by Bob Mould
Jim gradually “smartened me up,” as they call it in the business. When you smarten up a “mark,” or layman, you show him how it all works. Much of the wrestling business is an extension of carnival culture—basically, working the marks (that is, deceiving and manipulating the unknowing audience). Even the dialect, which is a type of pig latin language that, in later years, became mainstreamed through constant use in rap music, comes from the carny world. Jim taught me how to spizeak a little cizarny, explained most of the insider terms, and started letting me see inside the business. He showed me a little bit of the dressing room, introduced me to a couple of the boys, and generally explained how things work behind the curtain.
In late 1985 Jim brought me along to a small show in northern Minnesota. Jim was the ring announcer and I was the timekeeper. After the show Jim and I went out to dinner with a bunch of the boys and were joined by one of the main promoters in the area, Wally Karbo. All the wrestlers who fought earlier in the evening were sitting together at this big banquet table, and Wally is buying us dinner. He’s telling all these war stories about hookers and drinking, guns, stealing money, all this crazy shit. Old-time wrestling made rock and roll look like church. This was way cooler than I ever imagined. On the drive home, Jim said, “You have got to keep this to yourself. I’m letting you see this, but you have to protect the business.”
In early 1986 when Jim tour-managed Hüsker Dü, I was writing articles for a fanzine based in Dayton, Ohio, called Hardcore Wrestling, which covered both punk rock and pro wrestling. It was thick, a hundred-plus pages. We’d write about wrestling and we’d write about punk rock and just throw it all together. Anyone who followed the band knew I was into pro wrestling. I mentioned it in interviews, and often wore wrestling-related T-shirts in press photos.
On that tour Jim invited a longtime friend of his, Gary Juster, to attend our show at the 9:30 Club in DC. Gary was the Northeast promoter for the National Wrestling Alliance. He and I spent a good amount of the evening talking about wrestling, and we then stayed in touch. After I moved to Hoboken in 1989, Kevin and I would drive down to the wrestling shows in Philadelphia and Baltimore and spend time with Gary and his wife, Beverly. Gary had become the arena booker for World Championship Wrestling, an international brand commonly known as WCW, for most of North America. We talked about things our work had in common, like routing tours, booking buildings, and promoting through media outlets. Gary quickly figured out that I was “smart to the business” and started introducing me to some of the creative people at WCW.
One in particular: a gentleman named Jim Barnett. Jim was one of the most successful promoters in the wrestling business; he’d been involved in the Dumont Network stuff in the 1950s and, years later, made millions promoting in Australia. He once lived in a Fifth Avenue penthouse filled with millions of dollars’ worth of original art—a first-class lifestyle of the rich and famous. I sat with Jim at arena shows in Baltimore and critiqued the action as an educated fan, and he would listen, saying, “Interesting, interesting, OK.”
My friendship with Gary grew through the 1990s, and he introduced me to more key people at WCW. They were interested in the ideas I suggested—not a lot, but at least they listened. I was studying the business through newsletters, watching Japanese wrestling videotapes, and gathering information that was not, at that pre-internet time, easy to get. Even as far back as 1986, I’d been attending wrestling conventions in Kansas City and Las Vegas, and I’d met a lot of the old-time hands who wised me up to a lot of the inner workings. I was carrying around a fairly deep history of the business—more than most people who weren’t in it, and maybe as much as a lot of people who were.
So I was pretty excited years later, when in the summer of 1999, Gary Juster, J. J. Dillon, an ex-wrestler who was the head of WCW talent coordination, and then CFO Bill Busch told me big changes in management were about to happen and that I should sit tight and watch. Sure enough, on Friday, September 9, the key person in charge was released from his position. J.J. and Gary included me on a conference call and said, “We want you to come in and sit in on the creative team meetings—which is the writing of the shows, creating characters and story lines, deciding who wins and loses, who gets the most TV time and the championships. Gary says you have great ideas, so we want you to come in and help write the shows. We have a pay-per-view in Cincinnati on Sunday night. Can you come in tomorrow?”
“Of course,” I said. I was thrilled that I had a shot at what was always a dream job for me.
“Great. We want you to come in, critique the show, and give some ideas on direction.”
I flew to the Raleigh-Durham airport and arrived at the Lawrence Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem. In the bosses’ trailer, Bill Busch and I watched the live feed that was going out on pay-per-view. Bill asked me, “What do you think of the product?”
I had some very definite ideas. “You’ve got to have all these guys that are really good technical workers in the middle of the show to give you extra minutes,” I said, “and the main event guys need to go a little bit quicker because they’re looking older, compared to these younger guys in the middle. Hulk Hogan shouldn’t always be going thirteen minutes—let the young guys do the heavy lifting.”
We watched this one match featuring this guy Sid—Sid Vicious was his previous stage name, but by this time they simply called him Sid. He’s six eight, 310 pounds, all gassed up, a good ol’ boy from Memphis. He looks like a monster and he’s working with this younger guy named Chris Benoit. Back when I was up in Calgary in 1981, I used to watch the Dynamite Kid, a skinhead from England who revolutionized the business through his high-flying, hard-hitting, very believable style. Turns out Chris Benoit grew up watching the Dynamite Kid too—idolized and worshipped him, finally met him, and got into the business and patterned himself completely after this guy. They both worked a state-of-the-art style of wrestling that was huge in Japan in the 1980s. And now I’m watching this match with Benoit and this big galoot from Memphis. I said to Bill Busch, “Chris Benoit is not only the best talent you have, but he is the future of this company and he should be your champ. I don’t know how we’d get there (in story line), but he’s the guy.”
The next night was on live TV, watched by five million households, and the backstage scene was a shit-storm. Nobody had written the show. Everyone was just making shit up on the spot. There were story lines that were evident from the previous night’s pay-per-view, the main one being that Sting, who had been a baby face (good guy), had just turned heel (villain) on Hulk Hogan and was going to team up with his old partner, Lex Luger, who was already a heel.
Bill Busch and Gary Juster asked me, “What would you do?”
I quickly responded, “Do what you’re supposed to do. The first segment is a monologue. Send Sting out to the ring as a newly turned heel with his buddy Lex Luger, who everybody already hates. Have Sting say, ‘Here we are in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (cheap heat). We’re in the Dean Dome (cheap pop). They should rename this place the Dean Dump (heel heat). This place sucks, to hell with you people, stick it up your ass.’ Turn the heel heat up. So Sting’s out there as the champ saying, ‘I fucked your hero Hogan, and fuck you too.’”
Bill and Gary are listening, looking at each other, and nodding affirmatively. I continued my pitch. “Here’s the deal. Hogan’s music is gonna hit, he’s gonna come down, he’s gonna stand, he’s gonna look at the ring. Sting and Luger are in there with their baseball bats”—because that was their gimmick at the time—“they’re gonna be standing there like they’re ready to tee off on Hogan if he dares to come in. Hogan’s grabbing at the ropes, walking around the ring, trying to get in on that side, that side, the fourth side. He can’t get in. Out comes Bret Hart”—who was one of the other big baby faces at the time—“and Bret comes down to the ring to have this standoff, where they’re both outside, not necessarily friends, but united in the face of these two heels with ball bats. The heels chicken shit and powder, and this will set
up your main event for the night. Over the course of the three hours, you’re gonna tease this thing all night while you have all these other matches going on. Simple formula.”
Busch and Juster loved this pitch, and Bill said to an assistant, “Go get Hogan, I want him to hear this.” And pretty soon in walks Hulk Hogan, the legend, the guy who has complete creative control, who nobody tells what to do. I betrayed no awe or excitement. I was all business. There’s no room for fans in that kind of situation. The last thing the boys want is a mark in the dressing room—that’s the best way to get yourself taken out of the equation. Hogan immediately seemed a bit dubious about me. I introduced myself, and in a surprisingly mild and cordial tone, Hogan rumbled, “I hear you got something for me.”
“Bill asked me to come up with something, so here’s what I have…” I laid out an eleven-minute opening segment, including how to carry it through to the end of the show. Somewhere within those three hours, the heels would have jumped Hogan in the dressing room, blowing his leg out, then Bret Hart would be sent down by himself for the match. Two heels against one baby face—kill, kill, kill. All of a sudden, two minutes left in the show, coming down the entrance ramp, hobbling on braces is Hogan, with a baseball bat of his own, like the Spirit of ’76, the White Knight, stronger than Ajax. He clears the ring, stands over the fallen Bret Hart; crowd cheers, end of show.
It was simple stuff—Pro Wrestling 101. I’d seen it my whole life. The thing was, Hogan and Bret Hart did not get along in real life, and I didn’t know the extent of it until I tried to sell this scenario to Hogan. He pretended to listen, nodding, “Uh-huh, yeah, not bad, I’ll think about it.” Of course, he wasn’t really going to think about it. They didn’t end up doing anything near that scenario. Still, afterward, I was like, Wow, did that just happen?
I was hired right away and given the title of creative consultant. I made less in one week at WCW than I would have made playing one solo show at the time, but it wasn’t about the money. My actual day-to-day duties were undefined until the first writing meeting in Atlanta a few days later. While in the “war room,” as the inner sanctum for scripting was called, my aptitude for numbers and time, attention to small details like proper spelling and capitalization, and limited yet accurate understanding of the business put me on a fast track with the booking committee—the small consortium of script writers and exwrestlers who decided the fates of all the current wrestlers.
There were two members of the creative team who took an instant liking to me. One was Kevin Nash, who was basically the locker room leader at the time. Kev had been a college basketball star, stood about six ten with long, flowing black hair, and was a very charismatic and charming individual. He quickly picked up on my aptitude for the business, and we immediately started hanging out socially, eating sushi and talking about wrestling.
The second was a wrestler I’d met years before, after a show in Philadelphia one summer evening in 1991. Kevin Sullivan was an Irish guy from Boston. A short, stocky bodybuilder who moved to Florida in the 1970s, Sullivan did a devil gimmick, pretending to be possessed by some otherworldly spirit. He never said “Satan” or “devil,” but he had the entire state of Florida thinking it and the territory did unbelievable business. He was married to a stunningly beautiful Italian gal from Jersey named Nancy, who he brought into the business.
Nash, Sullivan, and I got along well, and we began traveling the towns together. Those road trips are a book in themselves. I would be on the road for ten days, then back home in New York for a weekend. Kevin was thrilled for me, he knew this was my dream job. And from the moment I arrived in Winston-Salem, I stopped thinking about music—completely. I could sense this job was going to take all of my attention. It felt very similar to rock touring, in that I was completely consumed by the business at hand. Breathe it, eat it, sleep it. Even after a twelve-hour day of writing at the office, it didn’t stop. On the ride to dinner, we talked wrestling. Over meals, we talked about characters, story lines, and angles from thirty years ago. Whether partying or winding down at the hotel, I heard nothing but stories about the business. All wrestling, all the time.
My typical weekly schedule was: A limo picks me up at the loft at 6 PM Sunday evening and goes to Newark Airport for a 7 PM flight to Atlanta, arriving around 9 PM. Then I head to the Hyatt in Marietta, where I meet up with my bosses, and we go out for sushi or get room service. A limo picks us up the next morning at 7 AM and brings us to the Charlie Brown regional airport just outside Atlanta, where we board a Learjet and fly to wherever the show is.
We have to be at the building by noon to read the script for about one hundred production people. That usually takes about two hours. From 2 PM until 8 PM, I’m working with the agents and production team to time out all the segments. In a three-hour show, we usually had about 180 elements across sixteen segments (with fifteen commercial breaks). The typical show opens with pyro and ballyhoo (twenty seconds), throw it to the announcers at ringside (twenty seconds), quick graphics for the main event (ten seconds), quick second set of graphics (ten seconds), then to the arena for a live interview to establish the main story of the night (eight minutes), then a product placement ad (thirty seconds), and finally to a three-minute commercial slot. That’s the first segment, which contains at least six elements and lasts nine minutes and thirty seconds.
We have to lay all this out in the six hours between the reading and going live on national TV. A handful of agents (usually ex-wrestlers) work with the wrestlers, helping them figure out how to cooperate with each other to tell these stories. I’d run around with a small laptop, helping to organize how long each match is going to be from start to finish, dealing with wrestlers, agents, and production people to get this thing ready for live TV. Production would print up the final twenty-plus-page format sheets at 7:30 PM to hand out to the hundred people so that everybody would know what they’re supposed to do and when. Wrestlers are waiting around, flexing, pumping up, rubbing oil on themselves, primping in mirrors, rehearsing their lines, working out spots with their opponents.
I was at the “go position,” also known as the “gorilla position,” the area right behind the curtain. It’s the last stop before the talent goes live to the arena and television audiences, and it’s also where the literal and figurative pyrotechnics go off—the fireworks detonated on just the other side of the curtain, no more than twelve feet away. (My computer bag, which I took to go position, regularly set off explosives detectors at airports. I always had to explain what I did for work.) I sat there with the agents, watching two TV monitors, the bosses yelling at me while I’m trying to tell the production truck what’s going on. The boys are coming out with their scripts going, “Bob, what’s my cue, what’s my cue?” and I’m like, “Kev, your cue is when Sid says ‘the ruler of the world’ we hit your music and you’re out the curtain.”
Say we have a match, Disco Inferno versus La Parka. Disco and La Parka each need forty-five seconds for their respective ring intros, then you have thirty seconds of a video recap package to tell the backstory (the incident that caused the match to be made), then there’s three minutes of match, so it’s roughly five minutes total.
I’m on a microphone right behind the curtain, watching the time code on a screen. Disco and La Parka improvise for two and a half minutes, then I tell the referee, who’s wearing a translucent wireless earpiece, to tell them to “go home”—end the match as planned in those clearly scripted final thirty seconds, which is called “the finish.” The ref pretends to get distracted, Disco does something like a low blow, La Parka falls into the corner, Disco charges at him, La Parka ducks down, grabs him from behind, rolls him up, and the ref turns around and counts one, two, three. Match over—in three minutes flat.
The show has to stay on schedule—any variance over thirty seconds and I have to start making adjustments on the fly, looking for ways to shave or add time without making noticeable alterations to everything that’s been so carefully mapped out. Our best-
laid plans often went astray, though, and I spent the better part of those three hours juggling time code and scripting in real time with my production truck counterpart.
I did this for three hours on live television every Monday night. We’d wrap up the show a few minutes after 11 PM, immediately review the show with the bosses for about twenty minutes, and head back to the hotel. If we were lucky, the hotel would have both a bar and a restaurant, and we’d stay up until 3 AM, still buzzing on adrenaline from the live show. We’d get up the next morning at 6 AM, head to the airport, and get on another plane—sometimes the Learjet, sometimes the Atlanta Hawks’ commercial jet, sometimes Delta commercial—but we’d fly to another town and do another unique episode, as live-to-tape as possible, for the two-hour Thursday night TBS show.
Early Wednesday morning, with Thursday’s show in the can, the creative team would fly to Atlanta and spend twelve hours writing all the story lines for the next week’s shows. That night, I’d get to breathe a little bit. We’d go for dinner, some of the guys would drink wine and smoke pot, but the conversation remained pro wrestling. All wrestling, all the time. On top of all the traveling—and little to no sleep—we’d go to the gym every day. Thursday morning, I’d wake up in Atlanta, Sullivan would kick my ass in the gym, then we’d go to the office for a full day and do contract review and medical clearances, recommend hirings and firings, all that stuff. I’d finish by five that evening, head to the airport, and fly back to Newark.
I was home from Thursday night through Sunday night, but I would be dead tired. I’d never had a schedule like this in my life. There was pressure, a heavy workload, and constant travel—I was flying five times a week. In addition, we had a monthly pay-per-view, which added a Sunday night of work every four weeks.