The Hardcore Truth

by Bob Holly

  Sid wasn’t a good worker but he cut a great promo and he had a great look. He was over huge, so of course Vince was going to use him to draw. I guess Kevin and Shawn didn’t like the thought of someone else getting a piece of the action so they stepped in. Nash, especially, felt threatened by him because they were both big men, but Sid was over and Nash just hadn’t worked out as champion. They butted heads a lot when they were going over matches. Sid was set in his ways and wasn’t about to back down to anybody. He wouldn’t let upper management or the other boys push him around or abuse his character.

  After the Clique pushed Sid out of the main event picture, they kept sticking it to him — I guess to prove a point or something. In January 1996, they pushed it too far. He and I traveled to the arena together. Sid came up to me a while after we’d arrived and said, “How do you want to beat me?”

  “You’re fucking with me, right?” I replied.

  “No,” he said, “we’re wrestling tonight and they want you over.” I asked him if he was mad at me. “Fuck no,” he said, “It’s them . . . they’re fucking with me. Fuck this place. I’m done after tonight.” I wasn’t offended that he was mad at having to lose to me — it was an insult to him. Here you have me, who loses to everyone all the time, and there you have Sid, this big monster, and he had to put me over clean? I was very uncomfortable. He was pitching an absolute fit backstage and I was caught in the middle of it. We did the match and it was fine — I won with a cross-body off the top or something like that. The whole time we were out there, though, I felt so bad for him. It wasn’t right, what Kevin and Shawn were doing to him. But what could I do? I did what I was told or I found another job; it was as simple as that.

  Afterwards, Sid came backstage and was selling that he got injured. He said he hurt his neck. He was lying about that — since we had been traveling together, I knew the truth. He just didn’t want to deal with all the politics anymore so he left. Long before WrestleMania that year, Sid was gone. After ’Mania, Bret Hart took some time off. ’Taker was still around but the Clique’s influence was everywhere. Shawn was the champion now and Kevin was still on top. Shawn’s first challenger as champion was going to be Kevin. Scott Hall and Kid were still hanging around with them. The Clique had managed to push all of the other top guys out of the picture (except for ’Taker, and ain’t nobody pushing him anywhere . . . ) so now they were free to work with each other and dominate the company. They’d even added a fifth member . . .

  How Hunter got hooked up with the Clique, I don’t know. He’d been in WCW for a while before he came to the WWF, so he’d seen how the game was played. He figured out pretty quickly that if you wanted to get somewhere, you had to be in Shawn and Kevin’s circle, so he went right for the kill. If you ever meet Hunter, he’ll suck you right in — he’s a likeable guy. He comes across well, he’s very intelligent, very charming, and he has a great mind for the business. Shawn and Kevin let him in, although they sort of used him as a bag boy for a while to carry their luggage. He didn’t care about sucking up to get ahead.

  Maybe that’s where I went wrong. All my life, I was never into sucking up to anybody. When I went to the WWF, I didn’t know how the game was played and I thought I would just sit back, mind my P’s and Q’s, not step on any toes, and let my work speak for itself. If I’d gone up to Shawn and kissed his ass, maybe I would have had a bigger push. Instead, I traveled with guys who they didn’t like so I ended up “guilty by association.” Politically, I went in the wrong direction — but number one, I didn’t know what was going on when I first got there and number two, I didn’t care about locker-room politics. I wasn’t going to kiss ass to get ahead. I thought I could make my own path without anybody’s help, but in WWE you need everybody’s help. It’s often not what you know, it’s who you know. It’s funny that after I broke in, my first road trip was with Paul Bearer and the Undertaker. Politically, that was a hell of a connection to have for a new guy, but I wasn’t interested in playing that game. I was a guy who wanted to go work out and ’Taker wasn’t. Paul definitely wasn’t! But ’Taker is as cool as hell. He’s kind of quiet but very accommodating and fun to be around.

  As much as they claimed to be tight, the Clique’s members were a bunch of cowards who wouldn’t go to bat for each other when things got rough. At one point, when we were overseas on a tour, we heard about an incident that happened back in the States. The agent report was phoned through to us the day after the other crew had done a show in Madison Square Garden. Shawn had been smarting off — as usual — to the boys earlier in the day. He’d made the mistake of smarting off one too many times to Ronnie Harris. You don’t fuck with either of the Harris Twins. By now, Shawn and Kid didn’t change with the rest of the boys; they’d got themselves their own private dressing room. The Harris boys paid them a visit. Donnie stood outside the door to make sure nobody got in. Ronnie went inside, propped a chair up against the door, and put a table in the way to make sure nobody got out. He grabbed Shawn by the throat and slammed him up against the wall, then slammed him on the table and started choking him out. He was practically killing him and Kid just stood there and watched. Didn’t say a thing, didn’t do a thing. Now, if I were to see my friend getting choked out, regardless of whether he had it coming or not, I would intervene. I never understood why Sean didn’t.

  When the agent explained what had happened, I was sitting at the back of the bus playing trump with Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, and Yokozuna. Nash was furious. Being the tough guy he is, he said, “If I was there, that wouldn’t have happened. I ought to go to Ronnie Harris’s house, knock on his door, and beat his ass.” Nobody else said anything until I said, “That’s exactly what you need to do, Kevin. You need to go beat his ass.” Nash just looked at me and didn’t say a word. He didn’t say a word to Ronnie Harris either when he saw him next. That was Kevin — he was always talking tough. Whenever stuff went down between Shawn and Bret, Kevin said he would kick Bret’s ass. Nash is the biggest seven-foot-tall pussy I’ve ever seen in my life and Bret Hart would have eaten him for lunch. I’d tell Nash that to his face too — because he wouldn’t do jackshit to me.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR

  Everything changed in the middle of ’96 when it came out that Nash and Hall had signed with the opposition. WCW had been gaining ground and were trying to sign a lot of our guys, but everybody in the locker room was shocked when Hall and Nash quit. I couldn’t believe it — after all Vince had done for them, they showed absolutely no loyalty. Before they got to the WWF, they were nobodies. Vince took care of them, paid them well, made them who they were, and they shit on him. Loyalty didn’t mean a damn thing to those guys. They had been pushed to the moon, they beat everybody else on the roster, and then, boom, they were gone. All of the other boys on the roster worked hard, put Hall and Nash over, and then they just upped and left? They were making tons of money while none of us were making any. They deserved to have their asses kicked.

  Being a bunch of jackasses, they couldn’t just leave the company without doing something stupid too. I got back from (another) tour in Europe and Jerry Brisco told me what had happened at Madison Square Garden on Kevin and Scott’s last night with the company. Shawn and Kevin worked together, Shawn as the babyface, Kevin as the heel. After the match was over, Kevin got up and they started hugging and saying goodbye in front of the fans, despite the fact that they’d been fighting in a cage match just minutes before. Then Scott — another babyface — went out and joined in. Hunter was standing in Gorilla with Vince and Jerry and said, “Should I go out there and join them?” He knew that Jerry would have wanted to stop him, so he was looking to Vince for approval. Maybe it was because Shawn was his golden boy and he didn’t want to piss him off, but apparently Vince looked at Hunter and didn’t say a thing. Hunter went off and joined his buddies in the ring. Hunter was a heel and had fought Scott earlier in the night. Suddenly all of these guys were in front of t
he audience shaking hands and hugging and doing their little Clique hand sign like a bunch of fucking idiots. Jerry wanted to rip Hunter apart. He and Vince were both pissed.

  Management couldn’t do anything to Hall and Nash because they were leaving. They wouldn’t do anything to Shawn because he was over, making the company a lot of money, and I’m sure there was something going on behind closed doors with Vince too. Hunter took the fall. He was scheduled to win the King of the Ring tournament so they took that away from him and made him do jobs for a couple of months. Steve Austin ended up winning the King of the Ring that year and took off.

  I don’t think the punishment fit the crime for Hunter. Sure, he lost a bunch of matches for a while but he didn’t do a job to me or any of the other guys who could have gained from it. If he’d been made to do a job to me, that would have made a statement — especially since I’d busted my ass putting him over so much the summer before. After a couple of months, they figured he’d paid his dues and they gave him the Intercontinental title. That sure showed him.

  As for Nash and Hall, as soon as they got to WCW, they ran an angle where it looked like they were outsiders invading the promotion. It got hot real quick. WCW took off and suddenly started beating us in the ratings. They signed anybody they could take from us to build up their roster. Kid showed his loyalty to the WWF by jumping ship to join Nash and Hall pretty quickly. Other people stabbed Vince in the back too. It seemed like people would do anything for a bit of money. For example, Madusa, the WWF women’s champion, turned up on WCW TV and threw the title belt in the trash. They were definitely turning the volume up.

  I thought it was great that we had real competition at last. When you’ve got good competition, you strive to do everything you can do to be the best company on the planet. The locker room bonded together, tightened their bootlaces, dug deep, and worked harder. We were determined to put on a better show and prove to Hall and Nash that they had fucked up by leaving. It was like everybody wanted to say, “Just because you guys had a hit with the nWo, you just made us all work harder to become number one again.” We had monitors in the locker room when we were taping RAW, and sometimes we’d watch some of Nitro to see what the competition was up to. I didn’t think their show was that good. I was biased, obviously, but I thought our show was a lot better. The competition between the companies got pretty intense. We weren’t allowed friends in WCW. WWF management didn’t want us talking to anyone associated with WCW at all. They even sent out a memo with our travel itineraries, telling us that if they found out we were talking to anyone at all in WCW, we would be fired. Nobody backstage could believe it. Who were they to say who we could and couldn’t talk to?! There were guys we’d been friends with for years and suddenly we weren’t allowed to talk to them? As usual, I kept my head down, did my job, and didn’t complain. If I didn’t like their rules, I could leave. Nobody was forcing me to stay. But I bet Hunter and Shawn didn’t stop speaking to Scott and Kevin. The rules didn’t seem to apply to them back then.

  Mind you, with more than half of their members gone, the Clique couldn’t hold a gun to Vince’s head anymore. Shawn was the lonely man on the island backstage at that point. His behavior got even worse after Hall and Nash left; he was drinking more, doing more drugs. He was in a whole other world. The office sent one of the referees, Timmy White, to travel with Shawn and try to keep him on the straight and narrow. They were worried Shawn was going to do something stupid or just disappear. He was always getting into trouble. Timmy almost quit the company over that because he couldn’t take riding with Shawn. I don’t know the details but from what Timmy told me, it wasn’t fun — he described his time babysitting Shawn as one of the worst periods in his career. I don’t believe there’s a place for people like that in the industry. Why should somebody else have to take responsibility to get you to the show on time? If you’re a grown man in the wrestling business and you can’t get yourself to the arena or take responsibility for what you’ve got to do to get there, you have no place in the industry, no matter how talented or how much of a draw you are. Shawn kept abusing his power and getting away with it because Vince was feeling the pressure from WCW. He was doing whatever it took to make sure his top guys were happy and the WWF stayed in the game, but he started making decisions that Shawn couldn’t have liked, including bringing back some top guys that Shawn definitely didn’t like.

  Despite a huge offer from WCW, Bret came back at the end of the year. Sid was brought back halfway through the year, on some conditions: Shawn couldn’t fuck with him anymore, and guys like me wouldn’t go over on him to make him look bad. I don’t blame Sid for trying to protect himself. Another of these conditions was that Sid would get the World title, which he actually ended up winning from Shawn himself. I thought that was quite fitting and pretty funny.

  As for me, I wanted to do my bit and make a difference. All of these guys had been defecting to WCW and I was still with the WWF and working hard. I figured I’d finally get my shot. After all, I was loyal and talented, and, through the ups and downs, I had always figured my talent would eventually dictate how far I went. It turned out that my talent actually held me back because I was a good enough, reliable enough worker that I was used to make other people look good, even when they were absolutely terrible. And so I carried on in the role of the guy who went out there and lost to everybody to make them all look good, and it didn’t do a damn thing for me. I wasn’t even making decent money and they were using me less and less. In 1994, I had over 200 matches. In 1995, I had somewhere around 150. By 1996, they had me working less than 100 matches, and in 1997, I only had 50 matches. I’m sure that traveling with Sid was one of the reasons I got fewer matches in ’96. But, in ’97, Sid was the only reason I got any matches — he went to Pat Patterson and said, “If you don’t get Bob back on the road, I’ll be quitting.” He said that I kept him sane, helped him drive when he was hurt, that sort of thing. That was why they got me back on the road and working the shows. Sid had a lot of stroke but they never used him properly — they could have made a lot of money with him if they’d figured out how.

  Even though they brought me back, Sid still couldn’t deal with Shawn being a prick, so he dropped the WWF Championship to ’Taker and left shortly afterwards. I got used less and less again, and I ended up sitting at home for a long time as the war between WCW and the WWF went on. They were cycling their enhancement guys in and out, seeing if any of us would catch on with the audience. They were just throwing shit at a wall and hoping something stuck. None of us were making any money. I was still paid by the WWF and got calls to go to the TV tapings and the pay-per-views, but it wasn’t enough and I had no idea when they would bring me back full time. Then a friend of mine, who was a foreman with Harmony Construction, called and said that he needed a TIG welder. I didn’t want to do that, I just wanted to get back to the WWF and get on with my job there. I told him this but next thing I know, he turns up at my door on a Monday morning and says, “Jump in the truck, let’s get you a welding test. . . .” I figured, “Why not?” so I went ahead and did it and ended up getting a job with him. I was making good money as a welder during the week and started racing on the weekends again, so I was actually

  pretty content.

  After several months, Bruce Prichard from the WWF called me and said he needed me to come back to work full time. I told him I didn’t think I wanted to come back, that I had a good job, was enjoying racing again, and was home every night. He kept at me until I said that if they wanted me back, they were going to have to make sure I made at least what I was making at my welding job. I left it with him but I wasn’t concerned either way. Like I said, I was content with what I was doing at that point.

  I know a lot of people think that we were on TV and so we must have made huge money but it’s just not true. I was making $1,000 a week welding. After road expenses, I was making nowhere near that with the WWF. Only the top guys were.

  Bruce ca
lled me back later and said that they would match my salary and they wanted to bring me up to Connecticut to do some training, knock off the rust, and get me back into ring-shape. They started paying me right away but didn’t get me up to Connecticut for another four weeks, so I ended up making two grand a week for a while. That was pretty nice but it’s definitely not the sort of money that most people think a wrestler with the WWF makes.

  PART 4: MAKING MONEY

  One of the things you hear the most in WWE meetings is that “you’ve got to make your own push.” That is such a load of crap. I always used to give them ideas for me and those ideas would get thrown back at me every time. It gets to the point where it’s useless to try and it doesn’t do any good to complain, so you just go out there and do your job. You will go as far as they want you to go. If they get behind you and stay behind you, they will push and push until you get over. If they lose interest, you’re done.