Post by Stu-E Price on Sept 18, 2007 17:33:07 GMT -5
MORE ADVENTURES
At the end of October in 1995, I began accompanying Davey to the ring as his devoted wife. He was still a heel, but my gimmick was that I would stick by him no matter what. The fans hated me. I was like Sandy Scott, the ref who used to look the other way when wrestlers were cheating.
Then the WWF decided to pair Davey with Owen. They were terrific together. Owen became the flyer and Davey the powerhouse. I was the common link, the wife and sister. We were a heel trio.
Owen and Davey often tagged against Jake Roberts and Ahmed Johnson. Both Davey and Owen hated being slammed by Ahmed. He didn't know his own strength. They said that he'd slam them so hard; they'd see little birds. When Ahmed bodyslammed him, 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin said he'd have to wiggle his fingers to make sure he wasn't paralyzed.
Ahmed had a move called 'The Pearl River Plunge,' a move where he would scissor kick the back of his opponent's head. His heel would knock the guy face-first into the mat, then he'd pick up his opponent and powerbomb him. I was watching from the sides when he gave Owen a concussion doing this move. After getting kicked in the head, Owen's eyes went vacant and he ran flat-footed away from Ahmed, obviously unaware of his surroundings. He was wrestling on instinct. Owen ricocheted off the ropes and Ahmed threw him over the top rope. He landed like a rag doll on the concrete floor next to the ring. This wrestling was real all right.
Then they added Van Vader to our team of heels. They gave us Jim Cornette as our on-stage wrestling manager. We were a little army and Jim was our general. Jim would lead our way to the ring followed by Vader, then Davey and I would walk up, talking together. Owen's hands were full because he would always carry two Slammies – wrestling Oscars – and his World Tag Team Belt. He'd run up from behind and budge in front of Davey and me, sticking his face right in front of Davey's face for the camera and smiling approvingly and pointing his fingers at me, as if he were putting me over.
Davey would then run in front of Owen and flex his biceps, which would propel Owen to run in front of Davey.
I always worried when the boys had to go in with Jake 'The Snake' Roberts because I learned later he was a drug addict. At the time I thought he was just a drunk. I remember one night Jake came to the show and the next day he disappeared because he was on a crack binge. Meanwhile Vince was trying to get a live TV taping done and he was asking, "Where the hell is Jake? Where is he? He's in a six-man tag, where is he?" It turned out Jake was in jail. He got caught with some girl who was the daughter of someone in the police force.
I felt bad for Vince McMahon because he seemed to have a lot of disloyalty in his company and he was trying to get his show off the ground.
He reminded me of my dad, especially the times when my dad had struggled.
Jake was a brilliant man, with maybe a genius IQ, but he was troubled. He had a great gimmick. He would carry a burlap sack with him into the ring and stash it in the corner. When he was the victor, he'd empty a huge yellow boa constrictor from the sack onto his downed opponent. Jake's snake provided the inspiration for a story line that was cooked up for us. Jim Cornette was absolutely terrified of snakes. One night they had me sitting in the crowd rather than at ringside because I was going to be told Jim Cornette had had a heart attack after Jake scared him with his snake. Davey and Owen were supposed to be frightened too and run out of the ring instead of resuscitating their dying manager.
But instead of just teasing Jim with the snake, Jake dumped it right on Jim and it began threading itself around his body. Jim came close to genuinely having a cardiac arrest, and this made Davey and Owen laugh so hard they forgot to run out of the ring. In addition, the story line had me leaving my seat to tend to Jim in the back and getting distracted by a handsome Shawn Michaels. Then to cover my flirtatious behavior with Shawn, I leaned over Jim and said, "Did you see that Jim? Shawn just made a pass at me."
The cameras caught Jim pulling Davey and me into a locker room. Then they cut to Davey throwing a chair across the room yelling, "I'm going to kill that Shawn Michaels!" This angle was built for the big pay-per-view event in Savannah, Georgia, three months later in May of 1996. Vince split Owen and Davey up and had Davey wrestling as a single. Owen was paired with Vader and Jim Cornette managed them.
Much like the soap opera Vince McMahon eventually created with his daughter Stephanie and WWF superstar Triple H, I was supposedly getting involved with Shawn Michaels. Davey was supposed to be concerned that Shawn was making advances. This would lead to a big fight. Then I found out that part of the big angle had me getting on a closed-circuit camera seducing Shawn. It would have been so good if I had just gone with it. But I talked to my dad about it.
Bret had just lost the World's Belt at Wrestlemania 13, in a 60-minute hard-fought match with Shawn who had entered the ring on a harness from the ceiling of the Anaheim Duck Pond. He wasn't crazy about losing the belt to Shawn. He wouldn't have minded losing to Steve Austin or Diesel, but Bret and Shawn were always vying for Vince's attention. So he had a chip on his shoulder. He decided to put wrestling on hiatus while he pursued an acting career.
The WWF's booking agent Bruce Pritchard and Jim Cornette approached me. Jim said, "You know, this is going to be great! You're going to be making the moves on Shawn, trying to ram your tongue down his throat and undo his belt buckle while Shawn tries to resist. Your feelings will be hurt because he has spurned your advances, so you go back to Davey and say, 'That SOB, that goddamn Shawn Michaels, he's been making passes at me and I want you to put a stop to it. I want you to finish him.”
Davey hated this. He said, "It makes me look like an asshole because my wife is making moves on Shawn and I'm going after Shawn. I should be going after her!"
Jim rolled his eyes. "Uh you see, Davey, you don't know she is the bad one. You love her and believe her when she says Shawn is trying to grope her." But Davey didn't like it. I was uncomfortable with it because I'm Diana Hart, not Sable. For one thing, I was using my real name. I was nervous about acting out the scene on TV, but I would have trusted Shawn to help me through that. It would have been really good for me to get that kind of exposure. It was what I'd been waiting for my whole life.
I was so stupid and stubborn. I should have thought of it like the Undertaker. He's not an undertaker, he's not really a funeral home director, but that's his role on TV. I guess it was the way Jim Cornette told me about it. He was so coarse. He was really laughing and I thought maybe it was a joke on me. I didn't really comprehend the potential of the whole thing. I could have been such a good bad sister. I got back to my hotel room and I called Bret. He was absolutely against it. I think at that time Bret did care about what I did in wrestling and he was concerned about the way I would be perceived. But at the same time he was mad at the WWF because he had to lose to Shawn at Wrestlemania. Bret said, "You can't do that, you're Stu Hart's daughter. When dad goes to the IGA or the Safeway store and some guy says, 'Hey, Stu, I saw your daughter on TV. God what's happening there?' Well you just can't put dad through that."
I understood what he was saying. We were Stu Hart's kids and we didn't want anyone to think we were brought up to take advantage of our father's name. My mother has always said, "Dahling, we'd never want anyone to think your father's daughter was that kind of girl." Bret advised me to take the first plane out of there. Then I called my dad. He was furious about this angle. I could hear him yelling to my mother in the kitchen. "That gaddamned Bruce Pritchard wants Diana to appear as some sort of tramp, some and I think that's gaddamned disgusting. Would he want his mother to be watching his daughter doing a role like that?" My dad was going ballistic.
Then Owen pulled one of his ribs, which didn't help. Vince had these 1-800 phone line rooms set up where wrestlers talked to wrestling fans and answered questions at so much money per minute. Owen and Jim were working the phones when Owen discreetly dialed my dad who answered. "Oh hi, it's Owen," he said. Right away my dad started yelling about, "that gaddamned Bruce Pritchard and Jim Cornette and what kind of perverts are they?" He ranted, "I'm so gaddamned mad I could rip their nuts out!" Owen couldn't resist this golden opportunity. Without saying who he was talking to, he handed the phone to Jim, "It's for you." Jim Cornette grabbed the phone. "Yeah, Jim Cornette here."
In wrestling terminology, my dad cut a promo on him. But Bruce Pritchard was notorious for his impersonations so Jim assumed Owen and Bruce were trying to pull one over on him. He decided to go along. He really hammed it up. "Yeah, we're going to have your daughter go up there and it's going to look like a Goddamned orgy by the time we're finished. We're going to have her French kissing her brother and we're going to have Owen with his hands all over her ass and Davey Boy will be in there for a three-way." My dad was just going nuts on the other end. He screamed, "Gaddamnit, I don't want ... that's gaddamned horseshit and I don't want my daughter being a part of that."
Jim Cornette held the phone away from his ear laughing and looked at Owen saying, "Okay who the hell is this anyway?"
Owen was trying to keep his laughter in check. "It's Stu Hart, my dad." Jim laughed again, "Yeah right."
Then Bruce Pritchard walked into the room. Jim turned white as a sheet and started back-pedaling and apologizing to my dad, who was way beyond being pacified. To this day my dad thinks that Jim Cornette and Bruce Pritchard are really warped guys who wanted a perverted, incestuous orgy to be portrayed on TV with his kids.
My TV flirtation with Shawn was toned down considerably due to my reticence and because my dad objected so strenuously. Jim Cornette was sincerely afraid of my dad. Shawn was good about it. I told him I was really uncomfortable with the scenario and he said that was fine, we'd do something else. But I wonder what would have happened had I gone through with it as planned. Maybe it was my last chance to star in wrestling and I blew it. Maybe my being such a square cost me.
Davey gave notice to the WWF. He had to give three months" written notice through a lawyer by registered mail to WWF Titans Sports in Stanford, Connecticut. At that time Vince was losing guys to the WCW. Hulk Hogan still wanted Davey to join him there but Davey had only given notice so he could renegotiate a better deal with Vince. Vince called Owen, Davey and me into his office and said, "Davey, I don't want to lose you. Come on, you're family." He was really decent about it. Owen had already signed. He had no intention of leaving. He had the good sense to stay in one spot.
At the end of October in 1995, I began accompanying Davey to the ring as his devoted wife. He was still a heel, but my gimmick was that I would stick by him no matter what. The fans hated me. I was like Sandy Scott, the ref who used to look the other way when wrestlers were cheating.
Then the WWF decided to pair Davey with Owen. They were terrific together. Owen became the flyer and Davey the powerhouse. I was the common link, the wife and sister. We were a heel trio.
Owen and Davey often tagged against Jake Roberts and Ahmed Johnson. Both Davey and Owen hated being slammed by Ahmed. He didn't know his own strength. They said that he'd slam them so hard; they'd see little birds. When Ahmed bodyslammed him, 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin said he'd have to wiggle his fingers to make sure he wasn't paralyzed.
Ahmed had a move called 'The Pearl River Plunge,' a move where he would scissor kick the back of his opponent's head. His heel would knock the guy face-first into the mat, then he'd pick up his opponent and powerbomb him. I was watching from the sides when he gave Owen a concussion doing this move. After getting kicked in the head, Owen's eyes went vacant and he ran flat-footed away from Ahmed, obviously unaware of his surroundings. He was wrestling on instinct. Owen ricocheted off the ropes and Ahmed threw him over the top rope. He landed like a rag doll on the concrete floor next to the ring. This wrestling was real all right.
Then they added Van Vader to our team of heels. They gave us Jim Cornette as our on-stage wrestling manager. We were a little army and Jim was our general. Jim would lead our way to the ring followed by Vader, then Davey and I would walk up, talking together. Owen's hands were full because he would always carry two Slammies – wrestling Oscars – and his World Tag Team Belt. He'd run up from behind and budge in front of Davey and me, sticking his face right in front of Davey's face for the camera and smiling approvingly and pointing his fingers at me, as if he were putting me over.
Davey would then run in front of Owen and flex his biceps, which would propel Owen to run in front of Davey.
I always worried when the boys had to go in with Jake 'The Snake' Roberts because I learned later he was a drug addict. At the time I thought he was just a drunk. I remember one night Jake came to the show and the next day he disappeared because he was on a crack binge. Meanwhile Vince was trying to get a live TV taping done and he was asking, "Where the hell is Jake? Where is he? He's in a six-man tag, where is he?" It turned out Jake was in jail. He got caught with some girl who was the daughter of someone in the police force.
I felt bad for Vince McMahon because he seemed to have a lot of disloyalty in his company and he was trying to get his show off the ground.
He reminded me of my dad, especially the times when my dad had struggled.
Jake was a brilliant man, with maybe a genius IQ, but he was troubled. He had a great gimmick. He would carry a burlap sack with him into the ring and stash it in the corner. When he was the victor, he'd empty a huge yellow boa constrictor from the sack onto his downed opponent. Jake's snake provided the inspiration for a story line that was cooked up for us. Jim Cornette was absolutely terrified of snakes. One night they had me sitting in the crowd rather than at ringside because I was going to be told Jim Cornette had had a heart attack after Jake scared him with his snake. Davey and Owen were supposed to be frightened too and run out of the ring instead of resuscitating their dying manager.
But instead of just teasing Jim with the snake, Jake dumped it right on Jim and it began threading itself around his body. Jim came close to genuinely having a cardiac arrest, and this made Davey and Owen laugh so hard they forgot to run out of the ring. In addition, the story line had me leaving my seat to tend to Jim in the back and getting distracted by a handsome Shawn Michaels. Then to cover my flirtatious behavior with Shawn, I leaned over Jim and said, "Did you see that Jim? Shawn just made a pass at me."
The cameras caught Jim pulling Davey and me into a locker room. Then they cut to Davey throwing a chair across the room yelling, "I'm going to kill that Shawn Michaels!" This angle was built for the big pay-per-view event in Savannah, Georgia, three months later in May of 1996. Vince split Owen and Davey up and had Davey wrestling as a single. Owen was paired with Vader and Jim Cornette managed them.
Much like the soap opera Vince McMahon eventually created with his daughter Stephanie and WWF superstar Triple H, I was supposedly getting involved with Shawn Michaels. Davey was supposed to be concerned that Shawn was making advances. This would lead to a big fight. Then I found out that part of the big angle had me getting on a closed-circuit camera seducing Shawn. It would have been so good if I had just gone with it. But I talked to my dad about it.
Bret had just lost the World's Belt at Wrestlemania 13, in a 60-minute hard-fought match with Shawn who had entered the ring on a harness from the ceiling of the Anaheim Duck Pond. He wasn't crazy about losing the belt to Shawn. He wouldn't have minded losing to Steve Austin or Diesel, but Bret and Shawn were always vying for Vince's attention. So he had a chip on his shoulder. He decided to put wrestling on hiatus while he pursued an acting career.
The WWF's booking agent Bruce Pritchard and Jim Cornette approached me. Jim said, "You know, this is going to be great! You're going to be making the moves on Shawn, trying to ram your tongue down his throat and undo his belt buckle while Shawn tries to resist. Your feelings will be hurt because he has spurned your advances, so you go back to Davey and say, 'That SOB, that goddamn Shawn Michaels, he's been making passes at me and I want you to put a stop to it. I want you to finish him.”
Davey hated this. He said, "It makes me look like an asshole because my wife is making moves on Shawn and I'm going after Shawn. I should be going after her!"
Jim rolled his eyes. "Uh you see, Davey, you don't know she is the bad one. You love her and believe her when she says Shawn is trying to grope her." But Davey didn't like it. I was uncomfortable with it because I'm Diana Hart, not Sable. For one thing, I was using my real name. I was nervous about acting out the scene on TV, but I would have trusted Shawn to help me through that. It would have been really good for me to get that kind of exposure. It was what I'd been waiting for my whole life.
I was so stupid and stubborn. I should have thought of it like the Undertaker. He's not an undertaker, he's not really a funeral home director, but that's his role on TV. I guess it was the way Jim Cornette told me about it. He was so coarse. He was really laughing and I thought maybe it was a joke on me. I didn't really comprehend the potential of the whole thing. I could have been such a good bad sister. I got back to my hotel room and I called Bret. He was absolutely against it. I think at that time Bret did care about what I did in wrestling and he was concerned about the way I would be perceived. But at the same time he was mad at the WWF because he had to lose to Shawn at Wrestlemania. Bret said, "You can't do that, you're Stu Hart's daughter. When dad goes to the IGA or the Safeway store and some guy says, 'Hey, Stu, I saw your daughter on TV. God what's happening there?' Well you just can't put dad through that."
I understood what he was saying. We were Stu Hart's kids and we didn't want anyone to think we were brought up to take advantage of our father's name. My mother has always said, "Dahling, we'd never want anyone to think your father's daughter was that kind of girl." Bret advised me to take the first plane out of there. Then I called my dad. He was furious about this angle. I could hear him yelling to my mother in the kitchen. "That gaddamned Bruce Pritchard wants Diana to appear as some sort of tramp, some and I think that's gaddamned disgusting. Would he want his mother to be watching his daughter doing a role like that?" My dad was going ballistic.
Then Owen pulled one of his ribs, which didn't help. Vince had these 1-800 phone line rooms set up where wrestlers talked to wrestling fans and answered questions at so much money per minute. Owen and Jim were working the phones when Owen discreetly dialed my dad who answered. "Oh hi, it's Owen," he said. Right away my dad started yelling about, "that gaddamned Bruce Pritchard and Jim Cornette and what kind of perverts are they?" He ranted, "I'm so gaddamned mad I could rip their nuts out!" Owen couldn't resist this golden opportunity. Without saying who he was talking to, he handed the phone to Jim, "It's for you." Jim Cornette grabbed the phone. "Yeah, Jim Cornette here."
In wrestling terminology, my dad cut a promo on him. But Bruce Pritchard was notorious for his impersonations so Jim assumed Owen and Bruce were trying to pull one over on him. He decided to go along. He really hammed it up. "Yeah, we're going to have your daughter go up there and it's going to look like a Goddamned orgy by the time we're finished. We're going to have her French kissing her brother and we're going to have Owen with his hands all over her ass and Davey Boy will be in there for a three-way." My dad was just going nuts on the other end. He screamed, "Gaddamnit, I don't want ... that's gaddamned horseshit and I don't want my daughter being a part of that."
Jim Cornette held the phone away from his ear laughing and looked at Owen saying, "Okay who the hell is this anyway?"
Owen was trying to keep his laughter in check. "It's Stu Hart, my dad." Jim laughed again, "Yeah right."
Then Bruce Pritchard walked into the room. Jim turned white as a sheet and started back-pedaling and apologizing to my dad, who was way beyond being pacified. To this day my dad thinks that Jim Cornette and Bruce Pritchard are really warped guys who wanted a perverted, incestuous orgy to be portrayed on TV with his kids.
My TV flirtation with Shawn was toned down considerably due to my reticence and because my dad objected so strenuously. Jim Cornette was sincerely afraid of my dad. Shawn was good about it. I told him I was really uncomfortable with the scenario and he said that was fine, we'd do something else. But I wonder what would have happened had I gone through with it as planned. Maybe it was my last chance to star in wrestling and I blew it. Maybe my being such a square cost me.
Davey gave notice to the WWF. He had to give three months" written notice through a lawyer by registered mail to WWF Titans Sports in Stanford, Connecticut. At that time Vince was losing guys to the WCW. Hulk Hogan still wanted Davey to join him there but Davey had only given notice so he could renegotiate a better deal with Vince. Vince called Owen, Davey and me into his office and said, "Davey, I don't want to lose you. Come on, you're family." He was really decent about it. Owen had already signed. He had no intention of leaving. He had the good sense to stay in one spot.