“Hey brotha, nice to meet you,” Sullivan said in his native Boston accent. “What’s your finish?”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but gave a confused answer: “I drop an elbow.”
“An elbow,” Sullivan groaned. “What kind of a finish is that?”
Luckily for me, Corny jumped to my defense. “Kevin, you’ve got to see it-it’s the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen. He comes running down the apron and drops the elbow right on the concrete.”
Sullivan seemed impressed. “You drop an elbow on the concrete, brotha?” he asked. “I’ll tell you what,” he offered, “After your match with the Steiners, I want you to drop that elbow on your pahtnah. Got it, brotha? No matter what Ricky or Scott do to you I want you to get up and drop that fuckin’ elbow on your pahtnah.”
As it turned out, the Steiners did quite a lot to me. I was slapped so hard that my jaw swelled, was clotheslined damn near out of my shoes, and was taken down to the canvas by my old buddy Scott. I was hyperventilating badly-due mainly to nerves, as I hadn’t been in the ring long enough to qualify for such an exhausted state. As I lay there panting, I wondered briefly if maybe I wasn’t cut out for the big time. Maybe I belonged back in Tennessee or in Texas where I could continue to play Bleeding for Dollars.
Unbeknownst to me, however, Sullivan was making me out to be a star on color commentary. “Look at that, Jim,” Sullivan marvelled, “I’ve seen every wrestler take the Steinerline [clothesline], but this Cactus Jack just got right back up. There’s something that’s not quite right about this guy.” I always felt like Sullivan was very underrated color guy in that he constantly put over the wrestlers and the angles, as opposed to pushing himself. I actually benefited greatly from his wisdom and perception on color, as I would from Jim Ross on playby-play over the next decade.
When I tagged in Fargo, the Steiners put him through a quick series of torturous tumbles and ended the match. I waited until they left for my big chance to shine. Here I go. I helped Fargo to his feet, in an act of mock consideration. Once the poor guy was erect (no, not that way), I let him have it. A series of forearms to the head were followed by a toss out of the ring, where I continued to pursue him on the floor. I picked up Fargo, carried him a few steps, executed a backbreaker, and deposited him suddenly on the cold, concrete floor. Eagerly, I hopped back up on the ring apron, turned around, and got ready to pounce. “Oh my God,” I thought in panic, “I’ll never reach him.” Without exaggeration, Fargo was at least seventeen feet from the ring. Bob Beamon or Carl Lewis would have had trouble reaching him, let alone Mick Foley, who at a height of six-foot-four had barely grazed the rim of a basketball hoop a single time. What else could I do? I thought about an alternative but quickly realized that I couldn’t possibly jump down, pull him in closer, jump up on the apron, and do it again.
Instead, I took a deep breath, took my twostep approach, and pushed off with as much force as my legs could provide. I came up about one foot short and landed hard on my hip with a huge thud but caught Fargo with my outstretched arm. All in all, it was a pretty impressive debut, and my adrenaline surged when I felt the reaction of the crowd. “You were the star of that match,” wrestling personality Joe Pedicino told me as I walked into the backstage area. “You think so?” I asked, to which he replied, “Hey, it was your replay they showed-not the Steiners.”
Many of the guys who had never seen me wrestle were impressed with both my big elbow and my character, and they were patting me on the back and giving me encouragement. Arn Anderson, who on that very day was making his return to WCW after a year with the World Wrestling Federation, walked by with a strange look at this strange kid who had just dove seventeen feet onto a concrete floor. “Cactus Jack,” he began in his distinctive north Georgia drawl, “you just don’t have any sense.”
I thought about what he’d said and gave him an honest appraisal of the situation by replying, “No, but I don’t have any dollars either.”
“Point well taken,” replied Arn. Arn was the king of the putdown, and I quickly learned that it was a compliment and not an insult to be put down by Arn.
When the taping was over, I was approached by Sullivan and Flair. Sullivan was not shy about his high ambitions for me and Flair seemed impressed, if slightly stoic. “We’re going to put you on the road in about a month,” Flair informed me. “In the meantime, we’d like you to make our next TV tapings in the Carolinas. I’m not sure what you will be making, but it will probably be in the neighborhood of a grand a week. I can’t guarantee that, but I can guarantee that you’ll be making a comfortable living.” Comfortable-my ass! At a grand a week, I would be rich.
I know I’ve written some things about Flair that could be construed as unflattering and believe me, before I’m through, I’ll write a lot more. But, personal feelings aside, Ric Flair is one of the very best to ever walk that aisle-and I will always be proud of the fact that it was the Nature Boy who hired me.
When I returned to Montgomery, I worked my last few shows for Continental and then loaded up the Plymouth for my venture into the Carolinas, which would be more or less halfway to East Setauket. With a friend’s wedding coming up, to be followed by Christmas, I would be able to relax, rest up, and bask in the glory of $1,000 every week. First, however, I had shows in Greensboro and Raleigh, North Carolina, to finish.
Greensboro had been a longtime hot bed for the NWA but had fallen on hard times in the previous few years. The building was less than a third full, but as usual, WCW shifted the crowd to one side to give the illusion of a full mass. Even with a lot of empty seats, 5,000 fans were more than I’d seen in my last month of shows in Continental combined.
I was scheduled to tag with Nasty Ned Brady, who was one of my all-time favorite “underneath” wrestlers against the team of Wild Fire Tommy Rich and Ranger Ross. Rich was a former NWA world champ who went on to manage in ECW, and Ross was a former Army Ranger with a colorful background. The match, as Jim Cornette so elegantly put it, “sucked a dick.” But as Nasty Ned tagged in, I waited in nervous anticipation for my chance to follow Sullivan’s instructions to “Drop the elbow on Nasty Ned, brotha.”
Sure enough, Ned fell to the might of Rich and Ross, and even though Ned and I had not worked well as a team, I came in to lend a hand. “Look at that,” Gordon Solie, “the Dean” of wrestling announcers, pointed out. “There’s Cactus Jack helping his partner up. Oh no, he’s not.” As soon as Ned had gotten to his feet, I had put my arm around him just long enough to slip my left leg around his and deliver a quick Russian leg sweep that sent us both down backward to the canvas. From there, I proceeded to put the boots to poor Ned and set him up against the ropes for the Cactus clothesline that sent us both tumbling over the top. Ned hit the floor and rolled into such a perfect position that I didn’t even need to move him or slam him, and I sailed off onto the boards covering the Greensboro hockey ice with a perfect ten-foot elbow. When I looked up the camera was pointing right in my face. For some reason, the B-52’s song “Love Shack” came into my head. For a reason still unknown to me, I looked up at the camera and with my fingers pointed like pistols, recited the “Bang, bang, bang-On the door, baby” part of the song. A catchphrase was born.
The next night, we worked at the Dorton Arena in Raleigh, where I had my first singles match with a talented young wrestler on the rise named Flyin’ Brian Pillman. I went a full-tilt eight minutes with Brian, and we turned out a match that was excellent in quality and intensity. Terry Funk was doing the color commentary on the show and if you listen closely, you can hear the Funker’s admiration shining through. I lost the contest but refused to leave the ring and was still there when Sting came out for his match. Being the hero to “the little stingers” that he was, Sting didn’t take kindly to my poor show of sportsmanship and proceeded to beat me up all around ringside, including a backdrop over the guard rail that had the Dorton Arena fans oohing in unison. Despite the fact that I had been both beaten and beaten up, I was on cl
oud nine when I got back to the dressing room because I knew that I’d done well. Minutes later, Sullivan, Funk, and even Buzz Sawyer were congratulating me on the match. Unfortunately, it was probably the only time that Buzz was ever nice to me, but, hey, that was one more time than most of the young guys got.
Kevin walked up to me as I was dressing and sat down to talk. “Brotha,” he said, “I am going to make it my goal to come up with as much weird shit as possible for you to do.” He would prove to be true to his word in that regard.
That night, I got into the Arrow and headed for home, stopping only at my old friend Meg Morris’s house in Richmond, Virginia, long enough to rest for a few hours and then drive the 400 miles home with Van Morrison on the radio and big plans on my mind. I made it home in time to go out with my buddies at night, a decision that almost derailed my wrestling plans permanently.
A friend of mine, Jean Nagle, was getting married the following day and was having a small prewedding party in a bar named Billie’s in Port Jefferson. Hearing of the prenuptial plans, I hopped into the backseat of a car driven by my second grade buddy Dan Hegerty. Along with Dan Welisher riding shotgun, we took off from the Park Bench in Stony Brook, just four miles away. I was really enjoying myself that night and was in the middle of reminiscing about our mutual landscaping experiences when wham, our car was destroyed. I had been in mid-sentence with my last word being “sprinkler” when a car without its lights clipped us almost head-on when the driver, who, as it turned out, was a guy I had known since I was ten, attempted to turn into his street.
Immediately I realized that my front teeth were gone. Yeah, sorry to kill my hardcore reputation, but the missing teeth were not the result of Sting kicking them out in Raleigh as I have claimed for the past ten years. Also, since then, I’ve had other teeth knocked out, so I don’t feel all that bad about deceiving wrestling fans around the world. Aside from the teeth, I had terrible pain in my right shoulder, which made it almost impossible to move. “Are you all right?” I called out, to which there was no reply. “Are you guys all right?” I repeated, but again, no answer was forthcoming. I looked up front and saw both Dans slumped over, unconscious. My heart sank as I feared the worst, but I managed to roll out of the car through the back door, which had been opened upon impact.
I tried Welisher’s door, but it wouldn’t open-1 can’t honestly explain why I didn’t try Hegerty’s. Instead, I walked into the road to wave down help but was dismayed to see the first few cars whizzing by the accident scene. I wondered out loud, “What kind of prick would bypass two totaled cars and an injured man?” But then I realized that I was in New York and that the number of potential pricks capable of doing such a thing would probably make Santa Claus’s “Good Kid, Bad Kid” list look like the Cliff Notes version of Famous Jewish Sports Stars by comparison. Finally, the third car stopped and took me to downtown Port Jefferson, where I limped into a restaurant and dialed 911. On the way back, I realized that I could stick my tongue through a gash underneath the left side of my lower lip. By the time I got to the accident scene, two ambulances were already there and I hopped out of the car, thanked the driver for his help, and attempted to climb into the back of the ambulance.
“I think I belong in here,” I said to an EMT, who questioned my move, and then I heard an urgent “We’ve got a bleeder!” I looked down and saw blood oozing through my black jeans and down onto the cheap snakeskin boots I had bought at a discount tack store in Nashville. The EMTs quickly cut my pants up to the knee and took off my boot, and in the three or so seconds it took for them to press a heap of gauze into the wound, I saw blood squirting out from my shin area in about ten-inch surges.
I still didn’t know about my buddies’ fate until I heard yelling in the emergency room. “No way, no way, you’re not going to do that,” the voice yelled.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“That’s one of your friends,” the nurse replied. “He’s not too happy with the catheter we’re trying to insert into his urethra.” I really can’t say I blamed him. Geez, right off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen things I would rather have done to my penis than that. A moment later, I heard yelling from another part of the emergency room, and it seemed that Hegerty too was resisting the unwelcome intrusion of the catheter. For some reason, I was spared the pain and humiliation of that procedure. Maybe I just didn’t need it, or maybe, being a woman, the nurse had just chosen not to check out that part of my body for any reason. Poor little guy. Why didn’t anybody love him?
A few minutes later, the stitching began, and a doctor worked on my leg as he waited for a plastic surgeon to arrive to work on the gash under my lip. Somewhere between the time of the final shin stitches and the arrival of the plastic surgeon, my parents showed up and were deeply concerned about their little boy. I assured them that I was all right despite the fact that in addition to my major wounds, I had about ten minor gashes on my face. When the surgeon showed up, my parents were asked to leave, but before their departure, I had two favors to ask of them. “Mom, could you search in the front pocket of my jeans and get the front tooth I put there.” There, that was one. “Also, tomorrow when you come to see me, could you bring a camera?”
I left the hospital three days later, hardy able to walk and depressed about the loss of my teeth. Maybe not depressed, but definitely concerned. Friends who came to visit me all echoed the same sentiment-“Hey, that’s going to look good for wrestling,” to which I would give a lecture about it being almost 1990, and the day of toothless wrestlers was over. Ten days later, when I showed up at Center Stage, Jim Ross was the first person I saw. “Hey, you look great without your teeth,” he said. “It gives you a whole added dimension.” As it turned out, in 1990 I was the “guy without the teeth.” In 1994 I became “the guy without the ear.” In 1996 I became “the guy with the leather mask.” And in 1998 I became “the guy with the sock.”
The accident slowed me down for a little while, but I was able to suck it up on TV matches and continue with my terrible treatment of tag team associates. In addition, all the announcing teams-Ross and Sullivan on Saturday Night, Lance Russell and Michael Hayes on WCW Pro, and Chris Cruise and Terry Funk on Worldwide seemed to be getting into Cactus Jack, and their enthusiasm was contagious. Fans started responding well to my matches and even though I was a heel, I was being cheered heavily in many of our towns. Sullivan, whose abusive manager gimmick had always worked well, saw great potential in our pairing and stepped down from announcing to become an active wrestler and manager. Kevin had gotten really into the Cactus Jack character and came up with an idea that I loved then and still do. “Brotha,” he instructed me, “when you go home, I want you to find a book, and then I want you to bring it to the ring and read it before your matches.”
I nodded my head in approval, but needed more specifics. “What kind of book should I bring?” I asked.
Kevin was quick to respond. “A thick book, brotha, like an encyclopedia.”
When I came back, I had a book in hand but was not sure if it would meet the former Games-master’s standards. “It’s not exactly an encyclopedia,” I warned him as I handed over the book.
Kevin took one look at the title, I Am in Urgent Need of Advice, and began to smile. “That’s the book, brotha,” he said, laughing. “That’s the book.”
Thus began our strange chemistry, with me trying to sneak a look at the book during matches, and Kevin berating me for doing it. Kevin would slap my face and I would smile, and the fans were eating it up. I found out years later that even more emphasis would have been put on me except that the idea was shot down. Flair had thought over the request for my bigger role in the company, but had responded by asking the booking committee, “Do you really ever see Cactus Jack wrestling for the world’s heavyweight championship?” When no one stood up to herald me as the heir apparent, the Cactus Jack discussion was over.
Two days after the clash, Sullivan’s Slaughterhouse was born. The group consisted o
f Buzz Sawyer, Cactus Jack, and Kevin in butchers’ smocks. The smock would have probably looked more imposing if TBS had allowed it to look bloody, but coming from a group so politically correct that they refer to foreign objects as “international objects,” blood on a smock was unacceptable. As was something that might be interpreted as blood. As was dirt, which might be interpreted as something that could be interpreted as something that looks like blood. As a result, Kevin went to ringside looking like an anal-retentive butcher clad in laundered white.
The original plan for the Slaughterhouse was for Sullivan and Sawyer to form a tag team in cahoots with me as a single. Occasionally, we would all team. That plan ended at the February 1990 Pay-Per-View Wild Thing, when Buzz suffered a compound fracture of the wrist, and never returned to WCW rings. As a result, Kevin and I held down the fort in a somewhat odd feud against Captain Mike Rotunda, Norman the Lunatic, and Abdullah the Butcher.
Rotunda was an excellent wrestler who had been a part of Sullivan’s Varsity Club, an excellent and successful gimmick that was disbanded as soon as it became too popular. As a result, Rotunda had languished in wrestler’s purgatory until I tagged with him against the aforementioned Dynamic Dudes, and did a number on him after our loss. The dastardly attack turned Rotunda into a good guy, and somehow changed him from the captain of the team to the captain of the ship, complete with sailor’s cap and nautical windbreaker. Despite the ludicrous gimmick, Mike and I had good matches around the country, until Sawyer’s injury turned me into a tag team wrestler.
The February Pay-Per-View was also memorable in that it was Ric Flair’s birthday, and I somehow was offered an invite from Sullivan to attend. I was thrilled to be in attendance, even after a less than stellar match against Norman the Lunatic. The Funker was there, and he came over to give me his opinion of my match in his own unique style.