The Hardcore Truth

by Bob Holly

  I signed the contract and sent it back in November ’93. It had been about 18 months since I last wrestled, so I hit the gym hard to get back into ring-shape. The problem is that you can’t really do that without actually wrestling. I did as much cardio as I could but doing a wrestling match was a whole different game.

  They sent a camera crew down to meet me at the racetrack in Pensacola, Florida, and we filmed some vignettes to air on WWF TV shows before my debut. The idea was that they’d introduce my character to the viewers and make me seem like a star before I got there. I thought the vignettes were silly. They had me getting into my car at the track, acting like the happy-go-lucky race-car driver who smiles 24 hours a day: “Hey there, guys, my name is Thurman Plugg but my friends call me Sparky . . . you can call me Sparky too!” It was one step away from “gee whiz” and “golly, hey, guys!” and that’s totally not me. But hey, what was I going to do, tell them no? They gave you something, told you what to say, and you said it. The end.

  PART 2: LIFE ON THE ROAD

  If you want to make a living in the wrestling business, you’d better get ready to work your ass off. People think it’s all glitz and glamor, but it’s not easy. The part that people see, the 10 to 15 minutes in the ring, is the best part of our day. The other 23 hours and 45 minutes on the road is the work. Most people work an 8 to 10 hour day and then go home. You can kiss that goodbye if you’re going to be a wrestler.

  When I started with the WWF, we were on the road all the time. You got back to the hotel at 1 a.m. and if you had an early flight, you would grab three or four hours’ sleep and head to the airport. On TV days, we would tape four or five shows in a night, so we’d be there from noon to 2 a.m. We’d do double shots on the weekends — do a show at midday on Saturday, stay in our gear, travel to the next town, and do another show at 8 p.m. Same on Sunday. We were doing nine shows a week. After four or five weeks, we’d get two or three days off, and we’d either sleep through those or get caught up on stuff at home. Then it was back on the road. It’s a rough way to live. The newer guys have no idea how easy they’ve got it in comparison because they get at least a few days off each week. They get proper breaks at New Year’s, Christmas, and Thanksgiving now — we didn’t get that back in the ’90s. I used to fly home on Christmas Eve, arrive at 11 a.m., have Christmas Day off, and fly out first thing the next morning. Vince hates holidays; he thinks everybody needs to work, but not everybody is built the same way as him. Sometimes you’ve got to take a break.

  CHAPTER 11

  STARTING THE ENGINE

  My first match in a WWF ring was on January 11, 1994. It was at a TV taping but the match didn’t air until much later in the month. I wrestled Barry Horowitz, a guy who had been a long-time jobber for the company. He was very gracious to me that first day. I felt kind of guilty when they had me beat him because here was this guy who had been in the locker room for years, losing to everybody and never catching a break, and I had just got there and was going to beat him the first time out. I actually apologized to him for beating him and he said, “Hey, man, it’s what I’m here for.” He knew what his job was in the big picture — they paid him to go out there and get other people over. He did his job and he got paid. He didn’t have an ego about being on TV, and he knew that being a wrestler was, fundamentally, just a job. He ended up finally getting a push in ’95 and the fans loved it, but management seemed to lose interest pretty quickly. He ended up getting lost in the shuffle by the end of the year and was gone shortly afterwards. I felt bad for him, patiently waiting years for a break and then, when it finally came, it was over before it started. The match he and I had was nothing special. We did about three minutes and kept it simple — I spent most of the match working his arm and then got the win after a splash off the top rope. I was sucking air pretty badly in that match because I was so out of shape. Running to the ring then a couple of minutes of wrestling and I blew up! I knew I had to get in better shape — and I did, eventually.

  I was nervous as hell the first time I walked into that locker room. I introduced myself to everybody, found a spot where nobody was, sat down, shut up, and listened. I didn’t say anything or try to fit in; I just did my thing, spoke when I was spoken to, and hoped they accepted me. I knew a few of the guys there — I’d met Paul Bearer on a few occasions through Lenny, and I’d also worked with Scott Steiner. My old “friend” from Mid-South, Jeff Jarrett, had just started there too, and they were going to push him big time. He’d been given a country-music gimmick and a lot of vignettes to make him look like a superstar coming in — and the only reason they were running with him was that his daddy was now working in the WWF office. Interestingly enough, that was when everybody’s pay in the WWF got cut. I can just imagine the conversation: “Hey Vince, you ain’t got to pay these guys what you’re paying ’em; they’ll work for nothing!” Working for Jarrett was one step up from slave labor and the only guy who ever benefited from it was his son. I honestly don’t think Jeff would have gone anywhere in the wrestling business if he hadn’t have been Jerry Jarrett’s kid.

  The first time the WWF fans saw me onscreen was at the Royal Rumble in ’94, which was one of the big pay-per-view events and probably the third most important show of the year at that point. I wasn’t meant to be in the match but was backstage because, even then, they flew all their talent in for PPVs, just in case they needed them. Sean Waltman, who wrestled as the 1-2-3 Kid, was injured, so they decided to put me in the Royal Rumble match in his place. I was on cloud nine when I found out. It felt like I’d finally made it and now I just had to stay there. I couldn’t believe I was going to get to make my TV debut in the Rumble match, where the winner gets a title match at the biggest wrestling event of the year, WrestleMania. The Rumble is an “every man for himself” match with 30 guys coming in at intervals. You get eliminated by being thrown over the top rope to the floor. I figured I’d probably be in there for about a minute before they threw me out. I was pleasantly surprised that they ended up putting me in there at number 17 and letting me stay for over 21 minutes. I was quietly amused that my buddy Jeff Jarrett was in for less than two minutes — not a great start for him, but a promising start for me. I was one of the guys who was out there the longest that night and, on commentary, they put me over as a new guy with a lot of potential. I was eliminated by my old idol Bret Hart, who went on to win the match (along with Lex Luger in a screwy finish in which they were co-winners).

  Being in the same locker room as Bret was pretty neat, given that before I joined the WWF, I thought he was the man. He was always pleasant to me in the locker room, but I never did feel like I had a connection with him. He seemed to alienate himself from everybody and was very quiet. He would talk to you if you talked to him and he was never unpleasant to anybody, but it was one of those deals where you had to go up and talk to him because he wasn’t going to come to you. If I asked for advice, he’d be helpful, but even after I’d been there a while and he knew who I was, we never connected.

  Connection or not, I always wanted to work with him because he was such a good wrestler. He could go out there, take someone who couldn’t work, and make him look like he was a decent wrestler. A match between him and me when I was at my peak would have been off the hook, especially because of the way his mind works and how he goes about telling a story. I never got to wrestle him because I never got to a level where it would have worked. I could have pitched a story to management but they would have looked at me like, “Really? You want to work with Bret? Like that’s going to happen!” Thurman Plugg vs Bret Hart wouldn’t have gone over well. I was in a six-man tag with him, on his team, where Bret, 1-2-3 Kid, and I beat Yokozuna, Owen Hart, and Hakushi — and I was the guy who got the win too, pinning Owen after about six minutes. It wasn’t a big deal though; it was one of those things where I was in the ring with bigger stars and just making up the numbers. I’ll tell you how momentous it was — when I recently saw the match again, I couldn�
��t remember how it finished but I was sure it would end with one of the heels pinning me. I totally forgot that I pinned Owen.

  Bret was never a dick to me but we didn’t bond. Two guys who I did bond with quickly were “Macho Man” Randy Savage and “The Model” Rick Martel. For the first couple of weeks, they hung back, probably thinking, “Let’s get to know this guy and see how he is.” Once they realized I wasn’t a big-mouth and didn’t try to force people to like me, they did everything they could to help me. They helped me understand the dos and don’ts of the locker room and were forever offering me advice. If I had a question, they were always there to help me out. I can’t thank those two guys enough for helping me as much as they did.

  Martel helped me out in the ring too. When I first got to the WWF, I was working with him at house shows every night for what felt like forever. I learned so much from him — he was a great wrestler, very smooth in the ring and a good storyteller. Some people thought he was boring but those people don’t understand wrestling. Like Bret, everything Rick did was for a reason. He kept it technical and he wouldn’t do the fancy high-flying stuff, and there was always a reason he went back to a headlock or to working on the arm. It was all part of telling the story of a match. Once you understand wrestling, you understand that Rick was anything but a boring wrestler. I enjoyed our matches and they helped get me back into ring-shape. When I found out that I was going to be working against him at WrestleMania X, I was over the moon. I’d only just got to the WWF and I was going to be in a 10-man tag team match on the biggest show of the year. It was going to be me, the 1-2-3 Kid, Tatanka, and the Smoking Gunns against Rick, IRS, Jeff Jarrett, and the Headshrinkers. I knew it was only going to be a filler match but I didn’t care — I was going to be on the WrestleMania card! It’s what every single wrestler in the business works towards.

  The big day came. The match was at Madison Square Garden in New York. We were told that we were on right before the main event. Everything was going great; Bret and Owen had gone out and had one of the all-time great matches, the crowd was into the show, and about the only person who wasn’t happy was Adam Bomb, who was whining and bitching backstage because he had to put Earthquake over in about 30 seconds. Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon (Scott Hall) were out there doing a ladder match when I got to Gorilla (the area right behind the entranceway, named after legendary wrestler and announcer Gorilla Monsoon). They were having a great match and bringing the house down. I overheard the guy who was timing the show tell the referee over his earpiece that it was time to go to the end of the match. I kept on warming up, adrenaline pumping . . . I was about to wrestle at WrestleMania in Madison Square Garden. It doesn’t get any better than that. Shawn and Scott were still going. And going. And going . . . The timekeeper was screaming at the referee over and over, telling him to get them to go to the finish but Shawn and Scott ignored him. All the guys in Gorilla were trying to figure out what to do and then I heard the sentence that made my heart sink: “We’re going to have to pull the 10-man.” They canceled my match and went straight to the main event. I was so disappointed. I wasn’t mad at Shawn and Scott because they had a hell of a match, one of the best in wrestling history, and I was just this new guy. Who was I to say anything?

  Randy Savage was mad though. He was pissed. When Shawn and Scott came back through Gorilla, I thought he was going to jump on them. He was screaming and cussing at them, calling them every name in the book. He ripped them a new asshole and called them selfish motherfuckers. He told them that they had disrespected the other boys by taking their TV time and their spot on WrestleMania in order to go over their time allowance. Randy felt it was a “screw you” to everyone else, that Shawn and Scott thought that their match was going to be so good that they could screw 10 guys out of a WrestleMania appearance and a payday. Management always said in meetings that the golden rule was to always hit your time cues because if you went long, you were taking away from somebody else. Shawn and Scott only cared about themselves. Nobody had doubted that they would have a great match because they’d worked to perfect it for two months straight on the house show circuit. Randy was furious because he felt they were going into business for themselves and were disrespecting everyone else in the locker room. Randy fucking hated Shawn and his buddies because he thought they were taking over the locker room and starting to run the show.

  I loved Randy as a friend and as a wrestler — he was very charismatic, very flamboyant. He wasn’t a great worker but he was definitely good enough to be on top. He did great promos, had a great gimmick and character, and absolutely had what it took to be one of the top wrestlers in the world. By the end of 1994, Randy left the WWF. I hated to see him go. He didn’t tell anybody, he just upped and went. He told Vince that he was quitting wrestling and then, all of a sudden, he turned up in WCW. Vince felt Randy had betrayed him, so Vince blacklisted him. Now Vince is a businessman first and foremost, so even when someone screws him over, if he feels he can make money with them, he’ll put his differences aside and work with them — but he never worked with Randy again. There have been rumors going around for years involving Vince’s daughter, Stephanie, and Randy. I won’t say anything other than Randy was always pretty friendly with her.

  But Randy was right: Shawn’s little group of buddies, the Clique, as they called themselves, were taking over. It was Shawn, Scott, Kevin Nash, and the 1-2-3 Kid. Triple H would ass-kiss his way into the group when he turned up in 1995 and kept ass-kissing his way to the top of the industry. Before Triple H, Shawn was the biggest asshole in the company. He was a complete dick. When I started, he had been decent to me, but as time went on, he turned into an arrogant smartass. We were in Europe when I first butted heads with the Clique.

  When we were overseas, we were given cards to fill out to order food for the bus after the show. I had been with the company about four months at this point and I was working mainly with Rick or with Savio Vega (when he was wrestling as Kwang — a good worker who knew what he was doing). After my match on our first night in Germany, I got showered and dressed, then went to the kitchen to get my food. It wasn’t there. I thought that was a little strange. Same thing the next night . . . and the night after that. I went with Rick into the kitchen the next day and, again, my food wasn’t there. Rick asked what was going on and I told him my food had been missing for the past three nights. I said I’d been filling my card out but there was never any food. Rick looked around with me — he didn’t find my food but he found my card. It was torn into pieces on the floor. I figured this was somebody’s way of ribbing me, but to me that’s a dirty rib. You don’t mess with somebody’s food or clothing.

  The next night, I was in catering, eating with Randy. Rick came over, sat down, and said, “Hey Randy, Bob’s food has been missing after the shows and we found his card torn up.” Randy, in his growly Macho Man voice, said, “Well, I saw someone tearing up a food card so I know who’s doing it, brother . . . it was Shawn. And you’ve got to stop it now before it gets any worse.” So after my match, I took my shower and changed. Sure enough, in the kitchen, my food wasn’t there. Rick was with me and asked what I was going to do. I said, “Just watch.” I stormed off down the hall. Randy spotted me, saw that I was pissed, and asked what I was doing. I said I was looking for someone. He replied, “He’s in the shower.”

  Randy and Rick followed me and stood outside the door of the room where the Clique were changing. They had set up their own little area away from the other boys. Before I went in, I said to Randy and Rick, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” and I shut the door behind me. Scott Hall was milling around and Shawn had just got done in the shower. I said, “Shawn, what’s your fucking problem with me?” He looked at me and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I said, “The fuck you don’t know . . . I don’t think I need to remind you. If you’ve got a problem with me, you come up to me and you discuss it with me, but the next time you touch my fucking food, I swear to God, I w
ill cut all your fingers off with bolt cutters. Do not fuck with me.” Scott jumped in and tried to be a tough guy, so I turned to him and said, “Motherfucker, don’t come any closer or I will fucking drop you.” He backed up, playing all cool and everything, and said, “Hey, come on, there’s no need for this. . . .” I responded, “I’m nobody to fuck with, Scott. Don’t try me.” Shawn didn’t say one word. I turned around and walked out of there. Randy and Rick were standing outside the door, laughing and carrying on. Randy looked at me and said, “That’s the way you fucking handle things, right there. . . .”

  I wasn’t done with the Clique though. The next day, as I was heading into catering, I saw Scott and Kevin Nash sitting on one of the stage equipment boxes, being dicks to everybody who went by. Kevin smarted off at me so I stopped, looked him straight in the eye, and, in front of everybody, said, “You say one more word to me and I will knock your ass out.” Then I drew an X on his chin with my finger and said, “This is where I’m gonna hit you.” Nash couldn’t believe it. That sumbitch just sat there and looked at me as if to say “What do I do now?” They never fucked with me again.

  The international tours were tough and it didn’t help that the money was nothing close to what I had expected. After I’d been with the company for about a month, I still hadn’t seen a paycheck. I enjoyed the work and being with the WWF, but we’d been on the road for seven days a week most weeks. The office would give us a $200 advance each night to use for paying road expenses — they might have picked up our flights but we had to pay for car rental, gas, food on the road, and hotel rooms. When they worked out what you made from the shows you were on, they would deduct the advance they paid you and your paycheck would be the difference. About six weeks after I started with the WWF, I finally got the check for my first two weeks with the company. It was for a couple hundred dollars. What the hell? $200 for two weeks’ work? Were they kidding me?!