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Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything about the finish, because the next day Gedo almost killed me.

In the middle of a decent match in front of an apathetic crowd who had no idea who either of us were, I prepared to give Gedo my standing Frankensteiner off the top rope. It was the move I’d been using ever since Drew McDonald had suggested it in Hamburg years earlier.

For some reason when I jumped up to wrap my legs around his neck (no filthy remarks please), he gave me a double arm push to the chest. I didn’t get the leverage I needed as a result and when I swung my head backward, I didn’t clear the mat. I landed straight on top of my head with my legs flipping directly over my neck. A second later Gedo, who had still taken the proper bump, landed right on my head with his full weight.

The whole crowd in the MGM Garden Arena went silent and I lay there for a few seconds too scared to move, fearing I’d suffered the same fate as my mother. I was so terrified of what had just happened, I jumped straight up to my feet trying to prove to everyone (including myself) that I was okay.

It’s interesting that when you’re in a match and you really get hurt, it’s hard to sell it. There is such fear of not knowing how badly you’re hurt that it’s hard to pretend you are and you just want to hop up on your feet as if nothing is wrong. It’s the same principle as when you trip and bust your ass in front of a bunch of people.

The Lord was with me that night and I was fine—even though everyone who saw the botched move knew that tragedy had been narrowly avoided. I’ve never watched that match and I never will.

The office’s original decision to put Gedo over in our match erased the last shred of optimism I still had that I might have a future in WCW. I started thinking about working someplace else because I believed I deserved better than what the company was giving me.

WCW was a great place for veteran stars to make easy money and be lazy doing it. However, it was an awful place for a young guy to try and make a name for himself. I knew that the WWF mission statement was to create new stars and that’s where I needed to be more than ever.

I had an ace in my pocket to help me in my escape from the proverbial Alcatraz.

Even though I’d been working in WCW for over a year I had never signed my contract. I wasn’t holding out for more money or having a legal disagreement, I simply had never put the pen to the paper and returned the contract to WCW’s lawyers. Nobody seemed to realize it and I decided to see how long I could go without signing. It was astonishing that no one in the office had ever followed up with me about it, but this was the same company that once sent me a FedEx with nothing inside, so it wasn’t too hard to believe.

As a free agent, I made a call to my friend Don Callis. I’d come up through the business with Don in Winnipeg and we’d worked together many times on the Tony Condello tours. He was working in the WWF as the Jackal and had the ear of head booker, Vince Russo. I asked Don to ask Russo if he would ever be interested in hiring me.

“Russo said whenever you want to come to the WWF, just say the word,” Don reported a few days later. Those were the words I’d waited to hear since I pulled out of my mom’s driveway eight years earlier at nineteen years old. I could show up in the WWF the next week and toss the WCW cruiserweight belt into the garbage if I wanted to. I was legally clear to do so and there was nothing stopping me.

Except myself.

As much as WCW had ignored me, I still couldn’t justify walking away and screwing them over. I had never given up on anything in my life and if I quit WCW, I’d be admitting to everyone that I’d failed.

Plus Eric had given me a chance when the WWF never did and had even given me a raise (in good faith) a few months earlier. As much of an asshole as some of the bookers and wrestlers had been, Eric had always been fair with me and I didn’t take that lightly. I signed with him for three years and if I backed out on that deal I would’ve felt like a real shithouse.

My desire