Straight from the Hart by Bruce Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

being in the ring, I probably learned even more about the wrestling business from riding around with the wrestlers and “picking their brains” on the way to and from towns. Unfortunately, road trips are pretty much a thing of the past and one reason, I’d venture to say, why the quality of work has deteriorated so much.
    Even though it didn’t appear I’d be getting in the ring anytime soon, I used to eat, drink and sleep wrestling and was able to get this old Mexican heel named Frank Butcher to start training me down in my dad’s Dungeon. In time, a few other young guys also joined us for our workouts, including Rick Martel, Kim Klokeid and, later on, guys like Afa and Sika Anoia. Initially, all Butcher had us doing was taking bumps, bumps and more bumps, which is wrestling parlance for break falls — body slams, hip tosses, head mares, arm drags, tackles, suplexes, you name it. He stressed that before you do anything else in wrestling, you need to know how to fall properly, otherwise you’ll just get injured and if you’re on the shelf or in constant pain, what’s the point?
    At the time, I figured he might be half sadistic or just want to see what my pain threshold was, but, in retrospect, his emphasis on bump taking and learning how to land properly and avoid injury, while looking like you were endeavoring to inflict it, was great advice. Later on, when I was training other guys myself down in the Dungeon, bump taking was one of the first things I taught them.

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    ♥ STRAIGHT FROM THE HART ♥
    Once in a while, my dad would drop down to the Dungeon when Butcher was conducting his training sessions and Martel and I would put on these pseudo-matches, implementing all the fancy moves and high spots that we’d learned — eager to impress him. Most times, he would grunt, kind of dubiously, that we should be focused more on amateur wrestling than on trying to do high spots — making some analogy about eating meat and potatoes rather than our dessert first. All things considered, I don’t think he really took us all that seriously and probably perceived us a bit like little kids putting on our uniforms and trying to play baseball, hockey or whatever, like our major league heroes.
    My wrestling aspirations would take an unexpected turn for the better in the summer of ’72 with some help from an unlikely source — reigning world heavyweight champion Dory Funk Jr. Funk used to come up to defend the world title every Stampede Week for my dad and since my dad was usually busy as hell during that time — lining up guest appearances, working on publicity, lining up special guests, getting his float ready for the Stampede parade and all of that — he’d have my brother Dean and me pick Dory up at the airport. We’d chauffeur him around and look after him.
    Funk, whose father Dory Sr. had a promotion down in west Texas, seemed to be able to relate to us. Both second generation we became pretty good friends, so much so that he invited Dean and me to come and visit him and his family down in Amarillo. I’m still not sure if he was kidding or not, but we took him up on his offer and set off that August, along with my brother Bret, for what would turn out to be one of those coming-of-age type adventures — kind of like Stand by Me .
    That was the first time any of us had truly ventured beyond our home turf.
    In retrospect, we were naive as hell. As Dean, Bret and I — all of whom had long hair and tended to be unabashed mark types — made our way through these redneck states like Montana, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Texas, we ran into all kinds of hassles and near calamities with anally retentive truckers and narrow minded misfits, who seemed to think we were draft dodgers or hippie radicals from up North, seeking to cause problems in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Even though we endeavored to be as unobtrusive as possible, because of the prevailing norms