Hitman My Real Life in the Cartoon World by Bret Hart

Author:Bret Hart [Hart, Bret]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-05-27T15:16:42+00:00

PART THREE

STEAL MY CROWN

30

LONE WOLF

TO BE A GREAT WRESTLER, you have to be a real athlete and a great actor. To be a great champion, you need to be the best storyteller of them all, because your job is to work with the top hands, whoever they are. Whatever his opponent’s age, size, skill or style, whether he is a heel, babyface, Olympic-style shooter, showman, big brute or clumsy oaf, the champ has to have the versatility to bring the best out of each contender. A champion needs to be a champion first to his fellow wrestlers, and to protect and honor the profession for their sake. Or at least that’s the way it used to be when I was involved in pro wrestling. Even without the belt, I wanted to play this role and leave my mark on the business for years to come. My formula was simply to outwork and outwrestle my competition. And I would never stab backs.

On the other hand, champion wrestlers tend to hold on to their power like despots, and I shouldn’t have been so bitter toward Hogan. He was only guilty of being as greedy as he felt he’d earned the right to be. When I realized that my WrestleMania IX check was ten times bigger than the biggest check I’d ever got before, I wanted to dip my cup in too and never stop. Vince McMahon’s previous torchbearers—Hogan, Macho and Warrior—had made so much more than the rest of us all those years.

Throughout that summer of 1993, Yokozuna was the man. He sat in his first-class seat stuffing his face like Henry VIII. Lex Luger was in first class too, a perk left over from his old World Bodybuilding Federation contract. Back in coach, I tried not to let it bother me, but it did. I put Lex over without complaint. Although he was a mechanical worker who stuck to the basics and stayed there, he was a pro—safe, agreeable and easy to work with. I hoped maybe Vince would change his mind and put the belt back on me, but Lex was the one who got the SummerSlam match with Yoko.

Hogan was playing hardball in negotiating his contract, and I found out later that Hogan was being pressured by the Feds to roll over on Vince. Subpoenas were being served right and left, and I was sure to get one too.

Vince went to work repackaging and building Lex to be his next superstar. First he erased The Narcissist, then dressed him in skimpy red, white and blue trunks and turned him into his new all-American hero. The face turn was accomplished by having Lex slam Yoko on the deck of the USS

Intrepid in New York Harbor on Independence Day. No one had ever been able to slam Yoko, not even Hogan. Vince loaded Lex into a red, white and blue bus christened the Lex Express and with much flag waving and hoopla sent him off on a heavily hyped promotional tour, all summer long, across America.

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