The Hardcore Truth

by Bob Holly

  After I’d done my match with Flair and gone back home with another $250 in my pocket, I was feeling pretty good and starting to get more confident about my wrestling. I got called back soon after and ended up working with Jackie Fulton. They were trying to push Jackie, but he was past it at that point and slowing down. We had a decent match, but he’d give me an armdrag or knock me down and I’d be up on my feet before he was. I wasn’t trying to make him look bad; I was just working the way I worked and he couldn’t keep up with me. I took these bumps for him and was up before he was ready to go into the next move. I spent a lot of that match waiting on him. That was my first experience of making somebody else look bad by doing my job well. I was just trying to show the agents in the back that I could wrestle, that I was fast and knew what I was doing in there: here’s the guy you’re pushing and I’m waiting on him! At least Jackie had the class to thank me for the match afterwards.

  As soon as I walked in the dressing room after that match, Ron Simmons — who had been watching the match on a monitor with Butch Reed — looked up at me and just said, “Damn, they need to be pushing you instead of him.” That was the first thing Ron ever said to me. I didn’t respond. Who the hell was I to say anything? I didn’t even work there, I was a hired hand who came in and did jobs. I just kept on hoping that somebody would get wind of what I could do and give me a proper shot.

  As it happens, I did get noticed that night: Jim Cornette stopped me in the corridor as I was leaving and told me that I’d done well. Jim had been working in the office for that promotion and used to have some say in who got hired. He told me that he’d had a falling out with Dusty Rhodes (the head booker) a few weeks before and that he was off the booking team. He didn’t have any stroke any more, but he said that if he had seen me wrestle a few weeks earlier, he would have made sure to get me a job and give me a push. Right place, wrong time. We talked for a little bit and he took my number. He told me that he was leaving the company because he disagreed with a lot of the things they did, and then he gave me a piece of advice: “You’ve got talent, so quit coming up here and doing jobs, because that is all they will ever use you for.”

  Two weeks later, the guy I’d been riding with to Atlanta called me and asked if I wanted to go there again for another squash payday. I took Cornette’s advice and said I wasn’t going to go. I never told him why; I figured it was none of his business. I just said that I had my reasons. He got pissed with me and that was the last time we ever spoke.

  Several months went by and I just kept on working at Taylor Wharton. I didn’t give much thought to wrestling because I didn’t know if it was going to go anywhere for me. I was making good money again at my job. Out of nowhere, I got a call from Jim Cornette. He told me that he was starting a new wrestling promotion called Smoky Mountain Wrestling and he wanted me on board. I figured I’d see what it was like, so one Saturday I loaded up my ’81 Camaro Z28 and drove the 10 hours to South Carolina for a TV taping they were doing. We got me a flashy robe and sunglasses and I became “Hollywood” Bob Holly again — only it was more than just a nickname this time, it was a proper heel gimmick. I wrestled Reno Riggins for the first Smoky Mountain taping. He was a pretty decent worker — a short fella but a decent worker. I enjoyed it, so I started doing the TV tapings for Cornette. I had to be back at work on Mondays, so I’d do the show on Saturdays and drive home. I’d get in on Sundays around 8 a.m. and collapse, sleep through the day, and get back to work on Monday. It was tiring but fine. Then Cornette started running house shows during the week and said he wanted me full time. He was going to make me one of his main heels. It sounded good, but I wasn’t sure. He was paying me around $150 for each TV taping and I’d been burned before by giving up my job. We came to the compromise that I’d arrange to work Monday to Thursday at Taylor Wharton, and I’d do his house shows on Fridays and Sundays and the tapings on Saturdays. After the Sunday house show, I’d drive back home and go straight to work on Monday morning with no sleep. It was exhausting but there was no way I was giving up my job after what happened in Memphis.

  Working in SMW was great. I got lots of quality TV time and had some good matches with Robert Gibson, Tim Horner, and the Heavenly Bodies . . . Cornette has an eye for talent and one of the greatest minds in the business. He knows how to tell a story; he knows how to put on a show — unlike a lot of people who call themselves promoters but don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. I find it sad that although he’s a fucking great promoter, it doesn’t end well when he works for a big company because he’s kind of set in his ways and stands up for what he believes in. They don’t like that, so they end up pushing him out the door. It’s a shame nobody listens to him. He and I have had a few issues in the past, but to this day I love Jim Cornette to death. I have nothing but good things to say about that man. He’s completely the opposite of Jerry Jarrett: he makes sure his guys get paid as well as he can afford. On one weekend I did for SMW, somebody stole my luggage. Cornette gave me money out of his own pocket to go and buy new clothes and everything. I would have loved to work for Jimmy full time, but I just couldn’t take the chance of giving up my job and then having nowhere to go if SMW folded. I was right to do that — SMW went out of business in 1995. I was long gone by that point. Working a four-day week and then going on the road for three days was killing me. I was always worn out and I was starting to make less money at work because of all the vacation time and sick days I was taking to go wrestle for Jim. I knew I would eventually have to choose between wrestling and my job. After about four months with SMW, I called Jimmy and told him I had to quit. He tried to talk me into staying and said that he thought I could go a long way but I told him I couldn’t do it any more. I had a good job, I’d recently got the opportunity to start car racing, and I just couldn’t keep burning my candle at both ends. He said he hated it, but he understood and wished me the best.

  I thought that was it for me and wrestling, so I went back home and built me a race car.

  CHAPTER 8

  NEED FOR MORE SPEED

  Somehow I’d managed to get into my uncle’s race car. I was six, so of course I was curious. I thought I’d play in there and was having a great time, pushing stuff, grabbing things, all of that. All of a sudden, I started it up and it made the loudest noise I had ever heard in my life. I flew out of that car and inside the house like the Devil was on my heels.

  I got into car racing at an early age. It was how Gary met my mom, since he was friends with my aunt Elaine’s husband and used to help him with his race car over at Saugus Speedway in California. It was one of the few things I’m thankful to my stepdad for — we went to the track most Saturday nights. My mother absolutely despised it so they would argue each Saturday evening, regular as clockwork, and I’d just be hanging in the background saying, “Please, please, Mom, just go!” If I didn’t get to go, it was the end of the world. One time, Mom and Gary were going to go to a party afterwards so my brother and I had to go to the babysitter — and despite being seven, I cried like a baby because I couldn’t go to the track. I felt so abused!

  Fast-forward to me at 30 years old and I’d wrestled for over five years, had a kid, ridden (and crashed) a few dirtbikes . . . my interest in car racing was still there and I regularly found myself at the track in Mobile. By this point, I’d finished up with SMW and left Taylor Wharton to go to work for Cowin Equipment in Mobile as a heavy equipment mechanic. That was a great company and a great job. The people were wonderful, there was no pressure — I loved working there. I ended up working as the welder and, ironically, having that job at Cowin meant that the foreman called you “Sparky.” I didn’t like that name so much, so I told the foreman to knock it off.

  No wrestling meant I had my weekends to myself again, so I was at the racetrack every chance I got. It’s where I met my first wife, Terri. She was the photographer down there and started introducing me around, so I could get to know the guys and get my foot in the door
. One of Terri’s best friends was married to a guy named Carl who raced there. After I got to know him a bit, I said offhand that I’d like to try his car out at the track on a practice day. Carl said, “Well, if you want to drive, why don’t we build you a race car.” That sounded good to me but there was no way in hell I could afford to build a race car. He said he knew a guy who would let us have a car. It was a ’74 Chevelle Malibu and it was just sitting out in a field, doing nothing. Carl said we’d strip it down until it was just metal, he’d get all the parts and whatever else we needed to build the car, and I could pay him back. He had his own plumbing business and said I could work for him on the weekends, roughing in houses and laying the pipe in the ground before they put the foundation up. So that became my life — I worked as a heavy equipment mechanic during the week, I laid pipe (actual pipe!) for Carl on the weekends, and then I spent any free time I had at the races or working on building my car. Life couldn’t get any better. I got so interested in racing that I stopped watching wrestling for the first time since I’d been a kid. Racing was my passion now.

  We finished building my car in the middle of the racing season of ’92, so it was time to get out there and see what it could do. On Thursday nights, the tracks had open practice, so we took my car down and thought we’d try it out. I was pretty nervous — I’d never been in a race car before (or, at least, not since I was six). Carl explained that I needed to get used to the feel of the car before I got it up to speed. So I made two laps and everything was going okay. I was doing about 40 mph and then, all of a sudden, the car locked up, skidded, and slid sideways. I was thinking, “What the hell just happened? The motor locked up after only two laps?” Something was definitely wrong. We got it back to the pit and quickly found out that the transmission had locked up. Why? Because the bonehead heavy equipment mechanic (me) had forgotten to put gear oil in it after we stuck the transmission in. We wrecked the transmission on Thursday, got another one and put it in on the Friday, and Saturday was my first race. I’d had two laps at 40 mph at the most and I was about to get into a race with 28 other cars. I was getting ready to have a fucking stroke.

  The track opened for practice at 5, so I went to try to figure out what I was doing. All the other cars started whizzing by and scaring the shit out of me. I talked to Carl after the practice and he was asking me all this stuff like “What is your car doing?” “Is it pushing, is it loose?” — I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about! “Pushing” is when you go into the corner and the car doesn’t want to turn, so it just goes straight up the track, and “loose” is when the back end wants to come around and you spin out. But I hadn’t been driving the car fast enough to know what it was doing. I realized I was going to have to either go fast or go home.

  6 p.m. It was time to go. We did qualifying first to set up the heat race. I was always a horrible qualifier. We got to the heat race, which was to determine the starting positions in the feature race. It was a six-lap race that would take anywhere between five to six minutes, depending on how many cautions they had. The Mobile speedway is a half-mile high-banked oval, so you could haul ass on that track. It was pretty dangerous too, because there was no wall around it except for the front straight. If you went off the banking, you were going to sail off and catch some serious air. I started at the back in the heat race, sixth out of six, so I put my foot down to see what my car could do. “This is pretty damn cool,” I thought . . . and I found I wasn’t scared anymore. I started passing cars. Actually, I passed almost all of the cars. The only real practice I’d ever had was earlier that day and I was in second and right on the leader’s tail. I thought, “I’m fixing to win my first heat race,” and got pretty excited. A bit too excited. Instead of being patient and picking the right time to get by the leader, I tried to get it all in one shot. We came off a turn where there was nothing but asphalt, grass, and dirt — I got my right side tire in that dirt and the fucking car decided to start sliding sideways. I shot straight down the back stretch, right in front of the traffic, down into the infield, and into the air. The car bottomed out and I only just missed a big mound of dirt where a telephone pole was. I was inches away. That would have ended my racing career right there — it would have totaled the car and I wouldn’t have had the money to put it back together. We managed to get the car back on the track and I finished dead last. At least everybody who finished got through to the feature race.

  Before the feature, David Jones, one of the guys who had helped me build my car, came over to me and said, “Bob, look — I’ve been involved in racing for a while. I just want you to know that you shouldn’t expect to go out there and win a race for at least two years. Go out there, learn to drive, learn to race, pay your dues, and get experience.” I was cool with that. I figured it was good advice from someone who knew what he was doing, and that getting experience was the way forward. The feature was definitely good experience. There was no real drama or anything and I did pretty well for a first timer, finishing fourth overall. I was pleased with that. Bob House was the guy who won the race, who had won every race that season up until that point. Right there, I set my sights on him and his black car.

  We spent the week checking everything over and working on the car. Practice on Thursday went better and I was ready the next weekend. Once again, I started last in the heat because I suck at qualifying but am better during the actual races. By the time they waved the checkered flag, I was in first and won the heat. It felt like I’d redeemed myself from my previous heat race. We got lined up for the feature and I ended up on the pole with Bob House right next to me. He’d been winning each week and I was the new guy, the underdog, and nobody was really paying attention to me. It was perfect heel versus babyface stuff. Even our cars were the right color — his black and mine white. He raced like a heel too, as far as I knew. He was on my back bumper fast in that race and I thought he was about to knock it clean off. He was beating on it through all the turns, and I didn’t know what was going on. I had no idea about the way people drive dirty and try to wreck you. I managed to stay in control and was still in first after 19 of the 20 laps. He was still ramming me, trying to get around me, and I was just trying to hang on and not blow it. People had been trying all season to beat Bob House but I managed it in my second ever race. When I got out of that car, the crowd popped like crazy. Everybody was excited, especially all the people who helped me build my car. We got our picture taken with the flag and the trophy. I was on cloud nine, thinking life couldn’t get any better than that. I saw David Jones wandering around and called out, “Hey David, thought I wasn’t going to win for two years!” He just looked at me and walked off. He didn’t like that so much. There was some jealousy there and we developed a little heat over it.

  The next week, during the heat race, they black-flagged me for the first time. That means that either something’s wrong with the car or I’d broken some rule. There sure didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the car. I pulled into the pits and the track official came over to tell me that I’d broken out of my time. I didn’t even know what that meant! He explained that I was driving faster in the heat than I had during the qualifier, so it looked like I had been intentionally driving slow in the qualifier in order to get a better spot in the heat race. It definitely wasn’t intentional; I just sucked at qualifying because I had nobody to chase and nobody on my tail. He didn’t buy this and I ended up starting dead last in the feature.

  After I’d had such a great start the week before, I was brought right back down. There was no way that I was going to get to the front in 20 laps. I was worried that if I tried to push through the field, I’d just end up wadding the car up. I talked to Carl, who said, “Just go out there, do the best you can, and stay out of trouble.” I didn’t know how the hell I was meant to stay out of trouble when, half the time, those races ended up a wreck-fest, but I told him I’d try. Well, sure enough, that race went downhill for lots of people quickly; there were cautions and people wr
ecking everywhere and I managed to dodge them all. By lap 16, I found myself in second right behind Bob House. How I got there, I have no idea. We were going through the turns and I thought I’d see about doing to him what he tried to do to me the week before. I started beating on his back bumper, trying to push him down the back straightaway. I couldn’t manage it and he ended up winning, with me in second. I might not have won but I was still happy as hell with that. The crowd must have liked it too, because suddenly we had a rivalry, right at the end of the season. Bob House had already wrapped up the points win for the 1992 season, so the growing rivalry between me and him made it more interesting for the fans.

  It was pretty similar the next week: I was terrible in the qualifier, did well in the heat, got black flagged, started at the back of the feature, ended up at the front with Bob House, and started hammering on his bumper at about 90 mph. This time though, I managed to get by him to win the race. My fourth week in that race car and I’d won twice. David Jones was not happy at all. When I got the chance, I couldn’t resist calling out to him again, “Thought I wasn’t going to win for two years!” I wasn’t just poking the bear, I was shoving a damn arrow in there. He wouldn’t talk to me after that. He ended up building his own car, but he never beat me.