by Bob Holly
PART 7: KEEPING IT REAL
I was never comfortable wrestling someone who worked really light. When they hit you, you’re thinking, “Did they even hit me, and where?” I prefer it when somebody lays it in stiff so you know what you’re selling. You don’t want the crowd to see through your punches.
Now, you can pull a punch but you can’t fake a chop. Anybody can do an overhand chop, but there’s a technique to a backhand chop. They look good, they sound good. Flair was good at it, and so were Benoit, Shawn, and Jericho. I consider myself one of the best. Kevin Dunn, who is in charge of production, told me that his team always got a kick out of it when I’d chop — they’d even turn the sound up in the production truck. Benoit told me after one match, “You chopped me harder than Inoki — that was the hardest I’ve ever been chopped.” That explains why he didn’t chop me that often; he was worried I’d chop him back!
Vince took me aside at one point and told me I wasn’t allowed to chop any more. Everybody was throwing chops and Vince wanted to save the move for Flair. They even put a sign up in Gorilla that said NO CHOPS. Shawn started doing them again anyway. I went to Vince and asked why I couldn’t chop. He said nobody wanted to see that. I argued that everybody popped when I chopped. He came back with, “That’s a cheap pop.” I said it didn’t matter if it was entertaining the fans. He replied, “If you were in a real fight, would you really chop somebody?” I asked him, “If I were in a real fight, would I really jump off the top rope onto somebody?” That sort of pissed him off. He just said, “No chops. Nobody chops,” and walked off.
You have to adjust your style for different people. Shawn is smaller than a lot of the guys and a bit fragile because of his injuries, so you’ve got to be careful with him. He’s not going to be a pussy and complain if you catch him with a shot here and there, but everybody knows to look after him. I liked working with the guys who gave as good as they got. Jericho, Benoit, Finlay, Undertaker — you don’t have to worry when you’re in there with them. They can take it.
Who was the stiffest wrestler I ever worked with? Bradshaw. Hands down. He held absolutely nothing back. If he knew you could take it, he gave it to you. I enjoyed working with John. When I was up against him, I knew I had it coming and I knew he was going to bring it. Believe me, any chance I got to give something back to him, I took it. One night at a TV taping, I was supposed to hit him with a chair. He found me backstage and said, “I know I’ve got it coming to me. . . .” I told him, “Yes, you do, motherfucker.” I tried to rip his head clean off with that steel chair and he told me after that it about knocked him out. He loved it. It was give-and-take with us. Whenever he’d punch me or kick me in the head, he really would punch me or kick me in the head. He’d never do it full force but he’d lay it in there enough so that it fucking hurt. I never had to worry about John bellyaching. He wasn’t afraid of a fight and he wasn’t afraid to lose, either. He liked to screw with people until they wanted to fight him. That’s just John. He got under the skin of Joey Styles — one of the announcers — so much that little Joey took a swing at him and knocked him out. It wasn’t a big deal to John. He figured, “I fucked with him and he knocked me out, whoop-de-doo.” He didn’t like the guys who cowered in the corner and wanted to be left alone. He would fight a circle saw — he doesn’t care if he wins or loses, he just wants to fight.
CHAPTER 19
OWEN HART
My run as Hardcore Champion came to an end on May 23, 1999, in the second match of the Over the Edge pay-per-view. Al put me through a table, pinned me, and went off with the title. I went to the back while they were clearing the debris out of the ring in order to do a big comedy superhero entrance for Owen Hart. They were going to lower him into the ring on a cable from a catwalk at the top of the building.
I got to Gorilla, shook Al’s hand, and started discussing my match with the agent, talking about the mistakes we made, what we could have done better, and, all of sudden, we heard Bruce Prichard shouting, “Owen fell!” He went running off and I remember thinking, “Owen fell? What, did he fall off the stage?” Then it hit me that we were at a pay-per-view and we didn’t have a stage. Oh shit . . . he fell from the ceiling . . .
Everybody scrambled, the paramedics ran out to the ring, Bruce flew past me with some other people. It was chaos and nobody knew what had happened. All we knew was that Owen fell.
The other boys were in the back and didn’t know what was going on but I was right outside Gorilla. I didn’t move. The paramedics worked on him in the ring for what seemed like forever. Eventually, they got him onto a gurney and wheeled him to the back. I was no more than 15 feet away as it went past. Owen’s arms were hanging off the side of the gurney and the paramedics were pumping him the whole way to the ambulance. There was no bringing him back — I saw Owen’s face and it was pure white. It was surreal. The paramedics loaded him into the ambulance, still trying to bring him back. He couldn’t die at the arena — he had to die at the hospital. But I knew he was gone.
During the day, the word had been going around that Owen wasn’t comfortable with the stunt. He’d been rehearsing it and he wasn’t happy. He didn’t talk to me directly about it, but I overheard him saying he didn’t want to do it. The guy he was talking to said, “Just tell them you’re not comfortable with it.” Owen replied, “You know how it is if you tell them ‘no’ — they just end up firing you.” He was right — the office always said, “Tell us if you’re not comfortable doing something, we’ll do something else,” but we all knew that “something else” meant we wouldn’t be working for the company anymore. You did as you were told or you were gone. Owen’s back was against the wall and he had a wife and two young children to feed.
I know Sting had often done a similar stunt in WCW and never had a problem. I guess he had just been lucky every time he did it. Or Owen was unlucky. What we were all told was that Owen had accidentally disconnected himself from the cable. He was wearing a cape as part of his costume and when he flipped the cape back, he hit the latch that released the cable. So when he stepped off the catwalk, he didn’t have anything attached to him and just fell. The cable was still intact in the ceiling. It was awful. The guy who hooked Owen up didn’t do his job. If somebody is about to jump 80 feet, you keep your eyes on the cable. Owen couldn’t see if it was attached because it was behind him. The stunt coordinator must have taken his eyes off Owen when he flipped his cape back and the cable unhooked. In my opinion, he should have gone to Owen and checked that everything was hooked up the moment before he jumped. If somebody had just double-checked Owen, it never would have happened.
Despite Owen’s death, they kept on going with the pay-per-view. I didn’t agree with that. Vince should have canceled the show out of respect for Owen and his family. Regardless of how many tickets got sold, how many PPVs had been bought, I don’t think there’d have been a scene if the show had been canceled. Everybody would have understood. A few weeks before I wrote this chapter, I watched an IndyCar race in Las Vegas — a couple of laps in, there was a crash in which Dan Wheldon died. It was the final race of the season and IndyCar made the decision to stop the race. All the fans understood. Even though a lot of money was on the line in that race — millions of dollars spent by the race teams to get their cars and crews there and their million-dollar race cars prepared to run the final race of the season — but Indycar still canceled the race out of respect for the driver. Even though there was far less money for the WWF to lose at Over the Edge, Vince kept the show going because he was afraid he was going to have to pay everybody back for the PPV. Somebody’s life is more important to me than some money.
After the fall, you could have heard a pin drop backstage. It stayed like that for days. We did a tribute show to Owen the next night on RAW. I wrestled Ken Shamrock for about 90 seconds. They only had so many positions for so many guys and I just happened to be one of the guys on the show. Without wishing to seem disrespectful, it was just li
ke any other show to me. I had a job to do and the show had to go on — but I didn’t forget about Owen. I thought about him and his family. It bothered me. I knew Owen. I wasn’t close to him but I was friendly with him. We talked a lot. Many people remember Owen as the guy who ribbed everyone. He never messed with me, never got me with any of his ribs. I wouldn’t have minded if he had though — they were all in good fun. Owen would rib himself in order to rib someone else. He was one of the true good guys of the wrestling business and it’s a shame he had to go so early. It’s just one of those things — it happened and you’ve got to move on, but you can’t forget about him.
I don’t know how it affected everybody else in the company. Everybody reacts differently. Once you’re in the wrestling business, you’ve got to learn to shut things off pretty quickly or you’re not going to survive. Everybody wears a mask and stays stoic. You won’t make it if you let things bother you. Sometimes, you have to be almost inhumane, shut your feelings off, and go on. That’s what happened.
CHAPTER 20
BIG SHOT & FAMILY MAN
Over the summer, I ended up doing an angle with both the Big Show and Kane. These are two big, tough guys — both around seven feet tall, very strong, very heavy. So I went out there and declared myself a “super heavyweight” too. One time with Kane, they had me knock him out and beat him, 1-2-3, and then stand over him, jawjacking and talking a bunch of BS to him. He sat up, grabbed my throat, and choke-slammed me. It was a good angle and I couldn’t believe they were putting me over upper-level guys like Kane now. I was getting paid well, I was respected in my work, and I was finally going somewhere. They let me start cutting promos too — that was fun. I developed this cocky, no-bullshit, don’t-back-down character. I told Show that, if he was the Big Show, I was the Big Shot. The name stuck. I was getting over more than I’d ever been before. Sure, I got my ass handed to me a lot by those two monsters but I got to look competitive with them, like I was on their level, and it was damn entertaining. Even Chris Jericho, who is pretty hard to impress, told me that he loved that gimmick. If you can entertain Jericho, you can entertain anybody.
The most memorable moment of the run was probably a hardcore match I did with Show in Memphis. We fought outside of the arena and ended up by a wall. A car was parked above us. Show slammed me against the wall, then went up to that car and pushed it over the edge, right on top of me. At least that’s what the viewers saw! They did it with camera angles. When he went up to the car, I rolled out of the way. He pushed it off the edge and I crawled back into position to make it look like I was underneath the car. It was great TV, very entertaining. They ribbed me about that angle when we talked about it in advance; they said, “We want you to lay right here and Show will push the car over, but don’t worry, it will probably miss you!” They got a laugh out of that. Hell no, I wouldn’t have done that. I’m not that hardcore . . . and not that stupid! I was having too much fun with my new gimmick and getting squashed by a car would have literally killed everything. As it was, things were going to get killed soon anyway.
Everything was going great. The Big Shot had come out of nowhere and it was getting over. Ed Koskey helped me with the gimmick; he had a lot of ideas for me and ended up writing a lot of my stuff. Management assigns someone to write for specific talent; for example, Brian Gewirtz wrote for Edge and Christian. Ed was my guy. Typically, when something gets over, they run with it. For some reason, even though the Big Shot thing was working, they pulled the plug on it. It seems to be a curse that follows me — as soon as I do anything that gets over, the plug gets pulled.
I showed up in Milwaukee for a TV taping and Bruce Prichard came over. “You’re not the Big Shot anymore — now you have a cousin.” I thought it sucked that they hadn’t called me in advance to let me know, especially since the Big Shot deal was getting over. At least we kept doing something with the “super heavyweight” thing — my new cousin, Crash Holly, was a small guy who looked like Elroy from The Jetsons, but we would go out and say we were both super heavyweights and could fight anyone, any time. Crash started carrying a set of scales with him and we announced ourselves as weighing over 400 pounds each.
It did puzzle me at first as to why we weren’t going to carry on with the Big Shot deal but the cousins storyline was something to keep me going. I was easy to please as long as I was in a storyline. I wasn’t one of the prima donnas who got pissed off because I didn’t get my way. A lot of the other talent did and still do. They feel like they’re bigger than the company and they basically get spoiled. I might have grown frustrated when something was getting over and then they changed the direction, but that was their decision, not mine. I was happy enough to be in a storyline. I learned to not ask questions because the only answer I ever got was, “That’s the direction we want to go.” You’re never going to get a straight answer and it won’t do any good to try to figure out why they do what they do — you’ll go crazy thinking like that. You go with the flow, throw ideas out there, and hope they run with some of them. It’s like throwing darts at a dartboard — you hope you hit the bullseye but it’s almost never going to happen. You just keep throwing and hoping.
I still got to cut promos with the cousins angle — that made my job much more enjoyable. I enjoyed the wrestling but doing promos every week just adds to the enjoyment of your job. Back then, we had creative freedom as long as we hit the bullet points they gave you. Having Crash to play off was good fun. He was someone else to focus on and he became my whipping boy. I was constantly putting him down, belittling him, and using him for my own entertainment. We would end up fighting all the time and we’d beat the crap out of each other. One minute, we’d be tag team partners fighting against others wrestlers, and the next minute, we’d be fighting with each other. Everybody loved that gimmick and that ended up getting over too. Ed Koskey wanted to do a vignette at Christmas — “a Holly family Christmas” — with us in a trailer home. It was a great idea; we were going to get some people to play inbred family members and have a dysfunctional family Christmas. They didn’t do it in the end. That’s a shame because it would have been funny as hell and I know we could have pulled it off. That would have been great entertainment.
After a while, they stopped me and Crash fighting all the time and settled us down into a regular tag team. It sort of took the edge off our act. I wondered if somebody in the office had a problem with me, or if one of the top wrestlers felt threatened, or something like that. It seemed that every time anything I did was getting over, my direction got changed to make sure I didn’t get over more than some of the other wrestlers. I didn’t understand. Why would you take away a character that everybody loves?
Crash and I won the Tag Team Championship from The Rock and Mankind towards the end of ’99. We lost it a week or two later to Mankind and Al Snow. Winning the belts wasn’t a pat on the back to me or Crash, we were just in the right place at the right time. They needed to get the belts off Rock and Mick, and we happened to be the team in the middle. They were moving the belts around so much at that point that they had no value anyway. I didn’t have any pride in winning the titles that time. Some of the other times I’ve won titles have been fulfilling because I knew that I was being used and I was in a storyline, but in the grand scheme of things, what had I really won? It’s pure fantasy — I didn’t beat anybody, they let me win. I was told to be champion.
Don’t get me wrong, there is value in being a champion sometimes. If you become the WWE Champion or the World Champion, you get paid a lot more because you’re carrying the company. Getting one of the big belts is the big payoff. If you are IC or US Champion, you get a little extra money. Not much, but something. Getting the tag titles means absolutely nothing, money-wise. It’s just a label and something else to carry through customs. That’s why I don’t feel any sort of pride for winning a title from The Rock or any sort of shame for losing a title to Al Snow; the people losing the titles are told to let the other guy
s win. So what did you win exactly?
Crash and I winning the titles was, for the most part, the end of our storyline. We were going to go our separate ways and do away with the whole super heavyweight gimmick. I could have acted pissed off, resentful, or whatever else, but they were going to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. We still worked with and against each other over the next year or so, but our “fighting Holly cousins” story was finished and it was time for me to do something else. I’d been on most of the pay-per-views and been used pretty much all the time during ’99 so I wondered what was going to happen next. This time, it seemed that I was going to be fighting a woman.
Triple H’s former bodyguard and girlfriend-at-the-time Chyna had been working with my old friend Jeff Jarrett. Jeff had returned to the WWF after having a poor run in WCW and Vince let him come back in order to humiliate him on TV. Vince is a businessman and signs people because he wants to make money with them but I think he also likes to set them up to humiliate them if they’ve wronged him. This time, Jeff ended up with the upper hand.
Jeff’s contract was coming to an end and Jim Ross was told to sign him to an extension. For whatever reason, it slipped through the cracks and Jeff kept quiet about his contractual status. They had been building a match between Jeff and Chyna for weeks. It was one of the featured matches at the No Mercy pay-per-view and Chyna was going to make history by becoming the first female IC champion. The PPV was on Sunday and it turned out that Jeff’s contract had expired the day before. He walked into the arena for the PPV without his gear and went straight to Vince. Backstage, we all could hear the yelling in Vince’s office. Jeff was demanding that Vince pay him all the money he was owed from previous events and the money for the match he was going to do that night or he wasn’t going to go to the ring. Shane, Vince’s son, was really vocal — he was cussing Jeff out and was ready to beat the shit out of him. Jeff is a mild-mannered guy who wouldn’t fight anybody, so he just sat there and held his ground.