Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (28 page)

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“Vince — why would you give away who was going to win the Royal Rumble? Why would you do something like that?” he asked.

Without hesitation I answered his question.

“Vince, nobody told me that Bret was going to win the Royal Rumble — it was just so obvious.”

Looking back, where did I get my spaldings? After my response, Vince didn’t say a word. However, the finish to the Royal Rumble was changed.

• • •

Back to the phone call.

Feeling I had no other options, I called my old friend Kevin Nash.

I told Kevin of my absolute disgust with the wwf product, and how the nwo was no question the future of the business. wcw was doing reality tv, while the wwf was doing Mother Goose. Kevin told me he would talk to Eric Bischoff, then get back to me. I also asked the same favor from another old friend, Double J Jeff Jarrett. Along with Shane McMahon, I had done some of Jeff ’s first vignettes when he came to the wwf. Not those ridiculous ones, where his gold tooth sparkled, but a series we did in Vegas promoting a match between Double J and Razor Ramon. From there, Jeff and I really hit it off. Like Kevin, I think I was drawn to Jeff because he was just so much more intelligent than everybody else. Even though I viewed him as a bit old-school at the time, Jeff knew the wrestling business better than anyone in that locker room.

A classic story? Jeff, myself and Road Dog (Jeff ’s story line “valet” and real-life friend, Brian Armstrong — a tremendous talent in his own right) went to L.A. during the height of the O.J. Simpson trial.

This was the game plan: we were going to take photos of Jeff and the Dog right in front of O.J.’s house. While Jeff was striking his natural pose — Road Dog was going to have a look of shock on his face — as he found “O.J.’s mystery suitcase” behind the bushes at Rockingham.

So with Road Dog and Jeff in full costume, we drive to O.J.’s house, only to find the cops circling it every five minutes. Again, like “O.J. in 198

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the night,” we picked our spot and did our thing. To this day, that photo is one of my favorites — unfortunately it never found its way into the pages of the
wwf Magazine.

What can I say about Jeff Jarrett? Ours was the closest friendship I formed during my 10-plus years in the business. From the first time I ever met him I knew he was sincere. He just doesn’t have it in him to be a . . . (long pause) . . . (cough) . . . bad guy. From day one Jeff was all business — he never gave me a hard time about a script, or a story line. If anything, he put in his two cents and made it better. Jeff was just smart that way — he was always looking to make things better.

And Jeff got it. It took a while for me to shake some of the old school out of him, but when he started seeing results, he understood.

Jeff wasn’t afraid to make the change from rasslin’ to sports entertainment. He was smart enough to realize that the latter was the future.

And did we have a blast nailing people with that guitar. Howard Stern’s Beetlejuice may have been a nine on a scale of ten — but Mae Young, that was off the Richter scale! Think about it — he hit a 70-plus-year-old lady over the head with a guitar! That was television at its best. To this day, Jeff and I still talk about it. But then again, we coaxed a lot of celebrities into doing a lot of crazy things. When it came to Jeff, his southern charm may have been instrumental in talking them into it. We put Cindy Margolis and Ben Stiller in the figure-four, and of course, there was Gary Coleman. Man, “Arnold” was a hustler. He nickeled and dimed us to death over taking that guitar shot — but he took it.

Some of my best wrestling memories are from my time working with Jeff. We had our differences — but we also had a deep understanding of each other. If there is one guy who could ever talk me back into the business again, it would be Jeff Jarrett.

So, after weeks of waiting to hear something — anything — on a Sunday night, the phone rang. It was Eric Bischoff.

First impression? Not having ever met or spoken to him, Bischoff came across as a bit arrogant, maybe a bit full of himself. But in his defense, keep in mind, at that point, Eric was at the top of his pro-199

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fession. With the purchase of Nash and Hall, and after uniting them with Hulk Hogan to form the nwo (New World Order) — Eric had changed the face of the industry forever. His
Monday Nitro
was in-your-face, cutting edge, unpredictable and dangerous. If he was cocky, he had a right to be.

Eric told me that, unlike what other people thought, Turner wasn’t an atm machine. He said he would only be able to pay me so much, then asked what I was making. At the time it was a modest $75,000. I told Eric that I wasn’t calling about the money, I was calling because I wanted a shot — something I wasn’t getting in the wwf. Eric then said he’d see what he could do, and call me back.

To be honest with you, regardless of how bad the product was and how badly I may have wanted out of the wwf, I went to work the next day feeling dirty, like I had been unfaithful to the one man who was the reason I ever wanted to be in this business — Vince McMahon.

God, I felt so guilty, even though I knew that I had to do what was right for me. I couldn’t go on with a guilty conscience, but I needed an absolute answer as to whether or not I was going to get my shot to show what I could do for Vince, Linda and the entire company.

Inside, I knew I didn’t want to go and work for Eric Bischoff and wcw, but I also knew that I had to move to that next level. I had done the magazine, written promos, directed vignettes, helped create successful characters. I’d had somewhat of a hand in getting my booking ideas in, and I’d even appeared on television. I was ready to be Vince’s go-to guy, and there was nowhere else to go. I knew that I had to meet with him and Linda to find out just what my future was with the company.

So here I was again, spaldings in hand, ready to take a giant step forwards . . . or back. I hope you’re starting to see a pattern here. It’s all about taking chances. That’s the only way you’re going to get anywhere in life. Take your manhood and your confidence and just go for it. Like I stated earlier however, you’ve got to be prepared to lose it all. If you’re not willing to take that chance, put your spaldings back in your jeans and go home. I was prepared to lose it all. At that point, 200

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it really didn’t matter to me. If I wasn’t true to the McMahons and myself, the company was going to crash and burn.

Knowing what was on the line, I hid under the covers a bit. I set up a meeting with Linda. There was a part of me that was scared to death, and I guess I believed just meeting with Linda would be a little easier. But I wasn’t fooling anybody — I needed to tell “the man” face-to-face. As fate would have it, five minutes into my meeting with Linda, Vince walked into her office and sat down.

Picture it. It was a real tough situation. My mouth was so dry I could barely speak. It would have been so easy to give them a bogus reason as to why I was there, but I couldn’t. It needed to be said —

every word.

Looking back at that situation, there is no doubt that I took credit for
everything
that was happening in my life. There was no divine intervention, no Holy Spirit and there certainly was no involvement from God whatsoever. No, all that was put into play was about me and my glorious

“spaldings.”

Again, this is where the question of coincidence comes in. Was it just a coincidence that I knew deep down inside that I really needed to talk to Vince, but was too intimidated — and then he just to conveniently walked in? Or was this entire scene orchestrated by someone else?

Knowing what I know now, there is no question in my mind that God himself was holding the conductor’s baton, calculating every move and every word. In other words, it was meant to be. It was all part of God’s plan, all a way for God to bring me around to the only thing that should, and ultimately
did
, matter — him.

• • •

Why did they !@#$ up the
Springer Show?
It was the best thing on television, and they went and screwed it up because of outside pressure.

What — they stage fights now? What is this,
wrestling? Springer
was Americana. Trailer trash, rednecks, lesbians, midgets, homo truckers

— everything we love about America — and they went and killed it.

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Shame on them! The show is so obviously worked (staged) now it’s difficult to watch. Why do some people think they have the right to determine what’s good for my children? Who died and made them boss? !@#$ them and !@#$ Jerry Springer for caving. That’s everything that’s wrong with our country! Let me decide — and don’t you dare try to decide for me!

Wow, wow and wow again! I read that and I want to vomit. I feel like Sunny now — “That’s not me! That’s not me!” I used to love the
Springer
Show
— love it. I thank God every day that the old Vince is quietly resting in peace. Everything I represented was wrong. I was a fan of the
Springer Show
because that’s exactly what I was responsible for writing at the wwf — “smut tv.” Violence, sex, vulgarity, nudity, blasphemy —

if it sold, I wrote it, without a care in the world. And what’s even sadder than that was not only did I write it, I didn’t even care if my own kids watched it.

I want to explain something. Being saved doesn’t mean I’ve turned into some kind of a prude. What it means is that I now do everything in my life to glorify God — to please him. I don’t think hanging the Undertaker from a “symbol” would have made Jesus too proud. I did a lot of things I’m not proud of now, but lowering the Undertaker on a cross is the biggest regret I have. At the time, I just didn’t understand the implications. I just didn’t understand the magnitude of what I was doing

— of what Jesus had done. Years later, after Mel Gibson’s
Passion
slapped me upside the head — I got it.

Man, it was all so wrong.

• • •

I talked about a lot of things that day in Linda’s office — but the one thing that stands out is when I said to Vince and Linda, “If all you think all I’m capable of is writing the magazine, I need you to tell me that.” They didn’t — so I went on. I poured my guts out to them, telling them that I had so much more to offer than what they were currently getting from me. I don’t know what was going on inside 202

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Vince’s head, but during my soliloquy he seemed to get hot.

McMahon then basically told me that, in his opinion, I was being

“selfish.” To this day, I don’t understand how he formed that opinion, but I didn’t back down. I told Vince that I thought selfishness was the complete opposite of what I was doing. I told him I was offering myself to them at no extra charge. For a minute, I thought: “Am I nuts here? What don’t they get? They’re the ones in trouble, not me. Is this even worth the effort?”

I left Linda’s office not feeling much better about the situation —

but I was relieved. I’d shot straight with them, now the ball was in their court. They could either fire this bigmouth or give him the opportunity to back it up.

It was some time in early March, 1997. I could look up the exact date, but it doesn’t matter. Like I said earlier — I can’t remember yesterday’s date, let alone one from years ago. But I do remember landmarks: times and situations that changed the course of my life.

Someone, I’m not sure who, came up with the great idea of simulcast-ing
Monday Night Raw
from overseas and playing it live in conjunction with a
Monday Night Raw
shot in the States. In other words, some kind of a trans-global cluster — which it was. (Mostly due to the bad writing of not just one show, but two!) I’ll never forget it — there were two different broadcast teams and we would go back and forth, country to country, bringing you nonstop action from around the globe! That doesn’t even sound good on paper. What a mess — the worst show I had ever seen in my life. Wait . . . let me really think on that . . . no,
Battlebots
was
way
better! Man, to put it as nicely as I can, this show was
horrible!
I went to bed sick to my stomach.

Remember, I had to go back to work for these guys in the morning.

When I showed up for work the next day, I wanted to put a bag over my head. But I didn’t want to steal the “Unknown Comic’s” gimmick. The minute I walked into my office the phone rang. It was Beth Zazza, Vince McMahon’s assistant.

“Vince wants to see you in his office immediately.” I hung up the phone thinking: “What did I do now? A meeting 203

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with the boss first thing in the morning . . . this must be bad.” Immediately I took the elevator up to the fourth floor and went to Vince’s office. Upon entering, Beth said to me, “They’re in there,” and pointed to Vince’s conference room. “They?” I thought. “What —

does he have human resources in there waiting for me? He can’t fire me man-to-man? That’s !@#$%.”

So I walk into the conference room. Man, Vince had the ugliest office: red velour rug, a zebra-looking pattern on the walls. What was he thinking? Had he designed it? Or perhaps the “Crocodile Hunter” on an eight-ball?

To my surprise, there were no representatives from human resources to be found, but rather all of Vince’s minions, sitting around a long table. There was Ross, Prichard, Cornette, Shane, Kevin Dunn

— maybe even a few others, but I don’t recall. At the head of the table there’s Vince. He’s standing, he looks mad, and he’s got the
Raw
Magazine
in his hands — the same magazine that housed the Bret Hart shoot interview that triggered the boss to clear his desk of all knick-knacks only months earlier.