Despite the fact that Eric seemed to be high on me (Terry Taylor flat-out told me, "The boss digs you"), the rest of the booking team seemed to be digging me into a hole. My suspicions were confirmed when I had my first ever PPV match against Chris Benoit at Fall Brawl '96.

I knew Chris and I could tear the house down like we had at the J Cup, but my bubble burst like a pimple when Sullivan told us that the match should be structured 80 percent for Benoit and 20 percent for me.

It made no sense to book any important match that way, never mind one featuring the debut of a guy "the boss digs." Maybe Sullivan didn't like the fact that he'd looked stupid by calling me for a tryout after I'd already been hired by the boss. Maybe it was because he was about to start an angle with Chris and wanted him to look strong. Either way, he killed my morale dead.

Chris and I ignored Sullivan's order and had a good back-and-forth match anyway. Afterward, Sullivan said, "It was a good match, but you got in way too much offense."

Was I supposed to be the next Shawn Michaels or the next Barry Horowitz?

Things continued to get worse on my first loop of house shows. I was booked against Jerry Lynn and with none of the time constraints imposed at the TV taping, we were having good matches. They must have been too good because I was approached by Scott Hall.

"Listen, you guys are going way too long and doing too much stuff during your matches. Nobody is paying a dime to see you, so you shouldn't be out there for twenty minutes. Do a short match and hit the showers," he said arrogantly and sauntered away.

I was furious. Was he Scott Mascaras? He didn't like the fact that we were working hard and he had to follow us. Except his name value was a million times bigger than mine so he didn't have to do much to get a reaction. But in my case, hard work was all I had because nobody knew who in the hell I was. The nWo could've cared less about match quality but that's all I did care about and I wanted to slap him in the face for dissing me.

Benoit was as mad as I was. "It's not his place to say that. He's just pissed because he's lazy and wants us all to be lazy too. Don't listen to him." Benoit already wanted to kick Hall's ass, after he had drunkenly pissed on Chris's cowboy boots one night.

Hall's comments were indicative of the nWo's overall attitude as they were being paid millions and had turned into massive prima donnas. One night in Tupelo, Mississippi, there was a problem with the arena sound system and the intro music wouldn't play. Hall and Nash started complaining loudly that it was JoJo (their special term for something bush-league) and refused to go to the ring.

"In New York, there was always music. Isn't this supposed to be the big time? This is JoJo. If there's no music we're not going to the ring."

They were wrestling against Sting and Randy Savage and after a few minutes of nonstop, Warload-type bitching, Savage said, "Listen, I don't give a shit if there's music or not, I'm going to the ring."

Sting agreed and they walked to the ring without another word. Savage was one of the biggest stars in WWF history and he didn't think the lack of music was JoJo. Hall and Nash reluctantly followed, bitching and complaining all the way to the ring.

After the show Eddy, Chris, Dean, and I were driving out of town, having a few post-match beers in the car. Eddy had to take a leakus and when we pulled over, we were right next to the house Elvis Presley had grown up in. We knew because there was a big placard in the front yard advertising the fact. Eddy decided to piss in the bushes lining Elvis's house as a tribute. We all started laughing when Eddy, in the midst of his stream of consciousness, looked up and said, "Fuck Elvis! Who did he ever beat?"

I guess the King didn't play in El Paso.

CHAPTER 45.

INDIAN CASTE SYSTEM.

After floating around with no direction for the first few months of my tenure, Sullivan told me that I was finally going to be put into a story line.

"That's tremendous," I said with excitement. "Who's it going to be with? Eddy Guererro? Ric Flair? Randy Savage?"

"Nick Patrick," he replied.

Nick Patrick was a referee.

I'd worked all over the world to make it to the big time and my first angle was going to be against a referee. How low can you go?

It got worse when Sullivan told me that I was going to be managed in the feud by Teddy Long. Personally, Teddy was a great guy and a great performer but the problem was at the time Teddy's prots lost most of their matches. As soon as Sullivan aligned him with me, I knew I was screwed. I was battling a referee in a one-arm-tied-behind-my-back match with Typhoid Teddy as my mentor.

Shawn Michaels never had it so good.

Things fell apart during the big match, when the rope tying my arm behind my back came loose and I had to pretend it was still securely fastened. It didn't matter anyway as the announcers hardly commented on the bout-they were too busy plugging the nWo.

The social aspects of WCW were equally as disheartening. The locker room was infested with politics and cliques (great title for a rap song), and the office gave special treatment to the powerful ones. Hogan and Savage had their own dressing rooms and didn't really talk to anybody else. Hall and Nash were in their own little unit and acted above everyone. Other guys like Scott Steiner, DDP, Paul Wight, and Booker T later became my friends, but within the WCW environment they seemed uptight and defensive. Booker even balked at working with Dean, Eddy, and me, complaining, "I ain't no cruiserweight," as if he would get leprosy from touching us.

There wasn't a lot of cross-pollination among the cliques. It was almost like regressing to high school, where you had to be careful about who you talked to and where you sat in the lunch room. Once I sat down in catering at Hogan's table and he looked at me like I'd just whipped him in the face with my Jack Johnson. Maybe I should've; it would've given him no choice but to talk to me.

The booking of the matches worked the same way. The guys who made a certain amount of money worked almost exclusively with each other. There was a level that you were placed at and it was rare to ever move to another level. It was like an Indian caste system. Whatever level you came in at was the level that you were destined to stay at.

I came in at $165,000 and that's where I would stay. I hardly ever worked with someone who made, let's say, $750,000, because they were worth more than me and worked with the guys in their tax bracket. On the odd occasion that I did work with one of the big-money guys, it was usually in a quick squash. In WCW, a $750,000 salary had to be justified with a $750,000 push.

There was also a cavalcade of guys who were getting paid huge amounts of money and never worked at all. Horace Boulder, Hogan's nephew, was on the payroll for almost two years before he ever started working steadily. Randy Savage's brother, Lanny Poffo, was on the payroll for the whole three years I was with the company and I only saw him work ONE match. I'll bet you a free copy of this fine publication that he was making in the same ballpark as I was and I was wrestling twenty-two matches a month.

Sure I was making a decent wage, but ATM Eric was paying a lot of guys way more money to do less work. But it didn't matter to him, and he was fond of saying, "I don't care, it's not my money. It's Ted Turner's."

Because it wasn't his money, he seemed to have a real lackadaisical attitude and wore sweat pants, a leather jacket, and a baseball cap turned backward at most of the shows. He was running a multimillion-dollar company and looked like a change vendor at an arcade.

As smart as Eric was, he conceded so much power to Hogan, Hall, and Nash that they pretty much ran the show. The booking team would hammer out a Nitro Nitro episode and an hour before the show the nWo would rewrite it. Some nights we still didn't know the lineup ten minutes before the show aired live to millions of people. episode and an hour before the show the nWo would rewrite it. Some nights we still didn't know the lineup ten minutes before the show aired live to millions of people.

Their attitude toward their work was piss-poor as well. I overheard Scott Hall asking Bret Hart one night in Huntsville, Alabama, "Why do you care so much about this match? It's just a house show."

That attitude was shared by head booker Sullivan, who asked me once, "Why do you care so much about your match? Nobody else does. Just go in the ring and get it over with. This company is the Titanic Titanic heading toward the iceberg anyways." It was great to hear such positive words from the man who was technically in charge of my on screen career. heading toward the iceberg anyways." It was great to hear such positive words from the man who was technically in charge of my on screen career.

Ric Flair overheard Sullivan's words and though he had jobbed me out three years earlier, he was one of the few vets in the WCW locker room who gave a shit about the young guys.

"Don't ever stop caring about your work," he said with dead seriousness. "Around here a good match is all you have. It's the only thing that makes you rise above the bullshit."

Flair was right, because as a plain, dry piece of babyface toast, a good match WAS all I had. The nWo were supposed to be the bad guys, the evil empire tearing the company apart, yet they booked themselves to be the most entertaining, coolest act on the show. They had crowd-pleasing catchphrases, cool merchandise, a great sense of humor, and nobody in the company ever stood up to them. The fans started to treat them as the babyfaces, which emasculated other babyfaces (like me) who had no angles, no balls, and no chance to show any personality. The era of the Cool Heel had arrived.

As WCW continued its domination over the WWF, Eric became increasingly drunk with power. To capitalize on the company's growing popularity, TBS had started another two-hour weekly show called Thursday Thunder. Thursday Thunder. Bischoff was looking to give the show a boost and decided at the last minute to re-form the Four Horsemen, who had broken up a few months earlier. Bischoff was looking to give the show a boost and decided at the last minute to re-form the Four Horsemen, who had broken up a few months earlier.

Flair had received permission weeks earlier to miss the show so he could attend his son's wrestling tournament, and when Eric found out, he fired him on the spot. Then he called a meeting with every WCW employee in the Target Center in Minneapolis.

"I'm going to starve that piece of shit Flair and his family. I'm going to make sure that they end up living on the street."

Eric also guaranteed that the WWF would be out of business within six months. With his ludicrous claims and gestapo tactics, Eric had become the Hitler of wrestling and was acting like he'd lost his fuckin' mind.

He constantly trumpeted to anybody who would listen that Hogan and the nWo were the sole reason why WCW had pulled ahead of WWF in the ratings war. He never stopped to think that another reason may have been the hard work of the leprosy-afflicted cruiserweights.

Nobody in the mainstream audience had ever seen the style of matches that we were delivering on a consistent basis (sometimes for twenty minutes or more) on live TV. We were carrying the load and giving the fans tremendous performances while Hogan and the boys were stinking out the joint with theirs. In their arrogance, they'll tell you that the people paid to see only them, and in my arrogance, I'll tell you that the people walked away from the shows happier because of our hard work.

The overall bad attitude and lack of attention toward 80 percent of the roster was leading to mutiny. I saw it firsthand at a World Wide World Wide taping before a match I had with Mike Rotunda. taping before a match I had with Mike Rotunda.

Alex Wright and a jobber named Hardbody Harrison were standing face-to-face. Hardbody had one of those Mr. T. bendable pump-up bars and was brandishing it like a weapon.

"I wanna be the heel," he said in his Ebonics accent.

"No, I vant to be ze heel," Alex said in his German accent.

They were arguing over who got to be the bad guy, like a couple of eight-year-old kids who both wanted to be Darth Vader. The argument escalated to a pushing match and was broken up by referee Peewee Anderson.

"Stup it! Who's sposed ta bae the hee-ell?" Peewee said in his hick Georgia accent.

The scene had turned into a bad Dana Carvey routine, as the German, Ebonics, and bumpkin accents all blended into one. The comedy show continued when Alex wrenched the Mr. T. bar out of Hardbody's hand and conked him over the head with it. Hardbody pitied the fool and jumped on Alex. The two of them rolled around on the floor engaged in the worst fight ever. Meanwhile, my ring music was playing and I had to tear myself away from the catfight to go have my stupid match. It was far less entertaining than the match that was already taking place backstage.

It wasn't surprising that Hardbody had attacked Alex; he was in his own world anyway. He was constantly submitting weird angles and stories to the office, trying to get himself a push.

First he came up with the idea of painting his face and becoming Sting's black nemesis, Stang. Then he came up with another beauty that had Diamond Dallas Page (DDP) bringing a special magic diamond crystal to the ring. Hardbody would attack him, steal the crystal, and drop it into a tank of piranhas. This chicanery would force DDP to jump into the piranha tank to retrieve the magic crystal, live on PPV. I would've paid to see that one.

Maybe I should've hired Hardbody to write an angle for me too, as I was grasping at straws to get noticed.

I tried to jazz up my ring entrance by throwing my back up against the guardrail, goading the fans to pat me on the back and get their faces on TV. I was sick of seeing babyfaces (like Lex Luger) slapping the fans' hands and looking like they would rather be dipping their balls in hot pitch. Unfortunately for me, most of the fans who lined the barricades were guys, so when I vigorously threw myself at the rail it looked like I was trying to get groped by a bunch of dudes. Mission accomplished.

I also had another mission to accomplish by moving out of Canada. After avoiding it for a year it was time to leave Calgary as the flights were too long, the taxes were too steep, and Bischoff had been pressuring me to follow through on his original request.

I didn't have to worry about getting a work visa in the U.S., because I was born in New York when my dad was playing with the Rangers.

But I did have to worry about finding a place to live and because of my hectic schedule I had no time to look for a place in Atlanta. I was able to convince Eric to let me move to Orlando (like he cared) and I found an apartment during the two-week World Wide World Wide tapings. tapings.

So I packed up my Mustang, rented a U-Haul trailer, and made the drive down to Florida with my friend Ajax. I noticed right away that my new hometown was filled with tourists and old people. Since I didn't know any vacationing seniors, I started looking for a church that could help me fill the rare downtime.

I hadn't attended church regularly since I'd been laughed out of St. Chad's in Winnipeg over seven years earlier. Plus after my mom's accident I had some issues with God and though I continued to talk to him every day, I hadn't felt the desire to return to church. But the time had come to get some fellowship but I had no idea where to go. So I let God decide.

I opened the Yellow Pages to the church section, closed my eyes, and pointed. God's fingers did the walking and landed on an ad for the Tabernacle Baptist Church. I went to check it out and when I did, I was blown away. It was like the church scene in The Blues Brothers The Blues Brothers with people jumping up and down and dancing, all singing up-tempo hymns while accompanied by a ten-piece band. The pastor, Steve Ware, told jokes and showed clips from popular movies to back up his sermon. with people jumping up and down and dancing, all singing up-tempo hymns while accompanied by a ten-piece band. The pastor, Steve Ware, told jokes and showed clips from popular movies to back up his sermon.

I'd never been to a church like it and I was surprised at how much fun fun it was. I was grateful that God had led me to Tabernacle via the Yellow Pages Ouija BoardTM. He must have known that my soul needed cleansing-and some detoxification. it was. I was grateful that God had led me to Tabernacle via the Yellow Pages Ouija BoardTM. He must have known that my soul needed cleansing-and some detoxification.

On the road, I went out every night to maintain my sanity. Since most of the crew was on the same boat as I was, it was easy to form drinking alliances with various groups, each gang possessing different qualities and unique names:

1. The Chubba Bubbas Hugh Morrus Johnny Grunge Rochester Roadblock Rocco Rock Chris Jericho Special Quality-All the members accused the others of being fat, flabby, and chubby. A proper greeting was "Hello Fatso," followed by "Hello Chuboots." Girls of plus sizes and rotund shapes were appreciated, as was a one-legged woman. She was nicknamed Eileen. Think about it.

2. The Drunken Four Horsemen Steve McMichael Raven Curt Hennig Chris Jericho Special Quality-Being the last people in the bar, NO MATTER WHAT. Must be able to gargle Jack Daniel's for over thirty seconds. Must party with anyone, no matter the age or sexual orientation, a rule that encouraged Raven to go on a midnight motorcycle ride with a seventy-two-year-old woman.

3. The Useless Pop Culture Trivia Triumvrate Konnan Raven Chris Jericho Special Quality-Being able to waste hours of time discussing such important matters as what Isaac from The Love Boat The Love Boat's real name was (Ted Lange) and who was Meeno Peluce's half-sister (Soleil Moon Frye).

There were others, but you get the idea.

I spent most of my time with the core members of my Indian caste system, Benoit, Guerrero, and Malenko. I'd known Eddy and Chris for years, but I hit it off with Dean the best. I'd never met him before WCW, but everybody who'd ever worked with him told me how good he was. What they hadn't told me was how funny he was.

When the camera was on, Dean was a stone-faced no-nonsense performer who kicked ass and got the job done. But backstage, he was funnier than Will Ferrell. If he had projected his natural personality onto the screen, he could have had his own sitcom on the WB fo' sho.

He produced a steady stream of one-liners, no matter what the scenario.

When the overweight Brian Knobs walked around the dressing room in a thong, Dean mused, "That's not a G-string, that's the whole alphabet."

When we went to a strip club and watched an overly skinny stripper dance, Dean quipped, "I don't know whether to tip her a dollar or a food stamp."

Dean and I began to travel together. We had to pay all of our own expenses, so doubling up helped to save money and kill time during the long rides.

At first, Dean and I traveled together with Benoit and Eddy, but after a while four guys in the same car and in the same room got to be too much no matter how much money we were saving.

Plus Benoit and Eddy liked to get up at seven in the morning, have breakfast, and work out. Dean and I liked to sleep in until noon, have lunch, and work out. Why get up early when you didn't have to?

Eddy and Chris were very strict with their diets. They were the first guys I knew who checked the labels on food to find out the nutritional information. I ate whatever I wanted within reason (and looked like it) and Dean was the same way. One day I decided to mimic Chris and see what the hell the big deal with the labels was. I studied intently and looked up to see Dean across the aisle doing the same thing. Our eyes met and we burst out laughing at how stupid the situation was. We bought the donuts and left.

Then we had the bright idea to stay up all night after every Nitro Nitro until our flight left the next morning. We started our plan by going to the seediest clubs we could find in whatever town we were in. But that "thrill" soon wore off, so we thought it would be funny instead to keep everyone else awake. Because so many of the wrestlers had their rooms paid for by the company (not us), everyone was based out of the same hotel. As a result, it wasn't hard to con the hotel security guard into giving us the keys to the other guys' rooms. until our flight left the next morning. We started our plan by going to the seediest clubs we could find in whatever town we were in. But that "thrill" soon wore off, so we thought it would be funny instead to keep everyone else awake. Because so many of the wrestlers had their rooms paid for by the company (not us), everyone was based out of the same hotel. As a result, it wasn't hard to con the hotel security guard into giving us the keys to the other guys' rooms.

Dean and I would open our victim's door and run into their darkened room wearing lucha masks and screaming our heads off. One night, we broke into the room of a bunch of Mexican minis, midget wrestlers from south of the border. We found all five of them sleeping on the same king-size bed in a K position.

It was kompletely hilarious.

My three amigos and I had all wrestled for the bigger companies in Mexico, Europe, and Japan, earning us the nickname the New Japan Four. The name didn't quite fit for me, because even though I'd worked in Japan dozens of times, it had never been for New Japan. I knew that WCW had a working agreement with New Japan and that was one of the reasons I'd been so excited to sign with them in the first place, but I still hadn't had my chance to go.

Just as I reached the end of my rope, New Japan called and saved my career.

CHAPTER 46.

CHRIS BIGALOW, ORIENTAL GIGOLO.

I had just finished vacuuming my apartment when I received a call from Brad Rheinghans (who I used to watch in the AWA), the American liaison for New Japan. had just finished vacuuming my apartment when I received a call from Brad Rheinghans (who I used to watch in the AWA), the American liaison for New Japan.