by Bob Holly
I talked to him a few months before I left WWE and told him, “You know, I didn’t like you when I first got here.” He laughed and said, “I don’t remember half my life — I was so fucked up.” I told him about the whole deal with him tearing up my food card in Germany and me confronting him in the locker room. He said he couldn’t remember that at all, but he still apologized for being an asshole.
Shawn Michaels is the greatest wrestler of all time, hands down. If you want proof, go watch the hour-long match he did with John Cena on RAW in England back in 2007. Cena can’t wrestle and he can’t lead a match. Every single bit of that match was Shawn. He carried Cena for a full hour. That’s absolutely incredible.
CHAPTER 17
PUNCHING THE CLOCK
After that whole deal in Montreal, the WWF took off. It wasn’t about Bret, it wasn’t about Shawn; everything was about “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. WCW was still doing well and wrestling was becoming mainstream, like it had been during the Hogan era. Now, Austin was going to be the man. The difference was that the Attitude era, as it came to be known, wasn’t designed to appeal to little kids — it targeted the 18- to 30-year-old audience. The storylines were more realistic and the characters were reflections of the wrestlers’ actual personalities. People started buying into the show because of the cool factor. Austin was cool, The Rock was cool, and people wanted to be like them. The fans could relate to our characters because we were like over-the-top versions of them.
The Hogan era had been much more like a cartoon, so nobody could really relate to those characters. It fit that era just fine and made a lot of money, but the cartoon thing spilled over into the ’90s, when you had a wrestling garbage man, a wrestling plumber, a wrestling stock-car driver
. . . none of them were going to catch on and strike a chord with anybody. Once Vince realized that he had to let people be themselves as wrestling characters, because it would give the fans stars they could relate to, wrestling became more popular and started winning people over.
Vince really had something special with Austin. Steve was always going to succeed because of his personality and the ideas he had. Sure, he won the King of the Ring in ’96 and did his Austin 3:16 speech when they had originally planned to give the win to Hunter, but even if Steve hadn’t won that night, he would have done his 3:16 speech at some point and got over just as much. Steve was going to be a huge deal regardless of when. King of the Ring just gave him an opportunity to make it happen a bit sooner.
I thought it was great that Steve was on top — he helped put wrestling back on the map, he appreciated becoming who he was in the business, and he gave back to everybody. If somebody takes off and becomes a superstar, I’m all for that because it makes money for everybody in the company. The funny thing is that Vince wasn’t crazy about the idea, initially. The WWF brought Steve in as a borderline cartoon character, the Ringmaster, and Steve wasn’t comfortable with it. He wanted to go out there and be a bigger version of himself; no-nonsense, middle-fingers for everyone, and cussing all the time. Vince wasn’t too keen but there are far worse things done on TV than swearing and flipping the bird at your boss. Steve got to try out his ideas and do things his way. When his business went through the roof, I’m sure Vince’s opinion changed.
Steve was always the same person. From when he was in WCW as Steve the movie projector guy to the Ringmaster to becoming “Stone Cold,” he was the same person behind the scenes. Only the gimmick changed. I always thought that if somebody wasn’t comfortable with something, they should change it. The talent should be comfortable because when they are, they will be able to give 100 percent of who they are in the ring. It worked with Steve for damn sure.
I hadn’t caught on as a wide-eyed babyface, slapping hands and acting like I’d never had a bad day in my life, because that’s not who I am. Because they were starting to make everything more realistic, I figured I’d stop being the wrestling stock-car driver and start being a proper wrestler with a realistic personality. I wanted to be a tough guy because that was me! It would have worked. The problem was that when they looked at me, they didn’t see a tough guy. They saw a guy who was good in the ring and dependable outside of it. They’d just got me back on the team and had to find something to do with me, so rather than bothering to think of a new gimmick for me, they just gave me somebody else’s.
There was only one Midnight Express — and it sure as hell wasn’t us! (photo by George Napolitano)
The Midnight Express was one of the greatest tag teams in wrestling history. They sold tickets and had great matches in the Southern territories and the NWA. The WWF had something going with an internal NWA faction and were using the original Rock ’n’ Roll Express against them. So I guess management figured they’d bring in the Midnight Express. While the Rock ’n’ Roll Express was still running, the Midnight Express had stopped a long time ago, so they just took a couple of guys who weren’t doing anything else — who turned out to be me and Bart Gunn — and called us the New Midnight Express. Their entire management of us consisted of them giving us some videotapes of the original Express and saying, “Be like Dennis and Bobby.” Nobody can! Those two formed one of the greatest tag teams of all time. Throwing Bart and me together and hoping we’d immediately develop what took Dennis Condrey and Bobby Eaton years to get was plain stupid. We had new tights with “M.E.” on them, Jim Cornette as our manager — just like the original Express — and new names to go with the gimmick. Bart became “Bodacious” Bart and I became “Bombastic” Bob. I knew it wasn’t going to work.
At least I finally got to be in WrestleMania in some capacity. The night that Steve Austin won the WWF Championship for the first time, I was in the opening match, a tag team battle royal where they threw a whole bunch of guys in the ring, including some established teams and some guys just put together for that match, and said the winners would be the top contenders for the tag championships. The reality is that nobody cared about the match and it was just there to take up time. To show you how seriously management took the match, only two teams got entrances; the team that was going to win (the Legion of Doom) and a couple of guys who were buddies with the Undertaker (Ron Simmons and the Godfather). That tells the audience right there that one of those two teams is going to win and they shouldn’t give a crap about anybody else. There were about 15 teams in that match, but the WWF totally buried everybody before the bell rang. You’d have thought it would come down to the two teams who’d had entrances but it didn’t — Godfather and Ron got eliminated along the way and it came down to the Legion of Doom and the New Midnight Express. That went about as well as you’d expect — we put them over, made them look good, collected our paychecks, and went about our business. It definitely wasn’t the WrestleMania moment
I wanted.
Bart and I got along fine and tried hard to work well together as a unit but it was obvious to us and everybody else that we were just there to be an underneath tag team, take up some air time, and have some filler matches. As usual, time was passing, I wasn’t making any real money, and I wasn’t going anywhere. Austin was taking off and a few of the other guys at the top of the card were doing well, but there was a load of the mid-card guys floating around doing nothing. Then somebody had an idea about a shoot fighting competition, which ended up becoming the Brawl for All.
Our ratings were getting better and we had drawn level with WCW again, but Vince was always looking for ways to stay ahead in the ongoing Monday Night War. They decided to take 16 of the guys who weren’t doing anything and put them in a tough-man tournament. They were going to have us go out there, on a live-TV wrestling show, and fight for real in an attempt to get some ratings. It was also an attempt to get a wrestler by the name of “Dr. Death” Steve Williams over. Jim Ross, who was in charge of talent, had been lobbying to bring his buddy Steve in for a long time but Creative didn’t know how to do it. Steve had wrestled in Japan for the majority of his
career and had a reputation as a genuine badass, so they figured they would introduce him in the Brawl for All, he’d walk through everybody, and boom, they’d have a credible guy they could leapfrog over everybody else to put up against Austin in the main events. Everybody backstage thought it was a bunch of bullshit. J.R. was shoving Steve down everybody’s throats, saying he was going to destroy everybody. Nobody had a problem with Steve before, but J.R. was putting him over so often that the boys resented him and hoped he’d get knocked out.
They got together their group of 16 mid-card wrestlers who they figured were the tough guys. They put Bart in the tournament but I wasn’t included. They didn’t think that Sparky Plugg could fight. That pissed me off. Obviously, they didn’t know that Ol’ Sparky was a tough motherfucker!
Most of the people they had in there were pretty tough. Some of them talked a good fight but couldn’t back it up. Tiger Ali Singh had been bragging that he was a shoot fighter and a bare-knuckle champion and could do this and that, but when it came to it, he chickened out and said he wouldn’t do it. They needed a replacement and Bradshaw told Bruce Prichard, who was one of the guys in charge of organizing the whole thing, “Bob may not look like anything much but he’ll surprise you. . . .” Bruce gave me a call to ask if I wanted in. I said, “Hell yeah, I don’t know why you didn’t ask me in the first place!” I was pretty excited because I figured I could make some decent money and I’d have a chance to show them how tough I actually was.
They explained the rules to us. Three rounds, one minute a round. We would get points for takedowns and knockdowns. A knockout would end it. We were told the winner would get $100,000 and that each time we fought, we would get five grand whether we won or lost. Sure, I thought — they’re not going to pay us $5,000 each match for doing this! But they genuinely did.
As soon as Steve Blackman found out he was in the tournament, he started training for it. He was dead serious about hurting people, planning to take people’s knees out to win that hundred grand. In the meeting when the rules were explained, they told us that it was anything goes. Steve said, “So that means that if I want to take somebody’s knee out with a kick, I can do it, right?” Right about then they decided they needed to make some rules. I think they got worried that Steve might kill people and you know what? He probably could have. There is nobody more dangerous than Steve Blackman, period. He knows every element of the fighting game; he’s strong, he’s smart, he’s lightning quick — he’s a well-rounded fighter. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for the rest of us, Steve hurt himself training against a 300 pound guy who rolled on Steve’s leg and blew out his knee. If that hadn’t happened, Steve would have won the whole thing, hands down.
My first match turned out to be against my tag partner, Bart Gunn. Because Bart and I were riding together, we had a chance to talk before the fight. We agreed that whatever happened, happened. I knew that Bart used to do tough-man contests too, so I had my work cut out for me. Even though he’d never wrestled a bear, he was 6'5" and 260 pounds and I was 6'1" and about 220. That’s a heck of a size difference but I wasn’t about to back down from anybody. We went out there and laid into each other. It was brutal. He hit me so fucking hard, I ended up on the other side of the ring. I have no idea how I got there but he didn’t knock me out. We went all three rounds and the judges gave the points win to Bart. It turned out to be one of the best fights in the tournament. We were still friends afterwards — we’d cleaned each other’s clocks pretty good but neither of us was mad at the other. He told me, “I hit you with some good shots — it shocked me when you didn’t go down.” I had a black eye for a solid week after that fight but he never knocked me out. I got my five grand and I opened a lot of eyes in the back by showing that I was tougher than anybody had given me credit for.
Someone who wasn’t as tough as they thought was J.R.’s boy, Steve Williams. I saw him fighting Pierre Ouellette in his first round match and he didn’t look good. They were just swinging at each other and Steve barely survived. He didn’t knock out Pierre, so it went to points and it was so clear they had gimmicked the score so it looked like Steve had dominated. I thought, “They’re going to fix the whole thing and make it a work.” I knew that if they didn’t, Steve wasn’t going to win.
Even so, Steve was up against Bart in the second round and I knew for sure Bart was going to knock him out. I’d just fought the guy and felt his punches. Steve was in trouble and he didn’t know it. Earlier, when Bart and I were driving to a show, I told him, “You know they want Steve to win — you’re fixing to throw a wrench in their whole plan.” Bart said, “Yep, I’m going to knock him out.” Later during the same journey, Bart decided to call Bruce Prichard to say, “Get ready to make that check out to me because I’m going to knock J.R.’s boy out.” Bruce said, “That’s great, man — if you do, you do.” Bart knew Bruce wasn’t taking him seriously. He said, “You think I’m kidding? I promise you, I’m going to knock him out . . .”
The night of the fight came. We were in Anaheim at the Arrowhead Pond and the TV monitor backstage was sold out. You could not get near that monitor; there was no room to move. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Steve and Bart started fighting — it was pretty even, punch for punch. I was counting the takedowns and it became clear that they weren’t going to do it legit. Steve and Bart were even but the scoring onscreen had Steve with more takedowns. In the second round, Steve started gassing. Bart was outpunching him, staying on him and taking him down. Bart owned Steve in the second round but the scorecards came up and they still had Steve ahead. All the boys in the back were getting pissed. The third round was just like the second — Bart was kicking Steve’s ass but we all knew that he was going to lose unless he knocked Steve out. With the fight nearly over, Steve was still in there and then, out of nowhere, Bart nailed him with a left hand and Steve just fucking dropped. Everybody in the back popped huge. The 60 or so people watching the monitor blew the roof off that place.
Terry Funk actually got upset with that because he felt the boys were disrespecting Steve, who is considered a god in wrestling, especially in Japan, but nobody popped because they hated Steve or wanted to see him hurt. They popped because they knew the judges had been fucking with the scorecards and the wrong man would have won. The feeling was, “Fuck you, you’re not going to screw Bart out of this.” There was no disrespect meant to Steve, just hostility towards the office for sending us all out there, telling us the whole thing was a shoot, and then trying to fix the outcome to suit their plans.
If I ever wanted any proof that I was right on this one, I got it that night. I was getting changed near the trainers’ area. They had dragged Steve from the ring to the back and were checking him over. Steve’s jaw was dislocated and his hamstring was torn. I heard Steve say to the guys who were working on him, “I don’t know what they’re going to do now . . . they already paid me the money to win this thing.” Jim Ross was absolutely furious. For weeks, he’d been telling everybody that Steve was going to walk all over the competition, and now I had found out they’d paid him the prize money before he’d even won the tournament. I couldn’t believe it.
Bart was up against the Godfather next. Godfather was a big, tough motherfucker but I knew Bart would take him. I was watching the fight backstage and ’Taker was there, sitting in a chair in front of the monitor. A lot of people were watching again and I said out loud, “This is gonna be interesting.” ’Taker turned around, looked at me, and said, “That’s your boy, isn’t it?”
I said, “You’re damn right it is.”
He said, “Fifty bucks?”
We shook on it.
’Taker thought Godfather would take Bart out no problem. Bart ended up knocking his ass out in the third round. ’Taker didn’t say a word; he just got up and walked off. I thought he was pissed but he came back later that day and handed me a fifty. Easy money. Bart went on to the final against Bradshaw and knocked him out colder t
han a well digger’s ass. There were rumors that, after Bart knocked out Steve Williams, they told Godfather and Bradshaw to take a dive. Why would anybody drop their hands to get knocked out, especially when there’s a lot of money on the line? Bart just knocks motherfuckers out; end of story.
In the office, they wanted Bart to get his ass kicked. J.R. was being vindictive because Bart fucked their plan up and fucked his buddy up. They paid Bart the prize money, they’d already paid the same amount to Steve Williams, and they had to pay everyone else for their matches, so the whole thing must have cost them $350,000 in payouts, without giving them the result they wanted. Steve couldn’t work with Austin now and they couldn’t put Bart in his place. Bart had been around for six years as an underneath guy that nobody was going to buy against Austin no matter what management did. Even though J.R. was wrong about just “knowing” that Steve would walk through everybody, he didn’t get any heat for it; Bart did. J.R. said he didn’t have hard feelings towards Bart but he did for damn sure. The next thing you know, they’d talked Bart into fighting Butterbean at WrestleMania.
Butterbean was this huge, fat boxer who threw too strong a punch for anyone in the WWF to go toe to toe with (except Blackman — Blackman would have killed him). This guy was a pro boxer. I don’t care who you are, you don’t play someone else’s game. None of us should have tried to box him but they got into Bart’s head and brainwashed him into thinking that he could beat Butterbean in a straight-up boxing match. Bart bought into the hype. He didn’t change as a person but he did start overestimating himself. If Bart had gone into it like a regular street fight, he would have shot in there and taken him down because Bart’s a good amateur wrestler. If he was going to stand there and box the guy, he had no chance. Boxing is about angles. Fighting has no rules. Butterbean said that he didn’t want fighting — just boxing. That was the deal for him to come in. The WWF still promoted the match as under Brawl for All rules but Bart was told it had to be a straight-up boxing match. They sent him off for 10 weeks to train with Danny Hodge in New York. Bart lost weight and got into awesome shape, but I don’t care who you are, 10 weeks of training won’t prepare you to beat a professional boxer. The whole deal was set up purely to humiliate Bart because he had humiliated Jim Ross’s boy “Dr Death.” The office knew he didn’t have a chance. Even if Bart had beaten Butterbean, they would have found another way to screw with him.