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Finally the cops came and the boxers and their toadies scattered like the Socs after the Greasers defeated them in the parking lot rumble. The cops were WWE fans, and after asking a few questions, they kicked the remaining dregs out of the hotel, got a few autographs for their “kids,” and left us alone.

WWE Superstars 1, Kickboxers nil.

The next night after the show in Manchester, we were getting a little stir crazy so we had a massive party in the hotel. Everybody was running between rooms, singing, telling jokes, drinking barrels of whiskey and washing them down with Guinness. A bunch of us were in Hurricane’s room when I decided to throw the TV out the window. I was convinced that I had to because Ozzy and Keith Moon had done it. Helms tried to talk me out of it but I wouldn’t waver.

“Nobody will know whose TV it is. They’ll never find out!”

“Actually, they will,” Hurricane said matter-of-factly. “When they notice there’s no TV in this room, they’re probably gonna put two and two together.”

Bah humbug! I wanted to throw a TV out the window and nobody was going to stop me! I unplugged the unit and dragged it to the windowsill, propped it up, and got ready to toss the telly.

“I am a Golden God!” I screamed and flung the window open.

It cracked about two inches and then locked on its hinges.

I found out that windows in European hotel rooms never completely open, probably for the purpose of keeping drunken Canadian idiots from throwing their TVs out of them. I stood there for a few more minutes trying to stuff the TV through the miniscule opening, but my big moment was gone. Hurricane’s room was empty as my audience had moved on to the next party.

So I took all of his sheets, pillows, towels, every bit of fabric I could find and stuffed them into his closet. I unhooked the shower curtains ring by ring (which were filled with helium, making them very light) and put them into the closet too. Then I pointed the showerhead toward the sink.

The next morning when a still loaded Hurricane woke up on his bare mattress and went to take a shower, he didn’t notice the absence of curtain until the freezing cold water hit him directly in the Hurricock.

Wassup wit dat?

Vince approached me in England about re-signing and told me that since there was only one company now, there wasn’t much negotiating he could do and started talking about a pay cut. I cut him off and said, “Vince, I’d rather not talk about this right now, let’s deal with it when we get back to the States.”

The talk of a pay cut was another sign that I needed to disappear for a while. But I didn’t want Vince to think my leaving was about money so I didn’t even want to hear what his new offer was going to be.

A week later in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Vince and I walked around the arena into a storage area and had a one-on-one conversation for forty-five minutes.

“Vince, I need a break from wrestling. I need to step back for a while and I’m not going to re-sign.”

Vince nodded and asked, “How long do you need? A month? Three months?”

In my head, I knew it would be at least a year, maybe more, but I didn’t want to tell him that. “I’m thinking more like six months. I’m mentally fried, completely burnt out.”

Vince said, “Yeah, I feel like that sometimes, but I don’t have the option to step back.”

I told Vince that I didn’t want to be one of those guys who gets bitter toward the business because he’s not happy. He agreed and offered me a part-time contract to do PR work during my sabbatical, but I turned it down. I wanted to leave the WWE completely and be free to do the things I wanted to do on my own schedule, with no responsibilities or obligations to the company.

His only request was for me to extend my contract by a month and stay until SummerSlam.

I asked Vince if he wanted to do a “loser leaves town” match to explain my exit, and he said it wasn’t necessary, that it was cliché. He felt it would be better to just have me disappear with little fanfare.

We talked about old-time wrestling