THE STONE COLD TRUTH (13 page)

I had a ton of respect for Bobby. He had always been a supernice guy to me; one of the nicest guys in the business. And here I was taking the damn belt off of him the first time we met. He could have treated me like garbage, but he didn’t. I’ve always respected him for that.

Bobby would become one of my favorites to work with. I’d ask him all kinds of stuff. He couldn’t really tell you why he did anything, plus you couldn’t understand hardly a word he said with his Alabama drawl and his “mouth full of marbles.” But he had incredible timing. He couldn’t explain it, but it was a pleasure and an education going out there and working with him.

Bobby Eaton was the consummate professional. Top-notch.

I wish his career had ended on a better note, but unfortunately, a lot of guys don’t save their money and seemingly fade away. I hear that he’s still working some indy shows here and there in the area where he lives, and he’s probably still a great worker.

Anyway, that first night with WCW, I was going to do an in-ring interview with Missy Hyatt. They said, “Go!” and they were playing this music—mine, I guessed. I walked into the ring and all of a sudden I heard,
“From Hollywood, California,”
and I was thinking, Who the hell are they talking about? And they go,
“‘Stunning’ Steve Austin!”

I thought to myself, I’m not from Hollywood, California! But that’s how the Hollywood thing came about. They just said it on WCW TV. That’s where that part came from, as best I can remember.

As I got into the mix at WCW, I got to work with a number of legendary wrestling names who had come from the NWA [National Wrestling Alliance]. When Ted Turner bought Jim Crockett Promotions and turned it into WCW, he also acquired all the NWA big stars’ contracts. There was Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, the Four Horsemen—all the big, nationally known names who would come through Houston every now and then—all of whom I had loved to watch. Suddenly I was getting to work with these guys!

“Nature Boy” Ric Flair was a big influence on me. I didn’t really ask him any questions, but he always put on a wrestling clinic anytime he
was in the ring. I watched what he did in the ring and I learned from it. I have all the respect in the world for Ric Flair.

“Ravishing” Rick Rude was a guy that—well, we just hit it off. I don’t know why we did, but it was after we got put together in the Dangerous Alliance in WCW. He was into fishing, being he was from Minnesota, but Paul Orndorff and I got him into shooting and hunting. I liked being with him because he always told you straight up what he was thinking, 24/7.

I watched Rick closely because he really understood his character and was great at it. His heel psychology was so sound, so strong, and he was considered one of the smarter guys around. We just got along. We traveled together, stayed at hotels together, stuff like that.

Once, I tried staying in the same room with Rick. He beat me to sleep and what snoring that man generated! You would have thought a Mack truck was backing into the room. I was yelling, “Shut up!” over and over again. He’d roll over and stop for a while, but then he would start up again. This went on all night. After that experience, Rick and I still traveled together and stayed at the same hotels, but we never stayed in the same room again.

Arn Anderson was always one of my favorite wrestlers when I was a kid. I’d watch tapes of him and Ole Anderson fighting the Rock ’n’ Roll Express or the Midnight Express in the NWA in a steel fence cage, and that was the greatest tag-team wrestling I’d ever seen. Then I got to work with him and against him, and that was a wonderful experience. Arn was another guy who helped me out a whole lot.

He also performed one of the most intelligent, well-thought-out promos in the business. When that guy talked, he didn’t yell or scream. He just calmly explained things to you. Ole’s was another promo I liked. He’d scare you right through the TV screen.

Another guy like that was The Assassin, Jody Hamilton. I never got to see too many Assassin promos, but I heard he was phenomenal.

I wasn’t really in any programmed feuds, but I really enjoyed a lot of my matches and working with certain people. One of the highlights, to me, was a time when I was working a tag match on TV—me and Big Van Vader against Arn Anderson and Ric Flair. It went about forty minutes
on TV and the whole match was called in the ring, not all discussed beforehand. I loved it.

I worked with a lot of great hands back then. Brad Armstrong could work with anybody. That guy was as smooth as silk. He was like Ricky Steamboat, in a way—another guy you went out there with and never had to say a word to. He knew the finish and how to get there. I knew how good he could be. I’d call all the spots in the ring and we’d just wrestle.

I got in with a pretty good group of guys in WCW—the Dangerous Alliance, managed by Paul E. Dangerously, now known as Paul Heyman. It was me, Rick Rude, Arn Anderson, Larry Zbyszko and Barry Windham. I learned a lot from being around these guys. Of course, Rick Rude was the crown jewel of that whole group. I’d just sit back, watch and learn. It was good company to keep.

Larry Zbyszko was real old-school, but a good worker. Barry Windham was always cool. The thing I liked about working with Barry so much was this was a big guy. He was six-foot-six, six-foot-seven, close to three hundred pounds at one time, and he’d just step up on the apron and glide through the ropes like a cat. Definitely one of the most graceful big guys I’ve ever seen.

A lot of big guys won’t take bumps or sell for smaller guys. But not Barry. Big as he was, he took bumps for anybody he was working with. He’d work with Tully Blanchard, who was much smaller than he was, and he’d sell for Hilly like anybody else. And Barry is a second-generation worker in the business, with his dad being Black Jack Mulligan.

I’d travel with Barry and referee Pee Wee Anderson, and Barry was cool as hell. I remember one time we rented a Cadillac and Barry was riding shotgun and Pee Wee was in the back, and Barry said to me, “Wanna drive, kid?”

Of course, I’d never driven a Cadillac before, so I was looking at all the controls on the dashboard while I was driving. I almost ran that car right off the road. I had to quickly jerk it back on.

Barry looked over at me—he was always reading a hot-rod magazine or something like that—and said, in a real dry voice, “You okay?” That was it. Barry never got upset. He’ll probably live to be a hundred.

Barry was also one of the best all-time drinkers in the business. Barry could drink with anybody in the business, and the next day never show it a damn lick. He could drink all night long, and come back the next day and do it again. That guy could put down some alcohol. But I always enjoyed working with him. We had good chemistry—he’d let me call a match, or he’d call parts of it. A great talent.

Probably the most memorable WCW event I was involved in was on May 17, 1992 at the
Wrestle War ’92
Pay-Per-View. It was me, Rick Rude, Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton and Larry Zbyszko against Sting, Nikita Koloff, Dustin Rhodes, Ricky Steamboat and Barry Windham in a Double Steel Cage match. I was the top heel in the stable and in a main event of a big Pay-Per-View show. That was the wildest damn thing I’d ever been in, up to that time.

Most fans think wrestlers use “blood capsules” to bleed in the ring. We don’t. Sometimes you get hit “hard way” and bleed for real, or you can nick yourself with a razor blade and get it going that way.

Some guys don’t like to do that, but it’s one of those “time-honored traditions” that’s always been a part of our business. One thing about my character is that I’ve never been leery about getting color—bleeding—if the situation calls for it. Obviously, it adds a lot of drama to the match.

I remember at that
Wrestle War ’92,
I tackled Dustin Rhodes. I was beating on him and he looked up at me and said, “Good color.”

I said, “Thanks.” We both had gushers that night. That was a bonding moment.

Another time, Dustin and I were working together in Phoenix. It was a bad house with slow ticket sales and the WCW agent, Grizzly Smith, was running the show. Dustin and I had a great feud going and were just terrorizing each other that whole tour. I said, “Hey, man, whaddaya think, want to get some color tonight?”

And Dustin said, “Yeah!”

So we went over and asked Grizzly Smith. Dustin said, “Hey Griz, what do you think about me and Steve getting some color tonight?”

And Griz went, “Well, yeah, I think that might help your match.”

So we went out there and we both hit gushers, and we both came
back bleeding like stuck pigs. I remember we both walked back together through the door, and there was Lex Luger, all oiled up and ready to go out and flex. And he looked at us with horror in his eyes. He didn’t understand what we were trying to do.

Whether what we did was right or wrong didn’t matter. We were just busting our asses and giving people a helluva show, and we got some color to do it. Lex was visibly shocked. But then he’s a damn idiot, in my opinion, and has never understood our business.

I don’t think Ric Flair was on the card that night, which is why it was okay to get color. The Nature Boy’s matches usually ended with his blond hair turned red. So usually the option of getting color was reserved for Ric Flair.

After Paul E. got fired by WCW and they broke up the Dangerous Alliance, I had a one-time-only match with the other
real
Steve Williams, “Dr. Death.” One night, Dr. Death’s normal tag partner, “Bam-Bam” Terry Gordy, couldn’t show up for his match. It was October 25, 1992, and we were doing a Pay-Per-View called
Halloween Havoc.

I wasn’t originally booked on the card, but they wanted me to wrestle. It would have been fine except for the fact that I was supposed to be enjoying a long-overdue day off.

I was living in Douglasville, Georgia, in a log home on ten acres. I was in my basement, opening up my garage door so I could wheel out my YZ-490 dirt bike and go dirt biking when my phone rang. It was “Cowboy” Bill Watts. He was booking WCW at the time, which made him my boss.

“Steve, Bill Watts,” he said. “We’re in Philadelphia,” or wherever the hell they were that night for the Pay-Per-View. “Terry Gordy didn’t show tonight. We need you to come up and fill in for Gordy and be Doc’s partner against Barry and Dustin for the tag-team title.”

He heard this silence on the phone, because I was thinking, Damn, I was just fixin’ to go dirt biking. But instead I said, “Okay, I’ll go to the airport.”

So it was Steve Williams and Steve Williams, for all intents and purposes, versus Dustin Rhodes and Barry Windham. Unfortunately, it turned out to be only an average match, at best. After thirty minutes, it ended up in a draw. But then, it was really just thrown together at the last minute. It was a one time deal.

Steve “Dr. Death” Williams is okay in my book. Hell of a worker, and a big star when he was with Bill Watts’s shows and WCW. He wrestled in Japan for most of his career.

I’m really proud of how solid a worker I was back in WCW—more so than I was when I finished up. But you wouldn’t necessarily know it by watching my matches. It was just something that I knew and the crowds didn’t.

11
Stone Cold Becomes a Father