The Hardcore Truth

by Bob Holly

  It didn’t get any better after that. One time, I was on the road for five weeks without a break and I got a check for $50. Fifty fucking dollars. All the boys told me, “Always get your advance every night because you don’t know when you’re going to get paid.” There would be four of us piled up in a rental car, four of us sharing a hotel room; we spent 24 hours a day together, 7 days a week. You did what you had to do to cut expenses since it was the only way you could actually make any money if you weren’t one of the very top guys. Nobody in the mid-card or below was making any money. You earned enough to pay your road expenses, your taxes, and your bills at home and that was basically it. We were working for this mega-million dollar company, yet pretty much nobody was making any money. And I was right at the bottom of the earnings barrel. If you didn’t watch what you spent on the road, you’d come home with nothing and not even be able to pay your bills. It was a lot of work for not a lot of return. I started to second-guess myself. Was this what I really wanted to do? I figured that the only way it was ever going to work was if I was able to stand out and start moving up the ranks.

  I kept working hard, learning, and making sure I had good matches, but I also tried other things to get noticed. I got new wrestling gear made, with bold colors that would help me stand out. This was a trick I always did with my race cars, so I got my gear made the same way. One of my outfits was a lime green singlet and pair of tights. Looking back, I realize that everyone probably laughed at it and thought I looked like The Great Gazoo, but I just wanted somebody to notice and give me a shot.

  After I’d been with the company about six months, I decided to go for broke and talk to Vince about my name. I was nervous as hell to bring it up, because I didn’t want him to think I was ungrateful that he’d given me a job. But I knew that nobody would ever take me seriously with the name “Thurman Plugg.” I made sure to thank Vince for the opportunity before explaining my thoughts about the name. He understood and asked what I suggested changing it to. I told him and he was okay with it — I think he respected me for actually bringing it up to him — so after that, I became Bob “Sparkplug” Holly. I was happier with that name. I didn’t like the Sparkplug bit but I figured we’d take one step at a time. I still had the race-car driver gimmick and that gave me an identity, so that was fine with me.

  That first year with the WWF didn’t really have any highlights for me because I didn’t do anything. I was in the Royal Rumble, sure. I was nearly in WrestleMania but didn’t get on the show thanks to Shawn and Scott. I didn’t have any storyline or anything. I won some matches, I lost some matches. Nothing important. I was an enhancement guy. I got to beat other enhancement guys and jobbers in order to give a win over me some meaning, but then I’d lose to the guys who were actually going somewhere. I wanted to be more than just enhancement, so I told myself that my time would come and I had to be patient, do as I was told, and wait my turn. Everybody has to start somewhere and I always thought I would put my time in, keep my nose clean, pay my dues, and wait for a better spot in the company to open up. 1994 had seen me get into the company. I was hoping that 1995 would see me start to move up the ladder, but I couldn’t see where the opportunity was going to come from.

  As it happened, a spot opened up when Shawn and Kevin got moved up into the main event and vacated the tag-team championship. The WWF wanted to mix things up in the undercard, so they arranged an eight-team tournament to crown new champions. I was put in a team with Sean Waltman, the 1-2-3 Kid, who was part of Shawn’s Clique but less of a dick than his buddies. I didn’t think anything of it and figured that, as a makeshift team, we’d just lose in the first round and I’d go back to putting people over. We ended up winning the first match and the next one too — and, just like that, I was in the final and the tag team title match at the Royal Rumble in January. It didn’t matter to me that we were basically just being set up for Bam Bam Bigelow and Tatanka — two guys much higher up the card than me or Sean — I was finally getting a title match on pay-per-view. That was a definite step up as far as I was concerned. Maybe 1995 would end up being a decent year after all . . .

  PART 3: FLYING HIGH

  As a wrestler, it feels like you either spend your life in a car or in an airplane. You fly so much that you get automatically upgraded a lot of the time. That’s something you’ve got to be careful about politically. There’s an unwritten rule in the locker room that if you’re given an upgrade and you haven’t been with the company long, you offer your seat to a veteran who is sitting in coach. Some guys who came in and somehow got upgraded would get heat, even if they paid for it themselves. It just wasn’t the done thing.

  When I started out, I got upgraded a few times. I stuck with the rule: always offer the seat to the vets. If they didn’t take it, you wouldn’t get any heat for sitting up front as long as you had offered and they vouched for it. Later in my career, when some of the new guys offered me their seat, I wouldn’t take it. I got to sit in first a lot during my career, so it was nice for the young guys to get a chance to do that. I was thankful for the offer but I wasn’t that uncomfortable in coach, to be honest.

  I would offer my upgrade to the big guys if I had the chance. Bam Bam Bigelow, for example. When I first came in, I made sure to offer him my seat if I got an upgrade. He was a large guy and he wasn’t going to be comfortable in coach. It’s kind of ironic that I got him out of coach — because he ended up throwing me under the bus.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE MAN WITH THE FLAME TATTOO

  Heading into the 1995 Royal Rumble, I was feeling positive. Although I didn’t think that this match would be the turning point for me in my WWF career since I was sure we were just there to make Bam Bam and Tatanka look good, getting a match on pay-per-view was always good. That’s where you made your money — or so I had been told.

  This is how it works: management looks at the match you are in and considers how important it is to the show, then looks at what the live gate is and how many people buy the show on pay-per-view. After however long it takes them to make the calculations — and usually it takes several months — they send you a check with whatever figure they worked out for you. There is no formula; they could just pull a number out of a hat for all I know. But you could end up with a nice chunk of change, so getting a pay-per-view match is good news.

  The Royal Rumble was at the USF Sun Dome in Florida that year. When I got to the building, Pat Patterson, who was the agent for our match, came over and told me and Sean that Bam Bam was going to do something with football legend Lawrence Taylor after the match, which would lead to a match with him at WrestleMania, so we were going over and winning the tag titles. I was tickled to death about that — I thought it was fucking cool. Everyone in the wrestling world aspires to be a champion in the WWF and here I was about to become one of the world tag team champions. It was awesome; I figured I was on my way to making some good money . . .

  I was looking forward to being in the match with Bam Bam and Tatanka, because they were both guys who had worked near the top of the card. Bam Bam, in particular, was gracious as hell to me. When we went through the match beforehand, he said he wanted to make me look good. So did Sean. When we were laying out the match with Pat, he said he wanted Sean to get the pin on Bam Bam. Sean said, “I get to win a lot so why don’t we give Bob the win on this one?” He figured it would help elevate me. I thought that was very decent of him. For whatever reason, Pat didn’t go for it and insisted that Sean get the win, but I didn’t really mind. Whether he got the pin or I did, we were still going to win the tag team title.

  We went on right before the Rumble match itself and I enjoyed it — I thought it was a pretty good match and I put in a good performance. It was a nice feeling to hold that tag title belt in the air. I thought to myself, “I could get used to this.”

  They had us lose the title the very next night.

  We were working with the Smoking Gunns, Billy and Bart, t
wo guys who’d been traveling with us a lot, and we were told that Kid and I were going to drop the belts. They had always wanted the titles to end up on the Gunns, so I don’t know why they didn’t just put them over in the tournament in the first place. I wasn’t about to complain though. I thought it was a waste because me and Kid had got over as a good underdog team and could have run with the belts for a while, but that wasn’t my call. I was going to do what I was told.

  The night after the Rumble, we taped three episodes of RAW; one went out live and the others were for the next two weeks. On the live show, at the end of the match, I took a move called the Sidewinder, where Bart lifted me up on his shoulder and Billy jumped towards me and hit me with an elbow as Bart dropped me. I don’t know how it happened but I smashed my head on the canvas and knocked myself out. It was the finish of the match anyway and Billy pinned me to win the title. When I came to, I had no idea where I was. It turns out I’d got my first wrestling concussion. I was able to walk to the back by myself but I was real confused. Once I got backstage, I couldn’t remember where I put my stuff. I didn’t know whether to go right or left so I just stood there. Somebody came over and asked if I was okay. I said I didn’t know where the locker room was. He said, “You’re kidding me, right?” I honestly had no idea. We didn’t have doctors or trainers backstage back then, so I could either go to the hospital or get on with it. Pat came over and checked to see if I was all right. He said that we were supposed to do a rematch with the Gunns in about half an hour and asked if I could do it. I wasn’t going to tell him no. You just didn’t say no. After that, it’s all a blur. I can’t even remember sitting with Billy and Bart to go over the match. I do remember going out there later, and the rest is hazy. Billy told me that he could see I had no idea what was going on, because I was doing things in the ring for no reason at all. I got really sick the next few days on the road, but that was how it was back then. You didn’t complain; you just got on with it.

  When the check came in for the match I had at the Rumble, I was happy. I made $2,500. Back then, I thought that was great. In hindsight, knowing what I do now, it wasn’t that good. In the grand scheme of things, given how much money the pay-per-views generate and how much the company takes from that, $2,500 is nothing and I probably should have seen more for being in one of the featured matches. Back then though, the way I looked at it was that I hadn’t been there very long and I still had to prove myself. I hoped that later on, I’d make more money. Some of the other guys would sit in the back and complain because they weren’t making money or being pushed, but I hadn’t been there long enough to buy a watch, so who was I to say anything? I just listened and basically learned from others what not to do. I think one of the reasons I had such a long career with Vince is that I didn’t complain or get pissed when I had to put somebody over. I just did my job.

  With the Tag Team title. (photo by George Napolitano)

  My job continued to be making other people look good, and one of the people who needed to look very good in the lead up to WrestleMania was Bam Bam. He was going to be in the main event with Lawrence Taylor, so he needed to get as much momentum as possible. I worked with him several times, putting him over. Everything seemed fine and he was pleasant and easy to work with. But one day, without warning, he threw me under the bus. I was really shocked. Somebody came up to me backstage and said, “Hey Bob, I heard you didn’t want to put Bam Bam over last night?” Everyone was apparently saying that I hadn’t wanted to do the job for Bam Bam. That was bullshit and I said so — I never refused to do a job in my career. I had suggested that we used a different finish to our match the previous night. We had been doing the exact same finish in all of our matches, so I thought it would be good to switch it up (but still have Bam Bam win). He agreed to go with the different finish. I was trying to make him look versatile and I guess I shouldn’t have bothered.

  Anyway, I asked around and found out that Bam Bam had told one of the agents that I didn’t want to lose to him. I confronted Bam Bam in the locker room in front of everybody and asked why he had said that I didn’t want to put him over. He said, “I didn’t say that . . .” I demanded, “So what did you say?” and he responded, “All I said is that you wanted to change the finish. . . .” He didn’t tell them that I’d only suggested altering the finish but not the result, and he didn’t explain that it was only because we were using the same finish all the time. He just didn’t say anything. I told him that it was a chickenshit thing to do. He apologized and said that he was having a bad day, he took it wrong, he didn’t mean to make me look bad and everything. I couldn’t believe it. Hell, that “misunderstanding” could have cost me my job! That was my first lesson in not trusting anybody. I didn’t want to get a reputation as a troublemaker. You don’t want that reputation in wrestling.

  I made sure to talk to Pat Patterson about it and explain what really happened. Pat was understanding and said it was fine. I wanted to make sure I didn’t have any heat with the office. I learned from the situation and I didn’t let any more trouble happen with Bam Bam after that. Whenever I worked with him, I kept it simple. I said he should just tell me what he wanted to do and I would do it. That way, he couldn’t go back and say that I wasn’t cooperating.

  Bam Bam wasn’t happy about a lot of things at that point, so I guess that’s why he was acting out. He knew he was going to be losing to the football player at WrestleMania in front of a huge audience and he didn’t like it one bit. I agreed with him — I thought he had every right to complain. They were bringing in a guy from outside our world and having him beat a professional wrestler. If somebody from the outside comes in, they shouldn’t be able to beat us at what we do. It would have been one thing if Lawrence Taylor had been fighting a nobody who lost to all the wrestlers. You wouldn’t expect a wrestler to beat Tiger Woods in a game of golf, for example, so why should a wrestler be expected to potentially sacrifice all the credibility he’s built up over the years in order to put over somebody who isn’t even in the industry? Bam Bam was your consummate tough-guy wrestler, well over 300 pounds and feared in the wrestling world, and now he was going to lose to a retired football player? That didn’t seem right to me. I didn’t like the match either — Bam Bam just about killed himself to get L.T. over and had to lead him through everything. L.T. had no idea what he was doing and Bam Bam was pretty much holding his hand through the whole thing and sacrificing himself. He main-evented WrestleMania, something everyone in wrestling aspires to do, but he wasn’t happy about how it went down.

  They tried to keep Bam Bam happy afterwards and gave him a huge payout for the match. I heard it was something like a quarter of a million dollars. They promised that they’d turn him babyface after ’Mania and give him a big push to get him to the top of the card in order to rebuild his credibility. That didn’t work out. Shawn and Kevin were deep in Vince’s ear by this point and made sure that most of the attention was on them, so Bam Bam didn’t really have a chance to get over as a babyface. Not happy with the way things were going, he left the company later that year. He main-evented WrestleMania in April, received the most mainstream publicity of any wrestler in the world at that point, and was gone by November. That’s fucked up. But that’s how things were once the Clique took over.

  CHAPTER 13

  TREADING WATER

  By this point, Kevin Nash (as Diesel) was the WWF champion, and Shawn and Razor (Scott Hall) were working on top too. Even though Nash was drawing nothing as champion and business was down, they had a lot of stroke and they were damn sure using it. The only other guys who were getting anything were Bret and ’Taker because they were already at the top when the Clique got there. I was convinced that Shawn had something over Vince. I had no idea what, but there was something there. How else could Shawn have had so much power? Vince allowed the Clique to manipulate everything, the way every storyline went, the way every talent was used. They dictated everything. I didn’t like it bu
t hey, if I didn’t like working there, I could have quit. I kept my mouth shut and did my job. My opinion didn’t matter.

  ’Taker and Bret were both respected in the locker room, great workers who had Vince’s ear but didn’t abuse their power. Bret made sure to look after his brother Owen and his brother-in-law Davey Boy Smith as much as he could, but at least he never fucked with anybody else’s career. It was a shame to see Shawn acting up, because he was such a talented worker that he didn’t need to resort to politics and being a jerk. He was messed up all the time too — always drinking, always doing something. A lot of the boys were frustrated with his behavior but they didn’t say anything. Everybody knew how much the Clique had Vince’s ear and that, if they didn’t like you, they’d bury you in a heartbeat. Take Shane Douglas, for example — Shane was getting over. He had great promos, he was a good worker, and he knew how to get heat. I thought he was going to be one of the top guys because he was damn good. Shane didn’t act like he thought he was a big star or anything but Shawn and his buddies didn’t like him, so they shoved him right out the door. They did the same with “Sycho” Sid Eudy. It seemed to me like they were just afraid somebody was going to get over more than them, so they held everyone else down. They were making a ton of money and I didn’t get why they had a problem with someone else making money too. After all, the more people we have making money for the company, the more we all get paid. But all Shawn wanted to do was work with his buddies. It was clear that Bret didn’t like the way things were going either — Vince was the owner of the company but you had these two guys, Shawn and Kevin, who were dictating how everything went and who was going to do what.