The Hardcore Truth

by Bob Holly

  We were set to have our match at the Royal Rumble — and it was a pretty big deal for me to be in the WWE Championship match on one of the three biggest shows of the year. It was definitely the highest up the card I had ever been. You could say it was the biggest match of my career. We had been given 15 minutes, including our entrances. There was enough time there to build up some drama and make me look like I might actually be able to beat Brock and win the title. I knew that nobody was really taking me that seriously as a contender but if I was able to look strong against Brock, that would really help me. We laid out a pretty good match — even though Brock hadn’t wanted to work with me, he was very giving in the ring and unafraid to sell for me.

  When we got to Gorilla to warm up, we were told, “You’ve got eight minutes now — including entrances.” They halved the length of the biggest match of my career so that Shawn and Hunter, who were following us, could have the extra time and go long. I thought it was selfish as hell. They had both worked on top for years — including working together on pay-per-view four times in the past 18 months! They would go on to work with each other another four times on PPV in 2004. All main events. You’re telling me they needed those extra seven minutes more than Brock and I did?

  We had to throw out whole chunks of our match. A lot of the drama was lost. I thought it ended up pretty decent but at about six and a half minutes, I believe it is one of the shortest WWE title matches ever. Hunter and Shawn then went out and wrestled for nearly 23 minutes — and they had 29 minutes with entrances and post-match. 32 minutes if you include the video package before the match. With video package, entrances, and match, we had a fraction over 10 minutes. That was it — my run on top. One short match with Brock that played second-fiddle to Shawn and Hunter working for the millionth time. Maybe management thought I wasn’t over enough to deserve more time but I was what they made me. They treated me like an afterthought pretty much the whole way through my return and my run with Brock. I figured I would at least get one good payoff for my Rumble match. I’d heard that being in a world title match at the Rumble means about forty to fifty grand for the guy doing the job because it’s an advertised championship match; it’s one of the highlights of the show. When I got that check in the mail, I couldn’t believe it. Five thousand dollars. You think Shawn and Hunter got five thousand dollars for their match?

  Brock didn’t stick around long after that match. He’d reached a point where he said, “This isn’t for me.” He got on TV, was heavily pushed for two years, beat almost everybody, and then decided he’d had enough. He was criticized for doing that but what was he supposed to do? He didn’t ask to be pushed that much to get launched into stardom. He worked as hard as they worked him. WWE was always going to push him to the moon. He was this huge guy who had a great look and he could actually wrestle. He was going to draw, so WWE was going to push him. Brock was never arrogant or expectant. As successful as he got, he didn’t change — he never acted like he was above everybody else. Once he realized that he didn’t want to be there anymore, he couldn’t be expected to stick around for six months to put over the people who made him a star. He had other opportunities and he took them. At least he was man enough to stand up in a production meeting and tell everybody he was quitting. How many other guys stood up in front of all the boys and said that? Brock is all right by me. WWE made money off the guy and continued to do so even when he wasn’t working there.

  Brock’s last night with the company during that run was WrestleMania XX, a night that ended with two of my best friends, Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit, in the ring as WWE Champion and World Champion respectively. Eddie had won his title from Brock the month before. I was happy for him because he’d overcome his demons, worked hard to accomplish something, and reached the top of the industry. ’Mania was Chris Benoit’s crowning moment, with him winning the World title in the main event of the biggest show of the year. That’s success right there. They both made it to the top, as far as you can go — I was so happy to see my friends succeed. I wasn’t the only one. Everybody — from the fans in the arena to the boys backstage — had wanted Chris to win the title at ’Mania against Hunter and Shawn. Everybody wanted to see it but nobody expected that management would actually go through with it. Everyone was tired of seeing the same guys get the title over and over. The World title always seemed to stay with the same guys — Hunter’s new Clique. If you go back and look at who had the World title from its inception in 2002 through to the beginning of 2006, in only six of those 40 months was that belt not around the waist of somebody in Hunter’s circle. Benoit was allowed to have it for a few months, Goldberg was allowed to have it for a few months, but the rest of the time it was Shawn, Randy, Batista, or Hunter. Usually Hunter. They just wanted all the money for themselves. As I said before, it’s selfish — just like when they cut back my one match at the top of the card, basically ending my comeback push. I didn’t even get to work on the card at WrestleMania. They found 50 spots on the show that year. Fifty spots and after 10 years on the payroll, I wasn’t in their top 50.

  They put together a couple of 10-minute matches with eight or 10 guys in there to try and fit everybody on the card; the payoff those guys got would have been nothing, like a thousand dollars, but it was still a chance to gain exposure from being on the biggest show of the year. I paid my dues in that company, I crawled before I got a chance to think about walking. Other guys would come in, the company would invest money in them, and then they’d get fired or leave — and I’m not talking about Brock here, I’m talking about guys much lower on the card, guys who were no good and were never going to draw a dime for the company — and I was still there, not complaining, doing what I was told, working hard, and still being overlooked. It was hurtful. That year especially, I felt like I deserved to be in WrestleMania.

  PART 12: WRESTLING FANS

  Whether I won or lost — and I lost more than I won — the fans who supported me were loyal. You can’t ask for better fans than that. I always wanted to go out and do my best for that guy or girl who paid to cheer me on. I might not have had as many fans as some of the other boys but I loved the shit out of the fans who supported me. There are some strange ones — I’ve been asked to sign bras and panties, a baby’s arm, a diaper . . . but you treat all the fans the same. I like to treat them all like they’re my only fan.

  Even though I’ve now retired, I still get noticed in public. I’ll see the look on someone’s face, how they’ll start eyeballing me and wagging the finger. “You look just like that wrestler,” they’ll say,

  “. . . like that guy on TV.” Now, if I’m in a crowded public place, I don’t want to attract a lot of attention. I’m always cordial to anybody who approaches me but I won’t always admit who I am. It sort of depends how I’m feeling that day. A lot of the time, I’ll ask them a trick question, just to see what they do.

  “Hardcore Holly?” I’ll say.

  “Yes! That’s him — you look just like him.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot. Everybody tells me that. I don’t watch wrestling, so I don’t know. Is he any good? If I look like him, he’d better be good!”

  Not once has anyone ever said, “No, he’s terrible” — they usually say, “Yeah, he’s really good.” A lot of people say, “They should have done more with him.” I leave it there but often I then feel guilty and end up going back to the person and saying, “Yeah, I’m the wrestler.” If the person is a wrestling fan, they get a kick out of meeting a guy who worked for WWE.

  One time, after I’d put my groceries into the car, I decided to go back and talk to a guy who had asked if I was “Hardcore Holly.” I went all over the store but couldn’t find him — I actually felt really horrible about it because I think it would have made his day. A couple of months later, I was having some work done on my basement and one of the guys doing the work just happened to be that same guy! Needless to say, I apologized to him and told him that I had tried to f
ind him that day to let him know he was right. He thought it was pretty funny, and after I’d given him an 8 x 10 autographed picture, all was forgiven.

  At the arenas, some of the fans take it too far. They’ve bought a ticket, so it’s their right to yell things and boo or cheer who they want, but there comes a point when they should watch their mouths and show some respect. At a house show back when I was on one of my heel runs, I’d just got to the ring and the crowd was booing and hurling abuse at me; it was a full house with about 13,000 people there, so it was pretty loud, but I could hear one guy about five rows back above everybody else. He was acting like a big shot, showing off in front of his buddies. I shouted that he should sit down before I came over there and beat his ass. Standard heel behavior. This guy wouldn’t shut up though; he got louder, yelling and cussing, daring me to come over the railing and saying that he would beat my ass. I said, “Yeah, you dare me?” I’m not one to back down from a dare, so I jumped over the railing and walked right up to him. I got in his face and said, “You gonna beat my ass?” He didn’t even look at me — he just sat right down and shut up. I don’t blame him; this is back when I was gassed to the gills and ready to go! That whole arena started in on him, chanting, “You’re a pussy!” Even his friends joined in. Suddenly I was the babyface. . . . That was pretty good.

  Another time, a fan crossed the line at a show in Montreal. This was back in the Attitude era. Pretty much anything went, but I felt there were still boundaries of common decency. This guy in the crowd just stuck his camera right in my face, an inch or two from my eyes, and took a picture. I wheeled around and said, “You’re not even gonna ask if you can take a picture?” He just laughed and said, “I don’t have to ask you for shit.” Well, I thought that was pretty disrespectful so I told him, “You take another picture and see what happens.” He kept on laughing and said, “You ain’t gonna do shit to me,” and stuck the camera right in my face again. I smacked that sumbitch out of his hands so fast that he didn’t have time to blink. It hit the ground and smashed into pieces. I don’t mind people taking pictures, but if you’re going to stick a camera right in my face, you’d better ask first and show a little respect. The guy wasn’t laughing anymore. He said, “You can’t do that!” I looked him in the eyes, said, “I just did,” and walked off.

  Sometimes, you get famous people coming to shows and thinking they’re allowed to act differently because they’re celebrities. I was wrestling D-Lo Brown in Detroit and we worked our way onto the floor so I could get a hockey stick from underneath the ring. Just as I was fixing to nail D-Lo with it, somebody in the front row grabbed it. I jumped over the railing to confront the guy and he got in my face — so I shoved that motherfucker back three rows. He had a whole bunch of friends with him who went over and picked him up off the floor. When I got to the back after the match, I was told that the group of guys were the Detroit Red Wings and the guy I’d shoved was considered the toughest of the tough in the NHL. Tough or not, he didn’t do dick-all to me after I shoved him on his sorry ass!

  I look at male and female wrestling fans as all the same. Some of the boys don’t — they have a different view of the female fans. I never put myself in a position that encouraged any of the females to throw themselves at me and wouldn’t have gone for it if they had. There are some crazy fans out there that end up stalking wrestlers, and if you give them an opening, they’re going to take it. I never crossed that line. Sure, I took in a few strays here and there during my travels but they weren’t fans, just women I met on the road — usually at a gym or a restaurant.

  At WrestleMania one year, I was in the hotel gym with Steve Austin. I was on the StairMaster and he was working out next to me. There was this girl who worked there, a really good looking woman. Austin decided to fuck with me so as she walked past, he blurted out, “This guy wants to meet you.” We talked for a bit and Steve made himself scarce. I think he was trying to embarrass me a little but it didn’t work. I ended up spending pretty much the whole week at the woman’s house. Thanks for the assist there, Steve!

  CHAPTER 28

  BACK ON MY BACK

  2004 saw Bradshaw win the WWE title after having been a mid-card guy for years. Two things led to him getting the big push. Number one, Eddie was finding the pressure of being champion hard to take and he pushed hard for John to be the guy to take it off him. Number two, John and Vince had become really close because John, who is a real-life investment expert, had given Vince a heap of great ideas on that front — they were in the stock market together and that brought him and Vince closer. They needed a new heel, someone they could depend on at the top of the card, and John was in the right place at the right time with the right connections. I thought it was a good move to put the belt on somebody different rather than just cycling through the same guys, but I wasn’t sure it would work with John. I was happy to be wrong there because it ended up working really well! John knew how to get heat and be a good heel. They kept the belt on him for a long time, and rightfully so. I loved his new J.B.L. gimmick but I also kind of wondered why they still weren’t trying to do something different with me. I’d been around longer than him and I felt I could be just as good as him in a character. Yet they went with him on top and I kept on working underneath.

  After working against Brock, I found myself back in the familiar position of working with newer talent and putting them over. It wasn’t like when Jim Ross asked me to test Randy out a couple of years before though. Johnny Laurinaitis was in charge of talent now and he never asked me to “test anybody out.” Instead, he wanted me to go out there, make the new guys work, and see what they could do. He knew he could trust me to carry anybody to a decent match and that if a new guy could hang with me without complaining, they were worth keeping around. Over the next year or so, I got to work with almost everybody on the Smackdown roster. There were a few people I thought had real potential.

  Kevin Fertig came in as Mordecai, a sort of anti-Undertaker, and the idea was to build him as an opponent for the Dead Man. I worked with him at a PPV and put him over — I liked that match. Kevin and I had good matches. That guy can go and he’s as rough and tough as anybody out there. He’s super nice and very respectful, even if he can be a huge ass-kisser. He went as far as he could to live his gimmick, wearing white clothes, white shoes, white shirt everywhere he went. He was working hard to get the Mordecai gimmick over but he could only go so far without the writers and Creative on board. They lost interest in him after a couple of months and sent him back down to the developmental territories, saying he needed to learn how to work properly. I don’t know why they did that — that guy could work just fine. They brought him back as a vampire a few years later, got bored again, and then fired him. That blows my mind.

  Orlando Jordan was also a great worker. He was doing fine until it became apparent that he liked young guys. He ended up losing his job because he had all these young boys hanging around with him at the hotels, and that wasn’t good for business. We’re not talking illegal young — but it’s not great publicity. Management wasn’t comfortable with it. Another shame, because he was a great worker and a great guy. Who cares about his sexual preferences? After all, Pat Patterson works there!

  Mercury and Nitro (John Morrison) were good — you can’t deny that. I had some great matches with them both when I was tagging with Charlie Haas and when I was tagging with Booker T on house shows. That was what they did with some of the singles guys when Creative didn’t have anything for them — they dumped us in a tag team to keep us busy.

  Charlie Haas was good too. He worked his ass off, especially when he and Shelton Benjamin were tagging. Very few people know this but Shelton and Charlie would get to the arenas early and work on their tag stuff. They’d grab a couple of enhancement guys and head to the ring at about 1 or 2 p.m., where they’d sweat their asses off. Working with Arn Anderson, they tried to improve as much as possible. Charlie really wanted to succeed.

&n
bsp; Another tag team they brought in was the Highlanders. Rory was very respectful. Robbie, on the other hand, was a smartass who had an attitude because now that he was in WWE, he thought he was a big star. Creative were going to go with them as one of the top teams but Robbie blew that. Rory knew his place in the locker-room pecking order but Robbie thought he was the man.

  I was doing a match in Europe with them when they first arrived and I threw a few chops at Robbie. He didn’t sell any of them. Then he grabbed me and tried to turn me so he could start chopping. I blocked him and asked what the hell he was doing. He said, “Fucking turn around!” Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. If he was a guy I knew and had worked with enough to trust, I probably would have let him turn me, but I didn’t know these guys yet. I didn’t know if they were going to hot shot me or take liberties or whatever. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let this new guy take over the match. I grabbed him by his throat, threw him back in the corner, and started to pummel him. I told him right then and there, “Don’t you tell me what to do ever again, motherfucker.” I tagged out quickly after that because I didn’t want to lose my cool for real. When Charlie and I got to the back, I went up to Robbie and said, “Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do out there? Who are you to not sell my chops? Are you our World Champion? I’ve been here a lot longer than you, you’ve only just come in so you ain’t shit. Just because we’re putting you over, it doesn’t mean you’re better than us.” I explained that my job was to do what was right for the match, not what was right for me or him. That is something you learn with experience. He was just doing things for no apparent reason. I told him he needed to listen to me in the future because I worked for the match, not for myself. We never had a problem after that, but he got a lot of heat from the boys for disrespecting me. He went to watch a TNA show live and was shown on TV in the crowd while he was under contract to WWE. What a fucking dumb move that was. They both got let go for that.