Eventually, World Class separated from the NWA and formed its own world championship, and business stayed strong for a few years. When the bottom dropped out, however, it dropped out completely, to the point that the weekly Friday shows at the Dallas Sportatorium, which at this point were automatic sellouts of 3,000 people, fell to around a hundred.
With business down drastically, Jerry Jarrett stepped in and purchased the company. Jarrett, also spelled J-A-ha ha-double R-ha ha-E-double T-ha ha, was the co-owner of the CWA, from which I’d just come, and was as famous for his keen mind as he was infamous for his stingy payoffs. Fortunately, Texas had a starting $75 minimum per day that Jerry kept in place, probably in fear of a wrestlers’ mutiny. This was great news, as we averaged eighteen shows a month, not including Saturday morning TV tapings, which were a freebie. I would go on to average slightly under $350 a week during my ten months with the company. Those ten months were actually very good ones for the company, with houses picking up tremendously in the Sportatorium especially but in the rest of the towns as well. Oddly, with only two exceptions, my payoffs never rose above the $75 minimum, and even more oddly, I never questioned a single payoff. I was just so happy to be out of Memphis that I guess I didn’t stop to ponder the economics of the company.
World Class was also different in that it offered nightly draws (loans) that would be taken out of our paychecks. I didn’t even know that such a practice existed, so I didn’t know quite what to think when Bronco Lubich approached me on my first night with the company. Bronco was a former star wrestler who had retired and became an icon in World Class as the world’s least mobile referee. Bronco’s ultra slow counts and his unwillingness to let the heels get ahead even a little bit tended to take away from the aura of a match, but his kindness and great road stories made it impossible not to like him. He was also the man responsible for handing out the draws, but seeing as that concept was foreign to me, I looked at Bronco a little strangely when he walked up with clipboard and pen, asking, “Wanna draw?” I really thought that this old guy wanted me to sit down and color with him or something, and I was just about to take him up on his kind offer and create a puppy or a choo-choo when Gary Young interrupted me.
“Jack, he wants to know if you want any money,” Young yelled. I politely declined. To this day I still don’t take draws unless entirely necessary.
Gary and I went to a twenty-minute draw (stalemate) on our first night in with Steve Casey and the returning Cowboy, Tony Falk. That’s right-Cactus Jack couldn’t defeat Tony Falk from Paducah, Kentucky. Not too promising. Usually hot newcomers will run roughshod over everyone. So apparently we weren’t going to be pushed as hot newcomers. Fortunately, Jarrett had seen our match and was impressed with our teamwork to the point that we became top heels for most of our World Class stay. We were even given General Skandor Akbar as our manager and became the heart and soul of the general’s Devastation Incorporated. Actually, for a while we were the only heels in the company and must have been pretty good at it, as together we fought a babyface roster consisting of Kerry Von Erich, Eric Embry, Jeff Jarrett, Brickhouse Brown, Chris Adams, Jimmy Jack Funk, Matt Borne, Billy Travis, and Steve and Shaun Simpson. Despite the ridiculous odds, we somehow managed to stay a threat during our entire run.
My first night in Dallas also heralded a change in the Cactus Jack character. Even before my forced heel cowardice in Memphis, I had always seemed more mischievous than insane. During my first interview in Dallas, I somehow went in that direction and the style was encouraged immediately by Jarrett, Young, and Akbar. Unfortunately, this new “wild” Cactus Jack didn’t get to talk much as Young and Akbar carried out most of the verbiage. I took to the role quickly, however, and in my mind, at least, became the best weirdo in wrestling-probably because like most successful wrestling gimmicks, it wasn’t much of a stretch.
“Crazy” guys usually bothered me in wrestling simply because they were trying so damn hard to be “crazy.” They’d sit there and shake and make faces while their manager talked, and to me it all seemed so contrived and unbelievable.
Take college kids, for example. A guy has too much to drink, headbutts the wall, makes crude remarks to women, gets in a fight, throws up, and passes out. The next day, everyone talks about how “crazy” the guy is. I’m sorry, that’s not crazy-that’s stupid. On the other hand, I once accidentally walked in on a college buddy and was shocked to see him sitting Indian-style on the wooden floor, completely naked, eating brownies. He wasn’t trying to be a “sick college fuck” -he was just relaxing. And that’s the point that scared me. Given the choice, I’d rather fight ten drunk headbutters than one naked brownie eater because I wouldn’t know what to do against the brownie guy. As Cactus Jack, that’s the effect I was after. Moderation was the key, and it wasn’t long before all the fans bought into Cactus Jack as a madman.
I was a nice madman, however, somewhat naive and simpleminded, to tell the truth. Much as I’d done in Tennessee with my non-New York accent practice at local honky-tonks, I began practicing my new Cactus Jack at the local Dallas nightspots. It was as Cactus Jack that I met a pretty, divorced mother of two named Valerie. She had been to the Sportatorium for the first time that night with a friend, and when her friend approached me, Valerie became intrigued with me to the point that she invited me for dinner a few nights later.
I only had one problem-I had met her as the nervous, paranoid, simple Cactus Jack and didn’t really know how to tell her that I wasn’t really like that guy she had met. It was a hell of a predicament. Do I go as Mick Foley, explain the strange situation, and hope for the best? Or do I continue my lie and go as Cactus Jack? I pondered it awhile as I dressed in my typical attire of cowboy boots with pointed metal toes, jeans, snakeskin belt with alligator claw buckle, rattlesnake tail earring, and (surprise) red flannel shirt. It was an ensemble that one girl called the “sleaze cowboy look.” Now as I write this, clothed in blue sweats, two-day-old undies, a green Oscar the Grouch shirt, the same sneakers I wear in the ring, and (surprise) a red flannel shirt, I feel a little foolish about my Texas attire, but hey, come to think of it, there were a lot worse looks than mine in the eighties. Suddenly a realization hit me-Valerie had not invited Mick Foley over, she had invited Cactus Jack. Like most chicks, she would not dig poor Mick, while Cactus had a reasonable shot at nailing that shit (sorry, I know that is crude, but when I thought of it, it made me laugh out loud so I thought I’d include it). So rather than come clean, I continued my lie as it would continue for the next several months. I would “get up” for my Cactus Jack performances and would need time to unwind when it was over. Hey, it’s not easy being “on” for hours at a time. Valerie was my first long-term relationship in Texas, but unlike other guys who claim, “She never really knew me,” I was correct-she never really knew me.
Eventually, Valerie dropped me, claiming, among other things, substandard sexual techniques. But I showed her. After having a taste, I was like a kid in a candy store and I went on a short run of rampant promiscuousness that proved one of two things. Either Valerie was wrong about me, or she had quite a few people who would agree with her.
Eric Embry was our booker in Texas and also doubled as a top good guy. The guy had to be a genius because as a pudgy, sneaky heel, he was the last guy you’d think the fans would love, but over time, they went crazy over the guy. Actually, he was very bright, wrote good television, and could wrestle his ass off. He had one trait that bothered me a little, though: Eric liked to be naked.
I had been told that Eric belonged to a nudist colony in Florida, and I believed it as he turned the Sportatorium dressing room into his own personal colony. He would walk around giving instructions with his Johnson blowing in the wind, and I’d have to pretend not to see it. It reminded me of talking to a girl with huge hooters, as I would have to keep my eyes glued on his so as not to look at his menacing member. Actually, if my shorts housed a hose like Embry’s, maybe I too would be prone to presenting my penis. But alas
, the “Irish curse” had struck me hard and I know that I would be forever destined to walk to the shower with my towel around my waist.
Sadly for Eric, he was never quite the same after Robert Fuller came to Texas and showed how he’d earned the nickname Tennessee Stud.
I can say this about Eric, he gave me a chance to do my best at a time when I was almost out of choices. I was never held back, never lectured about college, and never told to “beg off” from my opponent. He gave me the freedom to be myself and I prospered with that gift. He also will go down as one of my favorite opponents, even if my favorite memory of him shows him in a somewhat embarrassing light.
We were wrestling in a Thunderdome ten-man cage match in Fort Worth, Texas, in March 1989 that Embry was a part of. A Thunderdome match is a cage in which each pinned man is handcuffed to the cage. The last man left is then handed a key with which he unlocks his teammates to unleash five minutes of destruction on their helpless foes.
The match was about ten minutes gone with about half the gang already cuffed when Embry, whom I had been beating on, began a comeback. To his credit, the little pudgy bastard had a lot of fire and when he kicked me in the balls, I heard the crowd erupt. Embry began hitting me, and the reaction got even louder. Embry was feeding off the frenzy now, and he slapped his hands on the mat and came up shaking his fists in the classic “Come on, you son of a bitch” babyface stance. The reaction was deafening. I couldn’t help thinking, however, that something was wrong. The reaction was too loud, the frenzy was too heated, and despite the fact that he was the number one guy in town, Eric’s response was too big. Something wasn’t quite right, all right, and from my vantage point, from the corner of my cage, I saw what it was.
Terry Garvin, who was doing a gay routine as the Beauty, had been handcuffed for a few minutes. As Eric stood clenching his fists and calling me a son of a bitch, Jimmy Jack Funk and Chris Adams had spread the Beauty’s legs, and Beauty was selling it big time. Funk (no relation to Terry, although at one point the World Wrestling Federation had claimed there was) and Adams threatened to maul Garvin’s marbles, it seemed to coincide with Embry’s posing, and in Eric’s mind, the reaction was his. In truth, I don’t think anyone was even looking at us, but I didn’t know how to break it to him. He was my boss, after all. If he wanted to believe that he was electrifying the crowd, who was I to burst his bubble? I would rather tell my son that there is no Easter Bunny. I felt so bad for the poor guy that I even broke tradition and began begging for mercy while he popped his eyes and puffed out his cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie on a hot trumpet solo. Sadly, by the time Eric let me have it, the Beauty had already “passed out” from the fear. Eric’s flurry of punches, which now had the crowd’s full attention, were met with only moderate enthusiasm.
Even though my star was on the rise in Texas, I lived as if it had fallen and had been buried. I would call the place I lived in a dump, but it would be an insult to people who actually live in dumps. The house was in the middle of Arlington, about five miles from Six Flags Over Texas. Oddly, I never made the trip to it, even though today I practically live to go to amusement parks. As in Nashville, I paid $50 a week for my room, but unlike Nashville, this $50 also covered food, laundry, and auto repairs. Also unlike Nashville, my $50 a week included sharing the house with the biggest variety of losers ever assembled under one roof. Compared to these guys, I was like the Fonz or something.
Wilson was the older guy who rented out the house. He was a nice guy, but his life was ruined by the fact that he drank literally from the time he got up in the morning until the time he passed out at night. In between, he would clean clothes, sit in the backyard, and prepare dinner-usually something extremely fried. Minutes after being served, Kyle and Roger, two Marine reservists about my age, would track Wilson down, sometimes blocks from the house, and force him to eat. “I don’t want to eat,” Wilson would yell as they dragged him in. Left to his own accord, Wilson would have much rather lived solely on hops and barley.
Kyle and Roger seemed like decent enough guys initially, but I eventually realized that if these guys were protecting our country, we were all in a whole lot of trouble. The two of them became hooked on an amphetamine called crank that was a huge deal in Texas, and they proceeded to throw their lives away. Roger inherited nineteen grand during this time, which seemed like a fortune to me, and it was gone literally in five days. He threw a huge party for himself in the most expensive restaurant in Dallas, bought a motorcycle for cash that he promptly crashed, and spent the rest on medical bills. When it was over, he didn’t even have enough money to buy crank.
Roger’s former girlfriend was a horribly messed-up seventeen year-old girl named Allison whose mother, Susan, was engaged to another guy in our house named Dennis. Dennis liked me enough to even invite me to be his best man at his forthcoming wedding, but after he moved into Susan’s place, I loaned him fifty bucks and never heard from him again. Susan’s messed-up daughter had once come on to Dennis, who defended his decision to nail her by saying, “Dammit, I’m a man, and she was turning me on.” I felt bad for poor Roger, who truly loved that nympha chick, until I found out that he and Kyle had once doubleteamed Susan while she was engaged to Dennis. Allison once came on to me to by exposing herself to me while I was sitting on her mom’s couch, and even though, “Dammit, I’m a man,” she was underage and my friend’s former girlfriend, and dammit, I didn’t need the hassle.
One day I came home to see small drops of blood on the hallway carpet. It turned out that Dennis, who by this time had moved out, had returned, and had been beaten up by another guy in the house named Thomas, apparently for borrowing money from Wilson. I didn’t see Thomas, who was an ex-convict, all that much, and when I did, he always seemed real mellow. I understood his mellow demeanor when Susan’s boyfriend-banging bimbo of a daughter informed me that “Thomas is a heroin-shooting motherfucker.” When I asked her how she knew this she cheerily replied, “Because I was just thirteen the first time I got high with that motherfucker.” Come to think of it, if she had called Kyle or Roger “motherfuckers,” technically she’d have been correct.
Eventually I got tired of my surroundings, especially when my bike was stolen out of my room and I couldn’t use the bathroom because one of Terry’s friends had passed out in there. Oh yeah, there was also a married couple in one room with a newborn. When the husband went to jail, the wife informed me that she was a lonely woman and that I could feel free to visit her room anytime I wanted to keep her company. I declined, partly because I didn’t need an angry ex-con looking for me, partly because I wouldn’t feel right about doing the nasty with a newborn in the room.
I left the house in Arlington and moved into an apartment in Irving with a woman named Joanne who made tights for all the boys. Despite rumors to the contrary, I never had a sexual relationship with that woman, Ms. Harriss.
I returned to the house in Arlington a year later and found things to be even worse than when I’d left. Wilson had died from alcoholism; Thomas had gotten married and moved out. Dennis hadn’t been heard from, and Kyle and Roger were living in a van in front of the house. Saddest of all, Tippy, the dog I had gotten from the pound for Wilson when his dog died, had been put to sleep after Wilson’s death. I remember the dog tied up to its house and starving for attention and I regretted every time I came in late from a show and didn’t pay her enough attention. For ten years I have regretted that, especially because my new dog, Delilah, looks so much like her.
Back on the wrestling front I asked for some time off as we headed into April, as I hadn’t been home for almost a year. I was given five days off at the beginning of May during which I would meet up with my old buddies for a return to Cortland for two days, and a visit with my parents for three. As I planned my escape, two mistakes were made-one by me and one by the office. I paid for both of them.
My first mistake was in not checking my schedule more carefully. If I had, I would have seen that we had only one show scheduled fo
r the week before my trip. By simply checking ahead, I could have skipped the Lawton, Oklahoma show and had a twelve-day break, instead of the five I got. I’m not sure, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the people of Lawton wouldn’t have missed me enough to cost seven days fewer at home. It’s also a safe bet that my bank account wouldn’t have missed the extra $7 5 all that much.
The second mistake was the office forgetting about my time off and booking me and Gary in the main event at the Sportatorium against Embry and Mexican Legend (and I use that term real lightly) Mil Mascaras. The show was to fall on Cinco de Mayo (the fifth of May), and Mascaras was being brought in to capitalize on Dallas’s huge Mexican population. A month earlier, Gary had used a baseball bat to injure Embry internally and now, with Embry hell-bent on revenge, the match was to be a “ball bat on a pole” match. There was only one problem. I wasn’t going to be there.
I went to Eric and expressed my problem. Embry assured me it would be all right. “How are we going to cover it?” I asked.
“We’ll hurt you” was Embry’s immediate reply. I wanted to know how. Eric thought it over. “We’ll do it with a chair,” he said. Even ten years ago, I didn’t feel like a chair was enough to keep Cactus Jack down and told him as much. “What do you suggest then, baby,” Embry asked, using his frequent term of endearment for me.
I looked him straight in the eye so as to avoid looking at his penis and said, “I’ll think of something.”