Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (41 page)

I think that’s wrong. Many people would disagree with me, saying that you have to “treat stars like stars.” But I think you have to “treat people like people.” And I believe the favoritism sent out a bad message to the boys. As I stated earlier, I treated Austin no differently whether he was Stone Cold or the Ringmaster. Today’s jobbers (guys just starting in the business, who pay their dues by losing to
everybody
) might be tomorrow’s stars. And many of the talents despised JR

for showing favoritism. They might not have told him that to his face, because they were afraid of losing their jobs, but they told
me
on many, many occasions.

On top of that, as head of talent relations you need to be aggres-sive — you need to be shuckin’-‘n’-jivin’ from the minute you wake-up! Moving nonstop, almost like you accidentally got a spot of Ben-Gay inside your boxers. Look at Bischoff: with Eric around, there was a very competitive environment when it came to signing talent.

And you know what Vince used to call JR behind the scenes?
Deputy
Dog
. Yes, he wore that ridiculous cowboy hat 24–7. And even if Vince was kidding, you know there was something to it. Now, if you’re a young talent with all the promise in the world, are you going to sign with a sharp, attractive, energetic go-getter like Eric Bischoff, or are you going to sign with a guy who’s only worried about being on television, talking about a barbeque sauce that bears his name, and moves at the snail’s pace of a laid-back, canine cartoon character?

When I was writing television, early on, and the ratings were just starting to reach the threes, every week I was looking at the same roster — the same names, over and over again. It’s like you’re managing a .500 team and you’re not making any moves to bring that 297

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team up to the next level. Meanwhile, Eric Bischoff was signing
everybody
. When he inked the Ultimate Warrior, that was the last straw.

What is JR doing?
I would often wonder.
I need players!
At the time I told Vince that I would take 100 percent responsibility if the ratings didn’t go up, however I needed some help — I needed some bodies!

So screw it — if JR wasn’t going to do his job, then I was going to do it for him. With Vince’s permission, I started to personally recruit talent. JR couldn’t have been happy about this, but then again, I really didn’t care. All I was worried about was the company. So, I was instrumental in bringing Al Snow back to the wwf and introducing the Dudleys, Taz, Stevie Richards and Chris Jericho to the Federation before my departure.

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like to talk. I like to get in and get out, say what I have to say then leave. That’s another thing that used to drive me nuts about JR . . . he talked, and he talked, and he talked, and he talked, and he talked, and he talked and he talked some more. Again, in my opinion, when somebody may not be qualified to do what they do, they will talk your freaking ear off in an effort to try and convince you that they actually know what they’re doing. After a while, I just flat-out refused to have
any
meetings with Jim. There just weren’t enough hours in a day.

Look, in my opinion it breaks down this simply: all JR was ever interested in was being the best play-by-play man in the business.

And to his credit, he was. But head of talent relations? To me that was another story. A little while back there was a company flight where two wwf wrestlers fought in mid-air. A commentator got knocked out cold by a wrestler, and then that same commentator had his hair cut by yet another wrestler. (At 30,000 feet!). All the while another wwf commentator was making out with a flight attendant in the back. And during the same flight, yet
another
wrestler took over the public address system and began to serenade his ex-wife. And, oh yeah, by the way,
Jim Ross
, the head of wwf talent relations, was on the plane! His job? His job was to police the boys. Even the real Deputy Dawg could have done better.

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Need I say more?

Well, let’s talk about
ego.
Man, I’ve got a story that’s almost hard to believe — but again it demonstrates how, in the wrestling business, ego can take over like a cancer. After his second bout with Bell’s palsy, JR was chomping at the bit to go back to television and do play-by-play. But after talking to Kevin Dunn, it was clear that there was no way on earth he was ready. The truth was, his face was still far from normal, and he noticeably slurred almost every word. Unfortunately, JR was lobbying the entire office, telling anybody that would listen how ready he was to be back. JR talked about it for weeks, but Kevin Dunn was telling me “No way.” Then just as I feared, there we were the night before the next pay-per-view. And JR thinks he’s going to do play-by-play, and nobody has told him differently. In the wrestling business, nobody wants to do the “dirty work.” So, somewhere near the end of our production meeting, Jim Cornette gets up and says he thinks JR should do play-by-play the following night. All I could think was: “Some friend. How about we put you on tv looking like that?” But really, Cornette just didn’t know any better. After Cornette’s two cents, Vince and Kevin just looked at each other: “ok

!@#$% — who’s going to tell him?” Then Vince said, “Let me and Kevin talk about it, and we’ll let JR know.” They left the room.

With everybody gone, I knew I had to say something to JR I had to protect him from himself, because he just didn’t see what I, the fan, was seeing. I’m not going to bs you — even back in his wcw days, I always thought Jim Ross was the best announcer in the game. I was a big fan. Forget professionalism, as a fan I could not let him go on national television that way.
Nobody
wanted to see him like that.

So I told him just that. I said I had always been a huge fan of his, and that I was speaking for all his fans. “Jim, they don’t want to see you this way — this isn’t the JR they know.” I told him to give it a little more time and there was no doubt he was going to be back on the air. Throughout the entire plea, my voice was cracking like a woman’s.

I had to fight back the tears just to get the damn words out. After I was done pouring my guts out onto the floor, Jim thanked me.

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Later that night I found out that following our conversation Jim went right to Kevin and Vince and
still
lobbied to go on the air the next day. That, my friend, is what ego is all about. Here is a wrestling legend, whose face is — let’s say it — disfigured at the time, and he still wants to go out there in front of “his” fans.

I often think about another incident from JR’s time away from tv.

We were at the SkyDome in Toronto, in front of a pretty big crowd.

JR took Vince to the side and asked if he could, “Just go out and wave to his fans before the show.” I don’t care how you look at it, that’s scary. If it’s that important for someone to be in the lime-light . . . I just don’t know what else to say.

As Vince’s television role grew, he brought in a Hollywood writer by the name of Ed Ferrara to help me. Over the past few years, Ed and I have had our differences. But I can never take this away from the guy — he was
extremely
talented. He easily could have been a stand-up comic. Not only does he look like a hedgehog, but the guy is just flat-out hysterical. Ed and I traveled everywhere with Vince, Shane and Stephanie, and during every trip he would entertain the troops.

Even though Ed did many voices and characters, his staple was JR. Yes it was cruel, but Ed’s imitation of JR during his Bell’s palsy era was beyond words. I’m going to go to hell for saying this, but as a good writer, I need to properly set the scene. When JR was stricken a second time with the disease — every time he spoke, his tongue would pop out of his mouth and roll about like a lost slug looking for a cool rock to crawl under. Ed had this down to a science. Now — get over it — we weren’t being deliberately cruel, we were just spending way too much time on the road. Yeah, we may all one day meet again at Satan’s gate, but at the time it was freaking hysterical!

That’s how Ed Ferrara playing wcw’s Oklahoma came about. We did it as a rib on JR, and because we knew Vince would be dying on the inside, saying, “I can’t believe those guys are doing that.” Of course, the goodie-goodies at wcw made us kill the character because it may have insulted someone with Bell’s palsy watching. . . .

But, you know what? With Vince, it was always that part of him 300

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that stood out the most. It was really my privilege at times to get that glimpse of the real Vince. At work, he was somebody else — he had to be. But when you could break down that guard, when you were able to get those special one-on-one times with him, it was almost like being with your best friend.

I miss those times.

• • •

Even after I first put this book to bed, I was forced to wake it up because of more asinine comments concerning yours truly. And they were made by good ol’ JR.

Recently, during an internet interview, Ross stated that he couldn’t

“understand Vince Russo’s logic.” Well, Jimbo, let me make it simple for you. . . .

With Vince Russo writing:
Raw
ratings reach 7.1. (Obviously, I won’t count the show following the tragic death of Owen Hart.

However, if you wanted to count “Halftime Heat” during the 1998

Super Bowl, that would be an 8.4 — but I’ll give
you
the benefit of the doubt, Hoss.)

Last week’s
Raw
rating: 3.9. Let’s see, that’s a drop of 3.2, or 45 percent — pick your poison!

Oh, and one more thing, that was
with
competition (versus no competition). There’s your
logic
.

I stated earlier that a large part of Vince McMahon’s success can be attributed to surrounding himself with dedicated, hard-working people and then putting them in key positions. But then what happened with JR? How in God’s name did he get to be the head of talent relations — perhaps the most important position in the company? I kept myself up many a night asking the same question, until Bruce Prichard supplied me with what may have been the answer.

As you know, JR was hired and fired by Vince — not once, but twice. Again what many don’t know is that when Vince was being tried by the Federal Government, he had to prepare himself for a guilty verdict. Nobody really knew what the outcome was going to be, 301

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not even Vince himself. In putting his “yes-men in a row,” so to speak, Vince once again needed the services of good ol’ JR. But this time Jim was smart. According to Prichard — I don’t know this to be a fact —

Ross demanded and
got
a 10-year no-cut contract. Again, this is according to Prichard, so you have to take it not only with a grain of salt, but a whole sack of Morton’s. . . .

I made the decision to print the JR log from two years ago in its entirety for a reason — to show, first-hand, exactly what a horse’s ass I was. (God, I apologize now — that will be the last expletive in this book. There is just no other way to describe the type of human being I was toward JR.) For those of you reading this who are in the wrestling business, it’s unfortunate that you may look at the following as a “work,” or a

“swerve.” That is part of being in the “wrestling bubble,” and one of the reasons I finally decided to leave. But, to JR, who
I hope
is reading this, all I can do at this point is apologize for my actions toward you.

For whatever reason, call it stress, call it lack of patience, call it failure to understand — whatever you want to call it — I was
brutal
to Jim Ross. And for that I sincerely apologize. There was no reason, no justifi-cation — I was just caught up in something that was slowly but surely turning me into something I didn’t want to be.

Why couldn’t I put myself in JR’s boots for just one minute? Why couldn’t I understand what he was going through? His mom, who he was very close to, had just passed away; he had not one, but two, bouts with Bell’s palsy and add to that the day-in, day-out stress of having to deal with Vince. . . . JR was at Vince’s beck and call, even more than I was. I’ll tell you why I didn’t show him compassion — because at the time it was all about me, me, me. I am ashamed, embarrassed and again, I truly apologize to JR and his entire family — publicly.

Friends, that is why I no longer want to be a part of that world — and understand, I’m not just talking about the wrestling world, I’m talking about the
entire
world. Once you become a part of this world you have a tendency to be like everybody else. Your day is filled with gossip, deceit, negativity and hate. Your nights are overflowing with money, 302

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greed, lust and temptation — it’s nothing more than Satan’s playground.

When Christ entered my life, I no longer wanted to be a part of that!

Jesus showed me first-hand that it has
nothing
to do with this world, whatsoever — this is nothing but a temporary truck stop. Life should be all about God’s eternal kingdom, a little place called Heaven. Once we set up our tents there, we no longer have to deal with the ugliness. No longer will the world rotate on an axis of hate — but instead spin on one of love. So, I’ve cashed in my chips. I’m not playing here anymore — I quit the game. My purpose here is to glorify God’s kingdom, and bring as much of it as I can down from Heaven.

I have to say this, because I feel compelled to. . . . Just last night, I had a rather traumatic evening. About a week ago, I launched a Christian website, which I took extremely seriously. Without missing a beat, a number of wrestling fans, who unfortunately also reside in “the bubble,” went on the site and stained it with wrestling reference after wrestling reference. Now, even though I didn’t want to comment on this subject here — I feel I must, briefly. For the past few years I have heard nothing but rehash after rehash of the 2000 “Bash at the Beach” incident. Now, I’m not really going to get into it, because it isn’t worth the ink on this page. But I will tell you this: that night, which no one seems able to let go of, was all about business, money, ego and greed — everything the wrestling world, and a good portion of the entire world, is built on.