THE STONE COLD TRUTH (7 page)

There we were, doing guitar lessons. Of course, I sucked. I learned a few chords, but I didn’t practice enough. You have to practice, practice,
practice, so I quit. I’m not blessed with any musical talent … or patience.

Later, I changed my mind and decided that I wanted to learn to play guitar again, so my dad—who has more patience than I do—started teaching me from scratch. Of course, I quit again. But I still wanted to be a damn rock star.

At that point, I went out and bought a bass guitar. My dad knows how to play the bass too, so I figured he’d take yet another shot at teaching me. Besides, I thought, two less strings, it’s gotta be easier.

Well, I sucked at the bass guitar too, so I quit that and sold it. Then I said to myself, Okay, I can’t play one single instrument.

A rock star who couldn’t play anything isn’t worth a damn. It didn’t leave me a whole lot of options.

But, despite everything, I still had the urge to become a rock star. When I told my parents that I wanted to join a band, they said that was fine. Then I told them that I wanted to play the drums, and they wouldn’t let me do that, period.

I had only one choice—to sing. I would be the front man for the band. Anyway, that was the plan.

Kiss was my favorite band growing up. Man, I was the biggest Kiss fan ever. I’d get the headphones on and I’d sing along with all the songs. One day I was singing, “Shock Me,” a Kiss song that Ace Frehley sang. I was singing away, doing what I thought was a pretty damn good job, when my brother Kevin came in and slapped the headphones right off my head.

I said, “What the hell are you doing?”

He said, “You suck!”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

And he said, “You’ve got those stupid headphones on, so you think you sound good. You suck! You’re horrible! Take those headphones off and sing without them.”

I took the headphones off and I was brutal. Real brutal.

All along, I had thought I was doing good! I thought I was going to be a rock ‘n’ roll singer and Kevin squashed those dreams right there. Thanks, Kevin. That was it, my singing career officially ended.

Now I buy CDs and listen to the radio. Kevin Williams ruined my dream to be a rock ’n’ roll star … though I think my lack of musical abilities may have played a small part in it. From then on, I strictly stuck to sports.

6
Playing College Sports

A
s I said before, I loved to play football in high school—that’s tackle football, Texas-style—and I was the running back. I was strictly a “north and south” kind of runner who never avoided contact. I’d just run over guys. For three years in a row, starting when I was a sophomore, I was a varsity starter and an All-District running back for the Edna Cowboys.

I started out at 185 pounds and got up to 205 by the time I graduated, so I wasn’t a powerhouse by any means. And my offensive line averaged only about 160 pounds, so I didn’t get a lot of blocking. Still, I managed to flat-out run over some people before they pulled me down.

I was also the discus guy on the track and field team. I even quit playing baseball because I wanted to concentrate on the discus.

But football was my deal. That was the sport I really loved.

When I came to the end of my high school career, I started looking around for colleges where I could continue to play football. My dad had played for Rice University, and of course he was trying to get me in at Rice. He took me to Houston and we visited the business school and met the coaches, but they had nothing for me.

Other than that, I got piles and piles of letters from colleges all over the place, but when it came down to it, I could have gone to Texas Lutheran College in Seguin, Texas, on a half scholarship, or I could have gone to Wharton County Junior College on a full scholarship, forty-five miles from my house.

Well, that was a no-brainer. Of course, I was going to go for the full scholarship. Hey, it was a chance to be close to home. That was great because I wasn’t one of those kids who wanted to go halfway across the country to go to school. I loved my family so much that forty-five miles away was even stretching it for me. So I went to Wharton County Junior College and played for two years.

At Wharton, they must have decided that I was too slow to play running back, so they moved me to linebacker. I played linebacker for two years at Wharton and started all our games both seasons, but I wasn’t very disciplined. I ran all over the field. I liked to hit people.

After a semi-illustrious career as a linebacker at Wharton, I had three scholarship offers. I could have gone to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque on a full scholarship, I could have gone to Texas Lutheran College on a half scholarship or I could have gone to North Texas State in Denton, Texas, about thirty-five miles north of Dallas, on a full scholarship.

The University of New Mexico took me snow skiing and everything up there in Albuquerque, but North Texas State was in Texas and I didn’t
have to leave the state. It was 350 miles away from home, but at least it was in Texas.

3/31/85

Dear Mom and Company,

Spring training is going pretty good. Everything is okay but the weight program sucks. I’m getting a little tired of it.

I’m ready for summer to get here. Maybe I can find a job in Edna. I forgot to fill an application at the Highway Dept. Oh, well. I need to make some money this summer. I’ve decided I’m going to buy a street bike if I can afford it. It will sure save a lot of money with these high gas prices.

Well, Scott seemed to be doing pretty good in Huntsville. I think he really likes it up there. Kevin wrote me a letter the other day. Seems like he’s doing pretty good, too.

I think someone needs to talk Coach Sappington So Jenny can run the hurdles. That could be her event. She needs to start running them now for the experience. It will help her when she’s in high school. She could be a bad ass white girl.

It sure seems like Jeff is having a good time in high school. I think he’ll be all right. Seems like he really enjoys the Red Rocker (Camaro).

Well, tell everybody hi for me and tell Dad to take it easy.

Be careful with my stereo.

Love,

Steve

That was another no-brainer for me. I wasn’t going to do the half-scholarship deal if I could get the full ride. So I packed up and went to attend North Texas State in Denton, Texas, on a football scholarship.

I remember at North Texas I was running the forty-yard dash, and I was clocking in at 4.9.1 ran again and it was another 4.9.

The coach who recruited me came over and said, “What are you doing?”

And I said, “What do you mean?”

He goes, “What’s with the four-point-nine?”

I said, “That’s what I’ve always run.”

He said, “The coach at your junior college said you run a four-point-seven.”

I said, “I’ve never run a four-point-seven in my life!”

These guys at Wharton had padded my stats a bit and said I was faster than I was. If they’d known I ran a 4.9, North Texas State might not have given me the scholarship.

But all the coaches liked me because I ran my ass off on the football field. A 4.9 may have been my fastest time, but I never ran around anybody anyway. I’d always try to run them over.

Being thirty-five miles north of Dallas, I was also about thirty-five miles north of the world-famous Dallas Sportatorium. My North Texas buddies and I would load up on Friday night, drive to Dallas and watch the wrestling matches at the Sportatorium.

Saturday morning, the next day, they’d be doing the TV tapings and I’d be right back there, about ten rows back, watching the guys wrestle again. I’ve always had a knack for putting myself in the right place at the right time somehow. This was one of those times, because I was getting deeper and deeper into wrestling.

As I said, I had been watching wrestling my whole life. But In Denton, I was exposed to the larger world of Dallas wrestling. I watched
World Class Championship Wrestling
with the Von Erich brothers, and then we started getting Bill Watts’s
Power Pro Wrestling and Mid-South Wrestling,
hosted by Jim Ross.

So I was playing football, studying and watching my wrestling. And for a while, that was pretty much all I did.

Midway through my junior year at North Texas State, when I was splitting time with one of the starters, I blew out the ACL in my left knee. That was the first of many knee problems in my life. I rehabbed the whole year and came back for my senior year, and started all eleven games at defensive end. Defensive end was a better read for me in college because I was jacking up with the tackle or the tight end rather than sitting back and watching all this movement. I didn’t have the discipline to sit back and watch. I liked to attack. Imagine that!

Actually, I didn’t like North Texas football a whole lot. It wasn’t what I was used to. I was ready to quit at the end of my junior year. And the only reason I didn’t quit was my dad.

I didn’t actually ask him if I could quit, but I was pretty sure I knew what he would say. North Texas had gambled on me and gave me a scholarship. I had given them my obligation to play and if I quit that was going to screw them up.

I knew my dad would be disappointed in me for not fulfilling my obligation to North Texas State, and for taking a scholarship they could have given to someone else. So I forgot about quitting and stuck with it.

After my college football eligibility was up, I still didn’t have enough credits to graduate North Texas State. But the team’s defensive line coach was good enough to find me a job at Watkins Motor Line, loading and unloading trucks and working on the freight dock. So I worked at the freight dock and made enough money to pay for another semester on my own.

Of course, I got burned out on research papers and all that stuff, but I made it through. But when that semester was over, I was still seventeen class hours short of graduating. Seventeen hours stood between me and a college diploma.

But I was burned out, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. So I said, “Screw this,” and started working full-time at Watkins driving a forklift. I was still lifting weights and staying in good shape, but I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t have any direction. That’s when I started seeing the commercials for Chris Adams’s wrestling school on TV, and for the first time I started thinking seriously about getting into wrestling for a living.