Controversy Creates Cash (8 page)

This is a vulnerability in the WWE formula. If the crowd doesn’t like you—in other words, if you’re an effective villain or heel, to use the wrestling expression—fans generally don’t buy your T-shirts and other merchandise. That translates into less money in your pocket.

But if no one
really
wants to be the villain, no one
really
gets to be the good guy. People start to feel ambivalent about the storylines and characters. They may come to enjoy the action and the communal experience of being in an arena with 15,000 other people. They will react the way they know they are supposed to, but will they really care about the outcome of the match?

In my opinion, probably not. At least not as much as they should. That’s the difference between what I refer to as “Pavlovian heat”—an automatic reaction that’s not deeply felt—and real heat—loathing that comes from the heart.

I have a hard time today pointing to one person who is really a babyface or a good guy. I can’t even point to one guy that the audience believes is a villain.

Look at a guy like Triple H, and how people react to him when he comes out. He goes into that Incredible Hulk–like stance. He scowls and spits water straight up into the air like he owns the arena. They dim the lights, and he has a spotlight on him like Elvis Presley as he makes his way to the ring, growling for the camera.

What guy doesn’t want to be him?

KEN DOLL

53

I don’t want to pick on Triple H, but unfortunately his character is an example of what I’m talking about. He’s one of the best modern heels out there, but his entrance is a hero’s entrance. If you give someone a hero’s entrance week in and week out, and he gets a hero’s response, the audience doesn’t hate that guy. They can’t—

they wish they were him.

Guess what? Once that happens, you’re not a heel. You cannot achieve heel status with the audience when, consciously or subconsciously, they wish they were you. It’s absolutely impossible.

Its like:
Yeah, I’ll play the role of a bad guy, but I want people to
think I’m cool. I want people to buy my merchandise.

You have to establish a heel character the second you walk through the curtain. You have to want people to hate you. They should be throwing shit at you. Then when you step in the ring and the good guy across from you hits you and knocks you on your ass, the roof blows off. And that good guy, that babyface, is
truly
a good guy And they buy
his
merchandise. The audience is living vicariously through him.

Verne Gagne told me it doesn’t matter if people love you or hate you, as long as they feel strongly one way or the other. The worst place you can be is in the middle.

The Road Gets

Rockier and Rockier

Superclash

Maybe because we were a struggling company, there were never any really standout moments—times when you stand back and say, Holy shit,
this
is an event,
this
is big time. But one that came close was a Pay-Per-View in 1989 dubbed
Superclash III.

The show was held in Chicago. Verne joined forces with some of the other regional promoters still around at the time. Jerry Jarrett, 54

CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

down in Memphis, was one; Don Owen and Bob Geigel in Kansas City were among the others. I think the show was Eddie Guererro’s professional television professional debut; he managed his brothers Chavo and Mando at the time. It’s interesting how a lot of us crossed paths early in our careers.

Seeing all this different talent from around the country that we had never worked with before was really quite interesting. I said earlier that I wasn’t going to talk about some of the crazy shit guys did backstage, and I’m not going to start now, but working with Kerry Von Erich was interesting. He was a lunatic. Kerry was definitely “Kerry” in quotes.

Besides doing the interviews for
Superclash,
I built the interview set. I loaded it into a van, put a mattress on top, and then with my three-year-old son and wife left Minneapolis in a rented van and drove from Minneapolis to Nashville to Louisville to Memphis, doing shows that promoted the Pay-Per-View the whole way. Then we went on to Chicago. We had a great time. We thought we were living like kings and queens.

Diamond Dallas Page

During my time with AWA, I crossed paths with many guys who’d play an important role in my later career. One was Diamond Dallas Page—though things between us started out very rocky.

At the time, Page was managing the tag team of Paul Diamond

& Pat Tanaka. We were all in Rochester, Minnesota, for an event, which I had put together as the AWA promoter. We were in this bar, and Page was there, along with a lot of other wrestlers. Page was a very loud and sometimes obnoxious individual—and actually still is. He wore white leather pants and snakeskin cowboy boots and looked real flashy with his “Diamond Dolls” (a couple of local strip-pers) hanging off him.

Page was being rude and loud, and, well, just being Diamond Dallas Page. He said something at one point that struck me wrong. I KEN DOLL

55

don’t know what I said back, but it was probably pretty aggressive.

Then either he called me out or I called him out. I put down my drink and followed him to the door, muttering to myself, “I’m going to kick this guy’s ass.”

I got outside, and the only thing I saw was Page going down the street, driving away.

On one level, I was proud of myself that I didn’t get into a fight in the bar, because that would have been inappropriate. I was probably somewhat relieved that we didn’t end up getting in a fight in the parking lot, because even if I had kicked his ass—and I sure thought I could—it would have caused a scene. And my ego was pretty happy that this loudmouth who thought he was a tough guy thought twice about it and left.

I went back inside and proceeded to pound a couple more beers.

Then my wife and I went back to my hotel. We got in the elevator to go to our room. When the doors opened, Diamond Dallas Page stood right in front of me.

We had a few more words. I don’t remember how intense it was, and I don’t remember how or why we decided not to get into a fight there and then, but he went back to his room and I went back to my room.

I woke up in the morning, and I just felt like an idiot. I knew the way I’d handled myself was wrong. So I went to Page’s room and knocked on the door. He came out looking like a hundred miles of bad road. I’m not sure what he was thinking—he’s got his version of the story, naturally, and I have mine—but I said,
Hey, I just wanted to
come by and apologize.
He kind of chuckled and shook my hand.

Breeding Ground for Greatness

Toward the end of 1989 and the beginning of 1990, I put together my first video from beginning to end. It was a tape for the home video market called
Best of the Eighties
and was a kind of greatest hits of AWA wrestling events. Verne had a tremendous wrestling 56

CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

library at the time—in fact, it’s now part of WWE’s 24/7 offerings.

Working through that catalog really drove home how much Verne had done for professional wrestling.

When you look back at that library, and you look back at the history of AWA, you see that some of the great names of our business during the late 1980s and early 1990s had really come out of the Verne Gagne territory—Hulk Hogan, Jesse Ventura, Jim Brunzell, Gene Okerlund, Scott Hall, Shawn Michaels, and Curt Hennig were just some of the many wrestlers who worked for Verne.

Minneapolis itself produced a significant number of the real superstars. Among them were the Road Warriors, Animal, Hawk and “Rav-ishing” Rick Rude—who went to the same high school as my wife.

Curt Hennig also came from the area. I don’t believe he wrestled in high school, but he had a brother named Randy who I wrestled my senior year. I think he was the captain of the Robbinsdale High School team. I was a little intimidated because he was a Hennig—his father, Larry “the Axe” Hennig, was a big pro wrestling star at the time.

I did fairly well, even though he beat me. He had a figure-four leglock on me, riding me around my midsection. It was just a grind-ing technique. I remember looking up and seeing Larry “the Ax” looking right at me. I remember thinking I didn’t know which was worse—this kid crushing my ribs, or the big burly mean bastard who looked like he’d just as soon do it himself.

Anyway a lot of those guys who made it big later on came from the AWA and made it big in Minneapolis first.

Audition

Verne’s business was sinking lower and lower. My own finances were being stretched, as paychecks began coming later and later, and finally stopped altogether. If I stayed at AWA and things continued the way they were, it would be just a matter of time before I went bankrupt.

KEN DOLL

57

In June or July of 1990, World Wrestling Federation advertised for an announcer. I put in a call, and within a day or two they sent me an airplane ticket and arranged for an audition.

Needless to say, I was extremely excited—and somewhat intimidated—at the opportunity.

The interview process was very informal. A couple of people in production put me in front of what they call a chroma key or blue screen. They gave me a script and said, “Sell us a match.” I gave them my very best pitch.

Someone—I think it may have been Kevin Dunn, who’s now the executive vice president for TV production—said, “Hey, Eric, sell me that broom over in the corner.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a rib—a joke—or if he was serious, but I figured what the hell. That’s what they want me to do, I’ll sell my ass off. I picked up the broom and interviewed it.

When I was done, Vince McMahon came over and shook my hand. He made a couple of jokes about Verne Gagne. They were gentle, along the lines of “Is he still as bald as he’s ever been?” Vince and I talked for probably three minutes, and that was the end of it.

I didn’t get the job. Looking back, I didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t ready for the big time.

Time Runs Out

While I was enjoying the opportunities at the AWA, Verne was going out of business one day at a time. It started getting so bad that he had a hard time paying talent. He cut costs any way he possibly could.

I’d gotten to know Verne at a different level at that point. I’d become friends with both Verne and his son Greg. We used to do a lot of things together socially. I took some fantastic hunting trips with them, and that sort of thing. I hated what was happening to them.

Besides having trouble competing with Vince, Verne was in the middle of a major lawsuit with the state of Minnesota. A lot of his 58

CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

money was wrapped up in an estate on Lake Minnetonka outside Minneapolis. Verne had built a beautiful home there, but the state of Minnesota decided they wanted his property to build a park.

They enforced eminent domain to take it from Verne, in exchange for what they thought the property was worth. Unfortunately, what they thought it was worth was significantly less than what it was really worth.

That put Verne in a double bind. He no longer had the property to draw equity from to keep AWA afloat. And not only did he not have that property, he had to fund a lawsuit against the state.

I stayed on, even as the ship kept sinking. We ran less and less shows, had fewer events, lost talent left and right. The last six months I was there, I literally worked without a paycheck.

Still, we all still showed up for work every day. Between the loyalty I had toward the Gagnes, the passion I felt for the business, and the knowledge that if I left, I probably wouldn’t get back into wrestling anywhere, I was reluctant to leave the business.

That decision took a significant financial toll on me and my family My car was repossessed out of my driveway, and I fell four or five months behind on my house payments. My kids ate rice and beans and hot dogs. My wife worked nights as a waitress in a restaurant, but the money wasn’t enough to keep us going.

The reality of my situation came to me when we came home from visiting my parents one winter night, and the house was freez-ing cold. We were out of propane. And we weren’t going to get any more, because we owed the propane company money. I had to heat our house with a couple of portable kerosene heaters.

I needed a miracle, or I needed to get out of pro wrestling. Or maybe both.

3

WCW:

The Early Days

How Soon Can You

Get Down Here?

Two Possibilities

People looking for a new position are often told that it’s a lot easier to get one if you’re already in a job. That’s always been especially true in wrestling, where a lot of the hiring has traditionally been done by word of mouth. Someone knew someone who needed someone and could vouch for you, that sort of thing. Once you were outside of the network, it could be very difficult to get back in.

The problem for me was, there were only two other organiza-tions in professional wrestling big enough that it seemed possible for me to get a job.

One was World Wrestling Federation, which seemed like a distant possibility. They were the juggernaut, and after I failed to get a job as an announcer following my audition, I couldn’t imagine that I’d be able to carve out a place for myself without any relationships whatsoever.

60

CONTROVERSY CREATES CASH

The other was World Championship Wrestling, WCW. I knew some people who had gone down there. So I put together a demo tape and sent it off to Jim Herd, the company president.

Ted Turner & the History of WCW

WCW’s prehistory is quite complicated, but it essentially rose from the ashes of the National Wrestling Association, or NWA. The NWA had started as a loose alliance of regional pro wrestling companies, including storied promotions such as Georgia Championship Wrestling. Jim Crockett Jr. consolidated many of the southern franchises in the NWA, promoting them all as “NWA World Championship Wrestling” in the 1980s. (Technically the NWA remained separate from Crockett’s promotions, though most people did not distinguish between the two entities.) There were a lot of very big names in the NWA at the time. Ric Flair had been the champion for quite a while. Dusty Rhodes was there. But like the AWA, the NWA wasn’t big enough to compete with Vince on a national level, and as a regional business, it floun-dered. By 1988, it was on the verge of bankruptcy.