned to a dusty, two-lane road barely wide
enough for one vehicle. The driver shifted gears, swerving side to side to miss the worst potholes


and avoid traffic; by the time we got to Agra we all had motion sickness. It was hard for me to
appreciate the sparkling, diamond-encrusted marble of the Taj Mahal after having seen such human
suffering on the way.



Two hours later we hesitantly boarded the bus for the death ride back. The kamikaze driver
explained that after 10 p.m. there was a curfew in Delhi; if we weren’t back in time we’d have to
wait till morning before we could enter the city. The traffic got heavier as it grew darker, and our
driver played chicken with tankers and oxcarts, passing numerous smol-dering, burnt-out wrecks
that hadn’t been there on the way to Agra. Those Stampede Wrestling black-ice hell rides, even the
time Smith drove André to the airport, they were a merry-go-round ride compared to this. God,
don’t let Julie and me die here, I prayed as Tatanka crossed himself.



The drive back took seven hours. I found myself pounding on the bulletproof glass screaming at the
driver, but he gave me a confident thumbs up, grinning at me with teeth stained red from betel nut.
He thought I was cheering him on for doing such a good job! A dog was crushed under the wheels of
the careening bus and nobody batted an eye. When we pulled into a truck stop for gas, another bus,
packed with Indians, pulled up alongside us, and they began spilling out. Three or four of them
commenced to throw up violently. Owen shouted, “Hey look!”—as though this was a sight to see.
Jerry Brisco raced to the window, camera in hand, to get a closer look. It probably made my trip and
everyone else’s on that lousy bus to watch the ripple effect on Brisco, who scrambled down the
steps and upchucked his curried rice.



We finally made it to Delhi, only minutes before curfew. I called home from our room to check on
the kids, and Stu told me that Davey had been acquitted of his assault charge. Apparently that
dumbass Karl Moffat testified that Davey was every bit strong enough to suplex someone on his
head, which the man who had been injured accused Davey of doing to him. It was just like Karl to
take the stand to swear that wrestling was the whole truth and nothing but. The prosecutor seemed
to be gambling that Davey would never confess that the pro matches were choreographed, but
luckily for Davey, he had no problem saying so.



Although he had won the war, the legal battle depleted him financially to the point that his only
coping mechanism was to take more downers. This is the point when things really started to get out
of hand for Davey.



On day six of the India tour, Diesel told me that he and Razor were really going to WCW, for
$750,000 a year, which was more than I was making. They had given Vince notice and were down to
their last ninety days in the WWF.




By the time I set my bag down in Louisville, Kentucky, on February 18 for an In Your House cage
match with Diesel, I was beyond tired. The ring had been gimmicked in such a way that when Diesel
had me beat and was making his escape, Undertaker suddenly exhumed himself from under the ring
floor and snatched Diesel’s leg, pulling him beneath the boards to avenge his interference in our
match at Royal Rumble ’96. Smoke effects were billowing while I climbed over the cage and out of
the ring to retain the belt. Once again, the pay-per-view ended with Undertaker and Diesel backing
each other down while I slunk back to the dressing room with the belt. Being saved by interference
at two pay-per-views in a row did nothing to keep a babyface champion like me strong.





I was completely caught off guard when I called the Lonesome Dove offices later that day and
producer Steve North calmly told me that the series had been canceled. He said that ratings were
great, but production costs were too high. Hearing this broke my heart. Now the new dawn I was
riding into was only a dimly lit path, and I was uncertain whether the path even went anywhere.



I decided to stick by my original plan and take at least six months off anyway. Carlo and I had come
to a parting of the ways; in fact, I was only too happy to put in a good word for him, and he ended up
with Jack Tunney’s job as president of the WWF’s Canadian arm. My new acting agent, Barry Bloom,
could use the six-month hiatus from wrestling to get me established. Barry and I agreed that he’d
have nothing to do with my wrestling career, even though he represented a bunch of WCW talent. I
never lost sight of the fact that wrestling buttered my bread. In the dressing rooms I kept the news
that Lonesome Dove had been canceled to myself.



The next day, I was happily surprised to see Roddy at the Cincinnati Gardens for Raw. He’d recently
been appointed the new figurehead interim president of the WWF, replacing Jack Tunney’s
character role. That afternoon Vince got me, Shawn and Roddy together and carefully rehearsed the
live interview we were to have that night, building heat for our title match. Shawn was scripted to
outwit me all the way through it.



When I went out to do the interview, he was already in the ring with Vince. Every word out of
Shawn’s mouth had so much more impact than what I had been told to say. And Vince was right
there to make sure that Shawn was humble, lovable and not too Shawn-ish. On mic, he bragged
about how well conditioned he was as he lifted his red-and-white candy-striped leather vest
exposing a rock-hard six-pack. When Vince asked me about my conditioning, I coolly described
myself as being a lot like the little pink rabbit in the Energizer battery commercials that just keeps
going and going and going.




At just the right moment Roddy stormed out in his role as the president and explained the rules for
our upcoming one-hour marathon match. I knew right then that I’d better get ready for the hardest
fight of my career. While I was over in India sick with the shits, Shawn had been home training like a
lunatic. Damned if he wasn’t in incredible shape.



In late February, Jim Ross and a WWF camera crew flew up to Calgary to get some footage of me
training for the big match. They had filmed Shawn in sunny San Antonio, where he ran the steps at a
football stadium, did upside-down sit-ups and pretended to spar with his mentor, Jose Lothario.
Vince was selling Shawn as a guy trying to realize his boyhood dream of winning the gold. I was
portrayed as the wily veteran from the dungeon who had every intention of being the champion for
a long time.



February in Calgary is the coldest time of the year, but they had me jog along Scotsman’s Hill so they
could get panoramic views of the city with the Rockies in the background. I don’t think J.R. and the
camera crew were trying to be funny, but I couldn’t help but see the humor in the footage they shot.
It was so icy that I had to run carefully, so it came across on film like I was running about a mile an
hour. Another magic moment taped for the world to see was when they asked me to swim laps in
my pool. But the topper was when they filmed Stu stretching me in the dungeon, an eighty-year-old
man tying me up in knots with me eagerly tapping out!



I trained for that match as hard as I ever had for anything. Shawn was eight years younger than me,
and I wasn’t going to let him outshine me. Like me and Davey at Wembley, I wanted the fans to
remember the loser in this one. I would break their hearts and disappear until Shawn had nobody to
work with except me. I saw a rematch up ahead with me taking back the title, which would build up
for yet one more match where I’d be more than happy to put Shawn over—to once and for all thrust
the torch into his hand. Done right, Shawn and I could draw money for years with a big rivalry, taking
turns putting each other over.



I found Shawn at lunchtime on the day of WrestleMania XII, and we sat down to compose our match
much like musicians composing a song. I let him piece much of the first twenty-five minutes together
while I figured out the rest. We sat for over three hours, tweaking each spot until we could sing
them in our heads. I told him I expected we’d be working a rematch when I came back in six months.
In order to feed the supposed heat between us, I wouldn’t be shaking his hand after he won.
Instead, I’d simply walk out, leaving the crowd to assume that I was really pissed off at the ref’s
decision. Shawn nodded and said, “No problem.” He’d spent much of the morning practicing a
special entrance, being lowered to the ring by a steel cable. I was impressed with how focused he
was.




Warrior was back, looking very jacked-up on steroids. During his match with Hunter he blew up
badly, even though it consisted of three clotheslines and lasted a mere 1:38. As the show went on,
many of the boys, tears in their eyes, sought me out to thank me, as was the custom on a day when
the belt was to change hands—if you’d carried the belt with dignity and worked hard.



On account of Diesel and Razor’s defection to WCW, every wrestler was being leveraged to sign a
new long-term contract. There was guaranteed money, which had never been offered in the WWF
before, but the contracts were one-sided, with little protection for the talent. I was glad I was
leaving for a while. My contract would expire while I was off, leaving me in a great bargaining
position if I wanted to play the WCW card. I didn’t ever want to end up there, but if I could show
Vince my loyalty by not going, I thought I could ride out my career in the WWF in grand style.



Shawn did make a spectacular entrance, sliding down to the ring from a steel cable strung from the
rafters while his ring music thumped “I’m just a sexy boy . . .” He seemed to explode from the ceiling
as fireworks went off around the arena. His waist-length blond hair was neatly pulled back, and the
words “Heartbreak Kid” were emblazoned on the ass of his white, silver-trimmed tights. The Boy Toy
had come to fulfill his lifelong dream.



In stark contrast, I marched out with little pomp and circumstance, wearing a new ring coat and a
black outfit. I looked every bit the tough ring general, serious and confident, the dutiful torchbearer.
I could see Dallas and Blade sitting in the front row, next to Georgia’s middle son, Matthew, whom
I’d brought along on the trip because he was such a good kid. Matt’s friend T.J. Wilson, who was like
an adopted Hart kid, was also with them, along with Georgia and my mom. Stu was seated
somewhere else with Freddie Blassie.



The crowd was intense, anticipating the passing of the torch. From the start, Shawn made it clear
that this wasn’t going to be so much a great work as a great contest. It was rather obvious to me
that he’d been coached to lean on me as much as he could. He did sneaky tricks, such as dragging his
heavy, steel-toed motorcycle boots across my face, scraping my lips up, which led to a subtle hour-
long potato harvest. At one point while I was on the floor, Shawn climbed up to the top corner and
dove out on me. He overshot and was flying head-first toward the railing, if not the front row. If I
didn’t catch him, he might seriously hurt himself. I put my own body on the line and quite literally
pulled him out of the air, right on top of me, saving him and his lifelong dream of being champion.



We were both able to remember every spot we’d mapped out only hours before, two great
wrestlers in their prime trying to outdo each other under the guise of working together. I’ve always
believed that the intention was for Shawn to drag me off the mat for the last twenty minutes. But it


made for a beautiful story—the lion and the gazelle, or perhaps the wolf and the fox. If fans go back
and study this one closely, they’ll see that at times I?was stiff, but I was never slow or heavy.



Our match seemed to unravel in slow motion as my heart beat strong in my chest. Shawn took some
fantastic bumps. From the way he went dead weight on me, I assumed he was getting tired, and I
was somewhat surprised that I had to keep dragging him off the mat. At the fifty-minute mark I dove
out through the ropes like a spear, flattening Shawn in the aisle. Once back in the ring I took in the
sold-out crowd and it reminded me of when Muhammad Ali stood in his corner and looked over at
George Foreman in Zaire. Unlike his, my fate was decided, but I was determined to keep my dignity.



Shawn was up on the apron; as I went to suplex him in, he dropped behind me. I was quick to
reverse and German suplex him straight back. When I did, he bit his tongue, which had nothing to do
with me, but he decided to slam me in the gut with a stiff punch anyway. One potato, two potato,
three . . . until I had no recourse but to snap a stiff boot square into his face, letting him know the
next one would be serious. With cocky arrogance Shawn waved me on to keep it coming.



With five minutes remaining I hoisted him up like a sack of cement and snapped him in half across
my knee. I smiled at the time clock. I had told Shawn the last five minutes were all his, and we were
right on schedule.



I leaped off the second rope only to be jolted by a vicious stiff boot to the jaw from Shawn, and then
one potato after another. He took every liberty he could, stiffing me on drop kicks and elbow
smashes. Even so, we both knew the match was a masterpiece. When Shawn nailed me with a high
flying elbow, I crashed hard to the mat, and Shawn proved to have been playing a bit of possum.
Suddenly he nipped up to his feet with all the energy in the world.



I was there to catch Shawn on all of his daredevil pinning combinations. Following the script to the
letter, I delivered as promised. Howard Finkel finally announced, “One minute remaining!” as Shawn
slammed me and made his way to the top turnbuckle. I could see thirty-eight seconds remaining on
the clock when Shawn came off at me with a drop kick. Catching the world by surprise, I grabbed the
heels of his boots and he crashed to the mat. I stepped through and twisted him into the
sharpshooter, and the crowd roared its approval at the surprising twist that I might actually win. But
it was all part of the final swerve.



As I arched back, careful not to put too much weight on his back, I heard the crowd counting down
ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . until Shawn, hanging on for dear life, was saved by the sound of the bell.




I’d won! At least in my eyes—and those of my fans! Earl handed me the belt, and I dropped to the
floor to leave, passing newly reinstated WWF figurehead president Gorilla Monsoon in the aisle. I
was totally exhausted, gulping some much needed air, as I heard Monsoon on the house mic
ordering me back into the ring to go into sudden-death overtime. I willed myself to turn around and
contest Gorilla’s decision. While I argued with him, the bell clanged and the match resumed.



I pounced right on the wounded Boy Toy, pounding him mercilessly. Three minutes into overtime, it
was time to go home. This had been a beautiful movie to watch, especially since the crowd loved us
both by the end of it. It was probably the greatest match I ever had, or close anyway. I squeezed
Shawn’s wrist to give him the cue that we were going home. In this ending, the better man would
lose.



I fired Shawn into the corner, following closely, and he sprang up and dropped neatly behind me.
The relentless pink soldier turned around as Shawn, in utter desperation, delivered a superkick and
caught me square on the jaw. I?went down hard and the crowd roared with excitement as we both
struggled to get up from the mat. The big kick was coming. I fought to stand but couldn’t. Shawn
waited for me in the corner, stomping a foot in anticipation. I staggered upright and walked right
into it, blindly, the superkick connecting like a shotgun blast. I crumpled to the mat. A drained Shawn
collapsed on top of me hooking my leg as Earl slowly counted one . . . two . . . three!



The crowd exploded as Shawn’s music played. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard Shawn angrily
tell Earl, “Tell him to get the fuck out of the ring! This is my moment!” I dropped out to the ring floor
and left him there on his knees, crying with the belt in his arms. I had firmly placed the torch in that
little monster’s hands. But I also knew that no one was going to forget about me. With my head held
high, I walked to my waiting Lincoln and burned rubber up the ramp as the credits rolled.



That night after the show, the hotel bar was packed with celebrating fans. I chose to hole up in my
room with the kids and enjoy the cold bottles of beer that I had chilling in the sink. I let out a long,
silent sigh, knowing that I could leave on a good note. As a character I couldn’t be torn down and
used up. I was a free agent in a strong position. Go ahead and see if you can carry the company,
Shawn.



A third generation of Hart wrestlers—the adolescent Dallas, Matt, T.J. and Harry, along with five-
year-old Blade—pulled the mattresses in my hotel room onto the floor to turn them into wrestling
mats. The sight of them with their shirts off getting all sweaty meant the world to me. They stayed
up until 4 a.m. eating pizza and wrestling. It made me think of my brother Dean and me as kids.




The next day Owen called me from Raw to tell me that the buzz in the dressing room was that I had
real heat with Shawn because I didn’t shake his hand at the end of the match. It didn’t hurt to let
some of the boys believe that. I watched the live Raw feeling uneasy in my easy chair as Shawn
stood before Vince in the ring saying it was the toughest match he’d ever had. He praised me,
closing the page on my chapter, trying to sweep me out of the minds of the fans.



It took a couple of days for Vince and Shawn to phone me. Vince told me how grateful he was, as did
Shawn, but I had the feeling that Shawn probably only called because Vince told him it was the right
thing to do. In those days Vince was still old school that way.



36



“I’LL NEVER GIVE YOU A REASON TO EVER WANT TO LEAVE”



AFTER MILLIONS OF MILES, I was finally going to be home for a while—except there was little time to
settle in. Just five days after WrestleMania XII, I packed my bags again for a seventeen-day tour of
Germany: I’d promised Vince I’d work the foreign markets while my face was having a rest in North
America, and personally I was regarding it as a grand farewell tour. The big question on everyone’s
mind was whether I was going to hang up my boots.



On April 11, Vince hired a camera crew to shoot a heartfelt interview with me on the banks of the
Rhine in Bonn. One of Vince’s suits tried to script it, but I ignored him. With a weary, almost fed-up
glare, I spoke passionately about how, after all the years on the road, family had become strangers
and strangers had become family. It was time for me to change that. The interview was overnighted
back to WWF headquarters, and I wondered if they’d even use it, since I hadn’t said what they
wanted.



I would have liked to have given Shawn some guidance, but he thought he already knew everything.
The one thing that Shawn had in common with Warrior as the champion was that they both liked to
ring Vince up with all their complaints, like two nagging wives. But, unlike Warrior, there was no
denying that Shawn had charisma and ability: The only thing stopping him from becoming the
phenomenon of his dreams was some patience, maturity and judgment. I know he was waiting for
me to put him over to the boys, to say, You’re the man. I would have liked nothing more than to be
able to do that, but with his attitude, how could I? I decided that though I wouldn’t stab him in the


back, I couldn’t endorse him either. Deep down we both knew there was going to be a showdown
between us someday.



In Berlin on April 17, the little war between Shawn’s clique and the rest of the talent escalated. They
had clearly singled out Chris Candido and his wife, Tammy Fytch, who now played the role of a
pretty blond vamp named Sunny. She was the first of the women now known as the WWE Divas, and
had become a bigger star than anyone expected when her sexy posters became the hottest-selling
WWF merchandise, which didn’t sit well with the clique. The caterers left Sunny a boxed dinner after
every show to take with her back to the hotel. One night when she opened it up, she found a pile of
human excrement. She was horrified and went home the next morning in tears. I thought, the Mafia
leaves its calling card by wrapping a fish up in newspaper, but the clique shits in your dinner.



On this tour, I worked my first matches with Steve Austin. He took a lot of pride in his work, and it
meant a lot to me when he told me that he’d like to work with me for the next six months because
he’d do nothing but learn from me.



On the flight home I studied my reflection in the lavatory mirror. I sure looked weary and beaten up.
I thought back to the days when I’d watched tired old Paddy Ryan lacing up his boots and had sworn
to myself that I’d never stay too long. That wasn’t me. Not yet.



By May 8, I was at the Kuwait Hotel, which was nothing short of a luxury prison, with no
entertainment, no nightlife, no women, no rock ’n’ roll and no booze. The highlights of my day were
working out in a well-equipped gym at the hotel and watching Larry King.



The sponsors of the five-show tour were wealthy Arabs. One afternoon they took me, Owen and
Davey out on a fishing boat, and Davey hooked a three-foot yellow shark. An epic tug-of-war went
on for about an hour, like something out of Hemingway, with Davey holding on, drenched in sweat,
the veins popping in his arms. When he finally reeled it in, it still had a lot of fight left as it flipped all
over the deck. Davey was so impressed with its inexhaustible will to live he insisted it be set free.



Back at the hotel restaurant, I was stirring my coffee and chatting with Razor The Moan, as a lot of
the boys now called him. It was the final foreign tour for him and Diesel. Diesel had just put Shawn
over clean at In Your House, a match during which Shawn went crashing through a table. How
original. Razor told me an interesting tale: The clique had cooked up a plan where he and Diesel
were going to take over the top spots in WCW, Shawn would take over the WWF and the clique
would rule the entire wrestling business!




A boy of about eleven came over to our table wearing a handmade replica of Razor’s gear, complete
with a “gold” chain of cardboard and greased-back hair with a curl on his forehead. I immediately
thought of the Israeli kid who’d pedaled his bicycle as hard as he could to keep up with the bus. This
boy had been patiently waiting around all morning for Razor’s autograph, and Razor seemed to
enjoy making him wait. When Razor got up to leave, he stopped beside the boy as if to finally sign,
then hesitated, looking back and forth between me and the boy. Finally he said to me, “I don’t need
to sign autographs anymore.” He left that little boy with the saddest look on his face. That was the
moment when I lost the little respect I still had for Scott Hall. By day five the boys were getting
bored and fidgety. “We know what athletes need!” our Arab hosts told me. “Everything will be there
tonight!” With a nod and a wink, they promised us the world: hashish, alcohol and naughty women.



Davey, Austin and I arrived for the party that night with Duke The Dumpster Drose, a raw rookie out
of Florida who reminded me of a friendly boxer dog and who had given up work on a law degree to
become a wrestler. Of course, there was no hashish, but there was apple-scented tobacco in a big
bong. As for alcohol, there was a lone bottle of vodka and some orange juice. And the women?
There was a bevy of beautiful Kuwaitis, but their idea of naughty was that they were dressed
American-style in jeans and tops that revealed their shoulders. Middle Eastern music was playing,
and the girls did everything they could to get us up dancing, but it wasn’t rock ’n’ roll. Duke finally
caved and not long after he got up, I allowed a young woman to entice me to dance, though I
actually had my eye on a black-haired beauty with slender curves. Soon enough, Davey and Steve
were dancing, too, though we couldn’t stop laughing at what bad dancers we all were. Steve had to
be worse than me, and that’s saying something.



Then the woman I’d been hankering after pinched my back when she walked by, teasing me that she
was angry that I was dancing with the other girl. I ended up talking with her on the balcony, away
from the security chief, who was attempting to keep a close eye on both of us. With the Kuwaiti
skyline in the background, she gave me her phone number and agreed to secretly meet me the next
day before we went back to the party. A few minutes later one of our Arab hosts pulled out an issue
of the WWF magazine in which there appeared a family Christmas portrait of me with Julie and the
kids, which he passed around to all the girls. The young woman who had just said she would meet
me glanced at the picture, then gave me a dirty look, and rattled off some guttural Arabic that was
easy to understand without a translator. Davey, Steve and Duke looked at me as we all burst out
laughing.In the end, the tour was a success, drawing close to thirty thousand fans every night.
Beyond the boy whom Razor Ramon brushed off, what I remember most about the trip was when
our hosts showed us burned, gutted homes and buildings where handfuls of Kuwaitis stood up to
Saddam Hussein’s army.



I did manage to get Julie a couple of white-gold rings encrusted with diamonds, more promise rings,
but the only promise I was trying hard to keep anymore was to come home in one piece.




Carlo called me to tell me about the clique’s last WWF show together at Madison Square Garden on
May 19. After Shawn beat Diesel in a cage match, the two sworn enemies embraced in the ring,
much to the confusion of the crowd. They were soon joined by Razor and Hunter, and then all four
stood on the turnbuckles giving the fans the clique hand sign in what they thought was a glorious
send-off.



Vince had already left the Garden; when he found out what they had pulled, he was livid. Backstage,
the agents and the boys were up in arms, and rightfully so: They thought Vince should have nipped
such behavior in the bud. Vince reprimanded all four of them, levying $2,500 fines, and he ordered
Shawn and Hunter to apologize to their fellow wrestlers. The other three had no excuse, but Shawn
should have known this wasn’t something the champion should do.



There were other things I thought a champion should never do. Young boys were now dressing up
like Shawn, the same as they did for me, Razor, Taker and others. The problem was that someone
decided it would be cute to invite them into the ring every night to do Shawn’s Chippendale dance
with him. It rankled many of us, not to mention a lot of the fans, to see impressionable boys
imitating Shawn’s striptease. I’d known him as a person who respected the business, and the
wrestlers and fans, upon whose shoulders we stood. But that person seemed to be gone.



Also, with the grueling schedule of the champion, Shawn’s drug problems escalated to the point
where referee Tim White, André the Giant’s long-time babysitter, was now given the responsibility
of driving Shawn around and carrying his bags. Shawn was finding out that it was harder than he
may have thought to go out there and blow them away every night, and do it without getting hurt.
The physical and emotional weight brought out the worst in him, and he became increasingly bad
tempered. No champion since Hogan had his own dressing room, but now Shawn reverted back to
the days when the champion felt the need to elevate himself above the rest of the boys.



And at no time in the past had the need for a strong and cagey champion been so urgent. When Hall
and Nash appeared on WCW’s Nitro as The Outsiders, it caused quite a sensation for the fans.
Vince’s way of retaliating was to turn Dr. Isaac Yankem into the new Diesel and an unskilled Rick
Bogner, from Calgary, into Razor Ramon. It was Vince’s way of saying that he created them and he
still owned them. WCW’s brash new boss, Eric Bischoff, countered with the best and conceivably the
only great idea he would ever come up with: Every week former WWF wrestlers joined the new
World order, or nWo, pretending to be an invading faction set on taking over WCW. The storyline
implied that maybe the nWo wrestlers had been sent by Vince to subvert the opposition. The angle
was done with an edge just real enough that a lot of the fans were open to the possibility that the
nWo would somehow bring WCW crashing down. It kept them tuning in. On June 10, 1996, Nitro
toppled Raw from the number-one spot, and stayed on top, week after week, for the next two years.




That same day, the WWF fired Louie Spicolli because of his drug problems and hired Brian Pillman,
who was recovering from a Humvee accident in which he nearly lost a foot. He was in a lot of pain,
and that pain would soon lead to his own drug problems. The one bright spot was that Yoko had
finally been ordered to the fat farm at Duke University, which I really hoped would save his life.



Meanwhile I tried to figure out a routine that included more than just wrestling and all the
psychodramas playing out in Vince’s world. So far, the acting had been slow going. And, in truth, my
heart just wasn’t in it. I was finally home, and was consumed with the idea of making up for lost time
with Julie, but she went out most nights and didn’t return until long after I’d gone to sleep. Most of
the time, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I remembered when my dad first got out of the
business: My mom seemed to forget all about him. I wondered whether Julie and I had grown apart,
but then had to admit that we’d never really even had the chance to be together in the first place.
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.



I felt badly, but I had to keep Eric hanging until my deal with Vince was done. Eric was making every
concession he could think of, including offering to have both Flair and Hogan call me to tell me
themselves that they had no hard feelings about some less than complimentary things I’d said about


them in past interviews, and that I’d be welcomed aboard. Even Hall and Nash agreed to waive their
favored-nations clause, which had guaranteed that no one in a similar position could be paid more
than they were making, just so I could come to WCW.



Vince was already advertising that I’d be doing a live interview on Raw to announce whether I was
staying or going. I assumed the whole contract thing would be sorted out in plenty of time, but it
wasn’t until the Friday before I was to make my appearance at Raw that I received a very controlling
draft contract, which, once again, my lawyer said only an idiot would sign. Since the draft bore no
resemblance to the deal Vince and I had shook on, I called him. I could only reach his wife, Linda,
who was now president of operations, so I had no choice but to tell her that all bets were off and
that I would not appear unless my contract was worked out. Before I could tear up Bischoff’s lottery
ticket, I simply had to have my deal with Vince inked and dry. Carlo believed that Bret Hart going to
WCW at that precise moment could devastate the WWF and pressed Vince to finalize my deal. Then
Vince’s office called to tell me that his legal department had accidentally sent me the wrong
contract: This was the third time over the years that I’d been given this same lame excuse.



When I flew into Fort Wayne for Raw I had the WCW contract folded up in the back pocket of my
jeans. I still didn’t have a signed WWF contract, but my appearance on the live show had been
heavily hyped in an all-out effort to finally beat Nitro in the ratings. One lesson I had learned in my
twelve years in the WWF was that Vince stripped you bare when he was through with you, using up
all or most of what you had left, including your name and persona. Carlo, believing my departure
would be a disaster for the organization he worked for, helped me put together a contract that
wrested more control away from Vince and gave me more protection than any wrestler had ever
had before, though officially it was my lawyer, Gord, and my accountant, John Gibson, who handled
the whole thing. The contract provided me with all the usual perks and also two ground-breaking
concessions. The first was that if I was injured on my way to a show or in a match so that I couldn’t
wrestle, I’d be fully compensated for all my wages. The second allowed me creative control for my
last thirty days if for any reason I was ever to leave the WWF. In short, this meant that my character
didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want him to do, which would keep Vince from devaluing my stock
on my way out. I liked hearing Carlo repeat over and over, “They can never, ever fuck you now.”



I stayed in my hotel room until one hour before the show. Backstage I was whisked away to a room
where copies of my contract were laid out on a long table. Carlo even had fancy pens on hand to
commemorate the occasion. Vince seemed anxious as he signed, and when it was all done Carlo
clapped and suggested we uncork some champagne after the show.



Within seconds of signing, I ran into Shawn. We spoke briefly as I waited for my cue to go through
the curtain. He’d just done a nude spread for Playgirl magazine, which I thought was a dumb move
for someone posing as a role model for young boys. I asked him, “Do you mind if I say something


about your Playgirl magazine spread?” I wanted to start building our heat right away. He said, “Say
whatever you want.”



I marched out to my music wearing jeans, shades and a tight gray T-shirt and was interviewed by Jim
Ross in the ring. The first thing I did in this completely unscripted live interview was thank Eric
Bischoff for treating me with respect and making me such a great offer. I regretted that I hadn’t had
a chance to call him and that Eric was about to find out that I had just resigned with Vince along with
the rest of the world. Mind you, I referred to Eric only as an unnamed rival because, to that point,
neither organization had uttered the name of the other on their TV shows—but the fans knew
exactly who and what I was talking about. (Dave Meltzer had put out such an accurate account of my
contract negotiations in the October 14, 1996, Wrestling Observer that I was sure it was all coming
from an insider from one or both organizations.) I spoke about not being greedy for money, but
being greedy for respect and about how much soul searching I’d done. But when it came right down
to it, I owed everything I’d ever done and everything I planned on doing to my WWF fans. “I’ll be in
the WWF forever!” I proclaimed. I said I wanted wrestling fans all over the world to have somebody
they could look up to, somebody who didn’t dance and pose for girlie books: “Shawn Michaels will
never be as tough as me. He’ll never be as smart as me. And that is why I’ve accepted the challenge
to face the best wrestler in the WWF, Stone Cold Steve Austin!” For the first time in months, while I
was on the air, Vince got the ratings he was looking for.



37



EVERYONE AROUND THE WORLD HATES AMERICANS



WHILE I’D BEEN GONE, Steve Austin had really flourished as a heel. By Survivor Series ’96 on
November 17, he’d become such a good heel he was starting to turn babyface—the fans loved him!
This was something he wanted to avoid because his heel run still had plenty of steam. He had such a
great look for a heel, with a bald head and menacing eyes that burned a hole through you. He wore
simple black trunks with black boots and came across like a real bad-ass son of a bitch. His promos
were intense: His Texas talk and ornery look gave him a unique magnetism.



This was a big night for Steve. The week before Survivor Series he flew to Calgary to work out the
entire match with me. He was a friend of Shawn’s, and they had been having some great matches
together, but standing next to the ring in my pool room Steve confided in me that Shawn wasn’t the
right guy to lead the company. I took this as the endorsement it was. In a surprising turn of events,
Shawn was going to drop the belt to Sycho Sid at Survivor Series, so he could win it back in his
hometown of San Antonio at the Royal Rumble in January. In the middle of all that, I’d be thrown
into the main event to work a title match with Sid at the December In Your House. I wasn’t sure how


Shawn’s losing the belt and then winning it back again would effect the big rematch that Vince led
me to believe we were having at WrestleMania XIII. For now, all I could do was focus on my match
with Stone Cold.



At Survivor Series, Steve and I worked fast and hard, and I only got tired near the end. I had no idea
that Vince and J.R. were going to great lengths in their live commentary to subtly tear me down.
When I heard it later, I got the first hint of what lay ahead for me. J.R. described me as being slow
getting up and attributed it to ring rust. “Bret Hart, with a huge move, can’t execute the cover . . .”
Vince was quick to add, “He just didn’t have it, J.R. He couldn’t capitalize on it!” I?felt that they were
going out of their way to portray me as old and beat-up, while I was only doing my best to make
Steve look strong while still putting me over. The bout was filled with believable moves in one long,
continuous fistfight. We brawled on the floor, leveled the Spanish announcers’ table, broke down a
metal barricade and duked it out in the front row! As Stone Cold closed in for the kill, he stalked me
from behind, clamping on a cobra clutch. Much like I’d done with Piper at WrestleMania VIII, I
jumped up and kicked off using the corner to topple backward, pinning Steve for the one . . . two . . .
three.



When I walked around the ring high-fiving my fans, I was happy when Vince reached out to shake my
hand. Still wearing his headset he smiled and with what I took to be the loving eyes of a father, he
said, “Unbelievable!”



Later on that night Sid took the title from Shawn using a gimmicked TV camera to bash him while
Shawn was distracted when his mentor, Jose Lothario, was supposedly stricken by a heart attack at
ringside.



On November 20, Taker, Shawn, Sid and I appeared at a huge press conference in San Antonio. My In
Your House title match with Sid was totally downplayed so they could hype Sid’s match with Shawn
at Royal Rumble.



The following week, the WWF headed over to England for shows in London and Birmingham, though
Vince kept Shawn in the United States as he’d done with Hogan. If anyone wondered whether I was
still over, the question was answered when hordes of chanting Hitman fans were there to meet us at
Heathrow. Sold-out shows had become a rarity in the United States since I’d been away, but there
wasn’t a ticket to be had for the shows in the U.K. A fan explained it this way in a letter to
TheWrestling Observer: “No adult male is going to support an obnoxious, blonde, ponytail wearing
self-professed sexy boy. No matter how well he does in the ring.”




I was grateful when a lot of the boys came up to me and thanked me for coming back; most of them
still called me champ. In London, I worked a good, solid match with Vader. He was considered tough,
quick and nearly as agile as Bam Bam Bigelow, but he was also one of the stiffest guys to ever lace
up a pair of boots. He’d recently potatoed Shawn so badly that Shawn dressed him down in front of
the boys, threatening that if it happened again he’d have his fat ass fired. But you had to be careful
with the monsters of the business. They could mop the floor with you any time they wanted, and
they were doing a guy my size or Shawn’s a favor when they let us look good by pinning their
shoulders to the mat.



Yoko, Fuji, Backlund and M.O.M. were all missing from the dressing room. The 1-2-3 Kid, Roddy Piper
and the recently fired J.J. Dillon were all in WCW (no-one was sure why Vince had dumped Dillon). A
lot of fresh faces had come in the few months I’d been gone; some I’d only met once or twice. The
one who immediately stood out was Dwayne Johnson, pro wrestling’s first third-generation worker.
His grandfather, Peter, a tough Samoan powerhouse, had been a very close friend of Stu’s. I told
Dwayne that I remembered him as a little kid running around the dressing room when I worked in
Hawaii back in the 1980s. He was shy around me, a nice, bright kid who was still innocent as far as
wrestlers went. He was a handsome blend of black and Polynesian, well built and a real athlete; he’d
played some CFL with the Calgary Stampeders just a couple of years earlier. Like me, he’d resigned
himself to trying his hand in the family business and was anxious to learn. I wanted to see this kid
make it, and I told him I’d help him all I could. I watched him in the ring that night, wrestling under
the ring name of Rocky Maivia, and I remember coming back to the dressing room and saying to
everyone, “Mark my words, three or four years down the road that kid will be the franchise.” He
already had the look and the skill. If he learned to talk, he could be great.



Another new face trudging around the dressing room was a frumpy curiosity called Cactus Jack.
Everyone called him Jack, but his name was actually Mick Foley. Vince had just reinvented him as
Mankind. He was a big kid from Long Island, New York, with a scruffy beard and bushy, long black
hair. He was already a hard-core legend famous for his crazy, violent matches in ECW, WCW and
Japan. But I found him to be a friendly guy, well read and intelligent, a far cry from the lunatic
character he played so persuasively, complete with straitjacket and Hannibal Lecter mask!



In the dressing room in Birmingham, Mankind stalked me eagerly, waiting to work with me. I hoped
he’d tone down all the crazy shit because the last thing I needed at that point was to get hurt. The
more we talked, the more I could see that he had the gift of seeing a match unfold in his head like a
movie, just like I did. And I was blown away by our match. Mankind took all the risks and bumps, yet
he was exceptionally skillful and tight. Most amazingly, he was never stiff. He became not only one
of my favorite characters in the business, but one of my favorite people too. Foley was one of only a
handful of guys who I thought had a similar imagination for the business as I do. While I’d been off,
his pay-per-view matches with Shawn were the ones that finally gave Shawn his opportunity to get
over. Mick Foley was a great wrestler, and I was amazed that WCW had lost him.




In West Palm Beach, the night of December 14, 1996, I slid under the sheets hurting so badly that I
had no choice but to wash down a couple of pain pills, plug in my heating pad and smear Icy Hot
over my knees and back. I was supposed to wrestle Sid in our title bout the next day on In Your
House. Wrestling with Jim in the Hart Foundation in the early days, I used to feel like the zippy
Porsche to Jim’s armored tank. Now I felt like an old race car with my dings hidden before every
match under a coat of fresh paint.



Our match turned out to be surprisingly good. Sid had come to respect me because I helped him
when I could. During our match, Shawn sat with Jim Ross at the announcers’ table ranting about his
God-given right to live his life as he chose. Apparently the remark I’d made a month earlier about
him posing for Playgirl had been eating away at him the whole time. Shawn got involved in the finish
by climbing on the ring apron, where we collided, allowing Sid to jackknife powerbomb me to the
mat for the win. I furiously jumped out and pulled Shawn’s shirt over his head like we were in a
hockey fight and pretended to beat him senseless. It looked fantastic. Sid came back to the dressing
room thrilled with how it went, and Shawn seemed nothing but upbeat. But over the next two days
of TVs in Florida he was noticeably distant with me. When I told Vince that I was concerned that I
was pissing Shawn off, he downplayed it. Still, I asked him to clarify things for both me and Shawn,
so we could do this thing right. He wouldn’t listen. Instead of us sorting things out, Shawn went out
and did an angry in-ring interview, with me as the target of his rage. I was disappointed to see him
lose his babyface composure. I was thinking, Oh, Shawn, don’t do this . . . stay humble . . . I’m only
workin’ . . . let me be the heel. I shook my head in utter dismay trying to figure out what was
happening between us.



I spent my Christmas holiday aching all over, yet I worked with Leo Burke and a bunch of green local
wrestlers he was training at my house in the WWF ring Vince had given me. Over time those young
men became Christian, Edge, Glen Kulka, Teddy Hart (Georgia’s son, Ted Annis), Mark Henry, the
fake Razor Ramon, Kurrgan, Don Callis, Test and Ken Shamrock, who was the Ultimate Fighting
Champion at the time, just to name a few. Despite the tension with Shawn, I was on top of the
world, set to regain the title, while being the highest paid WWF wrestler of all time. That Christmas,
Julie and the kids had everything, including me.



The WWF had been blitzing San Antonio for weeks in an all-out effort to fill up the Alamo Dome for
the Royal Rumble on January 19, 1997. In the end, it was one of the most papered shows in the
history of the WWF, but they did pack the Dome to the rafters.





Stone Cold was one of the first combatants in the battle royal, and the story was that he was
unstoppable. He whooped ass on nearly everyone, tossing out a record eleven wrestlers, one after


another—until I came out. We worked with each other, back and forth, until it was down to seven
men left. Then I happened to catch Austin off guard and tossed him over the top rope, eliminating
him, but the referees were conveniently distracted by Terry Funk and Mankind, who were brawling
on the floor. Austin shot back under the ropes and into the ring and flipped Taker and Sid out, just as
I dumped out the fake Diesel. Technically, I had just won the coveted title shot at WrestleMania XIII,
but Steve came from behind, threw me out and was awarded the win instead. As per the plan, he
hightailed it back to the dressing room as I went absolutely nuts in the ring, manhandling the
referees.



I followed the storyline, once again complaining on mic that I’d been screwed. This was all great heat
for Steve, and I went along, though I was wondering where the payoff was for me. Where was my
character going?



But nobody came close to the terrific job that Shawn did in the main event with Sid, not even me.
Afterwards I went to Shawn’s dressing room to tell him that I was proud of him. He thanked me, and
I thought everything was fine between us.



Terry Funk was only there for the one night, to be in the battle royal. It pained me to see him hobble
across the dressing room afterwards. He was barely able to walk after taking so many hard bumps
throughout his storied career, yet he had still given it his all, part machine, part masochist. This great
worker and former NWA world champion pulled me aside in the showers that night and told me that
he respected me for all I had given to the business all these years and in his opinion I was the best
worker around. I left the building after the show feeling pretty damn proud of myself.



The only thing still keeping me babyface was Stone Cold, who kept coming out of no-where like a
villain in a good Western, jumping me and leaving me for dead every week. He reminded me a lot of
Dave Schultz, in a different package but with the same intense meanness. Steve was a great chicken-
shit heel, which I mean as a compliment. I loved working with him because it came across like we
really hated each other; our interviews and brawls looked like even more of a shoot than the stuff I
was doing with Shawn.



Much to my surprise, Beaumont TV on January 20 was the Bret Hart show. Although I was happy to
play a major role on Raw, Vince had me do a carefully scripted in-ring interview that called for more
complaining, which I thought was beginning to kill me off with the fans. “I was screwed out of my
title match with Sid by Shawn Michaels. I got screwed at the Rumble by Stone Cold. I got screwed by
the WWF,” I said and glared down at Vince. I then pointed accusingly at him and said, “And I got
screwed by you!” On live international TV, I quit, climbing over the guard rail and walking out
through the crowd. It all seemed quite real, too real, but I did as Vince told me. In an in-tense


promo, Austin ripped into me about whining and complaining all the way back to Canada. “The only
person you could possibly beat up is your wrinkled-up old man in his little old basement!” (Stu
always took it as a sign of respect when a heel wrestler mentioned his name on TV.)



The marks groomed by the ECW had grown in number: By the winter of 1997, they regularly bought
up the tickets for the first few rows of seats at all of Vince’s TV shows on the east coast just so that
they could be heard on TV around the world booing the babyfaces and cheering the heels. They
made life really hard for Rocky Maivia, just because they knew they could get under his skin. The
general TV audience had no idea that it was the same group of ECW fans showing up everywhere.
Instead they thought a trend was developing, and as a result hating the good guys and loving the
heels actually started to catch on. At Beaumont, though, the fans were still cheering for the good
guys. After I quit on live TV, Gorilla Monsoon announced that what happened to me at the Rumble
was a travesty and he wanted to make up for it by inviting me, Taker, Va-der and Stone Cold to
participate in a final-four match at the In Your House pay-per-view on February 16, with the winner
to face Shawn for the title at WrestleMania XIII. So back I came through the crowd, accepted the
match and then brawled up and down the aisle with Stone Cold until we went off the air.



Afterwards, in his office, Vince introduced me to a bigwig from the USA cable network that carried
Raw. They were both very pleased with that night’s show, and the USA rep said it was the most
exciting Raw they’d ever done. Vince gave me a proud slap on the back and said, “It’s all on account
of him.”



On February 2, I was on dead last for the matinee of a double shot in Montreal, and the agents told
me not to worry if, as a result, I was late getting to Ottawa that night. I got there as the opening
match began, which was more than two hours before I needed to be in the ring for the main event.
As I entered the back door of the arena, Austin caught me by the arm to tell me that Shawn and
Hunter had been making a big stink about me being late. He also told me that Shawn was trying to
drive a wedge between us: He’d actually told Steve a few days earlier that I’d been asked to put
Steve over in Toronto and had refused. I told Steve there was no truth to that at all. There was no
avoiding the fact that Shawn and Hunter were stirring things up behind my back. They wanted war
rather than peace. That night Pat came to me and sheepishly explained, “Vince would like you to put
Hunter over, just to show the boys.”



“I don’t mind one bit, Pat,” I said, “but when the boys you are talking about happen to be only
Shawn and Hunter, it does bother me.”



I did the honors that night as I’d been asked, but I was steamed over the insult. I called Vince the
next day only to hear him side with them, telling me that Shawn and Hunter also said that on top of


my tardiness I was lackadaisical in the ring. I figured after all this time Vince knew me better than
that.



“Where are you going with me?” I countered. “I thought you said I was going to play a major role in
all the booking.”



Vince gave me that yuk-yuk laugh. “Well, you probably think this is crazy, but you’ll screw Shawn this
Thursday at Lowell TV so Sid wins the belt. Then in the final four, at In Your House, Shawn will screw
you out of winning, and from there Taker will work with Sid at Mania for the belt, and Shawn will put
his hair up in a ladder match, and you’ll cut it all off.”



I was a bit stunned at how casual he was. “So, it’s not me and Shawn at WrestleMania XIII for the
belt?”



“It’s too predictable now. I’m changing it.”



But I could see this for what it really was. Shawn had refused to work with me or put me over, and it
changed everything.



On February 7, I was sitting with Davey in the dressing room in Pitts-burgh listening to Shawn bitch
about Steve. I was slightly relieved to know that I wasn’t the only one he feared. Poor Rocky Maivia
was also being buried by Shawn and Hunter for sup-posedly not wanting to job, for not selling and
for stealing their spots. Rocky was a good kid, and he tried to be polite and respectful, but he
couldn’t get them to like him at all.



Just then Vince, with his lawyer, Jerry McDivitt, waved me into his office. I handed him a clipping
from a Quebec City newspaper. “As far as me being lackadaisical, believe what you want.”



Vince put on his glasses to read: “There were only four thousand wrestling fans at the Coliseum last
night in attendance at the WWF show and this is the reason the actors did not give their all. All the
hoopla we have been accustomed to was absent. Only the match-up between Bret Hart and Steve
Austin and the fight between newcomer Phil LePhon and Owen Hart drew fans to their feet. The
finale between Farouq and Shawn Michaels did not produce the desired re-sult.”




I told Vince that I knew he wasn’t being straight with me: Everything he’d promised me was being
changed because Shawn didn’t want to put me over. If he was trying to ruin me, I said, I wanted him
to know that I was aware of it. With this kind of treachery and deception, I might as well be in WCW.
“I don’t know if you realize it but I’ve only won three matches since I came back.” Vince stammered
that everything I said just wasn’t true—he now had too much invested in me not to get everything
out of me that he could.



On February 13, in Lowell, Massachusetts, the big news was that Shawn was forfeiting the World
belt because he’d suddenly somehow sustained a career-ending knee injury and needed surgery.
Taker looked at me like this was all bullshit and said, “I’ll believe it when I see the scar. The little
fucker doesn’t want to drop the belt.” Taker, Sid and I headed down the hallway to Vince’s office.
Shawn and Hunter, Pat, J.R. and Brisco were already there when we arrived. Vince seemed really
upset that Shawn was hurt and was near to tears as he explained how I’d win the belt in the final
four for my fourth title reign.



The catch? Sid would work with me in a title match on Raw the night after and Austin would cost me
the belt, setting up a new makeshift lineup for WrestleMania XIII with Taker and Sid headlining in the
main event while Stone Cold and I worked the semi-main event. I actually liked the new storyline,
accepting that Taker and Sid had every right to be the main event. But as Vince went on explaining
how everything was going to change, I looked over at Taker, who tugged on the corner of his eye
and made a skeptical face. Sid was tight-lipped, and Steve wore an intense glare as we had our
futures rewritten, probably fearful that he was going to be turned babyface just when things were
finally taking off for him. He knew that Shawn was better to have as a friend than as an enemy. Back
in the dressing room, Steve told me again that he supported me, but he added that he didn’t want to
get involved in dressing-room tensions. Steve was going to ride the fence.



Shawn did an in-ring interview that night that I watched on a TV monitor backstage along with the
other wrestlers. He walked out without so much as a limp and with the heartbreaking trickle of the
occasional tear, he talked of having lived his dream. Fans jeered him, so the cameras cut to close-ups
of girls crying. He said he simply had to listen to his doctors. He’d not only hurt his knee, he had “lost
his smile” over the last few months and was going home to find it. Every wrestler standing with me
rolled his eyes as Shawn forfeited the title, handing the belt to Vince, who was caked in makeup and
looked peculiarly Dracula-like as he, too, appeared to be fighting back tears. I’d worked a tag team
match with Shawn at the Meadowlands only three days before, and there was nothing wrong with
his knee. He hadn’t wrestled since. I found myself agreeing with Taker—I’ll believe this bullshit when
I see the scar.



Three days later, I drove up to the back of the arena in Chattanooga for In Your House. A bad flu had
hit the dressing room. Stone Cold was there, even though he was green in the gills. He barely spoke
as we worked out the finish with Vader and Taker.




When the four of us hit the ring, Shawn’s teary-eyed retirement interview played on the giant
screen. Shawn was there, watching it all on a monitor in the back, while word trickled down to the
dressing room that he miraculously wouldn’t need surgery after all. Then Shawn pranced out
swatting hands as he made his way to the announcers’ table to guest commentate.



It was a great four-way match with battle-royal rules and the belt on the line. Vader potatoed
himself this time, taking a boot while coming at Taker with a steel chair. He split his eyebrow open
and bled everywhere, getting eliminated, and the blood kicked the match into high gear. The referee
gave us the cue, and I delicately dumped a sick Steve over the ropes to the floor, eliminating him. In
a climactic series of false finishes, as the referees were trying to drag Austin off the apron, I ducked a
clothesline from Taker and tipped him out as Steve was hauled back to the dressing room. Then Earl
Hebner handed me the belt to begin my fourth title reign. Despite the cheers from the crowd, I
didn’t have a single moment to appreciate it because Sid’s theme music was pumping so loud to
build up our title match on Raw the next night.



At Raw, which was in Nashville, I strode to the ring looking like a confident champion, even though
Sid was the babyface and Nashville was his hometown. He was a good friend, but he scared me
every time we worked because he was awkward and injury prone. I had a new idea, one never done
before, where I would drag Sid over to the post and put on a figure four-leg lock around the post. It
looked extremely painful and Sid writhed in agony while I hung upside-down from the outside
corner. As I wrenched on his knee I smiled, because it was totally painless, looking so real but feeling
so light.



After several commercial breaks and one more airing of Shawn’s teary retirement speech, right in
the middle of our match, we went into the finish. At the end I’d somehow managed to bait Sid into
sunset flipping me, then cleverly rolled through and twisted the six-foot-nine powerhouse into the
sharpshooter. Sid desperately tried to power out of it, but he was done for. Then Stone Cold fought
his way to the ring apron and cracked me with a chair. I sold it just long enough to be caught bent
over so that Sid could step over me and powerbomb me to the mat, pinning me for the title win.



The WWF had just created a European Championship belt, and the first tournament to crown the
new champion would take place on a sold-out nine-day tour of Germany that February. I was happy
to get away from Shawn and all the other goings-on. This time I had decided to drive instead of
riding on the bus with the boys. Getting to the venues was a challenge, but I loved the fleeting
freedom of the road, and somehow luck landed me at the buildings safely every night. The European
fans were sympathetic over how my character had been screwed recently and cheered me on louder
than ever. On February 25, I had a wonderful match with Owen in Hamburg.




I left for the venue in Berlin with time to spare, but I got incredibly lost in pouring rain. It was still
early in the afternoon when I got to the building, but Vince was angry that I was late. It turned out
they were doing the first live Raw in Europe that night to air on a tape delay in the United States and
Canada, but I hadn’t known this. I had been under the impression that Vince was just hiring a local
camera crew to film a house show.



In the dressing room, Jerry Brisco told me that Hunter was going to go over on me: This wasn’t so
surprising since Shawn and Hunter had worked themselves onto the booking committee. I calmly
said that I didn’t see any sense in Hunter beating the most over guy they had in Europe less than a
month before WrestleMania XIII, when Stone Cold and I were being relied upon to carry the pay-per-
view. Hunter gritted his teeth while Brisco nervously repeated himself. I said coolly, “I’ll take it up
with Vince” and set off to find him. Vince was cool toward me but saw my point and changed the
match to a disqualification, with Chyna interfering.



That night Owen and Davey had a rare gem of a match for the European Championship. Owen
carried a super-charged Davey, who won when he flipped over and reversed Owen’s small package
for a beautiful finish, which tore the house down. Vince had made promises to Davey when he
signed him, but he hadn’t lived up to them and was trying to appease Davey by putting the European
title on him.



By the time I got home on March 1, there were only three weeks to go until WrestleMania XIII, and I
was nearly back to top form.



Before the start of the show in Springfield on March 9, I sat with Vince in an empty dressing room as
he outlined a year-and-a-half-long program that would revolve around Stone Cold turning babyface
at WrestleMania XIII. He pulled out a sheet of paper with two lists of names on it and handed it to
me. The lists compared whom I could work with as a face as opposed to whom I could work with as a
heel. I had to admit to myself that the heel list appealed to me more, especially from the standpoint
of safety. Most of the guys I’d work with if I was a face were reckless and stiff, whereas the
babyfaces were workers such as Shawn, Stone Cold and Taker. But actually turning heel? I wasn’t
sold on the idea by any means.



I fully expected to put Steve over at WrestleMania XIII, so I was taken aback to hear Vince tell me
that he wanted me to beat Steve instead. He enthusiastically went on to explain that he’d come up
with a concept that had never been done before and he was counting on me to pull it off. I would
become the hottest heel in the WWF, but only in the United States: the twist was that he wanted me
to slag the American fans as rotten to the core. To them I’d become a heel, but to the rest of the


fans around the world, I’d still be a babyface. I said I had no idea how anyone could make this work
with the worldwide television audience all watching the same shows.



“Everyone around the world loves to hate Americans,” Vince said. “We come across like we’re better
than everyone else. This won’t affect your merchandise sales because you’ll be loved abroad for
standing up to us Americans.”



Once upon a time I enjoyed being a heel, at least in the ring, but I had no desire to alienate my
audience. I admit I’d become accustomed to the adulation. Having a lot of young kids cheering their
hearts out for me eased my loneliness, stroked my ego and made it tolerable to get up every
morning and go to the next town. I told Vince I’d think it over.



As the evening wore on, I wandered the backstage hallways of the Springfield Civic Center tossing it
all around in my head. If I turned heel, I’d have more control in the ring because I’d be driving the
car. Not to mention that I wouldn’t have to worry anymore about my babyface character coming
across as a whiner. If the reaction I’d just got in Germany was any measure, I could see where my
foreign fans might actually buy into me bashing Americans. Best of all, Shawn wouldn’t see me as a
threat any more—in fact, he would need me more than ever.



But what about my mom? She was a patriot, and she’d hate every bit of this! I’d traveled Canada
and the United States from one end to the other, to every big city and countless small towns, and I
loved both countries. I had always seen myself as a North American, equally proud of my American
blood and my Canadian heritage. As an America basher, I would be a heel the American fans would
truly hate. And the American wrestling audience had already changed, booing the babyfaces and
cheering the heels. In a very real sense it was the American fans who were turning heel, not me.



Before the night was over, I had sold myself on the idea. After ten strong years as a baby-face I
definitely needed to do something to pump some kind of new blood into my character. I talked
myself into it, even though I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something not quite right about
Vince’s plan.



I called him early the next morning. “As long as it’s done smartly and I have my hands on the controls
of what I say and do, I’m in.”



“You won’t regret it.”




Vince told me to keep my upcoming heel turn to myself, so I did.



38



THE LION AND THE HYENA



ON MARCH 23, I arrived at the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago at about 10 a.m. for WrestleMania XIII.
Vince had just let Stone Cold in on my heel turn and our role reversal, and he and I sat on the ring
apron blankly staring at each other. Steve appeared anxious about how we’d go about telling our
respective stories. I started tossing out ideas, and together we began piecing our match together. I
told him if my new heel turn was going to seem for real, we had to go toe-to-toe right off the bell,
onto the floor, over the barricade and up into the stands. Such an approach would make it all feel
like a shoot. The fans would be close, so we’d have to keep our work tight. I looked him in the eye
and said, “What would really make this a great match would be for you to get a little juice.” Steve
uneasily admitted that he’d never done that before, but he offered to try.



There was too much at stake for him to start practicing at WrestleMania. “Steve, I’d be the first guy
to tell you never to let anyone cut you, but in this situation you’re going to have to trust me. I’ll do it
right.” Steve quickly conceded that if we were going to get away with it, I’d better be the one to do
it.



The plan was that he was going to pass out in the sharpshooter but never submit, and we both
needed to figure out the best way to do that. I smiled at Steve and said, “Have you ever seen the
scene in that movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest where Jack Nicholson’s character tries to pull
that heavy, bolted-down sink out of the floor and throw it out the widow so he can escape the nut
house and go watch the World Series? You want him to succeed so badly, but as hard as he tries, he
simply can’t. That was the scene that made him, and that’s what we’re going to do with you.” Steve
was relying on me because he knew he could trust me.Vince had finally hired Ken Shamrock, a move
I had suggested, and he was going to referee our match, lending the credibility he brought with him
as champion of the brutal world of Ultimate Fighting.



As I came out like a lion, Steve was pacing the ring like a pissed-off hyena. I really felt like I was going
out to have a fight after school with a kid I hated. I got a strong cheer, but there were enough angry
signs and boos for me to see that my days as a babyface were truly over. Steve tackled me full force
when I came through the ropes and the bell clanged.




As we brawled up the stands, I took a hard smack into the hockey boards, and Steve took a back
drop from an attempted pile driver right onto the cement steps. I remember this part of the fight in
slow motion. Shocked, amused and angry fans leaped and yelled all around us. The cheering was so
loud I couldn’t hear a thing. My fists bounced perfectly off Steve’s head, and he never stopped
fighting back. Ken Shamrock, wearing a sleeveless zebra-striped referee shirt, looked amazed at how
close our work was, and how totally believable.



I eventually derailed Steve and started to work his leg. I dragged him over to the corner, dropped out
to the floor and slapped on my figure four around the post. Steve sold it like I was breaking his legs! I
let go and nonchalantly grabbed the ring bell, then left it on the apron as if it was a weapon
abandoned while I sought a better one. Like a cool killer I grabbed a chair, but it was padded, so I put
it down and picked up a metal one. I could see Julie and the kids in the front row. Beans was
covering her eyes, sitting next to a grim Stu and a startled Helen. I prepared to break Stone Cold’s
ankle, as the fans remembered he’d done to Pillman a few months earlier, by methodically threading
his shin bone through the back of the chair and stomping on it. I climbed up to the top corner to
jump off and cripple him, but Steve was up to greet me and smacked me across the back with the
chair, knocking me to the mat. While I was on all fours he cracked the chair across my back again,
leaving me writhing and twitching in the ring. My heel turn was in motion.



Vince, commentating with Lawler, announced to the masses watching on live pay-per-view, “What
excuse will Bret Hart come up with this time?”



Then Stone Cold attempted to put the sharpshooter on me as Lawler said, “Wouldn’t that be the
greatest thing of all time? For Bret Hart to submit to his very own hold?”



Steve had put the sharpshooter on wrong, and I raked his eyes breaking the hold, fighting back with
a hard gut punch. I took off into the ropes, but he sidestepped me and threw me out to the floor. I
spat out the blade from where it was tucked between my upper lip and gum. As we slugged it out on
the floor, I said, “It’s time!”



I faintly heard him say, “Maybe we shouldn’t.”



I reversed his throw and told him, “It’s too late!” I hurled him crashing hard into the timekeeper, and
he barreled into the steel barricade. I calmly stepped over Steve, with Vince looking right at me and
screaming fans only inches away. I grabbed his head and beat him with my fists like rubber


hammers. Then I cut him perfectly, less than a half-inch long and as deep as a dime slot. No one saw
a thing. The blood spurted out of his head as I gave him a serious thrashing. Despite all the vicious
attacks he’d put me through, the crowd was now cheering for him as he fought to hang on. I
retrieved the chair I’d discarded earlier and repeatedly smashed him in the knee, like I was bent on
destroying him. I was actually doing the best I could to hit his knee brace every time.



I managed to beat the bloody but defiant Austin back to a corner, but like a school bully with his
back against the wall, he kicked me full force in the balls. A total work. I clutched my crotch and sank
backward. The tide had just turned.



Now a furious Stone Cold did all he could to put The Hitman away. The crowd seemed torn between
us at times, but when he suplexed me off the top corner into the ring, Steve had the fans totally
behind him.



After twenty minutes we went into the finish, but Steve threw me out on the wrong side of the
ring—I needed to be near the bell I’d left on the apron. Steve went for the mic cord, while I subtly
maneuvered to where I needed to be. He quietly sighed with relief that I’d fixed the mistake, and as I
leaned against the ropes from outside on the ring apron, he came from behind me and wrapped the
mic cord around my neck several times, pretending to choke the life out of me. I sank to my knees,
gasping and struggling, then grabbed the ring bell, desperately smashing the top of Steve’s bald,
bloody head. I untangled the cord from around my neck to find Steve flat on his back. It was time for
this son of a bitch to pay! Twisting him into my sharpshooter, I wrenched backward with all I had.
Blood gushed out of his forehead, but Stone Cold refused to give in and somehow found the will to
resist me. The crowd joined with him in one long, groaning gasp! He slowly forced me to topple to
the mat, but could he kick out of the hold that had never failed me? No! The Hitman held on with
unyielding determination!



The fans cheered him on, but like Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest he just could not lift that sink.
When I steadied myself on my feet and clamped the sharpshooter on even tighter, I broke every
heart that Stone Cold had just won.



In the end, Austin didn’t submit but was rendered unconscious. Shamrock stopped the match and
raised my hand. The bell sounded. I coldly began to attack his knees, then stepped into the
sharpshooter to give him some more, but before I could, Shamrock gripped me around the waist and
threw me down hard to the mat. I was right back up and furious, with the taste of blood on my lips,
and Ken and I squared off with fists clenched. He challenged me to bring it on, and the Chicago
crowd came unglued. For him, a seed was sown for some other day. As for me, I stood alone but
defiant, proud and unbowed, that remorseless pink soldier on his dark bloody battlefield.




As I dropped to the floor, signs danced in my face: “Bret who?” and “Go back to Canada!” But kids
still pulled out the front of their Hitman shirts as they high-fived me to show me that they were with
me. I touched hands of support that reached out, but one frothing-at-the-mouth, irate fan gave me
the middle finger. I thrust one right back and mouthed, “Fuck you too!”



I loved it. The match. Everything. If I ever wanted my fans to remember just one picture of me, it
would be that moment, as I was walking back to the dressing room.



As I headed past Taker, he smiled and said, “Helluva match, man, not a chance in hell me and Sid are
ever gonna top that!” He said this respectfully, from one worker to another. I was numb with pride
as I waded into my fellow wrestlers to handshakes and praise. When Steve came in, we shook hands
as he beamed, all the while pretending to be up-set about his cut head.



In The Wrestling Observer, Dave Meltzer wrote, “It was expected to be a one-man show. And
fortunately for the name WrestleMania, the one man delivered to match of the year caliber. . . Hart
and Steve Austin more than saved the show with a match phenomenal in work rate, intensity and
telling the story.”



The next day Vince pulled me into his office as soon as I got to the Rockford Civic Center and asked
me whether Steve and I had taken it upon ourselves to get juice. Steve had denied it. So did I. Vince
never said another word to me about it.



Then he asked me whether I was ready to give the interview of my life, and told me the points he
wanted me to cover. The set-up had begun the week before WrestleMania, when Vince had
encouraged me to go berserk on camera and curse him out over the injustices I’d suffered, then
shove him violently to the mat. He promised that they’d use the three-second delay to edit out my
curse words, but they didn’t bleep out a thing, and my crazed bout of rage had gone out everywhere
except Canada, where the show didn’t air live.



The interview I was to do that night would turn out to be the longest in the history of the business to
that time, a twenty-two-minute live rant that I think was the best of my career. I wore black gear
with a new black leather jacket that signaled my intentions: It had a menacing skull framed with a
pink triangle on the back. (None of the fans would have ever guessed that the illustration was
originally drawn by Jerry Lawler as a possible logo for the Hitmen hockey team.)




I started by apologizing to my fans all over the world for the foul-mouthed outburst they’d
witnessed. And then I took a deep breath thinking, Here we go, this is it:



“. . . to my fans across the United States of America, to you I apologize for nothing. No matter how
much I try to win, when I walk back to the dressing room, you treat me like I’ve lost. Even though
Stone Cold lost, you cheer him as though he won. . . . You cheer on a pretty boy like Shawn Michaels.
You let him screw me out of the World Wrestling Federation belt, but the WWF needed a hero, a
role model, not somebody with earrings and tattoos posing for a girlie magazine, which is actually a
gay magazine. . . . I thought I had a calling to come back and set the record straight and clean up the
WWF—so I did. I came back and beat Steve Austin at Survivor Series. When I had my first chance to
win the belt back, against Sycho Sid, Shawn Michaels interfered and cost me the belt. Nobody cared.
. . . But then I was told, don’t worry, you can fight twenty-nine other guys in the Royal Rumble and if
you win that you’ll get a title shot at WrestleMania. Twenty-nine guys later I won. I was the last legal
man standing, but somehow it’s justified that Steve Austin won. . . . Gorilla Monsoon and Vince
McMahon begged me not to quit. To think of my fans. So I did. I was told if I won the final four I’d
get a title shot at WrestleMania. Sounds good to me. I accept. I come back. All of a sudden, your
champion, your hero, Shawn Michaels, comes up with this life-ending, career-ending injury and
forfeits the title so he can go back and find his smile. . . You talk about me crying, I saw everybody
crying in the audience for that one. . . .



“I’ve got one thing on my mind after being screwed over by everybody in the WWF—and being
abandoned by all you good fans across the United States—I decide I’m going to go into this sub-
mission match and give Steve Austin exactly what he deserves. A good old-fashioned ass whipping.
So when I do it, when I take that dirty, rotten, stinking hyena, Steve Austin, and beat him to a bloody
pulp, you find it in your hearts to abandon me and cheer for him.”



Most of the fans in the arena stood in stunned silence, not quite able to absorb what was happening.
But there were those Hitman fans so loyal to me they believed that I had every right to feel the way I
did because the WWF had, in fact, screwed me, and they were just as sick of it as I was. In their
minds, I was addressing the segment of the American wrestling audience that had changed, and they
hadn’t, so they actually supported my heel turn. Lawler defended me too. So to stress to the TV
audience that I was now, in fact, a bad guy, Vince proclaimed, “The poison is spewing from Bret
Hart,” as they cut to a sign that read, “Bret get a life!”



Hatred seemed to burn from my eyes as I ranted on along the lines Vince had suggested:



“I’ve proven myself so many times here in the WWF. I’ve tried to be everything you wanted me to
be, but it seems to me you don’t seem to understand what it means to have dignity, poise, to bring


prestige . . . to be a man that brings a little class . . . because you’d rather cheer for heroes like
Charles Manson and O.J. Simpson. Nobody glorifies criminal conduct like the Americans do. All the
other countries I go to around the world still respect what’s right and what’s wrong.”



Contemptuously, I sneered, “Respect” and took a deep breath, diving in past the point of no return.



“Now that we’ve made everything really clear with our-selves here tonight, it’s obvious to me that
all you American wrestling fans from coast to coast, you don’t respect me. Well, the fact is, I don’t
respect you. You don’t deserve it. So from here on in the American wrestling fans can kiss my ass!”



And then Shawn appeared at the top of the ramp and made his way to the ring so we’d be face to
face as he had his turn.



“Yo, Hitman! Nobody knows better than me, you have to have a handwritten note from the Lord
Almighty to get the belt from you. I’ve tried and tried to take the high road. Now, Bret, I’m in no
shape to wrestle. I know you’re tougher than me. Blah blah blah. I admit that. That’s fine. I don’t
have to be number one. I don’t obsess like you do. I do this cuz I like it. You do it because in your
mind, Hitman, you really think all of this is yours. What you need to understand, every time these
fans reach into their pockets to watch you, me, or anybody else, they have the right to cheer or boo
anybody they want. Now, you don’t have to tell me, they’re cheering me now, but they booed me
before. But you didn’t see me get all bent out of shape.”



At that moment, one lone disgusted fan shouted out to Shawn, “You are a liar!”



Shawn went on to tell me all about the first amendment. “I don’t want to get on my high-and-mighty
roller coaster. Bret, my friend, you want to go? Let’s go! We’ve got a saying in the United States of
America. It’s called, America, love it or leave it.”



“Boy Toy,” I said, “go back to the dressing room. Just get the hell out of my face.”



“How’d you know I was in that gay magazine? You just had to flip through the pages, didn’tcha?”




The crowd popped. Shawn turned his back on me to play up to the fans. Quick as a cat I came from
behind and went straight for his supposedly injured knee. I dragged him to the nearest corner,
dropped out and slapped on my figure four on the post. As realistic as both our interviews were, we
were both still working: he protected me by holding my foot so I could ease myself to the floor
without whacking my head, which was the only dangerous part about putting that hold on.



Shawn’s response was as carefully scripted by Vince as my rant was. He was a master puppeteer
playing with a couple of marionettes.



On March 25, we taped Raw in Peoria, to air the following Monday. That night Owen and I concluded
our three-year war, fulfilling the promise we made to each other when we started our brother-
against-brother angle. Davey and Owen had a rematch for the European title, even though they
were still the reigning WWF Tag Team champs. In the heat of their battle, I suddenly hit the ring and
broke up the fight, like a big brother dealing with a couple of unruly younger siblings. I restored
order long enough to get to a mic, and then launched into a monologue about family values. Angry
fans booed me, but I appealed directly to Owen and Davey: “What are you fighting for? Americans
don’t understand family, they’ve based their entire history on brother against brother.”





When they tore into each other again, I got between them and broke it up, pleading with Davey,
“We fought each other at Wembley Stadium. We fought like two men and we hugged each other
when it was over.” He appeared to be moved by my words, especially as I pointed out how Diana
had been used to drive a wedge between us. I turned at long last to-ward Owen, my embittered
little brother.“Who was there for you more times than I was?” I pleaded with Owen, whose eyes
glistened bright as his lower lip quivered in an Academy Award–winning performance. Despite the
boos, I could see fans in the front row beginning to tear up too.



“Americans don’t understand family! Davey, Owen—I’m asking for your help. Owen, look me in the
eye. Hear me loud and clear, I don’t care about these people. Owen, I love ya.”



Tears streamed down Owen’s face as he fell into my arms. The three of us embraced in the middle of
the ring as the arena rained boos down on us. As Owen tousled Davey’s flat-top, I nearly cracked up,
but I was able to glare coldly into the camera with chilling hate for all those who opposed us. The
new Hart Foundation was born!



Later in the show, Stone Cold did an in-ring interview with a white bandage covering the tiny cut on
his forehead, seething about how he never said, “I quit!” I appeared on the giant screen telling him


he just got his butt kicked by the real king of the jungle, and that I was finished with him. He hotly
fired back, “No you’re not. You’ll have to kill me to be finished with me.”



That night had one more wrinkle: I was slated by the booking committee to challenge Rocky Maivia
for the Intercontinental title, and Hunter was insisting I beat him. I didn’t see any need for me to
beat Rocky; it wouldn’t build heat for my new heel turn, and would only undermine a real talent. I
insisted on a DQ instead, which infuriated Hunter. He and Shawn disliked Rocky intensely and were
too myopic to see that Rocky was destined to become one of the all-time greatest megastars in the
history of the business, The Rock. Looking back, I’m glad I got to work with him at least once.



Our match was nice, quick, simple. In the end, I pulled his legs out from under him in the corner, slid
out under the bottom rope and locked him into the figure four around the post. Several referees
later I still hadn’t released the hold and was disqualified. Stone Cold charged out to save Rocky, but
he was bushwhacked by Owen and Davey, and I joined in by pulling Stone Cold’s shirt over his head,
like I’d done to Shawn, and then pretended to beat him senseless. The Legion of Doom came to the
rescue, squaring off with Owen and Davey, just as Steve battled back. In a rare act of cowardice, the
Hart Foundation fled over the barricades and into the crowd to a chorus of boos.



It was working. Every night now, hostile fans waited outside the buildings for my arrival. I was
finding out that the one thing that pissed off wrestling fans more than anything else was to attack
their patriotism. By the time I got to the ring, I was covered in gobs of spit; coins, drinks and garbage
dangerously bounced off my head as fans cursed and pelted me. It reminded me of the kind of heat
Sergeant Slaughter had when he wore Saddam Hussein’s boots during the Gulf War. After the shows
I needed a police escort to get out of town. Even then, I often found myself speeding to outrun fans
who chased me, hanging out their car windows, shaking shotguns and half-empty beer bottles while
trying to run me off the road.



After six days at home at the beginning of April, I took off on two foreign tours, to South Africa and
then to Kuwait. Promoters in both places demanded that Undertaker and I headline their shows or
they’d cancel the sold-out tours, and though the dates overlapped, we both agreed to do double
duty as a sign of our commitment to Vince during his time of financial struggle. Before I left I got an
unexpected call from Eric Bischoff to say that he’d been blown away by my match with Steve. He
wanted me to know that if things didn’t work out with Vince, the door was always open for me at
WCW.



My flight from Calgary to South Africa was the most luxurious trip I ever took, and that’s saying
something. I could truly say to myself that this is what it felt like to be a superstar. I made my
connection in Heathrow, where I checked into a room at the Hilton right at the airport, which was


included as part of my ticket. I enjoyed a comfy eight-hour sleep before boarding a British Airways
flight direct to Cape Town. I dined on roast shoulder of lamb and slept flat in an egglike seat that
curled out like a bed. I felt so rested when I landed that I rented an Aston Martin and took off from
the airport to find the hotel where I’d hook up with the rest of the WWF crew. Driving through Cape
Town, the rolling clouds tumbled over Table Mountain and my heart beat contentedly in my chest.
How could I know this would be my final world tour as a wrestling hero? How could anyone know,
but for a handful of conspirators who met behind closed hotel room doors in the wee hours, long
after the fans had gone home, long even after the boys had gone to sleep.



I spent the following day on a sightseeing drive around the Cape, thinking about how desperately I
wanted to get home for good. Taking inventory, I had to admit that the aches and pains never went
away anymore. There was increasing stiffness in my joints, and I could barely bend my right wrist at
all, as much from working out on the weights as from wrestling. But I told myself I could still deliver
that one beautiful story, of a character who always stayed true to himself and fought hard for what
he believed in, and who had a fierce loyalty to those who, in turn, believed in him.



That night I drove to the building unsure whether my loyal Cape Town following was up to speed on
the new storyline. I strode out to a huge pop, waving a South African flag: the Cape Town fans ate it
up. (Of course, the sight of me flaunting the South African flag on Raw was intended to heat up the
American audience even more.)



That night, and for the rest of that blur of beautiful little towns, Taker and I had some great matches.
It was important for him to always be the monster, which allowed me the opportunity to save face
and stride out to the ring every night as a good and steady hero. Those few days in Africa have
endured for me as lasting memories of a vanishing time in a business that was drastically changing.



I was tanned and refreshed when Taker and I arrived in Kuwait on April 8 to hook up with a
completely different crew. Owen and Davey had just come from a live Raw in Muncie, Indiana, and
they told me about an in-ring shoot interview Shawn had done that was so over the line they were
both livid on my behalf. I didn’t realize the full impact of it until I called my friend Marcy, who was so
pissed off about the interview and disappointed in Shawn that she played the whole eighteen-
minute rant to me over the phone. Shawn started off level enough, working, talking about how I’d
put him in the figure four around the post a couple of weeks before and he wasn’t going to say when
he’d be back in action. After that, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Remember, this was a time
when pro wrestlers didn’t go on TV to speak openly about the business or what happened behind
the curtain. You spoke only about a guy’s wrestling character, not his character as a person.



Here’s Shawn:




“Everyone is asking, Why is Bret Hart all of a sudden a ‘bad’ guy? Well, ladies and gentlemen, boys
and girls, I’m not gonna lie to ya. Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels loathe one another. Whether it be
out here or back there, make no mistake about it, Bret Hart hates my guts. And to be perfectly
honest, I hate his. Now, we’re gonna take the gloves off here. Bret Hart has not just recently turned
into a bad guy; he has always been a bad guy. He comes out here and he talks about how . . . the
World Wrestling Federation exploited his family. Well, I’ve got news for ya, ladies and gentlemen,
Bret Hart is the one that asked his mother and his father to be on TV. Bret Hart is the one that drags
his sister and his children out on TV. The World Wrestling Federation exploits Bret Hart’s family
because he allows it . . . and the reason he allows it is very simple . . . for Bret Hart’s own financial
gain. If Bret can make a buck he’d sell his mother. That’s the truth!”



Shawn was only just getting warmed up.



“Bret Hart has an obsession with Shawn Michaels and the World Wrestling Federation
Championship. Last year I won the World Wrestling Federation Championship fair and square. But I
want to digress to six years ago. When Shawn Michaels first started his singles career and became
the Intercontinental Champion, that’s when Bret Hart also became the World Wrestling Federation
Champion. I ran support to him. I told everybody, including himself and his family, that I supported
him. And I was second fiddle to Bret Hart for years here, and I did it with a smile on my face, because
that’s what a man does when it comes to business. But then, when it came for Bret Hart to return
the favor, oh yeah he did it, but he did it kickin’ and screamin’ every inch of the way. And then, Bret
Hart takes time off . . . he says, ’Cause he needs rest. What he did was take time off to see if Shawn
Michaels and the World Wrestling Federation would fall flat on their face without him. Well, guess
what, we didn’t fall face flat anywhere! As a matter of fact the World Wrestling Federation did the
best business it has done in six years.”



Then Shawn turned to Vince, who’d been standing silently beside him all this time. “You’re the boss,
am I right or wrong?”



Vince smirked as he replied, “You’re right.”



What else could Vince say at that moment, with Shawn on a roll on live TV? But the fact is that when
I began my first title reign, the WWF was in the midst of the steroid and sex scandals, and business
dropped off because of negative press—not because I was champion. In fact, I carried the
championship during the darkest days in WWF history, and any wrestler who was there at that time
knows that. Vince knows that, I told myself.




Shawn carried on:



“Bret Hart, he sat in Calgary and passed judgment on Shawn Michaels and he told everybody about
my faults. And believe me, folks, I have got a truck-load of faults. But I have never, ever lied about
that to any one of ya. He talked about my dancing. How could the fans of the World Wrestling
Federation cheer a wrestler who dances? Who has long hair? Who pierces his navel? Who has
tattoos? How could the fans of the World Wrestling Federation support something like that? Well,
it’s real simple, they like it, you idiot!”



But every one of those comments I made was about his ring character, not about him as a person. If
I’d been taking personal jabs at Shawn Michaels, I’d have talked about how he was a drug addict and
how insecure and neurotic he was—and I never did. As for the fans? Male WWF fans left for WCW in
droves when Shawn got the belt.



“And Bret Hart . . . talks about his loyalty to his WWF fans. And that’s ultimately what made him
return to the World Wrestling Federation. Well, that is a load of horse shit. The reason Bret Hart
returned to the World Wrestling Federation, after using a rival organization against this man and the
company that made him what he was, he stabbed the World Wrestling Federation in the back! Why?
For his financial gain! Bret Hart did not come back to the World Wrestling Federation for his fans, he
came back for the almighty dollar!”



Hogan, Roddy, Razor, Diesel, Kid and even Curt Hennig had all abandoned Vince’s sinking ship. I
stayed loyal to him and to the WWF and walked away from $2.8 million a year to take Vince’s
proposed $1.5 million. But did Vince say that?



“Now we’re all wondering, why are you obsessed with the World Wrestling Federation
Championship? I’ll tell ya, I wanted to be the World Wrestling Federation Champion since I was a
little kid. It was a dream. Bret Hart is obsessed with the World Wrestling Federation Championship
because he was born into it. If Bret Hart wasn’t a World Champion he would feel like he had fallen
short. When he goes home to Calgary he is still Bret The Hitman Hart, former World Wrestling
Federation Champion. Shawn Michaels, when he goes home, he’s not The Heartbreak Kid, he’s not
Shawn Michaels, he’s just plain old Shawn. Bret, you’re The Hitman twenty-four hours a day. And the
reason for that is Bret Hart cannot separate all of this from his real life. That’s why he brings his
family in it, and that’s why he brings his friends in it. Bret Hart is obsessed with being in the limelight
more than I could ever possibly imagine! Bret Hart, your obsession with me and the World Wrestling
Federation Championship will ultimately be, and I want you to read my lips, it will ultimately be your
destruction.”




Marcy told me that when Shawn was done, he took his suit jacket off to do his Chippendale dance
and humped Vince’s leg.



I called Carlo, and he said he didn’t like the interview either. Carlo was in such a full panic, fearing for
his job and not trusting a soul, that I had to shout into the phone to calm him down.



Next I called Vince. Without a moment’s hesitation he told me that Shawn’s behavior was
inexcusable and that Shawn would be dealt with. Thinking back on it now, I am astonished that I
believed him: No one just went off like Shawn had done on a TV rant without Vince orchestrating
every bit of it. I guess I just wanted to believe him. I asked him, again, whether he had any problem
with our contract, and he reiterated that he didn’t. I reminded him that I turned down a hell of a lot
of money to stay loyal to the company, and that this was something Shawn should know. He agreed.



How could Shawn have forgotten that I put that torch right in his hand?



The Kuwait tour offered some relief and distraction. Owen and I had the privilege of spending a day
and a half with the 7th Cavalry Regiment “Garry Owen” tank division. The soldiers took us for a
helicopter flight out to Camp Doha on the Kuwait Iraq border, where we sat down to a hearty meal
with all the soldiers in the mess tent, including the general. The chaplain, Corporal Ken Sorensen,
who was a dead ringer for Father Mulcahey on M.A.S.H., told me the men loved to watch wrestling;
many of the soldiers said they couldn’t believe we’d come all the way out there to visit them.



They drove us in a Bradley tank to remote outposts where sentries stood guard. What impressed me
most about these soldiers was their guts and their fear; they had the guts to take on anyone and
they lived with the fear of knowing they might have to at any moment. I found the camaraderie of
these men not very different from the camaraderie between the wrestlers. In the army they need to
trust and respect one another and support each other, whether they like each other or not, which
was no different than the bond between wrestlers working in the ring. As we were leaving, the
general told us our visit had been great for morale and I told him, “Ours as well as yours.”



On the ride back to the base Owen, Davey and I found ourselves flying through an azure blue sky
over golden desert sands in an open military helicopter, happy to be alive and bound by our
optimism that the new Hart Foundation would really get over!




As a parting gift the chaplain handed me a coin with an inscription that read “The angel of the Lord
encamps around those who fear him and he delivers them. Psalm 3:4:7.” The men of the 7th Cavalry
gave me a Garry Owen pin. From that day on, even as I bashed American wrestling fans, I proudly
wore the pin on my ring jacket as a way of letting them know how I really felt about Americans.



On April 11 Vader made the mistake of going bonkers on Good Morning Kuwait. He and Taker were
appearing together on the show and had been warned in advance that the host was going to ask
them the predictable question about pro wrestling: Is it fake? Taker diplomatically answered that
wrestling is entertainment with athleticism thrown in. But Vader had worked a lot in Japan, where
pro wrestling was still taken very seriously as a shoot, and where wrestlers put a scare into talk-show
hosts all the time. So Vader grabbed the host by his tie and threw him down backward over some
chairs and a table, swearing that such questions were “bullshit!” He was immediately hauled off to
jail, and threatened with three months’ incarceration, mostly because it was illegal in Kuwait to
swear on TV. Despite Vince’s efforts to get Vader out, for a time the authorities wouldn’t budge.
They finally settled on house arrest at the hotel. When I finally saw Vader again, he looked like a big,
bad dog who tore up the fence. As much as the business had changed in the twelve years since the
David Schultz and John Stossel fiasco, some things never change.



On my second-to-last night of the tour, I carried a Kuwait national flag out to my match with Taker,
which was being taped to air on TV back home. I ducked under him, like I’d done so many times
before, but caught my boot in the canvas and felt something snap in my right knee, like a small fan
belt breaking. I limped slightly for the rest of the match and right through to the following night,
when the vocal crowd popped as I defeated Stone Cold in the final to win the Kuwaiti Cup.



When I got back home, I was gratified to read in The Wrestling Observer on April 21:



“Reality break, folks. It goes without saying that in the ring Michaels did a super job in 1996 . . .
however, let’s not rewrite history to say Shawn’s reign was Hogan-like from a business standpoint,
because nothing could be further from the truth. TV ratings collapsed in June of 1996 on Shawn’s
watch, not Bret’s, and reached company all time lows for the rest of the year. Not just Monday night
ratings due to Nitro—ratings across the board. Syndication died. Shawn’s work in the ring can’t be
denied . . . but the buy rates fell through his reign and it was during Shawn’s reign, for the first time
in a decade that WWF in both ppv and TV ratings fell to no. 2 in the U.S. And when it came to house
shows, while WWF had a strong year in 1996, its best months were February and March and who
was champion at that point? The summer was good but there was a serious decline in the fall, at
which point Vince threw everything he could to get Bret back, including promising him the belt. Let’s
not forget that there were numerous cases of Michaels throwing unprofessional hissy fits
throughout his title reign in the ring.”




I was still deeply hurt and pissed off though—and had no idea what to do about it.



39



“NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, I’M LOYAL TO YOU”



WHEN I GOT HOME TO CALGARY, my doctor told me that my sore knee was serious: I needed
surgery. They would have to do a scope and then shave the bone down in my knee, which could
keep me out of action for up to six months. Even though I was protected by my contract in case of
injury, I called Vince to let him know I’d do my best to be back as soon as possible. The week the
surgery was scheduled I was supposed to do an In Your House match with Sid, but Vince told me Sid
was injured too. He desperately needed me to do the match with Stone Cold instead, or the pay-per-
view was in danger of bombing. Looking back now, I wonder about myself and my desire to please
him at significant cost to myself: it couldn’t have been all about being worried about my livelihood.





Without hesitating I told him I’d schedule the surgery for after the show. In less than a minute we
formulated a new storyline in which Steve and I would carry our war through In Your House and
onto Raw the next night, where we’d square off in a street fight. Steve would “injure” my knee,
putting me out of commission. I’d have the surgery and do my best to get back for King of the Ring in
June. As an incentive, Vince promised that if I came back in time, Shawn would put me over at King
of the Ring. It was quite a thing to throw out to me, considering that Shawn and I hadn’t sorted
things out yet.



Vince told me he was grateful for my dedication and that he, too, was fed up with Shawn. But he
was reluctant to discipline him, maybe out of fear that Shawn would end up in WCW with his old
pals in the clique. For my part I offered to sit down with Shawn man to man and bury the hatchet,
for the good of the company. I hung up the phone relieved that everything seemed sal-vageable and
that my position was still solid.



During my match with Stone Cold on the April 20In Your House pay-per-view from Rochester, New
York, no fan could tell that my knee was blown. In a nice irony I viciously worked Steve’s knee, even
ripping off his knee brace and bashing his unprotected joint with a chair. When I finally softened him
up enough to go for the sharpshooter, I intentionally stepped through backward so he could reverse
it. Steve managed to reach back and find his knee brace and crack me over the head with it, gouging
a deep, two-inch cut in the top of my head. I fell back and my momentum flipped Steve perfectly up
to his feet so he could step right into the sharpshooter. Feeling my scalp with my fingers I knew I’d


need stitches, and the last thing Steve and I needed right now was another bloody match. Luckily the
blood caked in my thick hair and was unnoticeable. By the end of it, Owen and Davey hit the ring to
make the save, and I limped back to the dressing room leaning on their shoulders, which set the
stage for a big blow-off the next night on Raw in Binghamton.



The first thing I did when I got to the Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena on April 21 was ask
Shawn to talk with me in private out by the ring, as a handful of technicians did sound checks. I told
him I wanted peace. I didn’t lay everything on him as being his fault, and listened without protest as
he told me that morale among the boys was better when he was champion than when I was. I
almost felt sad for him: he didn’t seem to have a clue how wrong he was. Shawn said that his recent
animosity toward me stemmed from my remarks about his knee, which he maintained was really
hurt. What was I to make of that? Every-body in the dressing room was skeptical about his injury. So
I referred to my own hurt knee, and conceded that it was hard to tell from the outside just how
damaged a knee was.



Once again, we agreed that going forward, we would clear any negative comments with each other
before putting them out there for the public to hear, and we’d work together as professionally as we
always had, aiming for King of the Ring in June, if I could make it back by then. We shook hands and I
felt good that we were back in sync.



The street fight with Stone Cold on Raw built up like a showdown at the O.K. Corral. That night I
sacrificed all I had for Vince and his company, determined to turn my knee injury into a positive.
Even though Steve and I had fought it out numerous times before, I’d never been the despised one
before: The crowd was as bad-tempered as a pack of vicious dogs. Coins bounced off my sore,
stitched-up head as I headed out to the ring in blue jeans, a blue T-shirt and Doc Marten boots. It
was impossible to wear a knee wrap under the jeans, so I went out without knee protection.



Now the reluctant hero, Stone Cold paced the ring in his black AUSTIN 3:16 T-shirt and jeans, only to
be pounced on by Owen and Davey at the sound of the bell. Shawn came to Steve’s rescue, cleaning
house all the way back to the dressing room, leaving me to deliver an intense shit-kicking to Steve,
during which I methodically placed his ankle through the back of a steel chair and climbed up to the
top turnbuckle. When I jumped off, Steve moved and I made out that I injured my knee when I
landed. Of course, Steve promptly slammed my unprotected knees with the chair. We’d forgotten to
calculate for no knee wrap: the damage and the pain were very real. It has given me pause to think
that the knee problems I’ve suffered ever since were severely aggravated by this one angle on this
one night. Then Steve twisted me into a sharpshooter and cinched it in until The New Hart
Foundation, now including Brian Pillman, barged past several referees and agents to make the save. I
was delicately placed on a gurney and stretchered out to a waiting ambulance with Owen and Davey
shouting and pleading for the attendants to be careful as the camera crew followed us. I could hear
Owen yell, “Watch his knee! Get ’im to a hospital!” with such emotion that I almost cracked up.




They lifted me into the ambulance, but just as it was about to pull away the audience realized that
Stone Cold was sitting in the driver’s seat—it was an ambush! Steve scrambled back and put a
vicious beating on me before he was jumped by Owen and Davey and the whole ruckus was broken
up by a gaggle of refs and agents.



When the ambulance finally pulled away, a steaming Owen huffed to Davey, “He’s not gonna get
away with this. We’ll kill ’im. We’ll kill ’im.”



I had knee surgery on Wednesday, April 23, spending one night in the hospital. I barely got in the
door of my house the next day when Vince called and said he needed me to be at Raw in Omaha,
Nebraska, on Monday. I told him that the doctor had warned me not to do anything, but Vince
assured me that if I showed up, I could come out in a wheelchair and nobody would touch me. In
real life, the other members of The Hart Foundation—Owen, Davey and Pillman—were chomping at
the bit to keep the momentum going, and I felt I would be letting them and the business down if I
didn’t show. The last turn of the screw? Jim would be there too. Vince explained that he wanted
Anvil to come out in the final seconds of the show just as Stone Cold was about to get his hands on
me in my wheel-chair. Owen, Davey and Pillman would all be preoccupied at ringside, and I’d be
trying to fend Steve off with my crutches. Out of nowhere, Anvil would blindside him, and I’d whack
him with my crutch, knocking him off the ten-foot-high stage! Steve would land on a giant stunt
mattress, in the dark, which would quickly be removed before the cameras found him sprawled out
on the cement.



Although I didn’t relish making the trip just four days after major reconstructive surgery, I told Vince
I’d be there: I had a strong feeling that Jim being hired back depended on it. So that’s what I did.



Over the next few weeks I came out in a wheelchair and then on crutches, for real. My heel turn, and
the angles it spawned, were a huge success. We really had great heat, Vince’s ratings were
rebounding and the house show business was good, with Davey subbing for me in main events
against Taker. There were all kinds of spinoffs involving The Hart Foundation that benefited not only
Austin, but Taker, Mankind, Legion of Doom and, of course, Shawn. It was great to see the whole
dressing room working as a team to beat WCW.



I worked TVs every week, ripping into America. Being a heel was fun, but I really feared where this
was leading. The fans were so pissed off that I couldn’t even hear myself talk when I did my in-ring
interviews (though I couldn’t have been more pleased when Meltzer wrote that my interviews were
the best in the business all year).




The Hart Foundation wore black leather jackets like mine, except for Pillman, who wore a black
leather vest—the jackets served as protection from the constant barrage of dangerous objects! We
were having such a successful and creative run that I even went to Vince one more time to see about
bringing Bruce in as a heel World Junior Heavyweight Champion, the chance that Bruce had been
waiting for all his life. Vince seemed to like the idea of revealing yet another secret member of The
Foundation, which was really just the WWF’s version of what Bischoff was doing with the nWo.



Vince told me he was still hoping that I’d be able to work with Shawn at King of the Ring. My knee
was sore and swollen, and my recovery slow. If I was working with somebody I could trust, I thought
I might be able to pull it off. The question was, Could I trust Shawn? What I should have been asking
myself was, Could I trust Vince?



Raw, from Newark, Delaware, on May 12, opened with The Hart Foundation at the top of the ramp,
with me in my wheelchair praising them as the best that the WWF had to offer. They all seemed
legitimately touched when I borrowed a couple of lines from the Sebastian Faulks war novel,
Birdsong, to introduce them: “‘I would take these men into the mouth of hell to fight the devil. I
would trust these men to breathe for me and to pump my blood with their hearts.’ Jim The Anvil
Neidhart, Davey Boy Smith, my lovable brother Owen and Brian Pillman. We are The Hart
Foundation!”



At the end of the show, with the idea that I’d soon be working with Shawn at King of the Ring, I
called Shawn out to the ring. The last thirty seconds were supposed to be mine, and then Shawn
would give me his superkick, toppling me backward, out of my wheelchair, as the show went off the
air. But the fan noise was so loud I couldn’t hear my cue. Instead of the show ending with Shawn
nailing me, we went off the air with me dressing him down. I felt bad about it, but Shawn thought I
did it on purpose and was furious. I told him that they had the footage of him superkicking me out of
my wheelchair, which they could replay all week on Vince’s other shows. And they did—over and
over.



On May 19, at Raw in Mobile, Alabama, Shawn and I built more heat for our King of the Ring match,
but because my knee still wasn’t ready and I couldn’t go long, Vince’s idea was that I’d promise that
if I didn’t beat Shawn in less than ten minutes I’d never wrestle in America again! A Hart Foundation
member would be handcuffed to each ring post, and of course one of them would free himself to
ensure that I won, just in the nick of time. During an in-ring interview in the first half of the night,
Shawn was groggy and slurring his words. As I climbed into the ring with The Hart Foundation to
open the second half, Shawn appeared on the big screen, wasted, and suggested on live TV that I
couldn’t get it up for ten minutes and that I’d been having some “Sunny days,” a blatant suggestion
that I’d been sleeping with Sunny. I couldn’t hear him well because it was so noisy in the ring, so the


remark sailed right over my head. When the interview was over, most of the boys were seething at
how unprofessional it was. Any hopes we had of working together went out the window. Shawn was
so out of it that night, Hunter and Chyna had to help him out of the building.



When I got home, Julie and Stu were upset about the Sunny comment, but it wasn’t until Dallas and
all his school pals asked me whether I was doing stuff with Sunny that I realized that Shawn had hurt
my family. At that time, the pro wrestling code of honor was still clear: No man hurts another man’s
family. Jim Ross phoned me at home to apologize on behalf of the office and to promise that
Shawn’s unprofessional behavior would be dealt with. I’d heard that line before. This time I felt I had
to do something to settle the score.



Throughout that week I brooded about what to do. I wondered about beating the hell out of Shawn
for real at the pay-per-view, but that could be costly to the company if he got badly hurt, and I also
had to be careful of my knee. I decided to tell Vince that I had to pull out of the pay-per-view
because my knee wasn’t ready. Vince had a plan: Stone Cold would finally catch me alone, flatten
me and bash the hell of my knee, taking me out of the pay-per-view storyline and what would have
been a clean win over Shawn.



At the Raw in Huntington, West Virginia, on June 2, I had an in-depth talk with Vince. He told me
that the company was in financial peril and that he was only just hanging on: The next six months
would either make him or break him. He said Ted Turner was hell-bent on putting him out of
business, and he told me he might have no other choice but to restructure my contract. Of course,
I’d still get every dime he owed me, but I’d get it on the back end, years down the road. He added
that he appreciated how hard I was working for him and told me not to worry about anything.



I sure didn’t want to receive the money owing to me now at the back end of my contract, so I did call
my lawyer to see what my options were if Vince tried to do that kind of a move, but when it came
right down to it, I didn’t believe that he ever would.



King of the Ring went down on June 8, according to the new plan. The next day we were all
supposed to be at Raw in Hartford. Shawn was nowhere to be found. I happened to mention to Jim
that as soon as I saw Shawn I was going to straighten him out once and for all. I never thought Jim
The Anvil Neidhart could be a voice of reason, but he got a worried look on his face and pleaded with
me: “Please, I just got back here! Don’t do anything now! God, Bret, I need this job! Just forget about
it.” What could I say? I resigned myself to not beating the shit out of Shawn.




At about 6 p.m., I went into the bathroom to gel my hair before going across the hall to tape
interviews. I was surprised to see Shawn’s reflection go by me in the mirror. I could see he was
uptight, so I smiled and casually said, “Hey, Shawn . . .”



He cut me off. “Fuck you! You haven’t talked to me in over a fucking month, what makes you think
I’m gonna talk to you now?”



Even though I had hair gel all over my hands, I was primed to go back to my original plan, but Shawn
vanished through the doorway, past Crush, who was lacing his boots up and heard the whole thing.



I set out to find Shawn, but he was gone. I paced around the backstage area until Owen, Davey, Jim
and Pillman came to find me.



“I know Shawn’s watching from somewhere, waiting for me to leave this room,” I said. “I’ll bet you
the second I walk out of here, he’ll walk in. All his stuff is in here. Watch.” I crossed the hall, walked
into the interview room and cracked open the door to peek back out into the hall. Shawn strode past
me into the dressing room. He was bent over fixing his boots when I marched straight up to him.



I pushed him to his feet. “You got something to say to me?”



He flicked a weak punch at me and missed. Balancing awkwardly on my good leg, I popped him on
the chin, rocking him on his heels. He came for me, so I grabbed him by his long mane and
pretended I was doing a hammer throw at the Olympics. I was dragging him around the room when
a hysterical Pat and a frantic Lawler ran in and jumped on top of me. Unable to pry me off, Pat
shouted for the other wrestlers to help, but Davey and Crush had no intention of saving Shawn. It
was nothing but a scritch-fight really, but when we were finally separated, clumps of Shawn’s
precious hair fell from my hands. I blasted him: “Don’t fuck with me or my family, you little fucker.”



Shawn looked ready to burst into tears as he stomped across the hall to Vince’s office. Shouting loud
enough for everyone to hear, Shawn quit, saying it was an unsafe working environment. Then he
stormed off, slamming doors behind him.



Vince looked like a jilted lover whose boy toy had up and left him. But he told me that this had not
only been inevitable, but was long overdue, and that it was his fault for not dealing with Shawn


sooner. He told me to take the night off. I felt silly to have come to blows over something so stupid,
but while everything in wrestling was supposed to be bullshit, that bullshit was everything to me.



Before Raw was off the air, Vince was hyping the inside story of a backstage brawl between me and
Shawn for sale to fans on his 900 number.



My scuffle with Shawn was the talk of the business. Meltzer wrote that I’d always been professional,
and questioned the reasoning behind Shawn’s claim that he couldn’t trust or work with The Hart
Foundation. Jack Lanza told me that Vince had known a real physical confrontation was coming
before I did, because Shawn had told him he was going to punch me out as far back as May, at the
Evansville Raw, but I couldn’t tell if Jack was just trying to stir me up. I tried to put it all out of my
mind, including Vince’s talk about reneging on the financial terms of our contract, and did my best to
heal up for the July In Your House, which was going to be in Calgary. I had two good distractions:
Paul Jay and his High Road Productions crew arrived and began shooting the documentary on me.
And the Calgary Flames wanted to buy The Hitmen. I knew a hockey organization such as the Flames
were best suited to manage the team, and so I agreed to sell it



On July 3, Shawn agreed to come back: It’s not like he had any choice—Vince had threatened to stop
his $15,000-a-week paychecks. I hoped the little bastard would finally straighten up, but I was
thrown for a loop when Vince told me that Shawn was going to guest referee my SummerSlam
match with Taker at the Meadowlands on August 3. Shawn would turn heel on Taker, costing him
the belt. Though I’d finally get another stint as champion, a sour feeling ran through me: as heels
we’d be in direct competition with each other again.



One warm, beautiful night, Blade got upset while I was putting him to bed and started stomping
around slamming doors. I finally picked him up and put him in his bed and told him to go to sleep. I
was downstairs again chatting with Julie when Blade wandered defiantly past me wearing a Shawn
Michaels T-shirt, hat and heart-shaped glasses, opening and closing his red leather-gloved fist. Julie
and I struggled not to laugh. I coolly said to Blade, “What are you supposed to be?” He put on his
most serious face and said, “I’m with the clique.” Then he broke into a big grin and said, “Nah, I’m
just buggin’ ya, Dad!”



On July 6, the day of the Calgary show, I headed down to the Saddle-dome early with Julie, our kids
and their friends, with the High Road crew following us. Austin and Taker insisted that they not be
filmed out of character, and I only had Paul Jay’s word that I could ask him to edit anything out that I
felt could hurt the business in any way. Paul’s crew was so good at what they did that most of the
time I forgot they were even there.




I went over everything with Pat, putting the storyline and all the spots together. He wanted to
involve my parents, Bruce and the rest of the Hart clan, who would be seated down front, right
behind the rail. Owen would appear to be hurt and would be taken out of the match, only to return
as the big hero and catch the fall on Steve after he had an altercation with Stu and some of the Hart
brothers. This would be a huge night for Owen, setting up a big match between him and Austin at
SummerSlam.



My anti-American rants had been going down big time with the Canadian fans. The Calgary crowd
had shed its usual polite shyness and was ready to explode: Canadian flags waved everywhere.
Owen, Davey, Jim and Pillman were pumped up and chomping at the bit, Brian reminding me of a
happy jackal who’d befriended a pride of lions. We did a live promo from the dressing room that
played on the big screen in the arena, and the crowd response was so loud that the brick walls
shook. Leo and I had worked hard at polishing up Shamrock, who was really coming along now and
was pacing the dressing room anxiously. Goldust had a hot feud going with Pillman, and the Legion
of Doom couldn’t have been more pumped. Hawk came to me knowing that it was me and Taker
who’d got L.O.D. hired back. He awkwardly fumbled for the words to tell me that this time he’d give
us everything he had, adding, “This match is for your dad.” Beside Stu and Helen in the front row
was Alberta premier Ralph Klein. I was worn out; my knee wasn’t healed enough to wrestle safely,
and I knew it. My doctor warned me that it needed at least three more months, but I had to be there
for Vince, not to mention that I’d waited my entire life for this night, wrestling at the top of my game
in a really hot angle in front of fans who had been there for me from the very beginning.



I was home and this was real.



“O Canada!” echoed majestically through the Saddledome, and then each member of The Hart
Foundation made a separate entrance; first Pillman, then Anvil, then Davey, with Diana on his arm.
After Owen proudly strode out, I stepped through the curtain and stood at the top of the ramp
savoring the moment. There was no doubt that this was the loudest pop I’d ever heard.



We’d touched a nerve across Canada, but for the fans in Calgary it went much deeper than that.
They’d grown up with and stood by Stu’s old Stampede crew through decades of highs and lows, and
now we were squarely on top of the business, all of us like brothers. These fans were here to thank
all of us, especially Stu.



When I made my way to the ring, the explosion from the crowd gave me chills. The sight of the
entire Hart family cheering in the front row, with a sea of fluttering Canadian flags behind them,
made my chest thump like a war drum. I dropped down to the floor and carefully placed my
sunglasses on my mother’s head as she blushed. Stu smiled and winked at me.




Stone Cold and I squared off in the center of the ring, nose to nose. From the second the bell rang,
we set the pace for one incredible knock-down, drag-out fight that delighted fans on both sides of
the border. Austin was loving being the hated heel again, every bit as much as I loved playing the
hero. After Owen made an amazing Stampede Wrestling–style come-back, Austin cut him off and
clotheslined him out onto the floor. Then Stone Cold jumped out and put the boots to Owen, in front
of Stu and Bruce. When he rolled Owen back into the ring, Bruce threw a drink at Stone Cold’s back.
Austin turned around and jerked Stu to his feet by his lapels! The Hart brothers swarmed Stone Cold
just in time: nineteen thousand screaming fans were about to do the same thing! Bruce was so mad
about a couple of stiff shots Austin gave him that when I arrived to tip the balance and roll Stone
Cold back into the ring, Bruce slammed a fist as hard as he could into Stone Cold’s kidneys. Austin
managed to pull himself up, only to be schoolboyed from behind by Owen. Bruce erupted like a
tornado on the floor, taking on every heel in sight. When the referee made the all important three-
count, no-body was paying attention to Owen because everyone was riveted to Bruce’s unscripted
comeback! Owen was furious at Bruce for stealing his big pop.



Still, the Saddledome came unglued as the pay-per-view closed with Austin being wrestled down by
various Hart brothers, agents, referees and Keystone Kop–like security guards, who handcuffed him
and took him away.



Hart kids swarmed the ring while Pillman and I went out and got Stu, whose knees were now so bad
that we had to help him up the stairs. Jim Ross commentated, “The family that has fought together
survives together,” as the entire Hart clan celebrated in one last glorious whoop-up.



Davey high-fived twelve-year-old Harry, and Blade stood next to me, bouncing on the bottom rope.
Ellie and her girls rejoiced next to Martha while Owen stood proudly in the corner holding Oje, who
twirled a tiny Canadian flag.



I spotted some smiling kid in the ring and asked, “Who are you?”



He excitedly said, “I just told them I was a Hart.”



“Wave at the crowd and enjoy yourself!”




After the show, Bruce fell into a deep sulk because both Owen and I rebuked him for overdoing it on
the finish. Sore as hell, I made the three-hour drive to Edmonton alone, dreaming up my interview
for Raw that night. I walked out wearing an Edmonton Oilers jersey just in case I needed to offset the
long-standing rivalry between Calgary and Edmonton. It wasn’t so much that I was anti-American, I
said, I was just very pro-Canadian. I was soon shooting about sensitive issues such as gun control,
health care and racial hatred, Canada coming out on the plus side of the ledger on all counts. I
promised the fans that I’d defeat The Undertaker at SummerSlam and become the World Wrestling
Federation Champion for a fifth time. The only other five-time champion was Hulk Hogan, and I
wanted to tie his record before I ended my career.



Steve could hardly work the Edmonton Raw because of his bruised kidneys. As a result, Vince put on
hold any plans to go forward with Bruce joining The Hart Foundation.



Over the next few weeks I switched gears from visiting sick kids at the Children’s Hospital in Calgary
with Owen to being spat on and pelted with garbage during a four-day loop through Texas.



We were extremely worried about Davey and Pillman, whose drug problems were getting worse.
Owen told me that Davey was injecting liquid morphine; a few weeks earlier he’d tripped in his hotel
bathroom and smashed his face on the bathtub, needing sixteen stitches. Pillman did his best to hide
the pain from his fused ankle, but anyone who took the time to notice realized that it was a brave
and excruciating struggle for him to get in the ring every night, and the painkillers, washed down
with alcohol every night, were getting the upper hand.



I was doing my best to gingerly coax my own knee back, forcing myself to cut corners but still go all
out, using more facial expressions and short-heat spots. Every night Owen and I worked exciting but
easy matches against Stone Cold and Mick Foley, who was doing an amazing job of handling two
gimmicks at the same time—Mankind and Dude Love, a tiedyed, whacked-out hippie.



When Owen and I arrived in San Antonio for Raw on July 14, we made our usual visit to the Alamo.
Owen had become my most reliable friend and supporter, and we ended up having an interesting
talk about things worth dying for. We agreed that the wrestling business wasn’t one of them.



That night Shawn and I saw each other for the first time since our cat fight. We were surprisingly
cordial, yet neither of us offered any apologies. Once again we agreed to refrain from saying
personal things about each other in our interviews and to leave each other alone, especially in light
of the fact that we were both set to leave for a WWF-sponsored promotional cruise with a shipload


of fans the following day. I tried to break the ice with Shawn by telling him about Blade dressing up
like him, and he laughed.



In contrast to the week before in Alberta, Owen, Davey, Brian and I walked out to a blizzard of spit
and a hail of boos. (Jim was briefly off, sorting out some contract problems arising from having
signed with a small-time promotion before coming back to WWF.) As I stood with a Canadian flag
draped over my shoulders, each of The Hart Foundation members spelled out the conditions of our
various SummerSlam matches. If Davey lost to Shamrock he’d be forced to eat a can of dog food; if
Owen lost he’d pucker up and kiss Stone Cold’s ass; and if Pillman couldn’t beat Goldust he’d wear
his valet Marlena’s dress. My vow? If I lost to Taker I’d never wrestle in America again.



I took some playful potshots about how the WWF should go back to Canada for the next Raw, where
the girls were prettier and the beer was better, and I challenged any three Americans to a flag
match. Though on the surface things looked pretty good, I was feeling more and more in the dark
about where all this was going, unable to shake the uneasy feeling that something just wasn’t right.



40



THINK WITH YOUR HEAD, NOT YOUR HEART



S UMMER SLAM CAME EARLIER THAN USUAL that August of 1997. I brought Blade with me to New
York. He liked to carry my bag and massage my big hands with his tiny fingers. It had been over-
whelming to be Stu Hart’s kid, but I could see that being Bret Hart’s kid could be just as challenging.
Blade drew pictures of himself wrestling as Blade Sidekick Hart. When he saw how casual I was with
the other wrestlers in the dressing room, he seemed completely at ease with all of them, including
Shawn, who play-wrestled with him in and around the ring while Taker and I worked out our match.
Watching Blade with Shawn made me lower my guard a degree.



This would be the biggest match Taker and I had ever had, and we wanted to have a classic that
would blow away his fans and mine, who had been waiting for this fantasy title match for seven
years. Taker really dug the whole American versus Canadian angle, especially after The Hart
Foundation sent Vince’s ratings right through the roof a month earlier at the Halifax Raw and then
again at the Pittsburgh Raw.



That night it seemed like the entire dressing room was lit up, plugged into The Hart Foundation
power source. Everyone came back after their matches happy after having worked so hard, and it


was building into a great show. Then Owen, in the middle of a super match with Stone Cold,
accidentally pile-drived Steve hard, nearly breaking his neck. When Steve moaned to him, “I hurt my
neck. Don’t touch me! I can’t feel my feet,” Owen was beside himself with guilt and dread. But he
stayed calm despite the jeering of twenty thousand fans until it came to him what to do. Like an old
pro, Owen played to the crowd, hoping that it would give Steve enough time to recover. Steve
somehow managed to crawl over and school-boy Owen like a weak breeze knocking over a
cardboard cut-out for a horrible but doable one . . . two . . . three. Steve was helped to his feet by
the refs and managed to wobble his way into the dressing room, where he was taken right to the
hospital. Owen wandered past me crushed and in a daze.



In an in-ring interview, Shawn, who was about to ref my match with Taker, declared that if he didn’t
call it down the line he’d never wrestle in America again either: another interesting twist. While
going over the finish in the dressing room, Shawn had suggested that in order for him to get mad
enough to swing a chair, I should spit on him. He’d swing, I’d duck and he’d crack Undertaker smack
on the head! I asked Shawn whether he was sure, and he nodded. I told him I’d aim for his shirt.



Mostly boos greeted me when I went out, but I still had a lot of fans who believed that I had never
deserted them. Shawn came out to an elaborate fireworks display, dancing like the stripper he must
have been in a past life. Then Taker made his entrance, in pitch darkness, to funeral music and
deafening pyrotechnics. At the sound of the bell we tore into each other, raging on in a beautiful
dance of death like archrival superheroes, making and breaking each other. Shawn refereed right
down the middle, with me grudgingly obeying him. Then I twisted Taker’s long legs into the
sharpshooter; I let him kick out from respect for him, the only time anyone ever kicked out of the
sharpshooter. He sent me bouncing right out of the ring and onto the floor. I dusted myself off,
marched back in and went for it again. Taker rose up and made his comeback and nearly finished me
off, while Shawn was diving to and fro to make every count. I dragged Taker by his stomach to the
corner, where I attempted some kind of a half-assed sharpshooter on the ring apron, wrapping
Taker’s legs around the ring post, barely holding on. When at last he kicked out, he tossed me out
right on top of Shawn, who was trying to get me to break the hold.



While Shawn collected himself I grabbed a chair, coolly slid back into the ring and busted Taker over
the head. When Shawn finally got there to make the count, Taker kicked out. Shawn noticed the
steel chair on the apron, but before he could spin me around and demand to know how the chair got
there, I delivered one last kick to Taker’s knee. We had words, with me finally shouting, “Fuck you!”
Our finish needed perfect timing—I had to spit right on cue—but I was exhausted, my throat coated
from working so hard. I hacked out an extremely large, milky-white slobber-knocker. It flew out of
my mouth and hit Shawn on the chest, where it flew up to splatter him right between the eyes. He
came at me furiously with the chair. I ducked at the last second and heard a smash and a huge pop
from the crowd as Taker crashed to the mat. I waved Shawn over to do the count, which he did with
spit dangling from his nose. Then he stormed back to the dressing room. I was sure he’d thought I
did it on purpose.




Draped in a Canadian flag, with my music playing, I kissed the gold buckle of the belt, then dropped
to my knees clutching the belt to my chest. I was aching all over, like one giant, throbbing bruise.
When I came through the curtain I apologized to Shawn, explaining that I couldn’t help the size of
the gob and that it was an accident. He just thanked me for the match, and before either of us
realized it we shook hands, for the first time in a long time.



I hunched over like someone had beaten me with a stick to untie my boots. I’d pulled my groin badly
and I felt like I’d been impaled. Blade, in a long Hitman T-shirt, helped peel my pink wrist tape off
and followed me everywhere with the WWF World Heavy-weight belt draped over his shoulder and
his ball cap on backward. I loved those moments.



That night I crawled into my bed with a bag of ice on my knee, a heating pad under my back and
Blade sprawled out sleeping beside me. The next day, he and I caught a lift to Raw in Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, with Paul Jay in his production van. After all the angles that came out of SummerSlam
’97, The Hart Foundation stood in the ring together licking our respective wounds.



We should have been triumphant, but instead it seemed like everybody’s past was catching up with
them. Michelle had just passed on the news that the nerves in Dynamite’s back were damaged
beyond repair after years of him deadening the warning signs with pain pills so he could go out there
and have another great match. He was now paralyzed from the waist down and would be stuck in a
wheelchair for the rest of his life.



Vince had just phased out the costly drug testing he’d instituted at the start of the steroid scandal.
Of course the real danger was not steroids or coke but prescription painkillers. Every night deadly
lines were crossed by too many of the boys, and at that time the most vulnerable was Pillman, trying
to deaden his ankle pain just like Dynamite had deadened the pain from his back. Shawn, Davey and
Hawk were all serious abusers too. We all knew it—the wrestlers openly popped pills in the dressing
room—but the agents seemed powerless to do anything about prescription drug use.



Chief, once some kind of voice of reason in the dressing room, had been put out to pasture without
anyone even seeming to notice, though Vince would never have gone anywhere if it hadn’t been for
Chief and Pat Patterson. (After he retired Chief became a different kind of wrestling tragedy. He was
left to babysit his young grandson one day and fell asleep. When he woke up, he found the child
floating dead in his pool. I believed that Chief would never get over it, and my heart went out to
him.)




As I started my fifth run as World Champion, Shawn was being friendly enough, but I was unhappy
with a sexually explicit new storyline centered around him, Hunter, Chyna and Shawn’s newly
arrived bodyguard, Ravishing Rick Rude, who was working as a manager while he was involved in an
injury lawsuit. I was happy that Rude was back because he was a good friend, but Shawn was now on
the booking committee with Brisco and Hunter. The simple truth was that there was no trust
between us anymore. Looking back now, I can see that this wasn’t Shawn’s fault any more than it
was mine. Vince was the one who planted and cultivated the seeds of that doubt. Vince was playing
with me and Shawn like a kid with his wrestling dolls, bashing his old favorite and his new favorite
together like he was God himself.



On September 7, I worked at In Your House in Louisville with Del Wilkes, whose gimmick was The
Patriot. It was hard to do anything extraordinary because Wilkes had worked only in Japan and
wasn’t over by any stretch of the imagination in the United States. What had been a red-hot
American versus Canadian angle for the WWF lost its heat when the champion had to fight a
cartoon—a hokey, masked marvel in red, white and blue that fans couldn’t relate to because, with a
mask on, he couldn’t express pain or anything. When I asked Pat about the match up, he quipped,
“The whole business is a fucking cartoon.” I had nothing but respect for Del; we did all we could, but
it was a tough haul.



Next came two days of TV and four hard matches, and then I flew up to Toronto for a charity dinner.
Dory Funk Jr. had asked me a couple of months earlier if I’d mind working with Terry for his
retirement match in Amarillo on a big card billed as Fifty Years of Funk. Mind? I had said that I’d be
honored. And Dory said that Terry, who like so many of the old-school boys had retired only to
return again and again, actually meant it this time. So after Toronto, I connected through Dallas,
where I caught a charter to Amarillo that was packed with the remnants of ECW. I looked at the
heads of the young wrestlers, bandages hiding their gig marks, and they reminded me of my old
Stampede days.



I had a bad flu but couldn’t miss such a significant night. I crawled out of bed and drove to the
fairgrounds, where I met up with Stu and Bruce, and was saddened to hear from them that Fritz Von
Erich had died of cancer.



In many ways the Funk show was like traveling back in a time machine. Dory and Terry were old-
school pros who kindly conducted business the way it had always been done. Japanese reporters
swarmed all over as Dory led me down back hallways to a room where he gave me and Terry our
finish in great detail. I was happy to put the title up against Terry, but at his insistence, he wanted to
put me over, even though it was his retirement match. The Amarillo fans were so fired up about my
anti-American heel status that I feared for Stu, who was sitting at ringside. The special referee was
Dennis Stamp, that big, lanky wrestler who’d given me one of my first matches back in Amarillo so


long ago. When it was over I was so sick I had to crawl back to bed before Terry could even thank
me.



On September 20, I arrived in Birmingham, England, for the One Night Only pay-per-view. I got there
a day early and found the wrestlers, suits and road crew drinking merrily in the hotel lounge. Hunter
had to help a trembling, pilled-up Shawn out of his chair and up to his room, in clear view of the
fans.



On the bus ride to the National Exhibition Centre Arena the next day, Taker and I were disappointed
to notice that we weren’t even pictured on the pay-per-view posters plas-tered all over town. Shawn
and Davey were the main event in a European title match. We were baffled as to why the World title
match was being ignored, especially when Taker and I had been the biggest draws in Europe for
years.



But Taker and I knew how much this match meant to our U.K. fans, so we put our heads together
and came up with one that was different from all the others we’d ever had. Actually, this one was for
us as much as it was for the fans. I figured I’d finally find out whether the Brits and the boatloads of
my German fans who were coming actually supported me in my war with the Yanks.



Before the show I talked with a little boy who’d been burned in a fire—his ears were gone. Then I
found time to say hello to Davey’s family. Davey had made the huge mistake of promising in
interviews with the British tabloids that he’d win his title match for his sister, Tracey, who was dying
of cancer. He’d been told he was going over, but on the day of the show Vince and Shawn changed
the outcome. Davey was devastated. Shawn had openly bragged about how he was not doing jobs
for anyone, but nobody wanted to believe he had such nerve. This went against the code of all
wrestlers. Usually Vince or Pat would give me my finishes, but now Shawn, Hunter and Brisco were
there to oversee. Something was going very wrong.



I’ve always felt that Taker was one of the most unselfish and best workers in the business. We told a
great story that night in Birmingham that ended in a DQ, living up to the expectations of our legions
of fans. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but Vince in his live commentary was doing all he
could to paint me as the bad guy here in Europe, which was contrary to his own plan, or at least to
the plan he had described to me. I also had no way of knowing that this would turn out to be the last
truly great match I’d ever have in the WWF.



Shawn worked the main event with Davey, using every gimmick and prop possible to ultimately end
up injuring Davey’s knee and take the European belt. Vince, Brisco, Shawn and Hunter took great


delight in intentionally designing a finish that made me and Owen look like total idiots. For the entire
match, we were nowhere in sight as Hunter, Chyna and Rude worked Davey over while the British
fans waited for The Hart Foundation to rescue him. After Shawn won, he took the house mic and
said, “Hart Foundation, this is for you! Diana Smith, sweetheart, this is especially for you, baby!”
Diana was looking pretty—with stars in her eyes at being mentioned by Shawn even though he had
just defeated her husband—seated beside Davey’s parents and sister. Surrounded by his clique,
Shawn put the figure four on Davey, and Diana leaped from her front row seat and hit the ring!
Chyna grabbed Diana from behind as Owen and I finally charged down the ramp with everybody
wondering where the hell we’d been all this time! As I pretended to help the wounded Davey back
to the dressing room, we passed the burned little boy and Davey’s sister Tracey, who was terribly
upset and crying. I thought, In wrestling, never make a promise you can’t deliver. I saw the light die
in Davey’s eyes that day, darkness seeping into a heart that was giving out.



Two days later, on September 22 at Raw in Madison Square Garden, I was summoned to Vince’s
office for a private chat. He rocked me with the news that he wasn’t just thinking of breaching the
terms of my contract, but was actually going to do it: In the weeks ahead, he wasn’t going to pay me
my full salary because of problems he attributed to Ted Turner. He told me that I was the Cal Ripken
of the WWF and that he fully intended to pay me what he owed me on the back end of my twenty-
year deal in-stead. “You’ll still get every penny,” he declared.



In a fatherly tone, he then confided, “I have no problem if you want to see if WCW will make you
that same deal as before. I hear that Hogan is finishing up there soon. Your timing couldn’t be more
perfect.” He went on to say that if I left, I would actually be doing him a favor because he was about
to downsize into a northeastern U.S. promotion. Because of my fourteen years of loyal service, he
said, he wanted to give me the opportunity to be able to approach WCW before everyone else did,
since he’d be letting a lot of wrestlers go. He described me as the first guy in the lifeboat. “You don’t
even have to drop the belt if you don’t want to. You hold all the cards.” He even said that he would
secretly help me negotiate my deal, if I wanted. His final words to me were that he’d see whether he
could find the money somewhere to pay me, but for now I shouldn’t breathe a word to anybody. If
the news leaked out that Vince was in trouble, it would hurt my chances with Bischoff. Hurt my
chances? I was so stunned by how many promises he broke in one short conversation that I didn’t
know what to reply.



I worked Raw like a zombie. New York had always been my best American town, and my loyal
following of fans couldn’t bring themselves to hate me like I was hated everywhere else. I feared
having to sue Vince over my contract and also feared that WCW wouldn’t want to pay me so much
since I’d turned them down the last time. My worries were only compounded by disgust as Hunter
and Shawn told me that they wanted me to call them gay in my interview, like a true homophobe.
On the mic that night, Hunter referred to the business as a cheap whore with her legs spread wide
apart, and he was right, but this was still supposed to be a kids’ show.




Pat Patterson, back from his break, had Steve Lombardi win a battle royal so Lombardi could face me
for the title at the Garden on November 15. Steve was a veteran jobber, but Pat thought it would be
different to let a real dark horse win and have a shot for once. I said, “It’s your most important
market, and if that’s what you want to do, go ahead.”



Davey wasn’t working: he complained that he’d hurt his knee in the title match with Shawn, but I
thought what was really hurt was his Bulldog pride. I had a dark match that night with Taker and
Shawn. He was professional and pleasant, and I tried to relax and take all of this one step at a time.



On September 24, Owen and I drove up to Toledo together listening to the audio book of The Killer
Angels, Michael Shaara’s wonderful account of the battle of Gettysburg. We reminisced about the
time we were in Kearney, Missouri, touring the outlaw Jesse James’s house, where he was shot from
behind by one of his own men. Two brothers who are in the same business all their lives live and
learn a lot together. I confided to him everything Vince had said. “Owen, I’m going to end up getting
screwed in the end, with bad feelings for the business and the people in it. Vince told me the
business isn’t just about the money. What a hypocrite!”



“You’ll have to sue ’im,” he said.



That night during my match with Taker I did my usual job of taking a severe beating. So severe, in
fact, that an overwrought mentally challenged kid hit the ring to protect me. When I came back
through the curtain still wearing my belt, he broke away from the police, in tears, to hug me and tell
me that he loved me. For some reason this scene was too hard for Davey to bear, and he told Lanza
he was going home, for how long no one knew.



October 5, 1997. I took my time getting to the building in St. Louis that Sunday afternoon and arrived
well rested for In Your House. When the agents realized that Brian Pillman hadn’t arrived with me,
they started calling around looking for him. He was soon found dead of a suspected overdose in his
room at the Budgetel in Bloomington, Minnesota. Brian was a good friend, a brother among
brothers, and we shared a special bond. Just the night before, I remembered Brian leaning back in
his chair in the dressing room in St. Paul, his arms crossed, beaming at me with a sparkle in his eye,
even though we’d just been talking about how much he distrusted Shawn and the clique, and how
he was worried about his future. I gave him a friendly pat on the chest, and told him, “Don’t worry,
Bri.” And we both broke into big smiles. That’s how I’ll always remember Brian Pillman.




All too quickly after we heard the news, it was business as usual, with everyone hurriedly putting
their matches together for the pay-per-view. Vader, who was only trying to make the best of it, said,
“Let’s not worry about it right now, let’s concentrate on the match.” I wanted to blast Leon and say,
“No, let’s worry about Brian instead of the fucking match!”



That night was a blur as I worked with Davey Boy against the ill-conceived team of Vader and The
Patriot.



When the fans tuned in to see the live Raw from Kansas City the next day, before the opening
sequence even ran, Vince was in the ring announcing Brian’s death, as all the boys broke character
to stand together at the top of the ramp, breaking kayfabe in solidarity for a fallen comrade for the
duration of a stirring ten-bell salute. Rude, Owen, Davey, Jim and I sadly bowed our heads. There
were only two wrestlers who didn’t come out—Shawn and Hunter.



All that day I’d been uncomfortable: Shawn said he wanted me to denounce him and Hunter as
“homos,” but I worried it would only lead to more tension between us. Since both of them were part
of the booking committee, I did as I was told. “But I don’t want you to say this kind of crap about
me,” I warned Shawn. The night deteriorated into a lame storyline, with Shawn and Hunter taking
shots at me while I stupidly led The Hart Foundation in search of them everywhere in the building,
never finding them. Duh.



I watched on the monitor backstage as Vince posed probing questions to Melanie Pillman, Brian’s
pretty, young, clearly distraught wife, live via satellite from her living room. She said to the camera,
“It’s a wake-up call. Your husband could be next. . . . He lived for this business and died for this
business. I hope no one else has to die.” Owen and I felt so sorry for her. The whole thing struck us
as a ratings ploy, exploiting this poor girl’s misery for all the world to see, as if suddenly the WWF
had turned into The Jerry Springer Show.



Things only got worse the next day. The camera came into the dressing room in Topeka to allow the
fans to see Shawn pulling down his trunks and mooning them on the big screen and then kissing
Hunter on the lips. Shawn, Hunter and even Chyna pointed at one another’s crotches and told
everyone, “Suck it!” Hunter called out to me, in the first glimpse I’d had of his obsession with his
own penis, “I’m bigger than you, and I’m better than you, in more ways than one.” Shawn then
looked in amazement at Hunter’s fly and winced as he exclaimed, “Good God! You could put an eye
out with that thing!” The dressing room was full of grieving, confused wrestlers, all wondering where
the business was going.




As I drove back to Kansas City after the show, I looked up at a stunning autumn sunset and
wondered what any of these antics had to do with wrestling. I also wondered why Shawn seemed to
have such a hold on Vince. More and more air time was devoted to sleazy soap opera as the artistry
of great work faded from the collective consciousness of the fans. Vince used to be the biggest fan of
all: He had a passion for technicians, a love for characters and a deep appreciation for storytellers. I
couldn’t fathom how he could be the one encouraging the sabotage of what he and the old-school
boys, and even the long-time fans, held so dear.



I felt like I’d been tossed in the air and hadn’t landed yet, out of control and totally blind to what lay
ahead. Because I was an independent contractor, my living depended not just on talent but on
reputation. Remembering what Vince had done with Hulk and others, I felt a sense of foreboding:
Vince was about to tear me down, destroying my credibility and marketability. I never understood
how he could be so disloyal whenever he parted ways with those who’d sacrificed so much for him
and his business. But for Vince, loyalty was almost always a one-way street.



My heart kept going back to Brian. Thirty-five years old with five kids. He went to sleep not knowing
that his wife had just found out that she was pregnant again. Flyin’ Brian was flyin’ with the angels
now. I recited the Lord’s Prayer to an orange Kansas sky, adding a plea for myself: “God, I’ll probably
never be here again. Please get me home in one piece.”



A couple of days later, I was in L.A. to do an appearance on Mad TV and was able to arrange a
meeting with Eric Bischoff, who also happened to be in town. He was still interested in me, he said,
but he couldn’t negotiate until I had clearance to do so from the WWF. Eric told me that there were
all kinds of ongoing legal battles between the WWF and WCW, going back as far as when Alundra
Blaze, the champion of a short-lived women’s division of the WWF, showed up on Nitro and dropped
the WWF belt in a garbage can. Since Vince’s logo was on the belt, Vince had WCW by the balls for
trademark infringement. The latest court battle had Vince charging Eric with tortuous interference
over the Hall and Nash deal, saying Eric had encouraged them to breach their contract with him.



I didn’t tell Eric that Vince had said he wanted to help me make this deal, but I did tell him that Vince
said I could leave any way I wanted, even as champion. Eric made it clear that it didn’t matter to him
at all whether I was still champion, advising me simply to leave on good terms.



I retained the title in a triple-threat match in San Jose on October 12 with Stone Cold, Hunter and my
boy Shamrock. Shawn was the guest referee. After the match, with Jim Neidhart and Ken beside me
in the dressing room, I made a short speech to Shawn, knowing that it was official that we would
face each other in a title match at Survivor Series ’97, which was going to be in Montreal this time. “I
just want you to know that despite any differences we’ve had this past year, I have no problem


working with you. You can trust me in every way to be a professional. What you need to know,
Shawn, is that you’re not in any danger.” I added, “I also want you to know that I have no problem
dropping the belt to you if that’s what Vince wants.”



He glared back at me. “I appreciate that, but I want you to know that I’m not willing to do the same
thing for you.” And then he left.



Jim snorted, “I can’t believe that he just said that!”



There was no way I could ever drop the belt to him now: he’d just showed complete disrespect not
only to me, but to the position of champion, which was an affront to old-school traditions and a
betrayal of each and every wrestler who ever looked to me as a leader in the dressing room, or who
had been a leader himself. What kind of arrogant little prick would say that to a champion offering
to put him over? Since my deal with Vince was that I had creative control of my character for my last
thirty days in the WWF, it was up to me whom I lost the championship to. I figured I’d drop the belt
to Stone Cold instead.



Bischoff’s offer from the WCW came through: $1.8 million a year for three years. I told Eric if he
couldn’t get me $2.8 to forget about it. He said he’d have an answer for me by the middle of the
next week. If it turned out that I had to leave the WWF, I started to envision one last interview,
thanking the fans, all of the wrestlers and Vince, for everything he’d done for me. I still couldn’t
decide whether Vince was going to kill me off or if he was actually looking out for me, as he made
out he was. Was it really so much to ask to be able to leave with my head up?



Oklahoma City Raw on October 20 was more of the same. Shawn pulled his pants down on camera
while Hunter blocked the view with a cardboard D-Generation X sign. (New York Post columnist Phil
Mushnick was the one who coined the phrase, in an article that was actually critical of the drift of
the WWF into sex, sleaze and soap opera, and away from wrestling. Then Shawn and the clique took
it proudly as their name, and DX came to life in the WWF as a rebel group of wrestlers out to defy
authority and take over the business: The original members were Shawn, Hunter, Kevin Nash, Razor
Ramon, 1-2-3 Kid and Chyna.) Even worse was the storyline where a gang of militant black bad-asses
called The Nation of Domination had their dressing room trashed and sprayed with graffiti and
Canadian flags. By the end of the show I wasn’t just portrayed as homophobic but as a racist too.
These antics contrasted poorly with Vince’s idea of honoring past NWA champions on this same
show. I felt a little embarrassed when I shook the hands of Lou Thesz, Dory and Terry Funk and
Danny Hodge, who was a champion boxer and also an Olympic silver medalist in wrestling.




The following day at a taped Raw in Tulsa I informed Vince where I was with WCW, stressing that the
window he’d given me to negotiate with them closed on November 1.



“Well, whatever happens, we’ll deal with it,” he said. He told me that he was trying everything—
even selling property—to be able to afford to keep me. Then he said, “I wanted to talk to you about
Survivor Series. I want you to drop the belt to Shawn, but you’ll win it back for a sixth time at the
December 7 pay-per-view in Springfield, that is, if you’re still with me.”



“If I end up staying, it doesn’t make any sense to me that you’d want to beat me in Canada and then
have me win the belt back in the States,” I replied. I told him word for word how Shawn had told me
he wouldn’t put me over. Vince’s face got tense and red, and he asked me if I’d mind repeating
everything I’d said in front of Shawn.



“I’d be happy to.”



Later that night, Vince called us both to his office, and when we sat down he blurted out, “Shawn,
I’m putting the belt back on you!”



Shawn began to cry, thanking me and telling me how much he respected me.



I said, “Shawn, you just told me four days ago, in San Jose, that you’d never put me over.”



Shawn brushed away his tears, sniffling. “Sometimes I say the stupidest things. I always put my foot
in my own mouth.”



I had to get out of there. “I don’t know what’s going to happen at Survivor Series, and I’m not
agreeing to anything yet,” I said. “We’ll see where all of this is going, and, Vince, you know what I’m
talking about.”



I called Eric, leaving him numerous messages over the next three days, but I never heard a peep.
When I arrived at the Nassau Coliseum on October 24, Vince was there to greet me. He told me that
he could pay me after all, that my money was no longer a problem. I told him I hadn’t heard a thing
from Bischoff and that if the money problem was solved I’d likely stay, but I also told him that until I


heard back, I’d have to keep my options open. Then I left on a four-day tour of the Middle East,
thinking that Bischoff was just jerking me around and that I’d likely have to stay on with Vince.



At the airport in Muscat, Oman, kids of all ages enthusiastically greeted me waving huge Canadian
flags. I wondered where they’d got them and then realized that they were all hand sewn. There was
a mosque right next to the hotel, and from the balcony of my room I could hear chants of prayer. I
found myself praying to any God there was to help me make the right decision.



At the final show, in Bahrain, I retained the belt when Taker was disqualified. Despite being
tombstoned, I was proudly clapped to my feet and presented with an Arab championship belt and a
huge, bowl-like trophy. I was still a hero everywhere outside America.



October 31, 1997. As soon as I walked in the door of my house in Calgary, Bischoff called. He told me
they were up to $2.5 million for 125 days a year. “What else is it going to take to get you down
here?” he asked. I told him I’d talk to my people and get back to him right away. I called my lawyer,
who kept saying over and over, “We have a sweetie of a deal.” I decided to think everything through
and call Vince first thing in the morning.



So on Saturday, I called Vince and told him what WCW had offered. “I want to stay with you, Vince,
and my contract is fine just the way it is, but I need you to tell me where I’m going and what I’m
doing. What’s the rest of my story going to be?”



Vince told me that he’d think about it and call me back. But as the deadline crept closer, he still
hadn’t called. I finally tracked him down getting his hair cut in Manhattan. “Vince, I’ve only got until
midnight.” He told me not to worry about the deadline and to call him Sunday morning.



Minutes later I had my lawyer on the line telling me that Vince’s word over the phone meant nothing
in a court of law.



I had one last talk with Eric, who happily said, “What else? Whatever it is that you want, you better
say it now!”




I hesitated, but then said, “I can be late sometimes. I’ve never missed a show in fourteen years or
hurt another wrestler in my career. I’ll always be on time for my match, but with Vince I’m allowed
to get there at show time.”



“What else?”



“Injury insurance. With Vince I’m totally covered for everything.”



“We’ll get you insurance. Anything else?”



After a long pause I said, “That’s it.”



“Done!”



“Done?”



“Done!”



I guess we had a deal. While I waited for the document to pop out of my fax machine, I called Vince.
No answer.



It was nearly midnight on the east coast when Vince finally called back. His message to me,
expressed with smug good humor, was that I should think with my head and not my heart. When I
asked him what he had in mind for me, he gave me that stupid laugh of his and told me that first I’d
put Shawn over at Survivor Series, then I’d put him over at a final four pay-per-view next month that
would lead into a ladder match at the Royal Rumble, where I’d put him over again. Finally I’d
challenge him to one last match on a Raw, where I’d promise that if I didn’t win, I’d quit forever.
Everybody would think I was going to lose but, Vince chuckled, “We’ll fuck him and you’ll get your
hand raised.”



“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “I thought you’d come up with something to make me stay!”




Vince got irritated with me now. “I dunno, you tell me, what do you want to do?”



“Hell, Vince, you’re the genius. You made me turn heel, made me say all kinds of things about
Americans, and they all hate me now. You turned off my heat and gave it all to Shawn, and all I am
anymore is a lukewarm heel. I don’t even know what to do with me.”



Vince told me again to think with my head, not my heart, and take the WCW offer.



After we hung up, I checked my fax machine and saw the WCW contract coming in. I sat alone, in the
dark, with tears in my eyes. I signed, put the contract back into the feeder, dialed the number and
pushed send. I found myself reciting the Lord’s Prayer as my fourteen-year career in the WWF
passed before my eyes.



On Sunday morning, I called Vince at home. He was friendly and more than a little quick as far as I
was concerned to advise me that I’d done the right thing. He still wanted Shawn to beat me at
Survivor Series the following weekend. I cut him off. “I’m sorry, Vince. I’ve always done everything
you’ve asked, but I can’t do that. I’ll put over anybody you want, but I will not, under any
circumstances, put over Shawn Michaels.”



“Where do you get this stuff?”



“Come on, Vince. I made myself clear to both you and Shawn in Tulsa. I’ll drop it to Austin or Taker.
Hell, I’ll even drop it to Lombardi at the Garden. Vince, you told me I could leave any way I wanted!
Remember?”



“I’ll have to sue you.”



“In my contract, I have creative control for my last thirty days.”



“We could tie our assholes up in court for years over this.”




I told him again that I wouldn’t do it. “Everything has been geared toward the Canadian hero
winning this match. It’ll kill me off to lose to Shawn in Montreal after everything he’s done. He’s
picked his nose on TV with the Canadian flag, and just last week he said that Stu is dead on
international TV. I’d lose all my selfrespect. If he puts me over, I’ll be happy to put him over. We’ve
got over a month until I go to WCW, Vince, surely we can come up with something.”



For the rest of the week we went back and forth. He’d tell me I could win, then he’d tell me I
couldn’t. I stood my ground and refused to lose—for the first and only time in my career.



41



THE MONTREAL SCREWJOB



IT WAS NOVEMBER 8, the night before Survivor Series ’97. I was in the dressing room at Cobo Hall in
Detroit. Vince and I were still stalemated. I was worn out with conflicting emotions, grief vying with
an adrenaline rush of clarity. I was convinced Vince would ruin me just for the sick pleasure of it. I
kept reminding myself that if I’d stayed in the WWF, Shawn and Hunter would have done all they
could to drive me out anyway. Jack Lanza pulled me aside to tell me that I was doing the right thing
for the business: “I wouldn’t drop the belt to that little motherfucker either!” I never knew whether
Jack meant what he said or was trying to provoke a reaction out of me that would somehow play
into his boss’s hands.



I called Earl Hebner into a dingy dressing-room bathroom. I looked him right in the eyes and said,
“Tomorrow, Earl, they’re going to ask you to fuck me.” His mouth twisted and his eyes filled with
tears as he promised, “I swear on my kids’ heads, I won’t do it. I’ll quit first! If they ask me to do that,
I’ll tell them to go fuck themselves, Bret, I swear!” I calmed him down, saying that all he had to do
was tell me what the plan was, and I’d take care of it. I told him that I was going to insist that he be
the ref because I trusted him to watch my back. The longer we talked the stronger his resolve
became. I’ll never forget the tears in his eyes as he shook my hand.



Word had leaked out that I was going to WCW, and all during the six-man tag that night I was
tormented by a jeering mob chanting, “You sold out!” It bothered me that they didn’t know I was
pushed out, but at the end of the match, when I took my walk around the ring, my fans hugged me,
and many broke down crying.




I kept feeling as though I was alive at my own funeral. My worries about what would happen the
next day in Montreal tormented me all night long. Vince and I were eyeball to eyeball and nobody
was blinking. I’ll never understand why Shawn couldn’t simply put me over, with me immediately
dropping the belt to him on Raw, where a much bigger audience would see his win. I’d have my
respect, and Shawn would have the belt.



I met Julie and the kids at the hotel in Montreal, and in no time at all, it seems, I was barging up the
back ramp of the Molson Centre with them, Paul Jay’s camera crew filming every step. Though Paul
had wrapped up filming in September, I’d suggested he might want to film my last match for the
WWF in Canada. Julie and the kids were swept up in emotional farewells. Blade and Beans were too
young to understand completely what was going on, but they knew it wasn’t good.



I went looking for Vince, and Paul suggested that I keep my hidden mic on. Vince said hello to Julie
and the kids, smiling and kidding with them briefly, before we headed to his dressing room for a talk.
He spotted the bright red poppy pinned to my shirt, and I explained how it was a Remembrance Day
tradition. I brought up how this Canadian angle had really painted me into a corner: “It would be
hard for me to come up short as a hero today.” I bluntly asked, “So what is it that you want to do?”



Vince was grim-faced. “What do you want to do?”



Because word about me leaving had leaked out, I suggested some kind of run in. I told him I’d win
tonight, and then I’d forfeit the belt on Raw in Ottawa the next day. This was a suggestion, not a
demand. We talked about how we both felt betrayed. I brought up that nobody was supposed to
know that I was leaving, but he was already smearing my reputation. Vince likened it to sticking me
with a stick, which I took as his admission that he’d been poking at me intentionally to provoke me.
Finally Vince said that he was determined to see this come out the right way. I sighed with relief,
believing I now had the dignified exit I sought. Vince’s tone softened as he said, “All we’re talking
about is Ted Turner. That’s what’s coming between you and me. That’s all. I can’t tell you how
appreciative I will always be for everything you’ve done for this company. I’ll be damned, even if it is
Ted Turner’s money and all that kind of shit, that’s no reason for two people who’ve spent as much
time as we have together, worked closely through the years, it’s no reason to have any problems.”



“I couldn’t agree more,”?I said. “I didn’t want to ever leave here. What matters to me is what
happens to me right now. It might be all that I’m ever going to be remembered for. I don’t have high
hopes for down there. I loved my story here. My history will always be here, which is why I’ve been
so stubborn. After fourteen years, to end it here on such a bad note wouldn’t be right. I’m going to
miss this place. So we’ll leave it on that?”




“Uh-huh. Okay.”



“Feels better.”



“Yeah.”



I smiled then and said, “Ya never know, you might have me back someday.”



Vince chuckled. “Love to!”



I pushed for clarity, “So, what is it you want to do today then?”



Vince then described in detail how DX would interfere when I had Shawn in the sharp-shooter. The
Hart Foundation would charge out to my rescue, and we’d end up in a big “schmazz,” or brawl,
where he wanted me to deck Hunter and even Chyna.



“The marks out there are thinking this is a shoot,” he said. “I’m going to capitalize on that. I won’t be
out there commentating, and there’ll be a slew of uniformed security at ringside. I’m open to
anything.”



“All right,” I said and shook his hand. “I’ll go find Shawn and go over all this.”



“Whatever you want,” said Vince. “I put you with Pat—he’s the master—to work it through.”



A few minutes later, Carlo took me around back of the Molson Centre, where I told him that Vince
had decided to let me leave with my head up. Carlo broke down crying. In many ways, Carlo had
brought me to this moment. He’d helped to structure the contract that gave me way too much
power for it ever to rest easy with Vince or to allow to stand as a precedent. I trusted that contract
to protect me. If it wasn’t for me, Carlo wouldn’t be where he was and neither would I.




After taking my mic off and changing into my gear, I found Shawn. One last time, I tried to be
straight with him. He was visibly nervous and said he wanted no problems with me, that he had no
problems doing anything. Pat told me that he thought it would be a helluva spot to let Shawn put me
in the sharpshooter and then reverse it on him. It would be a great spot that would set the stage for
a fantastic second half.



“Who’s the ref?” I asked.



“Earl,” Pat said.



I smiled to myself. “Okay.”



I ran the whole scenario by Earl, Owen, Davey and Rude while Hunter and Chyna meekly nodded
their heads in approval.



Vader pulled me aside to warn me. “Be careful out there, brother. Vince is known for fucking people
in these kinds of situations.”



“I’ve got it covered,” I assured him, lowering my voice.



People still ask me, “Didn’t you see it coming?” The truth was, I’d been reasonable in every way, and
with Earl watching my back I thought I had nothing to worry about.



I paced around backstage and waited. When I heard Shawn’s music drowned out by boos, I had no
idea that he had just pretended to wipe his ass with the Canadian flag and then laid it out in the
middle of the ring and pretended to fuck it hard. Back home in Calgary, Stu was watching in disgust.
He took very real offense to Shawn’s actions, as did everyone in the building and all across Canada. If
I’d done that in the United States, I might have been lynched.



I grabbed my own flag, handed it to Blade and said, “Let’s go, boy!” He marched all the way to the
curtain with me, Jim, Davey and Owen, with Paul Jay’s crew trailing right behind us. Hunter was not
where he was supposed to be for the run in. An annoyed Rick Rude was suspicious. He pursed his
lips and told me, “I’ll watch your back in case they try to jump you or pull anything funny on you out


there.” Excitement and doubt pulsed through me as my music blared. I disappeared through the
curtain to an explosion of noise.



I entered the ring tense but unafraid—and proud. If Shawn so much as tried anything, I’d take him
out hard and fast. Shawn jumped me before the bell, but I battled right back, and we began working.
We fought through the crowd, with me decking agents and referees one after another. Somewhere
in the middle of it I locked eyes with Vince and shook my fist at him. Shawn was flopping and flying
for me everywhere. Before long I had a blue-and-white Que-bec flag wrapped around Shawn’s neck,
and the Molson Centre was coming apart at the seams. Only when I finally got him into the ring did
the bell signal the start of the match.



Halfway through what was to be a thirty-minute match, I made my way to the top corner. When I
leaped off, Shawn pulled Earl in front of me, and the collision left both me and Earl sprawled out on
the mat. Shawn then stepped over me to put on the sharpshooter, but he crossed my legs wrong, so
I called up to him, “The other way,” and he switched them. As Shawn turned me onto my stomach, I
saw Earl for a split second motioning with his fingers and Vince, strangely, standing at the ring apron
wearing an angry scowl. Then he screamed at the bell ringer, Mark Yeaton, “Ring the bell! Ring the
fucking bell!” Yeaton, in stunned disbelief, couldn’t bring himself to do it. I frantically tried to reverse
the sharp-shooter on Shawn as Vince snapped hard at Yeaton—and the bell clanged, over and over.



I couldn’t believe Earl fucked me.



It felt like all the blood in my veins had just evaporated.



Earl jumped out of the ring and ran away as fast as he could toward Jack Lanza and Dave Hebner,
who were waiting at the top of the ramp with a car running.



My first thought was that I’d somehow let the whole country down.



Shawn put on a show, cussing and carrying on as if he wasn’t in on the whole thing.



I saw Vince on the floor. The thought crossed my mind to jump out and go crazy on him. I looked
over at Mark Yeaton, his mouth open and tears in his eyes. I leaned over the top rope, carefully
aimed, and spit at Vince, hitting him right between the eyes. I saw Shawn hoisting the belt in the air


in victory, and then being hustled away down the aisle by Hunter and Jerry Brisco. Vince kept trying
to wipe my spit from his eyes.



The crowd totally got what had just happened and began angrily chanting, “Bullshit! Bullshit!” The
Montreal fans were outraged: a spark was all it would take to have a full-scale riot—and that was a
bad idea. I had to calm myself and think smart. What would my dad do?



Looking out at the stunned crowd, I fought the tears that were swimming in my eyes and thought,
Don’t you dare give these backstabbers the satisfaction of seeing you cry over any of this! Don’t you
dare cry! I worked so hard for him, fourteen years, all I wanted was my dignity.



They’d cut the ring mic, but the cameras were still rolling, so I painted WCW in giant letters in the air
for all to see. Owen, Davey and Jim soon surrounded me. Owen said, “You don’t look bad for this,
they do! You were all class!” When I met their eyes, I could feel myself dying inside.



My lower lip start to quiver, so I bit it.



Owen stood beside me, and his strength helped me keep it together. He told me that he and Rick
had been duped into looking everywhere for Hunter, when Hunter was at ringside all along. For
what seemed like an eternity, I looked out at the sea of sad people who felt as betrayed as I did,
knowing what disrespect had been paid to me, my family and millions of fans all around the world! I
told myself to never forget this feeling, ever.



I jumped down from the ring and commenced smashing Vince’s expensive TV monitors to the floor
and tossing his headsets out into the crowd, surrounded by security guards who couldn’t quite figure
out whether this was part of the storyline. On my way backstage I passed by Blade, who looked
equally sad and puzzled, then by Julie and the rest of the kids, all of them shocked to silence.



Surrounded by Paul’s crew, I headed straight for Vince’s office and tried to break the steel door
down. I gave up and walked back toward the dressing room, hounded by Japanese reporters who
thought I’d explain everything that had happened for them right then and there. I felt like The
Terminator. I wasn’t the only one. I saw the Harris twins kicking over barrels of garbage and
punching the walls. The wrestlers were ready to riot too.




Nothing to do but go home now. Blade trailed after me as I headed to the dressing room, but when I
got to there, I found my bag sitting out in the hallway. I picked it up and walked inside only to see
Shawn sitting in the corner.



“Shawn, you weren’t in on that?”



“I swear to fucking God, I had nothing to do with it!”



“You weren’t in on it?”



“So help me God, I don’t know anything about it!” He threw the belt on the floor and said he refused
to wear it. Paul Jay’s camera crew were right behind me filming everything they could. I wanted to
rip Shawn to shreds—deep down I knew he was in on it all the way—but I didn’t want to lose my
cool in front of Blade. “Shawn,” I said, “I’ll judge you by what you do tomorrow on TV.” I looked
around at a roomful of stricken wrestlers and calmly said, “If they can do this to me, they can do this
to anyone. Remember that.”



Taker blew his stack and shouted, “Fuck! I’m gonna bring his ass down here. I want Vince to explain
himself to me, you and everyone else!” He kicked the dressing-room door open. As he stomped off
down the hall, I could hear angry wrestlers calling out to Taker where he could find Vince.



Paul’s crew left so I could undress. I somehow found some humor in the fact that after his match
Davey had borrowed my towel (as he often did), leaving me without one as I headed to the showers.
My head was spinning and my heart had a giant hole in it as the water poured over me. Rick Rude
and Davey appeared just out of range of the showers to tell me that, true to his word, Taker had
made Vince open his door. Vince had rounded up a makeshift crew of bodyguards consisting of
Slaughter, Brisco and his son Shane. I had my friends: Taker, Sham-rock, Foley, Vader, Rude, Crush,
Savio and especially Owen, Davey and Jim.



This whole thing could turn into a damn mutiny—or worse!



Finally Vince came down the hall with his posse and stepped into the dressing room.




“He says he wants to talk to you,” Rick called to me in the shower.



“Tell Vince to get the hell out of here before he gets hurt.”



Rick and Davey returned seconds later and told me in unison, “He says he’s staying.”



I told them to please warn him to leave. “If he stays, he’s gonna get knocked out.” But they came
back with the same answer.



I came out of the shower sopping wet, with no towel, and calmly walked past Vince. I was actually
thinking that if they ever did a movie about this, it wouldn’t look very good if I beat Vince up naked.
As I picked up a damp towel from the floor, Vince dryly offered, “It’s the first time I ever had to lie to
one of my talent.”



“Who are you kidding, you lying piece of shit?” I shot back. Shawn now sat crying in the corner.



Brisco and Slaughter tried to clear everyone out of the dressing room. Owen was about to leave
when Davey grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t leave,” he said. “Remember what happened to Bruiser
Brody.” None of my boys left.



With Davey, Rick, Owen and Jim on my left, I sat down and glared at Vince, surrounded by his
henchmen, who all stood with their arms behind their backs. Taker was also there, offering me full
support. Shawn was still blubbering like a baby, his head in his hands.



“You told me I could leave any way I wanted. That I was Cal Ripkin. That I was doing you a favor. That
you appreciated everything I ever did. That for everything I’ve done there was no reason for any
problems. You’ve told me nothin’ but lies all week, all fucking year!” I said in a surprisingly calm
voice. Then I added, “If you’re still here when I’m finished getting dressed, I’ll have no choice but to
punch you out!”



Vince seemed unfazed, even tried to take credit for my deal with Turner, but I cut him off to remind
him that I’d taken the lesser deal from Vince because I’d wanted to stay loyal to him. “After fourteen
years, you just couldn’t let me leave with my head up?”




I shot him down on every lie. I was calm and rational as I sized up the room and who was where,
noticing too the look on Owen’s face: I could see he was afraid of what it might be like to stay on
with Vince after this, whatever this was, was over, but that he was backing me to the fullest. Like
one of my best matches, I could see it all play out in my head. I knew a fight with Vince was likely to
come down to a half-assed pull-apart, so I intentionally left my shirt off so no one could grab it. I’d
be lucky if I got one good shot in before they all pounced on me. When I tied the laces of my high-
tops, I stood up and said, “Okay.”



I picked up my knee brace, thinking to smash Vince over the head with it, but I tossed it down,
declaring, “I won’t need this!” and went straight for him. Cockily Vince came back at me and we
actually tied up. Fourteen fuckin’ years! I launched a rocket-launcher uppercut that connected with
Vince’s jaw. My right fist actually popped him like a cork off the ground, and he collapsed
unconscious to the carpet. His cavalry jumped in, but they were too late. I found myself jostling with
Jerry Brisco, who I would find out later was the one who had designed the whole screwjob for Vince.
I told him if he so much as touched me again, I’d give him exactly the same as I’d given Vince, and
the lying little coward backed away with his hands up. For the next forty seconds we all stared at
Vince unconscious, splayed like an X on the floor. I calmly took my seat again and noticed that my
hand was throbbing. I thought it might be broken. Shane pulled Vince into a sitting position and
pleaded with me to let his father get his bearings.



I thought of my dad, who had been at home watching me get screwed on live TV, and my sons out in
the hallway, and I remembered that Paul Jay was just outside the door. Vince was blowing like a
horse, still out of it, and I couldn’t help but think that maybe Paul should capture some of this. I
angrily shouted, “Get him out!” Slaughter and Brisco dragged him backward by the armpits and
plopped him on the bench across from me. I stood up and snatched my knee brace with a wild, mad
look on my face, and I think I meant it when I shouted, “Get him the fuck out right now or I’ll finish
him with this!”



When I came toward him, Shane and his helpers propped Vince on his feet and walked him limping
out the door. I would find out later that my punch lifted him high enough off the ground that when
he came down he rolled his ankle and nearly broke it.



And as history would have it, Paul filmed a dazed Vince staggering down the hall.



The dressing room was now quiet, except for Shawn’s sniffling. I walked toward him, thinking I
should kick the shit out of him too, while I had the chance. Instead I held out my hand. “Thanks for
the match, Shawn.” He shook my broken hand and started crying even harder.




It all seemed so surreal. After a few more moments of silence, Jim said with a mischie-vous smile, “I
guess they won’t say anything to me anymore about smashing TV monitors.” Rude, Taker, Owen, Jim
and Davey all burst out laughing.



When I got back to my hotel I asked Marcy, who was seething over how I’d been treated, to get the
truth out to the media and the fans before Vince rewrote history—and with her vast network of
contacts, I knew she could. It was an international news story before Vince’s damage-control team
had their morning coffee, and by then it was too late for Vince to smooth it over.



The next afternoon, while I was on the plane home, Vince had a talent meeting at Raw in Ottawa,
during which more than a few of the boys nearly quit. After the match, wrestlers kept calling my
hotel room saying that they wanted to boycott Raw. I deeply appreciated their support but told
them to think of their families first. Ken Shamrock was one of those who nearly quit. Davey and
Owen came home too; Davey pretended that he had reinjured his knee during the scuffle with
Vince, but Owen didn’t offer any excuse. Mick Foley actually quit.



I had no hard feelings about anyone staying on with Vince, including Jim, Davey and Owen. I left it up
to them. If things got rough for all of them, I’d see if Eric was interested in any of them, but only if
they wanted me to.



On the plane home, I’d been so dejected that my fist held up my chin the whole way, looking out the
window with the occasional tear rolling down my cheek. I couldn’t stop them and I didn’t feel like
hiding it. Jade just kept patting my hand.



Paul Jay’s crew filmed me on the plane: I couldn’t understand why Paul was so happy. He kept saying
to me, “You’re going to love what I got,” but I wasn’t getting it because I was literally in shock. Paul
said the God of documentaries had shone down on him in Montreal and he had the whole
conversation I’d had with Vince before the match on tape. But I wasn’t processing what he said.



At home on Monday night I couldn’t bring myself to watch Raw, so I called Marcy to find out what
happened. When she told me that Shawn had walked out with the belt, said how he’d beaten me in
my own country with my own finishing move and had run me out of the WWF, I finally knew for
certain that Shawn had been full of shit when he swore to God that he wasn’t in on it. Marcy was on
a relentless campaign to get the truth out, and on a leap of faith she contacted Dave Meltzer. She’d
never spoken to him before because she knew that I would have considered it a betrayal, despite


the fact that it was clear that Meltzer had by this point become pro wrestling’s most accurate
chronicler. After a lengthy conversation with him, she pointed out to me that the one thing Vince
seemed to be counting on to eventually save his ass on this is that I would never expose the
business, and she suggested I talk to Dave. I?had been considering it too, so on Tuesday, for the first
time in my life, I gave Dave Meltzer a call. If Vince could do this to me, he could do it to any of the
boys. I told Meltzer, “You don’t have to take my word for this. You go ahead and try to disprove
anything I’m telling you.” He printed every word I said, at the risk of alienating the sources he
needed to make his living. His meticulously detailed story about what has come to be called the
Montreal screwjob has never been refuted and is now considered a historic document in the history
of pro wrestling.



In the days after Montreal it was rumored that Vince was going to lay assault charges against me.
Apparently I broke his jaw and sprained his ankle. At first I thought, Great, bring it on. Vince would
have to sue me in Canada, exposing the truth about what happened in a court of law. I’d be happy to
swear to God and explain myself. But Carlo kept calling, building fear in me about what could
happen in a long, costly legal battle filled with uncertainty. I paced my pool room and briefly found
myself wishing I’d never hit Vince. Then I shook my head and laughed at how surreal this all was
continuing to be. They could put me in jail, they could do whatever the hell they wanted, and I knew
someday I’d be sorry for a lot of things, but I’d never, ever be sorry for knocking that son of a bitch
out.



I didn’t know at the time that Rick Rude had already called Eric Bischoff and told him everything that
had happened. When I phoned Eric from my hotel room after the match, he howled with laughter
over the fact that I had broken my hand on Vince’s jaw. As far as he was concerned, the whole
screwjob only made me hotter. On Nitro the day after Montreal, the nWo came out waving
Canadian flags, and Bischoff called me “a knock-out kind of a guy.” Hogan chimed in, “He passed the
initiation!” Then Miss Elizabeth conducted as Bischoff, Hogan, Hennig, Macho, Nash, Razor, Kid,
Konan, Virgil and the rest of the nWo sang the worst rendition of “O Canada!” I’ve ever heard! But in
many ways it was the best too.



Stu and Helen were hurt by what Vince did to me. But Stu reiterated that, under the circumstances,
I’d done the perfect thing. The love and support that my parents gave me was the only light I
needed. If I’d beaten up Vince badly, I’d have looked pretty bad as well, but one punch was more
than fair considering all the factors. What better way to say good-bye to a crooked boss than to deck
him on my last day of work?



Davey was trying to get out of his contract and was already talking to Eric. Owen had asked to be
released, but Vince refused to let him out of his contract, even when he told Vince that I vowed to
never talk to him again if he stayed. This was only a work, of course, but we both thought Vince


might feel bad enough to go for it. When I approached Eric about my brother, he was interested, but
he didn’t want to pay Owen the same money he was making with Vince.



As a favor to Owen, I spoke with Vince Russo on the phone—he’d gone from writing the WWF
magazine to writing the shows, and we both thought of him as a friend. I told Russo angrily that
McMahon wasn’t good for his word and that it was impossible for Owen to trust anything he ever
said again. My hostile tone wasn’t directed at him, and Russo and I hung up on good terms. Seconds
later, my phone rang, and to my startled amazement it was Vince McMahon. I concluded that he’d
listened in on the entire call. He said, “I can’t believe how truly selfish you are that you would want
to hold back your brother Owen.”



“How can you expect him to ever believe anything you say?”



“If you say another word to Owen, I’ll sue you so fast that you won’t know what hit you.”



“Vince, if you had an ounce of decency you’d let him go, or at least let him make his own decision.”



“Well, I’m not letting him go. And I’m never going to let him go! And you better get used to it. If you
keep doing what you’re doing, messing with Owen’s head, I’ll sue you with a smile on my face. And
I’ll sue Owen for breach of contract too!” He slammed the phone down.



I called Owen to tell him what happened. I said I couldn’t do anything more or Vince would sue us
both. For some reason, Owen apologized.



I told him not to worry; we would never let the wrestling business come between us. “I’ll always be
here for you, Owen. Do what ya gotta do and don’t worry about me. Watch yourself. They’ll be
coming for you next, you watch. Watch your back, Owen, and I’ll be waiting for you over at WCW.
Just get home in one piece.”



PART FOUR



PINK INTO BLACK




42



CASUALTIES OF WAR



I ALWAYS FELT THEY KILLED The Hitman character that day in Montreal. Every picture and mention
of my career quickly vanished from the WWF’s website. Vince McMahon was rewriting history to
suit his own purpose, erasing me like I never existed.



Not surprisingly I’d become an overnight hero of a different sort for having the balls to KO Vince, but
I knew he’d be coming after me. He openly challenged me on TV, but at the same time he was still
talking about suing me for assault. Neither Shawn nor Hunter had the guts to admit their
involvement, but it didn’t matter: The boys had seen the yellow stripes on those two snakes long
ago. Soon enough, Taker called to tell me, “I got it right from Vince. That little cunt Shawn, he was in
on the whole thing.”



One respected champion after another phoned me. Dory Funk laughed when I outlined what had
happened, and said about me punching Vince: “You couldn’t have done a more masterful job of
doing the perfect thing.” Pedro Morales was yet another former World Champion who told me that
Vince had a habit of doing this to every star he made, and said Vince had learned it from his dad:
“Vince senior never gave me any warning about dropping the belt either. He gave me less than an
hour’s notice. I told him, you should prepare me for this.” Pedro told me to watch my back, stand up
for myself and never let them destroy me. Harley Race filled my heart when he said, “I’m proud of
you, Bret.” I felt like a scrappy alley cat that had got in an ugly fight with a big, vicious dog; even
though I was limping off, that dog was limping off too.



Vince was deep in damage-control mode. He gave a big talk to all the wrestlers at Corn-wall TVs on
November 11, 1997, saying that he did what he did to me for the sake of the boys and the business.
Owen told me that nobody believed a word he said, but Vince’s words seemed to do a number on
Carlo, who did an about-face, calling me to say that Vince’s explanation made a lot of sense to him. I
kept my disappointment with him to myself, but distanced myself a bit from him after that.



On November 24, Vince broke his promise that he would never tarnish my character after I was
gone, the way he’d done to Hogan and Macho. First he teased the audience into thinking that I was
going to appear on Raw, and then he had Shawn parade out a Mexican midget wrestler wearing a
leather jacket and a Hitman Halloween mask. Hunter and Shawn quipped that they always knew The
Hitman was short on talent, charisma and stature. I have to admit that I was hurt by such stunts. I


was also worried about starting at WCW, though I kept a brave face for my family and the fans.
Harley had warned me that WCW was a den of wolves too.



On my first visit to the WCW offices in Atlanta on December 14, I bumped into Hogan, Macho and
Eric Bischoff, who smiled confidently at me as he said, “If you think you’re a big star now, you’re
going to be an even bigger star when I’m done with you!” Hogan said what’d happened between
him and me before he left the WWF was all Vince’s fault. He said that Vince had bragged to him that
he loved to ride the boys into the ground, “then cook and eat ’em.” The truth was that Hogan didn’t
put me over when he had the chance for his own reasons. Because we needed to work together,
however, I shook his hand when he offered it and told him I was sorry for anything I said about him
after he left the WWF. He grinned back like I was an old friend. He also surprised me by giving me a
compliment: He said he thought I was the best interview in the business now, even though I knew
that honor really belonged to Stone Cold.



I made my WCW debut the next day on a sold-out live Nitro in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was a bit
surprised that it didn’t feel that much different to me than a WWF show. WCW was loaded with
hard-working Mexican boys. I’d never been much of a Lu-cha Libre fan until I saw the dedication and
effort those wrestlers put in every night. In particular, I loved the amazing work of young Rey
Mysterio Jr., a masked lightweight Mexican who could spin through, up and over the ropes with
backflips and beautiful dives and rolls. In my opinion, he is the most talented Mexican wrestler there
has ever been. I felt mucho respect from all the Mexican boys as they came to me to shake my hand.



Paul Wight, the new Giant of wrestling at seven-foot-two and four hundred pounds, lumbered up to
say hello. There were old-timers, such as Roddy Piper and Ric Flair, and great young talent, including
powerhouse Booker T and, from the Stampede territory, Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho. Even Miss
Elizabeth was there, now working as Lex Luger’s valet. Curt Hennig gave me a big, warm smile and a
slap on the back.



I felt honored to shake Rick Rude’s hand. He’d been at a taped Raw on November 17, which aired on
November 24, just as he walked out live on Nitro. This was the first and only time a wrestler
appeared for both organizations on TV at the same time. Raw was taped on alternate weeks from
the live Nitros, and Bischoff liked to give out the results of Raw matches before they aired. Rude
walked out there and delivered a well-spoken monologue about the rights and wrongs of
professional wrestling. He said it was wrong for Shawn to claim he was the World Champion when
Vince had cheated me out of the title. A lot of wrestlers were disgusted by what Vince had done in
Montreal, but Rick Rude was one of the few who actually quit the WWF for good over it.




Mick Foley had quit too and missed a Raw but then returned the next day. He was finally making a
name for himself as Mankind. For him, going back to WCW would have been career suicide. Steve
Austin called to tell me how sorry he was that it ended up this way for me but warned me that WCW
was a black hole of bad booking and bad organization. Ken Shamrock had been so furious that he’d
also wanted to quit, but I advised him to do what was best for his family and he finally elected to
stay, though he said, “I’ll always be one of your crew, Bret.” Then he was quoted in a story in
Maclean’s magazine on the screwjob, saying, “I can’t speak for what happened between Vince
McMahon and Bret Hart, but I can say that Bret Hart was the kind of guy everyone looked up to.”



Davey had to pay a $150,000 penalty to get out of his WWF contract in order to jump to WCW. For
him, I was just the excuse: Quitting was more about letting down his dying sister in Birmingham than
it was about Vince betraying me over the way I got to leave. One week after Rude left the WWF, Jim
was brought out to the ring to be humiliated and disgraced by Shawn and Hunter as part of a
storyline, and then he was fired. Luckily, Eric liked Jim enough to sign him to a $150,-000-a-year deal.
I was glad to have Jim, Davey and Rude around.



That first night in the WCW dressing room in Charlotte, I also met Steve Borden, known as Sting. This
hard-working pioneer of WCW was a well-built, born-again Christian with long, dark hair who
worked a white-painted-face gimmick based on the movie The Crow; for his entrance, he was
lowered from the rafters on a steel cable. He’d been famous for his scorpion death lock long before I
ever came up with my own variation of it: the sharpshooter.



I was also impressed with the look of Bill Goldberg, a muscle-packed former NFLer who went simply
by his last name. Bill was forced to retire from football after badly tearing an abdominal muscle. His
former head coach, Bill Sleeman, later told me that if he had a whole team of Bill Goldbergs, he’d
win the Super Bowl every year. Goldberg was bald-headed, with an angry face punctuated by a
goatee—all he needed to be intimidating was simple black trunks and low-cut black boots. He made
his entrance to dramatic marching music, pausing just long enough to pound his chest in a haze of
billowing smoke. He was destined to be WCW’s new weapon in the battle of supremacy against
Vince. Unfortunately, Bill was green and was injuring a lot of guys too.



I was bedazzled enough by that sold-out Nitro that for the first time I felt that WCW might actually
work out for me. I had a great first interview and got a good pop when I said: “Nobody knows better
than me what it’s like to get screwed by a referee.” That comment set me up to referee Hogan’s
World title match with Sting at the Starrcade ’97 pay-per-view in Washington, D.C., on December 28.
Personally, I thought that appearing as a referee would be a lackluster debut, but what did I know?
What did I care? I wanted to comply, to do whatever they asked to the best of my ability—win, lose
or draw—then pick up my check and come home safe. Nobody would accuse me of taking this
business too seriously ever again.




The following morning at the Charlotte airport, I ran right into none other than Earl and Dave
Hebner. Earl came up to me with his hand out and an apologetic look on his face. I refused to shake
his hand, warning him calmly, “Don’t talk to me.” He insisted that he didn’t know what was up with
Shawn and Vince until he was on his way out to the ring in Montreal.



“What d’ya mean you didn’t know? I told you, Earl! You promised me, swore on your kids!” But in
the end, I forgave him. I knew that Vince held Earl’s livelihood in his hands, and the only thing Earl
was guilty of was not having the guts to take a stand against the man who wrote the checks. Then
Dave asked me if I thought Bischoff would take either him or Earl on, and I told him I’d ask.



Vince’s big news was that he was bringing in Mike Tyson to work an angle with Austin leading up to
WrestleMania XIV, where Tyson would guest ref a main-event title match between Shawn and Stone
Cold. At first, Bischoff laughed it off, saying he’d turned Tyson down. But then the WWF’s ratings
went through the roof and Bischoff wasn’t laughing anymore. All I could think about was how Vince
told me he was in such financial peril he couldn’t afford to live up to our contract, yet he was paying
Tyson over $3 million for a few hours of work.



Tyson was part of a storyline with Stone Cold, who turned out to be the perfect antihero to go nose
to nose with Vince’s own new TV persona: Vince had become a dictatorial heel boss! To this point,
Vince had been known to the majority of wrestling fans mainly as a ringside announcer. With the
truth out about what he’d done to me, he decided to capitalize on the intense heat by turning
himself heel and making the betrayal all part of the “storyline.” Owen was forced to confront Vince
as part of the storyline, because the corrupt wicked promoter had screwed over his big brother. On
Raw, Shawn and Hunter called Owen a nugget of shit that didn’t quite get flushed down the toilet
and, of course, I was the big, smelly turd. I admired how Owen refused to let Shawn or Hunter get to
him, ignoring their swipes as if they didn’t matter. Owen put Shawn over, and Shawn purposely
potatoed him at one point, splitting his head open. Like me, Owen found himself making truces with
Shawn while at the same time never trusting anything Shawn said or did.



Vince kept working angles based on what he’d done to me for real. It not only made the Montreal
screwjob seem less significant, it made an increasing number of fans wonder if everything that
happened between Vince and me was “only” the biggest work in the history of the business.



Meanwhile, Paul Jay and his crew were quietly holed up in their studio in Toronto, meticulously
editing the documentary. Paul kept telling me it would be my vindication, and I wanted to believe
him.




Back at home, things were not good. For eighteen years, I’d yearned to be home. Now that I was
home more, Julie and I found that we were leading completely different lives. We had a lousy
Christmas and barely even spoke to each other. She served a beautiful Christmas dinner on paper
plates. The kids were too consumed with all their presents to notice her gesture, which only
deepened her already dark mood. The truth was that none of us wanted to piss her off any further. I
was dragging my heart around over what Vince had done to me, and Julie snapped at me to get over
it. She was also threatening to divorce me again.



I surrounded myself with my sadness—I missed my old friends, the fans, all kinds of people from the
WWF circuit, from hotels, gyms, restaurants, clubs, arenas and airports. I had also lost track of my
old loves, some of whom I missed terribly, but the truth was I didn’t want them to see me this way. I
was hurt, vulnerable, changed: I had lost faith in the world. Bischoff wasn’t going to ask me to
wrestle until late January 1998, and I couldn’t do any weight training because of my broken hand. I
kept in shape through that unseasonably warm, brown Christmas in Calgary by riding my bike all
over town.



I’d barely seen Owen or spoken with him since Survivor Series. On Boxing Day, up at Hart house, he
seemed surprised when I greeted him warmly. He told me the WWF was only getting worse, with DX
getting more vulgar every week, not to mention Sable, a sensuous valet, walking out topless for a
Fully Loaded bikini match with painted-on black handprints to cover her breasts. When he asked me
again whether I was mad at him, I told him again that we could never let the fucked-up crazy
business get between us. With the money Vince was paying him, Owen said, he was thinking about
building a big house on some land just across from Clearwater Beach. I told him just to do whatever
it took to survive and to take care of his wife and kids.



“In three years when our contracts are up,” I said, “we’ll sit on each other’s back decks and laugh
about all this shit.”



Stu and Helen celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary that New Year’s Eve under the pall of the
Montreal screwjob. Sipping tea in the kitchen, we reminisced about how happy and different
everything was back at the Stampede show in July. What happened? I think 1997 was the weirdest
year of my entire life.



My debut at Starrcade ’97 in December had been anything but brilliant. Eric told me my storyline
was going to be about how I saved WCW by helping Sting win back the title from Hogan, which
called for me to confront the referee after he made a fast count on Sting. In true WCW fashion, the
referee forgot what he was supposed to do for real and made a normal count, but that didn’t stop


me from knocking him out cold and declaring myself the new referee. Sting resumed the match and
beat Hogan seconds later. If I thought things were going to get better for me from there on in, I was
sadly mistaken.



My fans tuned into WCW for a while, but according to the mail I received and the opionions of the
fans I ran into in person, they had a hard time following the incoherent story-lines—and so did I. In
comparison, the WWF was well organized; usually Vince’s storyboards were done months in
advance. I also noticed a stark contrast between WCW’s agents and Vince’s. With the exception of
Dusty Rhodes and Paul Orndorff, none of Eric’s men had ever drawn a dime in the business. It was
like having an NFL team run by a bunch of high-school coaches.



WCW took a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to live TV. Nitro was three hours of high-flying
matches mixed with live interviews starring Hollywood Hogan and the nWo, with Eric playing the
part of a crooked promoter, just like Vince was doing. Many times, the ideas for the interviews were
dreamed up just seconds before the befuddled wrestler had to walk out and deliver his lines, and
they often contradicted whatever weak storylines were in place. Eric reminded me of a guy with a
hundred birds pecking on his head all day long. Still, WCW was doing incredible business.



I tried my best to keep a low profile even though most of the boys wanted to pick my brain and hear
all about what happened between me and Vince. After so many years of being at home in the
dressing room and a leader, I was guarded and not so trusting. Hogan seemed to be the rock here,
with waves constantly lapping up to him.



Hennig, Rude and Duggan looked out for me like big brothers. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were
plotting and scheming, trying to pull me to their side to help them get rid of Hogan. Every-where,
there were little factions of backstabbers. Many of the WCW boys despised Flair, especially Hall,
Nash, Macho, the Steiners and Hogan. The only guys who didn’t stir up shit were the Mexicans and
some of the young talent—Chris Benoit was having some of the best matches in the business at that
time with Booker T. Some of the best talent were the smaller wrestlers, such as Eddie Guerrero and
Dean Malenko, both second generation, and young Billy Kidman, who reminded me a lot of myself
when I was starting out. These were the unsung heroes of WCW, and they worked really hard at
keeping everything going.



When I packed my bag to leave my house on January 23, 1998, for my first WCW pay-per-view
match, against Ric Flair, Blade was the only one to wish me good luck.




I was worried about how Flair would work with me—with my still-injured hand, I needed to keep a
close eye on him. Flair appeared to be trying to get along in this den of wolves and multiple wolf
packs, but as hard as he tried, nobody liked him except his old cronies, such as Kevin Sullivan, Arn
Anderson, J.J. Dillon and Mongo McMichael. Hogan took every opportunity to try to stir me up about
Flair, but I said nothing. I let Ric do the match his way, even letting him chop me to his heart’s
content as he tried to show me how good he really was. I offered no resistance in what was, as usual
with Flair, twenty minutes of nonstop non-psychology.



On January 25, Vince’s mother, Juanita, passed away. She’d always been nice to me, and so, despite
everything, I sent a card of condolence to Vince’s house. I didn’t expect a reply, and I never got one.



I couldn’t find any way to be at peace with what I had. When a soul gets bigger than a mind can
comprehend, it becomes easy to give up on trust and judgment. I heard two voices in my head,
talking loud and fast, contradicting each other. Go left! Go right! Look out! I now measured time by
how many more trips I’d have to take before I could say, “Fuck you, I’m going home” to the whole
business—whatever “going home” meant. Would the day ever really come when I could walk away
and not be another wrestling tragedy? I was forty-one now, and Harley Race was right about getting
to the point where you were feeling every damn one of those bumps. My knees were running on
borrowed time and so was the rest of me. I’d do whatever they asked, yet I’d be careful and work
safe. Pedro Morales had told me, “There are only three things in this business—you, you and you.”
What he meant was that at this stage of the game it was imperative to protect myself, especially in
the ring. So I did my job and waited for a much-anticipated storyline between me and Hogan to
start. A Hitman-Hogan match clearly had the potential to be the biggest match of all time.
Meanwhile, back in the WWF, Vince converted Papa Shango from a gangsta into a pimp, whose line
was “Pimpin’ ain’t easy!” Raw was becoming more about bra-and-panty Jell-O matches than about
wrestling, with Jerry Lawler’s commentaries going on about all the girls showing their puppies.



Still, the hype about Tyson refereeing the main event title match between Shawn and Austin at
Wrestlemania XIV ignited the WWF into a roaring fire. The fire that Vince tried to put out, but
couldn’t, though, was the one raging in the hearts of my fans. At the Wrestlemania XIV press
conference, a fan angrily shouted at Shawn, “You screwed Bret!” until he was dragged away. Shawn
had to realize that screwing me would haunt him for the rest of his life; more than it would haunt
me, which is saying a lot.



I was more than eager to see Shawn drop the belt to Stone Cold, whose character had become a
gun-waving, beer-guzzling antihero perfectly suited to punishing the prima donna asshole who
screwed over Bret Hart.




I often reflected on the five of us who had started out so long ago, galloping free like wild stallions:
Dynamite, Davey, Jim, Owen and me. Dynamite was now stuck in his wheelchair, drunk and bitter,
everything gone. It seemed to me that now Davey was falling lame like Dynamite, his drug problems
getting worse, and Jim wasn’t much better. Despite my broken heart, I was strong and free, and still
at the front of the herd along with Owen. I fantasized that my brother and I were literally stallions,
lathered with sweat, galloping up a Rocky Mountain foothill, steam coming out of our nostrils in
snorts. We reach a ledge wide enough to stop, where two clear paths lead in two different
directions, and we stare at one another with eagerness and apprehension, long tails swishing. Which
way should we go? The dark horse shakes his head, then carefully picks his way south up the
cliffside. The palomino prances to and fro, wanting to follow, but then takes the path to the north,
and they part ways forever.



A lot of pro wrestling’s old horses were falling away or dying off. Britain’s Big Daddy Crabtree had
died in 1997, Loch Ness was failing and then the legendary wrestler BoBo Brazil died at seventy-
three. But the Grim Reaper of wrestling wanted more young bones too. On February 15, 1998, a
drunken Louie Spicolli downed twenty-six Somas and died at the age of twenty-seven, drowning in
his own vomit. The sad thing was that more guys were worried about drug testing being introduced
as a result than about dying like Louie did, or like Brian Pillman had. Eric Bischoff was pissed off after
the news hit the dressing room about Louie, and said to me: “Man, these guys are just getting
dressed and nobody gives a shit.”



Dave Meltzer wrote a scathing piece about how Louie’s death should finally be the wake-up call for
all wrestlers, but nobody was listening. The industry was too caught up with stunts such as Shawn
Michaels jerking off a wiener on camera as Hunter wore a SUCK THE COOK T-shirt.



Vince appeared on Off The Record, a Canadian sports talk show, where he claimed that before I left,
I’d become a real pain in the ass with a bad attitude; that I was disruptive in the dressing room; that I
was breaking down physically; and that I was starting to miss dates. I guess that last one was my
thanks for having shown up at Omaha Raw in a wheelchair only five days after surgery. But the
determined interviewer, Mi-chael Landsberg, finally got Vince to admit, after considerable
squirming, that he had lied to me.



Owen had become the Intercontinental Champion, and was working with Hunter and Rock, while I
was working with Hennig and Rude. Then Shawn came down with another “career-ending” injury,
four days before the lead-in pay-per-view for Wrestlemania XIV. Now he wouldn’t have to put Steve
over. I just shook my head. In the end, Wrestlemania XIV was a huge success, but it took Vince right
up until match time to coax Shawn into dropping the belt to Austin. (On another note, Earl Hebner
wasn’t at WrestleMania at all, having been hospitalized with a brain aneurysm that could easily have
been fatal. When I called to wish him a speedy recovery, he broke down on the phone.)




In the face of relentless competition from Vince, Eric Bischoff seemed to be burning out, and as a
result, the disorganization at the WCW was getting worse. Though the house shows were still selling
out, by March his TV ratings were beginning to slip. The WWF had figured out that the way to beat
WCW was to get raunchier and sleazier every week. Vince’s shock TV pushed the envelope of what
the censors would allow, and Bischoff looked more lost and confused every day: He had to put out a
product that fit within Ted Turner’s squeaky-clean guidelines, and Vince knew it. Maybe it’s a good
thing that Eric couldn’t go that way, even if he’d wanted to. I liked Eric and often offered him ideas. I
don’t know if it was pride or politics that made him shoot them down one by one; his own angles
rarely made sense. They’d fly me to TVs—paying for first-class air fare, hotel and a lux-ury car—only
to leave me off the show. At the end of the day, in the WWF I got screwed for money, while in WCW
I got paid well enough for so little output that I felt a bit too much like a whore.



I saw a rough cut of Paul’s documentary, which was set to air in the fall, and now I understood what
he’d been trying to tell me: The story of what had really happened to me in Montreal was going to
be told, and it would be a vindication.



Eric had me turn heel by double-crossing Sting and revealing that, all along, I was part of the nWo.
Vince’s radical new direction was as brilliant in the ratings war as Eric’s was weak. Aside from Stone
Cold being one of the most popular TV characters in the world, Sable, Taker, Mankind and Rock were
all coming into their own. On April 13, Austin wrestled McMahon to a DQ on Raw (because of
interference from Mick Foley as Dude Love), the WWF shot out in front and never looked back. The
ratings war was essentially over. I was the greatest weapon Eric had at that time, and why he never
deployed me, I’ll never know.



With my marriage and my career both falling apart, I felt darkness from all sides. I kept to myself
more than ever, which wasn’t a good thing. One day Julie summoned all the kids into the living
room, against my protests, and told them we were divorcing. She then asked them to pick who they
wanted to live with. The kids and I had been through this before, but when seven-year-old Blade
broke into tears and cried, “I’m going with Dad!” it hit a powerful nerve in me. It had been six
months since Vince had broken my heart, and neither Julie nor I knew how to fix it. This time I took
Julie at her word. We officially separated on May 15, 1998.



Meanwhile, Stu and Helen had their own misery to deal with, being in a deep financial hole. I gave
them $70,000 to get them through, making them promise me they’d use the money for themselves
and not for those Harts who always had their hands out.




On May 17, I worked a good hard match with Macho at the Slamboree pay-per-view in Worcester,
and that set up a tag match: me and Hogan versus Piper and Macho at the Great American Bash in
Baltimore, which was a month away.



Death took yet another wrestler on June 2. The Junk Yard Dog, Sylvester Ritter, fell asleep at the
wheel and rolled his car. He was forty-five.



I was worried about Davey, who told me that he and Diana were on the rocks too. He again confided
to me that he needed help with his drug problem. I went to Eric on his behalf, and Eric said that if
Davey got help, he didn’t have to worry, his job would be secure. Sadly, even though Davey freely
admitted he needed help, he wasn’t yet ready to accept it.



At the Great American Bash, Macho and I cut a good pace, but Roddy and Hogan showed their age.
Hogan was starting to remind me of Giant Baba, who was old, phony and uncoordinated, but whose
fans loved him anyway. The whole storyline didn’t make sense to me, or to the fans, but to Eric and
Hogan it was all great work. My heel character had become a deranged, angry bad guy. My fans
didn’t like him, and neither did I. My original following was now outnumbered by a new breed of
fans, who were like cartoon characters themselves. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw younger
kids or a family at ringside. Even The New York Times proclaimed that pro wrestling was no longer
suitable for kids.



On July 20, I won the U.S. title in Salt Lake City when I beat up Diamond Dallas Page with a steel
chair. Page was a close friend of Eric’s, a scruffy, wiry older rookie who resembled a Scottie dog. He
was playing the part of an old veteran, even though he’d only been wrestling a few years. He was a
good hand who was always trying to improve. We had a kind of chemistry and got on well in and out
of the ring.



I’d brought Blade with me to Salt Lake City, and he sat watching the monitor in the dressing room as
Scott Hall took some kind of phony-looking bump into a TV production trailer while wrestling Kevin
Nash. Minutes later, when Scott walked in, my eight-year-old son called out, “Hey, Razor, that was
pathetic,” cracking up the whole dressing room. During these sad and empty days, the only real joy
in my life was Blade.



On August 4, I boarded a plane home after a Nitro in Denver and was happy to find Owen in the seat
next to mine, smiling as if he’d been waiting for me. For the next couple of hours, we talked about
the state of the business. He was disgusted by a recent angle on Raw that featured wrestler Val
Venis and special guest John Wayne Bobbitt, where Venis put his penis out on a chopping block.


Owen didn’t like the guns, sleazy sex and female fans taking their tops off in the audience. He told
me he wanted to resurrect his old Blue Blazer character just to change things up: Perhaps becoming
a masked superhero was a way to avoid involvement with the vulgar aspects of the show.



I had just moved, alone, into an old stone ranch house planted on the edge of a hill in the west end
of Calgary, overlooking the Rocky Mountains; because I had to travel so much, it made the most
sense for the all the kids to live with Julie. I took the opportunity to invite Owen to come over to see
my new place as well as watch a rough cut of Paul’s documentary, now titled Wrestling with
Shadows. I was worried that my dad came across as too harsh in the doc when I talked about him
often stretching me hard enough to pop the blood vessels in my eyes and about my life passing
before my eyes while he smothered me in various submission holds. I wanted Owen’s honest advice
because the last thing I wanted to do was hurt my dad, and I was relieved when he told me not to
worry because it was all true. The thing that upset Owen was when, in the documentary, I compared
losing to Shawn with blowing my brains out. My brother admonished me, reminding me,“We always
said there’s nothing in wrestling worth dying for.”



The next day I got a script to do a Disney series called Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, in which I’d play
myself. There was also a part for a Hart brother and I got Owen the job so we could spend some
time together. Owen couldn’t have been happier.



I lost the U.S. title to Lex Luger on August 10, only to win it back from him three days later. Titles
didn’t mean anything anymore; they changed hands almost as many times as the WCW senselessly
turned me from heel to babyface. At that time, Eric was pinning his ratings hopes on the return of
The Ultimate Warrior. But within days, Warrior tore a biceps muscle and that was the beginning of
the end for him, not that he could’ve been Eric’s savior anyway.



I’d given Eric and Hogan advance dubs of Paul’s documentary, and they both called to tell me they
loved it. I thought perhaps it would encourage Eric to keep me baby-face, seeing as how wrestling
fans would soon see me looking like a real hero in Paul’s movie. I was baffled when Eric wasted Hart
versus Hogan on a free match at Nitro, on September 28, throwing away a guaranteed moneymaker
that the fans had been waiting years for. The plan, in my view, was insane. He wanted me to turn
babyface during an in-ring interview, challenge Hogan, then get injured and have Sting take my
place. When Sting twisted Hogan into his scorpion death lock, I would limp back out and double-
cross Sting by DDTing him headfirst into the mat, turning heel again. To turn me heel at this point
was so stupid it felt like sabotage.



Then I heard the news that my old pal Jim Duggan had kidney cancer, which only added to the
weight I was carrying around. My divorce had also turned into a War of the Roses.




Julie and I had monumental fights, over money, over whose friends were on whose side, over . . .
everything basically. And then we would make up. We went through this cycle over and over again. I
couldn’t take the up-down, push-pull anymore and sank into a deep depression. On October 11,
while riding with The Giant from Milwaukee to Chicago, I found myself wishing I was dead. But then,
when Paul Wight actually started to pull out to pass—in front of a speeding semi truck—I heard
myself shouting, “Stop!” When both our heart rates had slowed again, the big guy looked over at me
and said, “Thanks for saving my life tonight.”



I worked Halloween Havoc with Sting in Las Vegas, retaining the U.S. title by beating him senseless
with a baseball bat that was actually made of foam.



I could rarely bear to watch Raw anymore but checked it out to see Owen’s new turn as The Blue
Blazer. I understood what Owen was talking about when I saw Vince McMahon appear to piss
himself in the ring on live TV after Stone Cold pressed a .38 special to his head. With the WWF
ratings going through the roof, Sable appeared in the highest-selling Playboy magazine of all time
and Stone Cold was on the cover of Rolling Stone.



That November, Jesse The Body Ventura surprised political pundits when he was elected governor of
Minnesota. Dave Meltzer wrote, “Pro wrestling is more real and more phony than people can
imagine.” The simple truth was that wrestling had never been more widely acceptable to the
mainstream than it was that year. But it felt to me that I kept spiraling down, in my own estimation
and in my fans’ eyes too.



On November 9, a year after the Montreal screwjob, I thought I finally had my chance to show Eric
what I was worth when I worked the Nassau Coliseum, wrestling in New York for the first time since
coming to WCW. To my complete dismay, I had a meaningless match with Konan and did a run-in
during the last few seconds of the show. But I refrained from complaining: Eric had just given Davey
more time off to get his act together, though he’d had to let Jim go because he was clumsily missing
shots—not showing up for work.



The high point of the whole year was the premiere of Paul’s documentary at a gala in Toronto. After
watching it with the audience, I got a standing ovation. A week later, I sat with Stu and the rest of
the Hart family at the IMAX theater in Calgary, where once again the audience got to its feet to
cheer me. That felt especially good, because halfway through the screening, Bruce abruptly dragged
his kids out because of how Stu was portrayed. But Stu told me he liked it, which was a great relief.
Afterwards, I fielded questions from the audience, and I saw a warm smile on Owen’s face when I
said the only thing I missed about the WWF was him.




New Year’s Eve, 1998. I had no idea when I bought my new house that the view would be like an
ever-changing painting every day. I was alone and had my music cranked while looking out my
kitchen window at a family of deer digging up fallen crab apples beneath a blanket of snow.



I eased myself into a more comfortable position on a huge round couch, where I could stare out at
the distant lights of Calgary. I’d dropped the U.S. title again, to Dallas Page in Phoenix on November
22. The next day I worked a Nitro match in Grand Rapids, Michigan, against pintsized Dean Malenko,
a second-generation wrestler who was a good, capable worker, although his style reminded me of
Cirque du Soleil—it was a little too rehearsed. When Malenko went for a standing suplex on me, I
went up for him effortlessly in the air, straight as two dinner forks stuck together. Instead of taking
me back for a simple back bump, Malenko decided to walk me the short distance to the corner, but
he didn’t have the size or strength and dropped me full-weight, crotching me and tearing my groin. I
don’t even know how I was able to bring myself to finish the match. I was in too much pain even to
tell Dean how pissed off I was at him. Even worse, he dressed fast and left without acknowledging
that he hurt me, or that he was sorry. As well regarded as little Malenko was, I lost respect for him as
a professional that day. I could barely walk, let alone wrestle, yet Eric had me win back the U.S. title
from Page in Chattanooga a week later, with a lame finish where The Giant helped me. As ridiculous
as the storyline was, at least The Giant did do all the work.



I also managed to do another appearance on Mad TV in December, in a sketch about The Hitman
becoming Jesse Ventura’s lieutenant-governor and getting too physical at a press conference, where
I’d rough up the cast before stomping off the set. The funniest bit came at the end of the show when
I decked the heavy-set Will Sasso with a plastic chair, twisted him into a sharpshooter and fled. He
followed me back to my dressing room, with a camera crew in tow, asking me what my problem
was. I jumped him from behind, pulled his shirt over his head and appeared to beat him senseless.
The show went off the air with cast members attending to Will, who actually got a bloody nose in all
the excitement. As ole J.R. Foley used to say, “I never, erm, touched him.”



Christmas had been especially bleak. Diana had got so fed up with Davey passing out like a zombie
on the couch in front of the kids that she downed his entire bottle of Xanax right in front of him to
prove a point. Sadly, it was young Harry who had to call 911 because Davey was too out of it to dial
the number. Alison said that Diana had had her stomach pumped and that they’d read her the last
rites. But Owen told me at dinner at his place on Boxing Day that, as far as he was concerned, the
incident hadn’t been life threatening and that Diana only acted like she was out of it when there
were people around. I thought Owen was being a little too hard on Diana. She was having a tough
time with Davey’s out-of-control drug problem. Poor Davey. His sister, Tracey, had only just passed
away in November and his mother, Joyce, was dying of cancer and was down to her last days in a
hospital in England too.




No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to escape the Montreal screwjob. With the release of
the documentary, wherever I went people stopped me to shake my hand. A teary-eyed Marine came
up to me at the St. Louis airport and told me he’d never watch the WWF again, and that he was
proud of me. But I’d read in a Forbes magazine before Christmas that the WWF was now a $500
million-a-year company. In the last year alone, the company grossed $54.7 million, breaking all
records. I had to shake my head at the irony of the fact that the whole thing started when Vince told
me that the WWF was in financial peril! Vince had used what he did to me for real to turn his
company around completely—and his words about WCW not knowing what to do with a Bret Hart
echoed louder and louder in my head.



The heated negotiations over my divorce were basically done, and all I needed to do was sign the
papers. Though I’d decided that marriage was not for me, I’d gone through some kind of strange
metamorphosis: I now had no interest in the pretty girls at the hotels who threw themselves at the
wrestlers after the shows. Oddly, now that everything Julie and I had owned had been divided up,
we were getting along better than we had in a long time.



The constant pain in my groin was bad enough that I winced when I hoisted myself off the couch to
pace around inside my big house, thinking and remembering. I promised Eric I’d delay my groin
surgery until after WCW’s Canadian debut, which was going to be in Toronto, on March 29, 1999. I
thought I could make it because I could walk, run reasonably fast and take some bumps, but I’d have
to go real easy. Eric had also apologized to me for how they’d dropped the ball with me from the
start.



On February 1, Bill Goldberg and I were waiting on the runway in Los Angeles for Hogan and Bischoff
to arrive for a chartered flight to San Francisco, both of us worried that we wouldn’t get to Nitro on
time. As we chatted I told Bill that I had an idea for WCW’s debut in Toronto, which was coming up,
a great angle that played on my popularity in Canada, especially after the documentary. Wearing my
trademark skater shorts and a Hitmen jersey, I’d call him out and goad him into spear-tackling me
like a freight train, only I’d hide a “steel” chest plate under my jersey, and he’d end up knocked out
cold for the one . . . two . . . three. This of course would set us up to work together, with him coming
after me to get even. “It’s great television, Bill, and it doesn’t hurt you one bit.” Bill grinned and told
me he was all for it.



Eric, Hogan, Bill and I missed all but the last three minutes of Nitro and hit the ring one after another
in our street clothes. The next day I told Eric my idea about Goldberg and the steel plate and he told
me he loved it too, but he thought Bill would never go for it. I explained that I had already run it past
Bill and that he wanted to do it. Surprised, Eric told me we could do it. I suggested to him that with
Toronto barely two months away, I’d need to be built up some, get a few wins and cut some good
promos. We planned out my next few weeks leading into Toronto, and Eric asked me not to say a
peep about our plans to anyone.




On February 7, I was flown down to Atlanta to sit in on a booking meeting that was supposed to
determine finally where The Hitman was going at WCW. I wasn’t surprised to find Hulk, Nash, Eric
and the rest of the booking committee playing God with the careers of the wrestlers. First off, Hogan
suddenly brought up rumors that I was going back to Vince, which would do big business. I
downplayed the chance of it ever happening, while knowing this fear was really the only leverage I
had anymore. The only thing bigger than a Hart-Hogan match would be if I did an angle with Vince,
but for all the money in the world, I would never let Vince make an angle out of something that hurt
so deeply. I let them know I was happy to put over anybody they wanted, but it seemed to me that it
didn’t make much sense to beat me so often considering what they were paying me. Bischoff and
Hogan stayed in the meeting just long enough to clear the way for me to work with Hogan in the fall.
After they left, Nash, who was the new captain of the booking committee, told me there was no
chance I’d be working with Hogan in the fall: he had Hogan with Gold-berg.



“Eric was just here and we were all in agreement.” I said. “Where were you?”



Nash walked off, bitching and shaking his head.



The next day, in Buffalo for Nitro, as part of an angle that was tied in with Mad TV, I was supposed to
drop the belt to an unworthy and unreliable Razor, but at the last minute that was switched, and
Roddy Piper was going to get the belt. I wanted to do all I could for Roddy, in return for all his years
of being a true friend to me. I laid him out after the referee had also been knocked down. Then I
attempted to drag the semi-conscious ref over to make the count, just as Will Sasso climbed over the
railing. We got into a tug-o’war over the ref, with me pulling on his arm and Will pulling on his leg.
When Roddy schoolboyed me from behind, with the ref just able to make the count, it got a huge
pop.



Then Eric decided to go on a family vacation to France, leaving Nash in charge. Eric’s last Nitro before
his time off was February 22 in Sacramento; instead of building me up for Goldberg, he had me lose
to Booker T. This made no sense to me at all, but Eric sheepishly told me that his booking committee
insisted that it was time to see me do a job. I told him I’d done plenty of them and beating me was
beyond stupid when they had so much invested in me. “Just put Booker over and we’ll build
everything after this,” he said. I had nothing but respect for Booker T, so told Eric I’d do whatever he
needed me to do. (I was pleased to see that despite my groin injury, Meltzer rated it a four-star
match.)



Three days later, at Thunder in Salt Lake City, Eric was gone and Nash had the nerve to tell me that
he’d taken my groin injury into account but he still wanted me to do a ridiculously long seventeen


minutes with Disco Inferno. Disco was comic relief, and no way to build me for Goldberg, let alone
Hogan. Next, at Nitro in Worcester on March 8, it was Malenko I would supposedly lose to. When I
protested to Nash that I needed to stay strong for Goldberg, of course he didn’t know what I was
talking about. To me, it felt like Rome was burning yet again. Nash was doing all he could to kill me
off, for reasons I’ll never know. That time, I somehow managed to persuade him that Eric had
something big planned for me, so, acting like he was doing me a huge favor, he threw me in with a
big, clumsy rookie named Heavy Metal Van Hammer. I didn’t lose, but it added nothing to my heat
going into Toronto.



At home, my mom told me that Smith’s on-and-off girlfriend Zoe—Chad’s mother—had died of a
drug overdose. I decided to go to her funeral to be there for Smith. A few days later Smith showed
up at my place with Stu in tow, his excuse being that Stu wanted to see my house (clearly an excuse
because Stu had just been over for a visit). I helped my dad into the kitchen where we soon got so
engrossed in talking about Davey, and the pain he was in from a hurt back, that I didn’t immediately
notice that Smith had gone missing. I soon found him rummaging through my things in the living
room, and I invited him back to the kitchen, telling him he had to stay where I could keep an eye on
him. He sheepishly followed me. My dad told me he thought Eric Bischoff was the cause of Davey’s
problems and soon I was defending Eric to my dad: Davey’s story was that he’d hurt his back on a
malfunctioning trap door in a WCW ring. He and Diana were even talking about suing. I told Stu that
as far as I was concerned, Davey was battling a morphine addiction more than any injury or
infection, and he needed to get clean. Eric had given him lots of chances to do just that, but Davey
was still procrastinating about going to rehab.



On March 22, I flew all the way to Panama City to find out I’d be off that night, but I managed to
persuade Nash to give me an interview on Nitro to set things up for Toronto—because it looked like
WCW was going to waste that opportunity too, even though I was over in Canada following the
documentary release. In my brief interview with Gene Okerlund, I prepped my Canadian fans by
challenging Hogan and Nash, and then subtly tossing Goldberg’s name out for the very first time,
planting a seed that I knew was sure to grow in the week remaining before the Toronto show.



At Wrestlemania XV in Philadelphia on March 28, Austin pinned Rocky Maivia, now known as The
Rock, to win the World Heavyweight title, while Owen and Jeff Jarrett defeated D-Lo Brown and Test
to retain the Tag Team belts. The WWF was red hot.



The next day at about noon, I walked into the Air Canada Centre in Toronto for Nitro and there were
already a few thousand fans standing on the street in the frigid cold chanting my name. Eric had
filled in the booking committee about my Goldberg angle, but, much to my disappointment, Nash
and WCW road agent Kevin Sullivan had got to Bill and persuaded him that the angle would kill him
off.




I tried to talk Goldberg back into it in the dressing room. “C’mon on, Bill. You’re kidding me? We
talked about this, remember? You loved it! Nothing’s changed. You know this will set us up to work
after my surgery.”



When I left him, I ran into Nash, who’d now decided he would come down at the end and leave me
laying, which made no sense at all.



I went and found Eric in his office. I knew that the ratings success of Wrestlemania XV had to be
weighing heavily on his mind, but I still couldn’t believe my ears when he said, “How ’bout this—you
go out and tell the fans that you don’t need them anymore!”



In my first WCW refusal, I shook my head: no. “Eric, you hear that sound?” I said. “That’s the sound
of thousands of my fans, and only my fans, standing outside on the sidewalk, in the dead of winter,
chanting my name. Why would I do that?”



He had another idea: We’d do everything the same, except that Hogan, not Nash, would come down
at the end. He’d go to high-five me, but instead he’d double-cross me, jump me and leave me for
dead. Dumbfounded, I asked Eric if I was going to work with Hogan instead of Goldberg. He said not
until next fall. I asked if Hogan was going to be wrestling Goldberg. He said not anytime soon. I asked
him, “Why in God’s name would you fuck up such a great angle with something so stupid and
pointless?”



Eric said nervously, “You’ll have to convince Terry. If he says it’s okay, then fine.” Now I knew who
was really in charge of WCW.



So I went and found Hulk and asked him. “So why would you come down?”



“I don’t need to come down,” he admitted.



When I relayed Hulk’s response to Eric, he seemed surprised and relieved. Eric wanted me to feed
the rumors that I was going back to the WWF, so he told me that after the bit with Goldberg, he
wanted me to get on the mic and quit WCW. I had no idea what that would be about, but I agreed.




I felt like a cat in the dark, watching Hogan battling Nash in some kind of power play in which we
were all caught in the middle; Eric was clearly in over his head, unable to cope with the warring wolf
packs.



As I walked out to my music, there was a commotion going on in the entranceway. Kevin Sullivan
was on the floor, frothing at the mouth in a seizure (in the dressing room the next day, he explained
that he had miscalculated his GBH dosage). Who could make such stuff up? As I stepped over him, I
couldn’t help thinking, It’s a good thing I don’t follow the leaders around here.



I walked out wearing my friend Tie Domi’s Maple Leafs jersey underneath my Hitmen jersey. I knew
if Eric had seen it, he’d have made me take it off because he was already terrified that I was going to
go over so strong with the Canadian crowd that it would turn Goldberg heel, which was going to
happen anyway, no matter what we did. I received a thundering ovation from the crowd, and then
on the mic, I accused Goldberg of hiding in his dressing room, biting his fingernails and trembling
with fear. While I peeled off my Hitmen jersey to expose the Maple Leafs jersey, declaring Canada
“hockey country,” Eric was frantically running around backstage screaming at Goldberg to get out
there before I killed him off. When Goldberg finally got in the ring, snorting like a Brahma bull, I
taunted him, begging him to come and get me. When he spear-tackled me, the fans had no idea
what was going to happen next. We both lay there without moving for what seemed like an eternity.
Then I rolled him off me, counted him out, stood up, peeled my jersey off and threw it down on his
unconscious body revealing the “steel” plate: the whole building came unglued. As Eric requested, I
got on the mic and declared, “Hey, WCW, I quit!”



When I got home I actually contemplated quitting for real. It seemed to me that Eric just didn’t have
enough wrestling smarts to do his job: He had freaked out backstage because he thought I
overshadowed Goldberg, but within hours the angle was being talked about as the best thing WCW
had done in years. It even made the front page of The Toronto Sun, under the headline “HITMAN
QUITS.”



When I?got home, I signed a two-year extension to my contract. I hoped it would dispel any fears
that I was going back to WWF, which might give WCW the incentive to do better by me—not to
mention that $2.5 million a year until 2003 was too good to turn down. Then I?had my surgery.
Davey was in the hospital too, supposedly with a staph infection that had traveled to his spine. I
believe he was actually going through withdrawal. I don’t think it helped when WCW, not being able
to reach him, FedExed termination papers to his house and Diana brought them right to him in the
hospital. What did help was when Owen and Mankind visited him that same afternoon and put him
on the phone with Vince, who told Davey that if he got clean, he’d have a job waiting for him. With
Davey, though, that was a big if. The WWF was in Calgary for a sold-out non-televised show at the


Saddledome on April 17. Owen asked me if I would come down and say hi to all the wrestlers. I
decided I would, as a favor to him, but I also needed to do it for myself. I didn’t want to carry around
my bitterness anymore.



I spoke to Eric the night before, and he told me to go down to the show, that it would really feed the
rumors on the Internet. When I arrived at the back of the Saddledome, Carlo was there to meet me
and seemed overly concerned about letting me come backstage. The closer we got to the dressing
room, the more I realized that Carlo was the only one who had a problem with it. I was soon
surrounded by the smiling faces of Owen, Mankind, Edge, Test and Papa Shango. Even Hunter came
out to greet me, with Chyna, who clearly had had radical cosmetic surgery since the last time I’d
seen her; she looked drastically altered, reconstructed and beautiful in a ghastly kind of way. I gave a
hardy handshake to Ken Shamrock just as agent Jack Lanza waded in with a big smile, flashing a look
of annoyance at Carlo, who was still standing around like a useless guard dog. “What the hell?” he
said to Carlo. “Of course he can come down. Are you kidding?”



It felt good to see my old friends, and I could tell by the huge smile on Owen’s face that it meant a
lot to him that I was there. I was soon pulling my pants down just enough to show them the four-
inch incision from my surgery. Then I went to watch Taker’s match, and when the fans glimpsed me
in the wings, they began chanting “We want Bret,” over and over. After his match, Taker walked past
me grinning and said, “You’re next.”



I noticed Stone Cold playing innocently enough with some black-haired girl’s hand. I couldn’t see her
because she was all wrapped up in the curtain, but I assumed this might be a new girlfriend. Like so
many of us, Austin had just gone through a divorce. Then Steve noticed me and I noticed that the girl
he was playing around with was Diana. She’d dyed her hair. I’d seen Davey do a lot more than flirt,
but still, this seemed a bit callous with Davey in the hospital, for whatever reason he was there.
Steve left her to come over and chat with me; we parked ourselves on some equipment boxes, and
soon we were talking about our divorces. Then Owen asked me to say hi to Earl, and I had no
problem doing that.



Moments later, I stood with The Rock, who told me, “I’ll never forget what you did for me.” He also
said that I should come back, that WCW was screwing me over worse than Vince had. Shawn wasn’t
wrestling anymore, just playing the role of a commissioner, so he, Taker and Austin were the ones in
charge. I shrugged and said, “I don’t think so.”



After the show, I sat with Taker at a bar and we laughed like the long-lost friends that we were. I
went home that night feeling better than I had in months, because finally, at least in some sad, small
way, I got to say a proper good-bye.




Three days later, on the same day as the Columbine high-school massacre, the Grim Reaper came
calling for Rick Rude, who was found dead of a heart attack from an overdose of painkillers. He was
forty. I’ll never forget how Rick stood by me after Montreal. Rick was one of those guys who never
took his wedding ring off; he’d wrap a piece of white tape around it when he went into the ring. He
was the kind of guy who, when you needed someone to back you up, wouldn’t flinch at all. Not for
money. Not for anything.



And then, in early May, that crazy lumberjack, Jos The Maniac LeDuc, died. I can’t express how much
the constant string of wrestlers’ deaths affected me. They developed drug habits and took such risks
with their health, all for what? Just to make the next town? To entertain people? This sort of funeral
march happens to most people when they hit their seventies. To me it felt like the casualties of war.



On May 17, I did a bit where I came out of the crowd on The Tonight Show to accept a challenge
from Kevin Nash that I come back to WCW in one week to wrestle him. Jay Leno had been part of
WCW’s Hog Wild pay-per-view back in July 1998, and he laughed when I pulled out a WCW wrestling
card with his picture on it and asked him to sign it.



Meanwhile, the Hitmen had won the WHL championship and were set to meet the Ottawa 67s in the
Memorial Cup. Things had improved so much between Julie and me that I invited her, along with
Blade and Dallas, to fly east with me to watch the game. On Sunday afternoon, May 23, 1999, the
Ottawa 67s defeated the Hitmen in a heartbreaking overtime. Julie and I, along with the boys,
stopped in the locker room to congratulate the team on a great season. Even though the team had
lost, that visit was a sweet moment of competitive purity that one only finds in real sports.