Through The Shattered Glass

by Jeanie Clarke

  In that year alone, WCW had brought in an array of new talent, and there was a real buzz that the company was moving in the right direction. Steve and I were delighted when the first edition of WCW’s monthly publication reached newsstands, as we featured in an article which focused on the top stars to join the company.

  Bill Apter, former senior editor of WCW Magazine and Pro Wrestling Illustrated: “It was always a pleasure to pose Jeanie during my trips down to World Championship Wrestling. Jeanie was a photographic pleasure, always willing to stand any long amount of time I needed to get that perfect shot in the studio. Always smiling and eager to work with me she was just fabulous.”

  Steve was finally making waves with his hard work, and we had some fantastic matches with some great opponents, many of whom were also looking to rise to the challenge of filling the voids left by those who were no longer around. For a hungry young athlete, it seemed that the promotion was really building towards its future. For fans, it resulted in some outstanding matches between some of the finest new stars.

  Gary Michael Cappetta, former WCW ring announcer: "When Stunning Steve Austin and Lady Blossom arrived in WCW I was hopeful their debut signalled a change in the direction of the promotion. Such a handsome couple with impressive ring skills and electric chemistry would be a marketing bonanza if properly presented and carefully cultivated. Elevating this adorable, yet devastating duo to main event status was surely inevitable as long as the private agendas of the company’s decision makers did not conflict with their certain success.

  With time, instead of utilizing their gifts to headline events, Steve and Jeanie became a solid mid card draw. While their contribution to the show greatly enhanced each event, I thought they never were given the opportunity to rise to a position that their talents commanded."

  I loved standing behind the curtain with some of the talent to watch the events, but Steve was becoming increasingly protective and hated the thought of me mixing with the wrestlers. In the USWA, I had already seen a glimpse of his jealousy, but I also thought it was quite sweet as it showed that Steve still really cared about me. I reassured him that he would never lose me, but he wanted me to stay in a separate dressing room at each show and he would insist that I stay there until it was time to go out for our match. Sometimes I would nip out to get a coffee but Steve’s face would turn as he never wanted me anywhere near the boys.

  Although this worsened my sense of isolation that I was already feeling from missing Jade, WCW remained an exciting place to work once it was time to perform. The shows were often played to seemingly packed houses all across the country and the atmosphere in the arenas was electric.

  With Steve as one of its champions we were positioned right near the top of the promotion, but the man at the very peak and the perennial face of the company was the charismatic sensation Sting.

  Sting’s image seemed to be on everything: from our tour posters and Galoob range of action figures to clothing, gadgets and soft toys. You could even buy kids training shoes with his unmistakeable scorpion logo on the treads! He generated so much energy and excitement from the crowds with his dynamic style of wrestling, and had a loyal army of young fans that he sweetly referred to as the ‘Little Stingers’.

  So many people who have followed professional wrestling will have their own unique memory of Sting; however I will always remember the date of 25th August 1991 as The Great American Bash tour reached its climax. Being held at The Omni in Atlanta that night was a tournament to crown a new United States champion. For a pair of relative newcomers to the company, Steve and I were so ecstatic that we were going to feature in a main event at the promotion’s flagship venue to face its top star, a man who would become known as ‘The Franchise of WCW’.

  It was our dream that came true; this was the night we finally realised that we had made the big leagues after years of hard work for smaller promotions.

  There were dozens of near-falls throughout the match, which brought the audience to a fever pitch. It appeared that ‘Stunning’ Steve was finally going to win after unloading with The Stun Gun, his finishing move at the time. I jumped with joy onto the ring apron and embraced Steve before telling him to pin the painted warrior from Venice Beach, California. I stayed on the edge of the ring, looking out to the crowd and gloating that the match was over. I could not hear the bell ring, but I was sure the match was finished as all I could hear was an enormous, collective roar.

  I could sense that Steve was coming back for a celebratory hug, so I reached behind me and went to flirtatiously play with his hair. But this was not the long locks of Austin, all I could feel were short spikes in the palms of my hands. I turned around, and discovered it was Sting! He flexed his muscles as I screamed in surprise while the capacity crowd went nuts. The match was still on, Steve rushed over in frustration to grab him from behind, and roll him up. ‘The Stinger’ quickly reversed the move to get the three count, winning the title and sending the fans home happy.

  Steve and I would often talk about that match, which was the highlight of both our runs in WCW. As a fellow wrestler, Steve remained in sheer awe at just how over Sting was with the fans that night, and we both agreed that he carried himself with the class of a real champion. But most of all, I was taken by just how sweet and gentle natured he was, firstly as a dad to his children, and then as a good friend to us both.

  We were soon getting rave reviews for our work, and the match with Sting gave Steve a conviction that he could perform at a main event level on the biggest stage WCW could provide. In matches with Barry Windham, The Yellow Dog (a masked ‘Flyin’’ Brian Pillman) and ‘The Z-Man’ Tom Zenk, he was determined to show WCW management that he could face a seasoned veteran without the need to be carried in order to have a thrilling match. We both knew that we had been given a lucky break caused by the departure of others, and that we were being awarded opportunities that would have been otherwise rare.

  The company was in need of headline talent, and Steve was on a mission to prove he was one. As Steve’s confidence grew in the ring, he was already being entrusted as someone who could work with a diverse array of talent in the ring to help establish them as viable stars in the promotion.

  The flamboyant rookie Johnny B. Badd (Marc Mero), second-generation Florida veteran Mike Graham, the undervalued but dynamic ‘Jumpin’’ Joey Maggs and the rough and ready Big Josh all faced Steve in his defences of the World Television title.

  We were also involved in matches with tag team stars, such as Todd Champion and Firebreaker Chip, collectively known as The Patriots, and both members of The Young Pistols, Steve Armstrong and Tracey Smothers, who each faced Steve in their rare forays into singles competition, as did Rick Steiner, a fan favourite who needed to be kept visible while his brother Scott was nursing a torn bicep injury. Even Robert Gibson, who had just split with Rock ‘N’ Roll Express teammate Ricky Morton, returned from a devastating knee injury to challenge Steve for the Television Championship.

  Tracy Smothers, former WCW wrestler: “After WCW hired Jeanie and Steve, Dusty loved them and put the TV title on them straight away. He put Steve over all the middle and underneath babyfaces, and he had great matches with everybody. To this day, people come up to me about my match with Steve that is on YouTube. Steve was regarded as the best heel in the biz... Steve and Jeanie were always a class act and I was honoured to share the ring with them.”

  The World Television title was unlike any championship in professional wrestling. It was primarily defended during episodes of the syndicated programming of World Championship Wrestling, and we were able to do some really creative things with the concept.

  Frequently, our main event defences of the belt would be scheduled to have a short duration, dictated by the limited time remaining on WCW’s television shows.

  This was not usually long if we were last on the card.

  If there was restricted time left on the broadcast it allowed us to create immediate heat from the start of each match and f
oster a sense of urgency as the challenger tried his best to win against the clock. The drama would only heighten as ring announcer Gary Michael Cappetta counted down the time remaining before the match would be declared a draw.

  In wrestling, the event of a draw results in the gold staying with the champion, and this even applies when there is a disqualification, regardless of the winner. Dusty loved using the idea of a challenger getting screwed out of the title by virtue of a disqualification win. His justification was that it made a series of rematches viable as we toured on the road for our non-televised house shows, and could allow Steve to face some worthy challengers without damaging the credibility of either man. He felt that it could solidify Steve’s status as champion without him winning clean in the ring.

  As Steve’s reign with the championship flourished, I started to increase my level of physicality in his matches. We were experimenting with new ideas and inventive ways for Steve to be disqualified in order to keep the title. Despite many of our matches ending with the same result, we wanted to keep the finishing sequences fresh. Our aim was to preserve Steve as a truly vile cheat, who would stay the champion under the smallest technicality of the rules, but without making him seem desperate or weak.

  Most of our disqualification losses were caused by my interference, but only once the referee caught me injecting myself into the match to give Steve an illegal advantage. One of my favourite methods of interference was to jump onto the back of Steve’s opponents and either claw at their faces with my nails or try to choke them. This would usually occur late in the match as Steve would be lying prone on the mat, becoming increasingly vulnerable to a loss. With my petite figure, and most of Steve’s opponents being well over six feet tall, it was not easy to do a standing jump whilst wearing heels and then attempt to clamber up their huge and sweaty frames.

  In a televised match with Ron Simmons, we used this spot in the finish, but after Steve was disqualified he charged at ‘The All American’ while I was still on his back. Ron moved at the last second, and Steve collided with me in the corner, with the fans erupting as he knocked me senseless. It was one of the few times on television that I was seen to be taking a bump, but it was something that I had started to do with frequency on house shows up and down the country.

  A bump is an inside term that wrestlers use to describe each time they take a fall to the floor, whether from a slam or strike, or anything that leads to them collapsing on the mat. Bumps are often taken for granted by wrestling fans, but years of doing it can really take its toll on the human body. There is no real way to fall without feeling any sort of pain. When I started taking bumps, I wasn’t given any training, I was just asked to go out and do it. If the fans could not see Steve lose his title, they prayed that the wicked witch who caused them to be cheated out of their hero’s victory would at least get her comeuppance after the match ended.

  In one match in Sioux City, Iowa, I would take a bump after Dustin Rhodes dropkicked Steve onto me, almost crushing me flat. In another, I was thrown off the ring apron and landed backwards onto the ringside mats after being clobbered by Tracey Smothers. Each time I would take a bump, I was not aiming to express it by over-the-top theatrics; I wanted it to look like I was critically hurt. Management were becoming quite impressed by my bumping, not because any of my falls were particularly spectacular, but due to my subtle embellishments. I was credibly selling the pain each time I landed.

  When I would return backstage, there were a few times that Dusty appeared anxious, he was concerned that I had sustained an injury. We laughed about after he realised I was just doing my best acting job, but he did start to notice a minor annoyance that he felt was hampering my work.

  Dusty observed that after each bump, my hands would immediately grasp my skirt to pull it down and protect my modesty. It was something that I had been doing without thinking, and I knew it was a subconscious reaction borne out of my natural shyness. The reserved Brit inside of me explained to Dusty that it would not be ladylike for a woman to expose her knickers to the world. He smiled, but told me that I should ignore the temptation to protect my image, and continue to concentrate my efforts on expressing the pain from a fall, not save myself from the embarrassment of accidental exposure.

  I tried my best to heed Dusty’s advice, but it was difficult to fight my instinctive movements. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t help but sort my dress. Backstage, word soon spread of my bashful demeanour, and some of the wrestlers took great delight in ribbing me during the matches, especially P.N. News and Big Josh. In one match, Josh intercepted me as I tried to slap him, lifting me up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Completely powerless, I could do nothing to fight back as he lifted up my dress, and paraded me around ringside, as the crowd were exposed to my revealed bottom. The audience laughed, but it was not the way I wanted our contests to come to a close each night.

  By the fall of 1991, we brought a new finish that would recur in our matches. Rather than run my usual distractions and physical interference from ringside, I started to take a pair of brass knuckles which I had hidden within my evening gown, underneath my bosom. With the referee's attention drawn elsewhere, I would pull the knuckles out and hand them over to Steve so that he could use them on his opponent.

  After knocking out his foe, he would then quickly hand the weapon back over to me, where I would conceal it before the ref had any idea of what had happened. It seems like a fairly basic concept but it was a trusted formula that we knew would get heat with the fans, especially as the referee would not be able to check where the foreign object was being stored, which only served to wind up the crowd even more.

  We were next thrust into a short programme with P.N. News, a burly heavyweight who was given the moniker of a street rapper. He would come out and rhyme to the crowd before the match and get them to join in, and had been a frequent opponent of Steve in a number of tag team matches, with a variety of partners on both sides. The most famous of these was a wacky Scaffold Match at The Great American Bash ’91 in Baltimore which was the first time both Steve and I ever featured on a pay-per-view event.

  Steve and P.N. News met again during a 7th October TV taping filmed at the Centre Stage Theatre in Atlanta, and once more, we sneaked a victory after I passed Steve the brass knuckles, allowing him to wrap them around his fist before he floored News with a stiff knockout punch for the win.

  With Steve victorious, we rejoiced in the ring only to be interrupted by an enraged Dustin Rhodes who interrupted our celebration. He tried to explain to the referee that Steve had yet again cheated with a weapon which was hidden inside my gown. Naturally, we vehemently denied this, and dared Rhodes to validate his protest and prove to the referee that we had cheated in the match. A frustrated Dustin backed off, realising it would be improper for him to place his hand down the dress of a lady.

  Moments later, Madusa arrived into the fray and stepped through the ropes with the intent to confront me. Having recently returned to the United States from a tour of Japan, she was another newcomer looking to make an impact in the promotion. She then did the unthinkable and delved into my dress, revealing our secret weapon and exposing it to the crowd.

  After being provided with tangible evidence, the ref promptly reversed his decision, awarding the match to News by disqualification. Once again, the result allowed us to keep the title, while allowing the challenger to claim he had not been beaten. The aim of the finish served to solidify fan interest in future rematches held at house shows across the country.

  Paul Neu, former WCW wrestler P.N. News: “I remember working with Jeanie and Steve a lot including a really great match in North Carolina that ended up running to a time limit draw. Jeanie was always such consummate professional when it came to wrestling and although we didn’t spend a lot of time socialising away from the job, I do remember she was always so happy and would have a smile and a friendly ‘hello’ for everyone.”

  The disputed finish of our TV match with News also create
d a fresh issue with Dustin. This led into our second and my final pay-per-view appearance at the Halloween Havoc 1991 event, held at the UTC Arena in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I still get lots of comments and mail from fans about the glittery red-sequined dress I wore to that card; however it was Steve and Dustin who stole the show that night. They had an epic and bloody match that illustrated that the two young stars of WCW could rise to the occasion when the spotlight was on them, wrestling to a fifteen-minute time limit draw that raised both their profiles.

  Steve really wanted to impress during the big show, and felt it was essential that he was seen to excel without the constant interference of a valet. His new aim was to establish himself as a strong individual character without anyone at ringside stealing his heat.

  Meanwhile, I had removed all of the bumping spots I had been taking in previous matches as I was no longer willing to take any unnecessary physical risks to my body. My mind was far from the unfolding drama in the ring that evening. It was completely centred on the future.

  I had just been given some unexpected, but wonderful, news.

  Our lives were about to change.

  11 FAMILY COMES FIRST

  My WCW career had only started four months before I discovered that I was expecting a baby. Radiant with happiness, I was overwhelmed as it served to remind me on the value of family. Meanwhile, Steve was hesitant in sharing the joy of the coming of our first child. He was a man riddled in conflict.

  Although he was amidst the final stages of a marital annulment with his first wife, Steve was ridden with a deep guilt stemming from his inability to tell his parents that his relationship with Kathy was over, and that it had been for some time. Furthermore, he felt even more ashamed to tell his parents that he had pursued me during his marriage, out of fear that it would disappoint them.