The truth was that he wasn’t working because he wasn’t very good. He was really bragging, “I’m getting paid so I don’t stink out the joint tonight.”
One night we went to the red-light district on the Reeperbahn. At the end of a dark alley there was a big gate and when you walked through it you entered what was basically a pornographic zoo. Behind full-length walls of glass stood some of the most beautiful (and ugliest) girls I’d ever seen. If a fine lad was so inclined, for the right price he could enter the goddess’s glass house and throw some sexual stones.
We walked by a spectacular blonde and Suni decided, “The blond one, she like me I can tell. How could she no like sexy Suni? I take off my shirt and show her what real mans is!”
He stripped off a shirt that was too small for a twelve-year-old and unleashed a pair of man boobs that would’ve made Fatwell jealous. He continued with a posing routine so red reels that it could’ve embarrassed Schwarzenegger into making a movie about male pregnancy.
Suni was like one of those guys at Lambeau Field in December with a painted stomach and no shirt. The pretty young thing watched his flabby pectorals bob to and fro, lit up a smoke, and pulled down the window shade.
Hamburg was a European Las Vegas that never shut down and offered anything and everything that a decadent heart could desire. And since it was also the city where the Beatles got their start over three decades earlier, I made it my mission to try to find the clubs where they played. Happily, I found that a few of them were still around. Sitting in the Kaiserkeller drinking cheap draft beer and watching a crappy German rock band play “Bad to the Bone” or smelling forty years of cigarette smoke ground into the walls of the Star Club was like being on hallowed ground. Hanging around in the same bars that John, Paul, and George had rocked decades ago was one of the high points of my trip. This was what life was all about—being paid to do something you loved while traveling the world to places that you heard about your whole life.
Since there were so many things to do and holes to crawl into on the Reeperbahn, being a Catcher didn’t have the same allure to the Hamburg locals that it did to the Mexicans. Most of the people in the city didn’t even realize that there was wrestling in the big tent downtown, since Rene refused to advertise. He figured the word of mouth from forty years of running shows would be enough. It wasn’t. Within a few years the tournament would shut down. But the one group of people that knew about the matches in Hamburg were the strippers. I single-handedly generated a lot of the advertising by hanging out regularly in the Cat Meow. As I learned in Denver, wrestlers and strippers easily connect with each other and I proved it by connecting with a few of the frauleins. My new supporters also had a lot of cash, which they were very generous in sharing with me. I made sure to use the starving wrestler poverty card whenever one of my friends stayed the night enjoying tea and strumpets, so I could get said friend to pay for my room.
One morning when I went to pay the rent—again—I was surprised when the guy behind the desk said, “Last night you had a guest in your room, you have to pay me 125 deutsche marks.”
That was a fifty DM increase and I was perplexed. How did he know I’d had a guest? I scanned the bar for a secret mirror or a video screen, anything that would’ve helped him to find out, but there was nothing.
A couple of days later another of Hamburg’s finest impressed me with her hospitality and the next morning I was charged 125 deutsche marks again. I still had no idea how he’d found out, until I heard a couple of beeps coming from behind the desk. Upon closer inspection, I saw what appeared to be a telephone switchboard. This was strange because there were no telephones in the rooms.
When I went back up to my room to investigate, sure enough there was an electric eye embedded in the wood at the bottom of the staircase. Whenever someone walked up to their room it would set the eye off. If it beeped twice, they would know that two people had walked up the stairs and if that didn’t match your registration, they would know you had someone in for a shag or a piss in the sink or whatever.
Now that I’d figured out the secret, the next time I had a visitor I hoisted her over my shoulder as I walked up the steps. I don’t know why I wasn’t charged extra when the drunken dude barged into my room during my first night. I guess the first accosting from an inebriated German was on the house.
I did quite well on the German meat market despite the fact that I was sporting a Michael Bolton hairstyle. Because of the heavy humidity in Hamburg I had some serious Shirley Temple sausage curls. The problem was that the hair dryer I used to blow out the curls blew its circuits the first day I arrived. Once I realized that Europe was on a different power system, I couldn’t afford a European-powered dryer and was forced to rock the poodle lid for six weeks.
Fortunately, I noticed from hanging out at the Docks that most of the rockers in Hamburg had hair just like me.
CHAPTER 24
MY FIRST FELONY!
Every Monday there was a metal concert at the Docks and since I just so happened to be off on Mondays, I was able to check out some of my favorite groups. I got to see such mega-bands as Gamma Ray, Saxon, Accept, Manowar, Green Jelly, and Morbid Angel, who were all very popular in Europe, yet practically unheard of in the U.S. The highlight for me was getting to check out Helloween, whose Walls of Jericho album helped inspire my name. An extra bonus occurred when I got to meet their singer, Michael Kiske, one of my top three favorite vocalists of all time. I was starstruck and even though I’d tasted some degree of worldwide stardom and success, meeting him transformed me right back into a fifteen-year-old fan. If I met James Hetfield from Metallica tomorrow, I would act the same way.
I thought I did meet James during one of my first nights wrestling in Hamburg, when I looked into the crowd and saw him sitting there. I kept looking over at him during my match, trying to figure why in the hell the mighty Hetfield would be sitting in a tent on the Reeperbahn.
After the match, I asked Robbie Brookside, “Am I crazy or was that James Hetfield out there tonight?”
Robbie laughed and said, “That was my friend Jorn. Everyone thinks he’s Hetfield when they first see him. You have to meet him, he owns a record store and he plays bass in a band.” He sounded like my kind of dude.
When I met Jorn Ruter after the show, he was sooo easygoing and impossible not to like. He played bass and sang in Torment, a Motörhead-influenced band, whose biggest hit was the pretty little ditty “Bestial Sex.” He also owned and operated both a record label and a record shop named Remedy Records. Jorn knew his stuff and we spent hours debating and discussing all things metal.
You have to understand that in Germany heavy metal isn’t just music, it’s a way of life. The people of Hamburg seemed to me to be strict, cold, and tough with a pissed-off edge. Heavy metal was the perfect soundtrack for their lives.
Jorn showed that toughness by cruising the streets of Hamburg with his friends, one of them being Kai Karczewski, whose father, Uwe, painted the cover of the Walls of Jericho album...see how it all ties together?
They roamed the city looking for fights...with skinheads. While the Nazi-influenced punks patrolled the Reeperbahn looking for drunken partiers or homosexuals to beat the hell out of, Jorn’s gang patrolled the Reeperbahn looking for skinheads to beat the hell out of.
There was still a big Nazi influence in Hamburg existing even in its architecture. In the middle of the city, there was a black fortress of a building perched like a bloated spider casting a dark shadow across the streets. It gave me a bad vibe, so I asked Jorn what it was. I found out it was called the Hafenbunker, a Nazi stronghold where Hitler himself stayed when he was in Hamburg. If there was ever such a thing as a haunted house, the Hafenbunker was it.
One night Jorn and I went to Ante’s for a few beers. But the beers he ordered were a lot different from the Labatt’s I was used to drinking. He’d got me a Guinness and I couldn’t believe how dark and syrupy it was. It was like drinking a stein of Aunt Jemima’s and I was still forcing down
my first one when the next round came. Apparently German drinking rules are similar to wrestling drinking rules. Jorn got angry and sternly told me, “You are in Germany. You must drink like a German!”
So I did.
I ended up totally loaded and spent the rest of the night going absolutely crazy. The highlights of which included a foot race between Jorn and me over the roofs of cars parked on the street and a schnitzel-eating contest, which was not a good decision. Holy heartburn, Batman!
I woke up the next morning next to a naked hermaphrodite—whose picture was in the stack of porno magazines scattered across my room. I had spent all of my deutsche marks on such classics as He’s a Woman, She’s a Man, Midget Titties, and Caviar Deluxe (normal Caviar wasn’t enough for this mag) and didn’t remember a damn thing.
Later that night in the dressing room I told my Caviar Deluxe story after taking a post-match shower, while Doc messed around with a movie camera he’d brought with him from Liverpool.
“Hey Lion Heart, what would you do if I was filming right now?” he inquired.
I checked and saw that there was no blinking red light on the camera, so I decided to put on a show.
“I’d take off my towel and shake my shit like this!” I whipped off the towel and started flapping my horn back and forth like a paddleball.
Then I performed a sweet electric slide and a swank Pee-wee Herman tequila dance while my Arthur Digby Sellers whipped to and fro.
“And what if I told you I really was filming?”
“Well, you’re not. The red light’s not blinking.” I started to pogo.
“Actually, it is,” he said and ripped off the piece of black electrical tape that had been hiding the blinking red light.
I scrambled to cover up my Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey with the bunched-up towel at my feet. “Promise you won’t show that to anyone,” I begged. “It’s freezing in here!”
Later on, all the boys and a ton of fans congregated at Ante’s for the nightly after-show party. I was making some headway with one of Ante’s gorgeous daughters when the whole place suddenly burst out laughing. I turned to the big-screen TV behind the bar and saw my Tico Torres staring back at me with a one-eyed grin.
I felt like George Costanza as I explained how cold the dressing room was. And that shower...there was NEVER hot water in that damn shower. The laughter got louder when my Pee-wee (poor choice of words) Herman dance began.
I was furious and I didn’t speak to Doc for a week. He finally cornered me in the dressing room and said, “Listen man if you want to get even, get even, but the fact you’re not talking to me is killing me. Please...rib me back already.”
I racked my brain and decided to exact my revenge by stuffing raw eggs into his wrestling boots and cutting the laces minutes before his match. I put my plan in motion and stifled a giggle when Doc stuck his foot into his boot, cracking the eggs. I waited for him to freak out, alerting everyone to my master plan. Instead he diabolically diffused my rib by silently cleaning out his boots and tying knots in his laces and nobody was ever the wiser.
I learned two important lessons that day:
1. Never sell a rib, and
2. Never whip out your Dustin Diamond in front of a camera.
Did I mention how cold the dressing room was?
Now reunited, Robbie, Doc, and I had a couple of strippers take us on the two-hour drive to Hanover to visit the boys in the CWA. The Catch Wrestling Association was the WWF of Germany and I wanted to check out the difference between Rene’s promotion and the big leagues. Their tent was fancier than ours and the crowd was a little bigger, but other than that it was pretty much the same scenario as Hamburg, with one notable exception.
The quality of the workers in Hanover was head and shoulders above our group. The best of the lot was Fit Finlay, an Irishman who was the king of the heels in the company. That night I watched his match and he commanded five fines against a young guy I’d never seen before or since. Fit was a friend of Robbie and Doc and when they introduced me he said, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m wrestling in Hamburg right now.”
Finlay smiled his gap-toothed grin. “Give those guys in Hamburg a message for me,” he said cheerily.
“Sure,” I replied just as cheerily.
“Tell those cunts to fuck off.”
I returned to Hamburg and told everyone that Finlay had wished them well in their future endeavors.
Toward the end of the tourney, a sign was posted in the dressing room announcing that Kinder Catch would be held the following Sunday. Kinder Catch was probably the worst idea I’d ever heard. The basic premise was that you would baby-sit a bunch of kids under the age of ten and tell them wrestling’s secrets. We should have told them that Santa Claus was bullshit too while we were at it. Now playing the role of Catfish Charlie...Chris Jericho.
I arrived that morning straight from the Kaiserkeller sporting a horrible hangover. Rene had all the kids line up in the ring and showed them our tricks, like a turncoat magician at a child’s birthday party. The kids ran around the ring doing drop kicks and taking bumps while we tried to make sure they didn’t break their Kinder necks.
When the last day of the tournament arrived, nobody seemed to know who was in the final. When the tournament started there’d been a chart in the front lobby listing all the standings, but it had been taken down a few days later because I don’t think Rene knew how he wanted the tournament to end.
I was in the tourney and I was confused, so I can just imagine how the fans felt. It wouldn’t have been hard to figure out a point system or a round-robin bracketing, but Rene was just too lazy. He didn’t think people would care about such details, even though it was a TOURNAMENT.
But I found out that I’d advanced to the semifinals (who knew?) and would be facing Drew McDonald to decide the third-place winner. There’d been zero buildup for the match but the crowd was still buzzing when we stood across from each other in the parade. It was hard to keep a straight face during the staredown as he was flexing his thigh and the tits of naked girl tattooed on his leg’s were bouncing up and down. It was actually a lot cooler than it sounds.
We had great chemistry and the match went perfectly. During the entire tournament, Drew had been trying to convince me to try a move he’d thought of where I would do a Frankensteiner with the both of us standing on the top rope. I thought it was impossible but he kept bringing it up and I finally agreed to do it for the last match. We both climbed to the top and I jumped up on his shoulders, back-flipping him into the ring while the fans went nuts. I liked the move so much that it became one of my signature moves (and almost led to my death four years later).
Drew ended up pinning me but we were both winners, as Rene told me it was the best match he’d ever seen during his time in Hamburg. Considering my less than auspicious start, it was nice to end the tournament with a bang.
The final match was Blackie Boy Smith winning the tournament by beating Rene (Rene was in the final? What a surprise.) and they had no chance of following Drew and me. I took great pride in that.
Even though I’d been wrestling for years, I’d never experimented with steroids. I didn’t have the guts to try them. Plus I didn’t know where I could get them and after my crack-buying experience in Denver, I’d proven that I didn’t have much flair for purchasing illegal drugs.
But when I found out that they were easy to obtain in Germany, I decided to pop my sterry and bought 150 tablets of Dianabol. The Dianabol looked exactly like these little sugar tablets that Germans use to sweeten their coffee. They came in this Tic-Tac container type thingy, so I bought one and replaced the sugar pills with Dianabol pills. I’d discovered the perfect way to smuggle contraband over international borders, but I got paranoid and became convinced I was going to get caught. I wrapped the dispenser in a pair of dirty undies, but that still wasn’t enough. So I stuffed the gonch into a stinky sock and then stuck the stinky sock into a pair of sweaty tights. But I needed mor
e protection, so I put the whole rolled-up wrinkly mess into the bottom of my laundry bag. I figured if the customs guys found my stuff after all that, I deserved to get busted.
I was freaking out when I took my bags through German customs, even though there still wasn’t a customs area. When I approached Canadian customs I felt like I was packing a shoe bomb, but thankfully my bags weren’t searched.
So it was official. I had transported illegal substances across international borders.
My first felony!
(Apologetic Author’s Note: If any customs officials are reading this book, please don’t search me as I promise to never smuggle illegal contraband again. I don’t know why I even bothered because the Dianabol didn’t do shit for me. As a matter of fact, I think they actually were sugar pills in the first place.)
PART SIX KNOXVILLE
CHAPTER 25
AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A WAL-MART PARTY
After returning from Germany I decided it was time to get serious about working in the States. I’d thought a lot about Rip Morgan’s comment that I was ready to break into the WWF and wondered if he was right. But even though I’d achieved some worldwide notoriety, the WWF still hadn’t acknowledged my existence or sent out any kind of feelers toward me. Since they were essentially compana non grata, it was time to look elsewhere for mainland exposure.
I called Lance to touch base and share stories about working in Germany and I asked him what he had coming up next. He mentioned that he’d been talking with Jim Cornette (who I had interviewed years earlier for my college newspaper), now the promoter for Smoky Mountain Wrestling, one of the top independent companies in the States.
SMW was based out of Knoxville, Tennessee, and it had been getting a lot of recognition because of Cornette’s involvement. He’d been a successful manager and assistant booker in both the WCW and WWF, before getting tired of the grind and walking away to form his own company.
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