(WWF). It was a pretty big deal. Most professional wrestlers wait years and years for such an opportunity. Some wait all of their life. So it was something that I took very seriously. I trained hard in preparation, determined to prove that I had what it took to entertain the masses.
And I think I did that in my first couple of matches. I was paired up with Barry Horowitz, a great worker who had been around a long, long time. He understood that professional wrestling was more than just a bunch of random moves and then a finish. He knew how to build a story around a match, create drama that the fans could identify with, and that’s exactly what we did. I walked away from our bouts feeling accomplished and satisfied. I felt like I had done a good job, and that’s all that really mattered to me because whether I got into the WWF or not was not something I could control.
Then they asked me back, and I got excited. I had passed the first stage of the tryout, and this was the second stage. I didn’t know how many stages there were, but I didn’t care. My goal was to reach the top, and I was currently taking the steps needed to get there. But instead of paring me up with Horowitz, who had made me look so damn good during my debut, they paired me up with Tom McGee. They called him “Mega Man,” but I had no idea why. He wasn’t Mega in anything he did. It’s not that he didn’t have any moves. He had plenty of moves. He just didn’t want or know how to string those moves together in a way that would build up the match. It’s not like you had to be a brain surgeon to be able to do that. He could have come out and socked me in the face, kicked me in the gut, and then picked me up and slammed me to the ground. While I rolled around in agony, he could have caught me in a painful hold and twisted my head. I would have kicked my feet, convulsed my body. Then, just before the ref pounded his hand for the third time on the canvas, I would have escaped. That would have built the match a little, got the fans riled up, but instead it was, “Hey, let’s just do these moves and we’re done.” He just wanted to go spot after spot after spot, and then “boom,” the finish.
I did two matches with him, and both of them turned out absolutely horrible. I remember coming backstage after our second bout completely depressed. I was still relatively green, still trying to get a foothold in the business, and I thought the lack of build had been my fault. While I was sulking, one of the Anderson brothers came up and tapped on my shoulder.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It wasn’t you. That guy has a horrible match with everybody.”
It made me feel a little better, but it didn’t do any wonders for getting me into the WWF. After that last show with Mega Man, I didn’t hear back from them, so I continued wrestling for the SAPW on the East Coast. I figured if I made a big enough impact on the smaller circuits, then it was only a matter of time before the WWF gave me another chance.
I started to get to know more people and make more friends in the business. Every time one of those friends came through town on their circuit, my pop and I would put him up for a couple of nights so he didn’t have to stay in a hotel. Professional wrestlers are generally not the kind of men who like to sit around watching television, so we would go out and get some drinks. The problem was we almost always had someone over, so I was going out and getting drinks more often than my family or I liked. It was only a matter of time before I got into some kind of trouble.
As it turned out, that trouble started over a girl.
I was sitting up at the bar of a local dive with a friend of mine who wrestled on some of the smaller circuits. He and his girlfriend were in town for a few days, and naturally I had taken them out for a couple of drinks to show them some fun. As we were sitting there, the Nasty Boys came sauntering in. They were wrestling for the WWF at the time, and I guess they thought that gave them special privileges because the blond one, I believe his name is Knobs, came up to the bar and grabbed the chest of my buddy’s girlfriend.
She got mad, of course. I could tell my buddy wanted to come to her rescue, but he wasn’t much of a fighter. Besides, the Nasty Boys were with the WWF, and my buddy was desperately trying to get into the WWF. He didn’t want to stir up any unnecessary waves, so he let her handle it. And she seemed to be doing a pretty good job of it, too.
But then Knobs reached forward and pinched her chest again. My buddy spun around on his bar stool, but he managed to keep his cool. He said only three words—“Dude, come on.”
Back in the day I probably would have already been throwing punches, but I was trying to get away from stepping into the middle of every fight that happened. I had children now, and the last thing I needed was another lawsuit for hurting someone in public. I tried my hardest just to stay in my seat and drink my drink, but the moment Knobs laid his hands on my friend, all that anger and rage came bubbling back up to the surface.
“You know what,” I said to Knobs, standing up, “You better back up.”
I was still hoping that there would be some sort of peaceful resolution. I knew the Nasty Boys weren’t going to say they were sorry and buy my friend’s girlfriend a drink, but I was hoping they’d fire off a few nasty words and then skip out the door.
That didn’t happen. What did happen was Knobs put his hand on my face and shoved me back. I think he saw the change in my facial expression the moment he did that because he didn’t wait around for a response. By the time I could get my weight moving in a forward direction, both of them were already headed for the door. I was so mad that I would probably have caught them even though they had a good head start, but the bouncers intercepted me halfway across the floor.
“Come on, Ken, chill, chill, chill.”
When they let go of me, both of the Nasty Boys were long gone. The smart thing would have been to let it go, but that’s not something I could do. I had learned at five years of age what mattered most in my life. It wasn’t looks or money or health. It was my pride. The Nasty Boys had picked a fight with us. They had disrespected my friend’s girlfriend, then my friend, and then they had disrespected me. If I didn’t settle the score, they would walk away thinking I was a chump, and I couldn’t have that. The only thought circling around in my mind was I’m not going to let this happen!
I knew the hotel the Nasty Boys were staying in, so after I said goodnight to my friend and his girlfriend, I headed over there. I banged on their door for a good five minutes, and when they wouldn’t open it, I kicked the door down. As I stormed into their room, I saw Knobs lying on the bed. He looked passed out, and I started kicking the side of the bed to wake him up to fight me.
“Get up!” I shouted.
I remember seeing Knobs stir on the bed, and then my world went black. When I woke up an hour or so later, I was lying in the back of an ambulance. I had a broken sternum, and my eye socket was caved in. I was in such bad shape that the paramedics thought they were going to lose me before they could get me to the hospital. I looked like someone had run me over with a tractor several dozen times.
While recovering in the hospital over the next couple of months, I learned what had happened that night. I guess when I was beating on their door, the Nasty Boys realized that there was no way they were going to be able to stop me from getting into their room, so they worked up a little scheme. Knobs lay down in bed and pretended to be passed out, and his partner in crime, Saggs, ripped the phone out of the wall and hid in the closet. Now, I don’t know what kind of hotel this was, but they didn’t have your run-of-the-mill phone. Instead of being constructed primarily out of plastic, this one was constructed primarily out of steel. As I was preoccupied with kicking the bed in an attempt to wake Knobs up, Saggs came up behind me with that god-awful phone. He swung it over his shoulder with all of his might, hitting me upside the head and knocking me out cold.
It was a scenario you might see acted out in the WWE on Monday Night Raw, and they carried it just as far. Once I was
