For several minutes, Terry rambled on with a story about the devil who was facedown in the gutter, having his life saved by the angel. The story was making absolutely no sense until the last sentence, at which point the story, and its relation to me, became apparent. When the lovely angel was asked why she would save someone as despicable as the devil, the angel fluttered its wings, strummed its harp, and replied, “Don’t you understand, without him there is no me.”
Terry then looked at me and said in his soft, West Texas mumble, “Cactus Jack, Norman tried to be an angel out there, but you wouldn’t let him, because you were not the devil. People can talk about your bumps all they want, but until you learn to be the devil in the ring, you will never fully be all that you can.” I nodded in agreement with Terry, who seemed pleased to have had me sit for a spell underneath his learning tree.
Dennis Brent was a friend of mine from Dallas, who was currently the WCW magazine editor. He had witnessed the entire angel/devil parable and couldn’t help but notice the Funker’s interest in me. “Terry,” Brent began, “it seems that you like Cactus because you see a little bit of yourself in him.” It was a very astute observation on Dennis’s part, and deserved an equally astute response, which Terry quickly provided. “I don’t see shit in him,” the Funker claimed, but said it in such a way that I know he agreed with Dennis.
Since that time, Terry and I have inflicted punishment on each other that might well carry jail time if it was done on the street. But as K. C. and the Sunshine Band once put it so well, “That’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it.”
As much as I wish it weren’t true, my first stint in WCW, spanning late November 1989 to mid-June 1990, will best be remembered for my match at the February 10 Clash of the Champions. Unfortunately, I hated the match and considered it one of the biggest letdowns in my career. For years, however, it was the most frequently talked about subject of my career, so I’ll at least try to touch on it.
The horrible chain of events started some two weeks earlier when Jim Cornette approached me with what he thought was great news. “Guess who they’ve got you working at the Clash against?” Corny beamed and then shot down my first few guesses. “Nope, you’re going to work with Mil Mascaras,” he gushed and awaited my enthusiastic response, which never came. Jimmy was confused. “What’s wrong with that?” he wanted to know.
I decided to cut around all the fat and get right to the meat of the subject. “Mascaras sucks,” I stated, “and the match is going to suck.” Jimmy nodded, but I wasn’t done with my honest assessment of the man who had been a legitimate legend, sports hero, and film star in his native Mexico for over a quarter of a century. This may have been true, but in my dealings with Mascaras in Texas, I had found him to be selfish, redundant, and lousy. “Jimmy, why is he coming in?” I asked, and Corny quickly let me know, “It’s just for a couple of shows in the Texas border towns.”
This didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. If they wanted Mascaras to draw fans in towns with heavy Mexican populations, why couldn’t they put him on before the televised matches started, instead of both stinking up a nationally televised Clash, which was TBS’s most heavily hyped wrestling show, and sinking my career, which had been going so well. “Jimmy, I’ll do it,” I said, “but I can’t promise that it won’t be a stinker.” Cornette seemed to understand my feelings and said that, as color commentator, he would try to make me look good on the show.
I arrived in Corpus Christi, Texas, several hours early for the show, and was delighted to hear that Mascaras had missed his flight into town. Immediately, plans were changed, and all of a sudden I was set to wrestle my old partner Rick Fargo instead. This was great-not only would I not be in the ring with the ungiving Mascaras, I was actually going to win a match in the Clash. So I guess I don’t have to explain how dejected I was when I saw the Mexican legend show up a half-hour before the match. As it turned out, he hadn’t missed the flight; he just hadn’t wanted to sit around the arena for a few hours, so the prima donna booked a later departure. Obviously, the visions of grandeur I had set in my mind for Fargo were not going to apply with Mascaras, so I quickly went back to the drawing board.
I knew that it was useless to try to talk to Mascaras, so instead I talked to Cornette quickly before he went out for the show, and alerted him to a big move I was going to do, and he told me that he was going to do his best to make me look like the star of the match. He didn’t let me down.
Much as I had predicted, the match, to use a Cornette term, sucked a dick, but when the time was right, I made most of the young audience forget that Mascaras even existed. I briefly took over on the used-up loser and threw him to the outside where he gingerly landed. I then picked him up and gave him a weak backbreaker that he was so frightened to take, he actually put his hands and ass down on the ground, so that he finished the move in a sitting position. “Come on, Mil,” I thought, “show a little bit of pride in your work.” At that moment, I wondered if having the ability to suck in your stomach and walk on your tiptoes for twenty-five years was really all it took to become a legend in the business. Then again, bell bottoms were big in the seventies also, so there may have been a lack of sense all the way around.
With Mascaras looking about as poised on the floor as a Swedish massage recipient, I hopped up to the ring apron for the big elbow. Actually the timing of this was excellent, because as I faced the crowd with my arm in the air, signaling the imminent arrival of the flying elbow, Mascaras was rolling back into the ring. When I took my twostep approach and got ready to fly, Mascaras was nowhere to be seen. When I turned around in confusion, Mascaras was there with a dropkick, or “dropkiss,” as he called it. When he hit me, I went sailing backward several feet, and as I came smacking down with what was then my 265 pounds, cameraman Jackie Crockett caught the impact perfectly, with a low-angle shot that made it look like I was crashing right into living rooms around the country.
In reality it was the same Nestea Plunge that I’d done previously in Memphis and Dallas, but this was a nationally televised live event, and fans around the country and the world had never seen anything like it. “Oh no,” Cornette screamed. “Cactus Jack is dead!” It was one of the greatest calls I’ve ever heard. As I lay there stunned, two replays showed the sickening bump, while Ross and Corny both agreed that the match, if not my career, was over. When the camera came back to me, I was on my knees struggling to get back in the ring. Cornette went back into the action and dramatically yelled, “No human being could get up after that, but Cactus Jack is doing it.”
All I wanted to do was be able to kick out of one pinning attempt, which would have made me look like Superman, but when I earlier had told Flair of this plan, he told me in no uncertain terms, “This match is not about you. No kickouts.” So instead Mascaras pinned me and walked to the back as I waited for indignity number two to transpire.
The Clash in Corpus Christi featured a live band that played during the commercial breaks to entertain the crowd, and when they came back from commercial, I was still at ringside and was being enraged by the lead guitarist, who, I guess, was supposed to mock me. As a result, I tried to go after the skinny guitarist, only to be confronted by their buff drummer, Wolfe Wilde, who was really New Jersey independent wrestler J. T. Southern. Southern and I got into it, but the fans were not supposed to know he was a wrestler, so it looked to most of the viewing population like I was getting my ass kicked by a musician. After the show, Joe Blanchard, an old-time wrestler and promoter, who was currently in charge of the Texas ring crew, offered to take me on as well. “Well, you already put over a wrestler and a drummer,” Blanchard said, laughing. “I figure you might be willing to put me over, too.”
In retrospect, my WCW run would have been better served if I had stayed a single wrestler, but we certainly provided some excitement as a tag team. Eventually Bam Bam Bigelow was added as a third partner in our group, and we went around the country with a combination of tag team matches and six-man events
that were met with great response.
One day, I opened my check and thought that a mistake must have been made. I was paid too much. As Flair had said, I was averaging a grand a week at that point-with five shows a week for $200 a shot. Suddenly I had a check for $3,000, and I commenced to reading the numbers to find out where I’d gone wrong. I looked at the ten individual payoffs, which were all $200. Then, at the bottom of the page, I saw a statement that confused me: “Per agreement-$1,000”which totaled the mysterious three grand payout. I called up the office to find out what was wrong, and my worries were put to rest immediately by Jim Barnett, an old promoter turned front office person whom I had heard incredible stories about from both Dominic and Fuller. “My boy,” Barnette said in a voice that couldn’t be considered gruff, “We are very happy with your efforts here, and we decided that we’re going to start paying you $1,500 a week.”
I didn’t know what to say except “Thank you Mr. Barnett,” to which he quickly responded, “No, thank you, my boy.” When he hung up, I danced around my room and thought of all the ways I would spend my newfound wealth. Then I got a better idea. I wouldn’t spend any of it.
Sure enough, for the first time in my life, my bank account started to grow. Aside from my road expenses, which were around a hundred a day, I had few bills to pay, because I lived with my parents and was regularly putting away a grand a week. I was wrestling hard, having fun, and in my mind at least, I was one wealthy SOB. Actually, after five years in the business, I had pulled in a grand total of $30,000 before my WCW stint, so I probably had several $1,500 weeks to go before I could even qualify as destitute.
I was regularly traveling with Jim Cornette and his Midnight Express, which consisted of Sweet Stan Lane and Beautiful Bobby Eaton. Stan was like the ultimate bachelor, and even traveling with me didn’t seem to tarnish his image with the ladies. One night I saw Stan opening his door carrying about ten jumbo-size bottles of baby oil, and I didn’t have to wrack my brain to figure out what was going on in Stan’s room that night. Actually, I never had to use my mind to figure it out-a drinking glass pressed to my ear and held against the wall usually told the tale rather explicitly.
Beautiful Bobby was one of the true greats in the sport. Aside from being perhaps the most underrated superstar in the business, he was also its nicest, and stories of Bobby’s generosity were commonly recited in the dressing room. It was damn near impossible to pay for anything when Bobby was around, although I’ll confess to not trying all that hard.
One night when we stopped for gas, a bum approached us as we got out of the car. I didn’t say too much to him except “Hi Mr. Snow” (just kidding, Al) as I pumped the gas. A few minutes later, I was in the car with Corny and Stan, and Bobby was nowhere to be seen. Another few minutes-no Bobby. Just as Stan was about to get out to find him, we saw Bobby coming out of the store with his arm around the old bum. The old guy was now holding a new bottle of wine in his hand, and had on a new shirt as well. When they got to the car, Bobby handed the guy $10, shook his hand, and got back in the car. That was just the way he was.
My fortunes started taking a turn for the worse in mid-April in Columbus, Ohio. I was teaming with Kevin against Rick Ryder and someone else whose name escapes me at the moment. We had what I thought was a very enjoyable match, concluding with an elbow on Ryder, who was as far away, if not farther, than Rick Fargo had been four and a half months earlier. “Rick Ryder has just had his pancreas punished,” Cornette yelled in response to the big elbow, which was honestly just a wrist and four fingers making contact, because he had been so far away.
I was happy about the match, but my positive feeling soon turned to shock when I ran into Ric Flair, who had been waiting for me. Flair had just resigned as booker, and I guess he decided to take his frustration and anger out on me. “What the hell are you doing out there?” Flair demanded. I didn’t know what to say. Hell, I didn’t even know what that question meant, and I told Flair so. “I mean you do all that shit, and just because those two [pointing to Ross and Cornette on the TV monitor] put you over, you think you’re over. Don’t you understand no one cares about you?” I was floored. All I could do was stare blindly as the Nature Boy continued his condemnation. “You’ll be in a wheelchair by the time you’re thirty,” he scoffed, and followed it up with another bit of sentiment, “and nobody’s going to care.”
I have thought about that night in Columbus at least a thousand times since it happened. For several years, I thought about it every day, and as I approached my thirtieth birthday four years ago, I became obsessed with it. I felt strongly enough about it to do an interview on the subject on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, which the Wrestling Observer called “one of the greatest ever” in wrestling.
A short while ago I ran into Flair, who congratulated me on how well I’d done, and then said, “Geez, Cactus, you need to slow down so you don’t get hurt. Do you remember when I told you that you were going to be in a wheelchair by the time you were thirty?” I told him that I remembered very well.
For a few weeks, WCW went ahead without a lead booker. When I found out who the new booker was, I was wishing Flair had never left, Columbus dressing room incident or not. Ole Anderson was a wrestling traditionalist who hadn’t shown a whole lot of enthusiasm for my character or my style since I met him. Ole had just retired in February and had been around in some capacity since then, I think as a road agent. He had continuously teased me-usually about my ass, and even compared it to the McGuire twins, which was a little ridiculous, because the twins weighed over six hundred pounds each. Now that I think of it, for such a tough guy, Ole sure did spend a lot of time talking about my ass. Hmm.
I felt like I knew that my days were numbered, so I decided to have a talk with Ole. To his credit, Ole talked to me for a long time and did have some noteworthy points. Among them was an analogy to war atrocities, which I have since learned is one of his favorites.
“Goddamn,” Ole began, “there’s a guy walking around a war-torn country, and he comes across a girl who’s been killed by a bomb. The guy drops to his knees and goddamn, he cries that it’s the worst thing he’s ever seen. ‘Oh my God, it’s terrible. Look at that poor little girl. I can’t go on.’ When the guy gets up, he walks a few steps and sees five kids who have also been killed and burned by a bomb. Oh God, this is really bad, he thinks, but gets up and walks until he sees ten girls who have been killed and says, ‘What a shame,’ as he walks by. By the time he gets to a hundred children who have been bombed and killed, he doesn’t even slow down to look. He just doesn’t care anymore.”
I understood Ole’s point, but he wasn’t quite through yet. “You see, kid, the marquee says wrestling,” he grumbled. “That’s what we’re going to give them. If people wanted to see your goddamn trampoline act, they would buy a ticket to see Cathy Rigby.” He also said a bunch of things that started with, “Back in my day,” and by the end of our talk, I could pretty much see the writing on the wall. Still, I hung around for a little while, simply because of the money.
A few weeks later, I had talks with Kevin Sullivan, Jim Cornette, and Jim Ross, and then gave Ole my one month’s notice. He didn’t exactly beg me to reconsider.
I finished up on June 10 in Hollywood, Florida, and flew home the next day feeling like I could take on the world. My name had gotten around to several independent promoters, and I already had several bookings lined up. I was ready to enter into the next phase of my career.
Chapter 12
One of my first independent matches after my WCW exit was for my first wrestling boss, Tommy Dee. I would go on to work quite a bit for Tommy over the next thirteen months, and always worked half price in appreciation for the help he had given me years earlier. I had set a somewhat ambitious price for myself of $250 but would work for Tommy for a cool $125. Obviously it would be impossible to match the $1,500 a week I had been pulling down in WCW, but I looked at my independent dates as a long-term investment in myself. The show was to be held on Ju
ly 7 at the Riverhead Raceway in eastern Long Island, about thirty miles from my house. Because of my close proximity to the venue, I agreed to hand out flyers at the races on the previous Saturday afternoon, to help build up the matches that were set for six days later.
It was a beautiful summer afternoon at the races, and the smell of burning rubber brought back memories of when my parents used to take me to the Commack Motor Speedway when I was a kid. I was strolling about the grounds handing out flyers and was pleasantly surprised at the recognition I was receiving, when all of a sudden I saw it. A beautiful, thin waist, with a shirt that revealed just an inch or two of skin. Around the waist there was a distinctive, if somewhat S&M-ish-looking belt that I couldn’t take my eyes off. I couldn’t even see her face, but nonetheless felt like I had to meet her. She later would say she could feel me watching her, even though she could not see me.
I thought over my options. I could simply walk up and introduce myself, but that would take a certain amount of guts, and I knew that it was out of the question. Instead, I saw a husband/wife team of truck drivers who had said hello earlier, and asked if they knew who she was. “No,” one replied, “but would you like me to find out?” A minute later, they came back with good news. “Her name is Colette and she said she’d be happy to meet you.”
Now I had a little more confidence, and I walked over and said, “Hello.”
“Hello, I’m Colette Christie. How did you get the name Captain Jack?” Uh oh, an incorrect name right off the bat. For a moment, I had flashbacks to Cortland State, but then realized that this was actually a good thing. She didn’t know who the hell I was, so there was no way that she could be digging me for my very small amount of fame. Then again, I wasn’t so sure she was digging me anyway.