Original subtitles

- We interrupt your regularly scheduled program

For this special report.

- I've never seen a more controversial entity

Than d-generation x.

- Here we go. - And three, two--

- Good evening, my fellow americans.

This past week, d-generation x was--

Oh, [bleep] a. [laughter]

- This past week, d-generation x

Completed a full sentence. - [laughs]

- If you took a group of great athletes,

Stuck them in a frat house,

Mix that up with a bunch of

"I don't give a [bleep]" attitudes...

All: Let's go! - And stir vigorously,

You get dx to come out of it.

[laughter]

- D-generation x was the counterculture,

Anti-establishment crew inside wwe.

All: [chanting] dx! Dx! Dx!

- They were rat pack for a new millennium.

- We're total bad asses.

- We're gangstas.

- You had triple h, shawn michaels,

X-pac, billy gunn, road dogg,

And of course, you had chyna.

- Oh, my!

- Uh! - Their entire purpose

Was to push the boundaries and make you uncomfortable

And entertain the hell out of you in the process.

- We were just six degenerates having a great time,

And you were welcome to come aboard

And have a good time with us.

And if you didn't, we had two words for ya.

- Suck it! - Suck it!

- Suck it! - It became a battle cry.

- We got two words for ya!

All: Suck it!

- Let's get ready to suck it! [cheering]

- D-generation x was cocky, arrogant, egotistical,

And they were cool.

- Dx was as much a part of 90s american pop culture

Than anything else.

- It was like the beatles... [laughs]

No matter where they went.

- When you're in the midst of it,

It's like you're in a drug-addled violent tornado

That's just carrying you along.

I got caught up. I got lost in the limelight.

Cut. My wife's gonna watch this.

- For a guy that didn't need many excuses

To spiral down to a bad place, that was it.

- We were unfireable,

So I pushed the limits of everything

As far as I possibly could.

Then you fall into a dark spot.

We all have our...Demons.

- It robs you of your soul.

[pensive music]

- We've all gotten through that.

Man, we are blessed to be alive.

- Did there used to be

More of us?

- They defined maybe the most memorable time ever in wwe.

[rock music]

- Some of it felt a little childish,

A little crass,

But it was a necessary revolution.

It was a transformation

Of what we're allowed to do on tv.

- Should we be doing that now? No.

There's no real place for d-generation x today,

As far as I'm concerned.

But it is fun to look back on it.

- You will never forget d-generation x.

- Try not to take any of it too serious.

♪ ♪

All: [chanting] dx! Dx! Dx!

- We are back with more "Monday night raw."

- Everything has an expiration date,

And in the early '90s, wwe was just sort of

Plugging along, trying to use a lot of the same tricks

That had gotten them to that point

Without really reading the tea leaves

And seeing where culture was going.

- What was traditionally hip in wrestling

Is no longer hip.

- And dx were the ones that came out and said,

"if you think wrestling is gonna stay the same as it was,

"you're wrong, and we are the people who are

Going to come out here and shake things up."

- Before you come out here

And get the crap kicked completely out of you...

[laughs]

D-generation x has got two words for ya...

All: Suck it!

- When you look at dx,

What comes to mind is,

Well, kind of exactly

What it is--degenerates.

Degenerates within the sports entertainment world

That were the anti-authority,

And didn't care about the rules of society

Or the rules of the business,

And did everything that you weren't supposed to do.

Dx was triple h and shawn,

The new age outlaws, chyna, x-pac.

But dx, to me, will always be triple h and shawn.

It was the brain child of that friendship

That started dx.

- We are the business today.

- [chuckles] there's a bit of discrepancy

On shawn and I's first meeting,

And I'll stick with my version of it,

Because shawn was...

Had issues at the time.

And I remember it distinctly because shawn,

He's a fashion assassin.

Shawn came in wearing no shirt,

Bandanas all over him,

He had cowboy boots with his jeans tucked into the pants,

And--like, that was his street clothes.

And, like, he just completely walked in front of me

And just started talking to kevin nash.

Kevin said, "hey, have you met paul yet?"

And he shook my hand, and then he said,

"anyway, kev, I'll see you later."

And he walked away. Right? [laughs]

- Well, I-- that is something--

And again, that's what, you know,

I'm not sure if it was the drugs, or, you know.

That's why hunter's always better at telling the stories.

[light music]

- I was born July 27, 1969, nashua, new hampshire.

It was a roaring metropolis.

Normal childhood, middle class,

Parents are still married to this day.

I don't know, I just always had this interest

In things that were larger than life.

I was five or six years old,

My dad got up and was changing the channel, and...

- Chief jay strongbow.

- Stopped on chief jay strongbow.

I remember specifically who it was.

I had a plastic football helmet

That I remember putting the football in the helmet,

Putting it on the floor, climbing up on my dad's lap,

And just sitting and being fascinated by it.

- Yes, there he goes.

- There's something about it that was just

Incredibly entertaining, action-packed,

But these larger-than-life superheroes,

But that were real and on tv, sitting right in front of you.

And it sucked me in, and from that point forward,

I was fascinated with it.

When I was 14, I went to the gym for the first time,

And I started lifting weights.

And I started to see that path

To get to being a wwe superstar.

As I got to that size, got to that level of development,

And becoming larger than life

Like the athletes that I saw on tv,

It started to become a reality

That maybe this was something that I could do,

And I started to search high and low

For a way to make that happen.

- The world's strongest man. - I met a powerlifter

Named ted arcidi,

Who had also broken into the wrestling business.

And over time, I developed the courage

To ask him, "hey, how can I get in the wrestling business, man?

I'd love to do that."

And he discouraged me in every conceivable way possible.

But I stayed on him, stayed on him,

Stayed on him, stayed on him--

Probably just to get me to stop asking him,

He gave me the number for walter "killer" kowalski.

I went in the ring and took a couple of bumps,

And it was the most natural thing I'd ever done,

First time in my life.

And it took off from there.

Lock up your doors. I'm comin' to your town.

They better pray when I'm around.

- What a future. Young, big man, aggressive,

He's got everything going for him.

- Pat patterson and I, we had been invited

To a show that was run by walter kowalski.

And walter had a student, paul levesque.

His name was terra ryzing.

Great name.

By the time that his show came around,

Paul levesque had signed a contract with wcw in atlanta.

We met, we watched his match,

And told him that night,

"when your contract comes up with wcw,

Please give us a call."

- Hunter hearst helmsley.

- Paul came in and became hunter hearst helmsley.

Hunter was the quintessential snob.

- Hello, hunter hearst helmsley here.

- When hunter arrived in wwe,

I was happy we got him because I saw a bright future.

- What an aggressive athlete

This hunter hearst helmsley is.

- He looked good, student of the game.

The gathering of the minds between shawn and hunter

Was pretty quick.

[light music]

- I was born in williams air force base,

And shortly after that, my father got transferred

To randolph air force base in san antonio, texas,

And for the most part, that's where I spent

The rest of my youth and growing up.

I never had sat down and, like,

"what do you wanna be when you grow up?"

But I can just recall I made the comment to my mother

Like, "I'm gonna be a professional wrestler."

"that's nice, honey."

[laughs] you know?

And I was saying that at 12,

And by the time I was graduating high school,

I was still saying it,

And then get trained for three months.

- He is sean michaels.

- When he's in the ring, it's nothing short

Of an aerial circus.

- Bill watts got me booked in kansas city.

- Ohh!

- And that's where I met marty.

- Marty jannetty!

- We walked into

The dressing room,

And it was this guy, had real short hair

And he had green tights

Pulled up to under his chest.

[laughs]

It was like, oh, damn. We got some work to do.

[laughs]

- Marty was cool. I mean, he was the cool guy.

And he said, "you got something inside you

"that looks like it's dying to come out,

And we're gonna get it out of you."

And I'm sure, you know, myself and many people

In the wrestling business are sorry

That he ever let that person out.

- The midnight rockers!

- We became the midnight rockers.

Turned into a fantastic team.

But, yeah, we lived with the gimmick, as they say.

- They love to party!

- We were out every night,

And nothing was off the table,

Whether it was women, drugs, um--

[laughs] so all of that stuff

Was on the table, and we partook in that

On an extremely regular basis.

- If we was on the road 300 days a year,

We partied 290 of 'em. [laughs]

- And marty and I were just hell... [laughs]

To deal with, but inside the ring, we were really good.

[upbeat rock music playing] - the rockers!

- Shawn michaels, him and his partner,

Marty jannetty, they came from the awa

In the late '80s to the wwe,

And they were

Popular immediately.

- The fans right behind the rockers. Oh!

- Shawn's reputation early on

Was always one of a top notch performer.

I think shawn always saw himself as the star,

And the biggest star.

So being in a tag team,

Shawn, in my opinion, looked at that

As a stepping stone to his singles stardom.

- Recently, there's been

A lot of controversy, a lot of rumors

That maybe you guys are gonna break up.

- From the time I got in, I never pictured myself

In a tag team.

Not in any of the theater of my mind or dreams

Was it ever me and this other guy.

- Oh!

- I would argue the barbershop window

Is the greatest tag team breakup of all time.

- Oh, my god!

- He literally smashed

The version of shawn michaels as we knew it.

- Is there a problem with the rockers?

I'd been a rocker forever, and I had no idea

Who my character was gonna be.

- Ladies and gentlemen...

- Then, all of a sudden, one day,

I'm just sort of out there-- [blows]

It comes out.

- Here is shawn michaels!

["I'm a sexy boy" playing]

- Talk about being in love with yourself.

- The heartbreak kid was a mix of elvis

Meets freddie mercury and the lead singer

For judas priest.

All of 'em were so secure in their entertainment.

- Talk about showboating-- - and in their sexuality.

It is fact that I am the sexiest man alive.

- It was a grown man shaking his ass

And he's got the chaps and the song is just so obnoxious.

- Shawn michaels has got that certain something

That everybody's looking for.

It was all that kind of stuff,

Allowing me a vehicle to let this other person out.

- Your girlfriend wants him.

You're gonna go up and kick his ass

But maybe he's gonna kick yours

And take her anyway.

I mean, there was a lot to dislike.

- The world wrestling entertainment

Reeks of jealousy for the heartbreak kid.

- When he first turned into the heartbreak kid,

He was becoming sort of this cocky kinda character.

- I want you to take a good look

At the wrestler of the '90s.

- And I think there was eventually a time where

He did morph into that character.

- The heartbreak kid was cocky, arrogant,

Full of himself,

Not the biggest guy in the room,

But definitely the biggest attitude in the room...

- Shawn michaels is leaving the building.

- And dx just accentuated that.

[cheering]

- If you ask anybody to describe shawn michaels

In those days, one of the first two words out of their mouth

Is gonna be [bleep].

I mean, self-described.

Triple h was the other end of the spectrum.

Both literally and sort of metaphorically,

The designated driver.

- It wasn't always easy

Being shawn's friend.

He was the little guy with the chip on his shoulder.

- You will not ever see a man more charismatic,

More flamboyant, or more talented

Than the heartbreak kid shawn michaels.

- For the longest period of time,

I didn't care for shawn at all.

He was hard to deal with, and I didn't appreciate it.

[announcers shouting] but there was no one that I'd

Rather work with in the ring.

- Shawn was doing things nobody else was

And working on a level

From a in-ring performer standpoint

But wasn't getting the accolade of it

And was just--he was angry and bitter about it.

Drugs and alcohol didn't help that.

- From high above!

- They're not gonna give me a pat on the back,

So I'm gonna be obnoxious about it.

And it just started to turn to anger.

Another day at the office.

After a while, it just got to be--

[laughs]

I at least need to have that.

That, and the only guys I got real with

Were my buddies, the kliq.

Hunter and kev, and scott and kid.

- The kliq was a bunch of guys that hung out together

And went to the bars together, ate together,

I mean, the whole nine yards.

Had very strong opinions

On the business.

- These five guys looked at professional wrestling

In the early '90s and said, "this is kinda lame."

These guys, who were kinda too cool for school

Started telling vince that his product wasn't up to date.

It's hard to argue with that looking back.

- Oh!

- Safe to say that the '90s

Became the decade

Of the antihero.

- Music, tv, even movies--

And people started pushing boundaries

In a way that just seemed really edgy at the time.

- Here is repo man!

- As pop culture in america was getting darker,

Wwe is, like, the complete opposite.

- The mantaur!

- A lot of cartoon characters,

Everyone in wwe had a job.

- The home improvement-- - the plumber,

The racecar driver, the dentist--

Wrestling must really be doing bad if every wrestler

Has, like, a second occupation.

What is that, even, you know?

Not making enough money wrestling?

What the [bleep]?

We wanted to make wrestling better.

At least, to where, like,

And adult wasn't embarrassed to say

"I'm a wrestling fan."

- The business needs to change.

We were in indianapolis, and kevin and scott

Had reached a boiling point.

Shawn had reached a boiling point.

- It was just the five of us sitting around

Bsing with each other,

And you sorta couldn't get yourself worked up.

- They snapped, and said, "I can't take it anymore.

I'm calling vince."

- We just talked.

It was us not knowing we're kind of describing

The attitude era, but doing that

And just saying this needs to be a shift.

Yeah, some of the tradition is respectful,

But too much of it is just kind of like, ugh!

Vince said, "I've no doubt you guys believe this

"deep down in your heart.

Now's not the time."

- He was reluctant.

He feels like he has a good idea of what people want.

And it just wasn't working out.

And like, you know, we had to leave

For vince to go, "okay, okay."

I mean, it shouldn't have to get to that point.

- As we got into 1996,

Wcw, our competitor, was being very aggressive

In their quest for new talent.

And new talent to wcw was established stars from wwe.

- The macho man randy savage and hulk hogan together!

- It was a tumultuous time

In our company.

- On may 19, 1996,

We went to a house show,

Which was not televised.

We would sneak in a camera past security.

- It was the last night in wwe for diesel and razor ramon.

They both accepted offers for the rival company, wcw,

And this is their swan song.

- That night, shawn and diesel had a cage match,

Which was the culmination of their rivalry.

- At the time, diesel was a bad guy,

Shawn michaels was a good guy.

The ending shows shawn michaels

Giving diesel a superkick.

- And diesel was laid out in the middle of the cage,

And here comes triple h,

And here comes razor,

Who had a match earlier in the night.

Like, what the hell is this?

[dramatic chord]

Your champion, your hero,

Shawn michaels, is now hugging and kissing

The guy that he just spent 20 minutes

Beating the hell out of.

- The garden just erupted.

[crowd cheering]

I'm screaming like a little girl.

Oh, my god! - People were going ballistic.

They're seeing something they've never seen before

At a moment in time.

- It's breaking the fourth wall,

Just telling people everything that you had just done

In this match--beat the hell out of each other--

Is bull[bleep].

Taboo in the wrestling business.

- It's breaking the handshake agreement

That wrestling is real or not.

In pro wrestling logic,

They're not treating this like it's real.

- The kliq was an insult to our business.

If they had done that

In the '70s, early '80s, yeah,

All four of 'em would've got

The [bleep] beat out of 'em.

- We watched right up until the point, I think,

That the four of 'em raised their hands,

And doing their little curtain call,

And vince said, "let's go."

[crowd roaring]

- Ooh.

You know, everybody's pissed.

Everybody's taking it as

They're crapping on the business,

Not expressing a friendship.

- Nothing you can do to razor,

Nothing you can do to diesel.

They're gone. They're wcw's problem now.

Okay, shawn's the champion.

There's only so much, you know,

"shawn, don't you ever do that again."

Hunter, man, we can't go any further with him

Based on the decision that he made on that night.

- One of vince's famous quotes:

"you're gonna have to learn to eat [bleep]

And like the taste of it."

I was supposed to win king of the ring,

And he said, "obviously, that's not gonna happen now."

I said, "okay."

As I was leaving, I turned back to him,

And I said, "this goes back to what we were talking about

"in indianapolis.

"it was the loudest reaction in madison square garden.

"I don't understand how that's wrong.

The business is changing. We gotta change with it."

[crowd cheering]

- The curtain call-- that moment,

That sort of wink at reality,

It sets the stage for dx.

Shawn michaels and triple h,

At that point, they were bound together.

- After kev and scott left, we just had each other.

That bond, which was already strong,

Was instantly made stronger.

And I think hunter really began to understand

How much more dependent on him I was going to become.

♪ ♪

- We're back, ladies and gentlemen.

"Monday night raw."

And here he comes!

- After the curtain call, shawn michaels

Was still on top of everything.

But for triple h, it was, you know, back to square one.

- Hunter hearst helmsley, getting

Jake "the snake" roberts, first round,

King of the ring tournament.

- He was supposed to win the king of the ring tournament.

- Two, yes! Yes! - I can't believe it!

- It ended up being stone cold steve austin,

Which changed the course of history in its own way.

- Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass.

- He was gonna have to start back over on the bottom.

- He took a good hit, no doubt--creative hit.

- Nice looking cover by--oh!

Two, and three!

Three count is total--

- The power of this bomb! Three count--

- And that was just a way of punishing triple h.

He lost some money because his position on the cards lowered.

He wasn't looked at as

Exaltingly as he once was.

- Oh, my!

- And I said this to him, I mean,

"you just gotta let the water go under the bridge,

"and you gotta get past this somehow.

Maybe you wanna reinvent yourself a little bit."

- No, wait a minute. Oh!

Helmsley, and the drive to dumpster.

- It's over.

- I can't believe-- hooks the leg, one, two,

And he got him. [bell dings]

I must say, I'm impressed with the resilience

Of hunter hearst helmsley.

- As my punishment came to an end,

I was told, "hey, you know what,

We're gonna start you back up."

The business was slightly changing,

So vince had offered me

To slowly transition out

Of being the blue blood character

To more what I see myself as.

And they also felt like if they put a heater with me,

It would give me a fresh coat of paint.

Shawn and I at that point had met joanie.

- She was an extremely impressive

And jacked young lady.

You could not help

But notice her.

Right away, we were like, oh, my goodness.

- Shawn and I both looked at each other

At the same time and were like,

That's my heater.

No one's ever done that in the business before.

- To have a woman bodyguard, which was such a heat getter,

But have one that was so unbelievably impressive

That it could be taken realistically.

- [grunting] - we brought it to vince

And he hated it.

Didn't see it at all.

Like, thought it was the dumbest idea of all time.

- I believe we were in tampa,

And we had breakfast with shane,

And he thought it was a fantastic idea.

- Vince said, "if that girl hasn't signed with wcw yet,

"tell her she can be your heater.

"but if she's a screw up, if she's a headcase,

It's on you, it's your fault."

- Live for "Monday night raw."

- His lights have been dimmed.

Oh, that--what a slap. [crowd cheering]

- My initial memory of chyna

Was when she snatched terri runnels...

[crowd cheering] and was flinging her around

Like a rag doll.

Terri looked like she had not a bone in her body.

- Who the hell's that? Is that a woman?

- My reaction was like, "oh, my god.

I've never seen anything like this."

- We don't condone this, ladies and gentlemen,

- Everyone--jim ross,

Jerry lawler,

And us as the audience at home,

Everybody is going...

- I have no idea what this is about.

- Who is this lady?

- That is a huge woman! An amazon-like woman!

- These are newborn-- look how tiny she is--

These are newborn pictures of her.

It's kinda hard to believe that this

6 pound, 10 ounce thing would grow up to be

The ninth wonder of the world.

I mean, that's just, like, kinda awesome. [laughs]

[light music]

Joanie was born in rochester, new york,

At 4:14 in the afternoon, I remember it.

She had strawberry blonde hair.

Joan was kind of the entertainer.

She could always liven up the crowd.

At some point, her father and I divorced,

And we kinda flitted

From one apartment to another apartment.

The kids switched schools.

I'm sure that was unsettling for them.

I know it would be unsettling for me.

I always say, when joanie turned 15,

The devil came down and snatched her

And took her away.

She got involved with a bad crowd at school.

And I went through her room and found some little baggies

Of what looked like some kinda drug.

And so we called her down, and we confronted her.

And, uh, that was kinda the beginning of the end.

When she was 16, she left and went with her father.

♪ ♪

And I didn't see her or talk to her for 27 years.

♪ ♪

- Ready? Three, two, one. - Speech.

- Chyna definitely broke the mold

Of what a female was supposed to look

And act like in sports entertainment.

I mean, we had women before

Who might get involved in a little

Extracurricular activity.

But nobody who had that sheer force of will and power

That joanie brought to the table.

- Unbelievable!

- Wow! - Bart gunn weighs 270 pounds!

- To see a woman as the muscle for a man--

You're not able to place why

Something is different at first,

But you know when you're seeing something

For the first time, and that's what chyna was.

- You might be the world's most dangerous man.

But I'm bringing something with me even deadlier than that.

- The world's most dangerous woman.

- The emergence of chyna was something

No one had ever seen.

That's the kinda stuff you're waiting for as a fan.

[crowd cheering]

- After hall and nash leave, business is not great.

Crowds are much smaller.

Sometimes they're playing smaller venues.

Wwe is not trending in the right direction.

- Shawn's in a cascade at this point in time.

He's downward spiraling.

Business is not great.

There's a lot of banter about shawn's

Not working as champion.

He's collapsing under the pressure.

I can see him falling apart.

- Shawn came to work impaired on more than one occasion.

His mood swings became very drastic.

- If I want to come out here and look like

A blithering idiot on live tv, believe me,

I'm gonna do it.

Why? Because I can.

- We get to lowell, massachusetts,

And this is the night that shawn loses his smile.

- Here, ladies and gentlemen, to surrender

The world wrestling entertainment championship.

- I wasn't in a great place.

The reality is, when you're a drug addict,

You don't think well.

Your judgment isn't great.

Over the last couple months, there's been a lot of talk,

A lot revolving around this belt.

One thing that's not gonna revolve around this belt

Is going to be shawn michaels.

In my mind, it's not me, it's the place.

Asking for my release and believing

That I would be happier going to wcw,

And just being with my friends.

The last several months, I've lost a lot of things,

And one of 'em has been my smile.

I just thought it was better for everything and everyone

That you let me move on,

And whatever happens, happens.

Vince just said "no."

And he understood that, look, what you enjoy

About this job is the creativity

And the chance to go out there

And do what you believe is your art,

And they won't allow you to do what it is you want to do.

So whether it was from a business standpoint

Or a personal standpoint,

He wasn't gonna release me.

- [bleep] unraveling for shawn.

So the losing the smile thing is,

"I gotta step away for a minute or I'm gonna die."

And I'm all he's got now.

They had nothing else.

Like, nothing.

- Wwe's fighting battles on two fronts--

Fighting for viewers against wcw on Monday nights,

But they're also fighting internally with relevancy.

♪ ♪

- It was the first time that

Anybody had ever challenged us

And taken it to the point

Of actually doing

Perceivably better than us.

It was tough. It was really, really tough.

It was demoralizing,

And people felt a little bit defeated.

Every penny that we spent was analyzed.

What do we need? What can we get by without?

And what are we going to do to turn this around?

- This was a moment where things needed to change.

Business was bad.

Bad. Dying.

- And the world wrestling entertainment

Kept pushing shawn michaels.

I told you time and time again, don't push me!

- At that point in time, he's bitter and angry.

- But you pushed and you pushed and you pushed.

And what happens when you push the heartbreak kid?

You get a reaction!

- I'm a little bit at a point, like, listen,

I gotta do what I wanna do.

What's the worst that can happen?

Dx is born.

- You no longer know what's hip.

Traditionally hip in wrestling

Is no longer hip.

- Vince always said that shawn michaels

Reminded vince of a young vince mcmahon--

Defiant, attitudinal.

- We are what is cool.

- Vince is gonna acquiesce to pretty much anything shawn

Wanted to do-- within reason.

So dx--shawn was the catalyst for that.

- We are the business today.

- It was filling a need for me personally,

With the friendship that hunter and I had.

And joanie was coming with us.

And it goes back to seeing society--

The sort of rebellious atmosphere that was going on.

- D-generation x was the counterculture,

Antiestablishment crew.

And for the survival of the company,

Dx was sort of a necessary irritant.

- I'm using this vehicle against you.

- I saw it as inmates had taken over the asylum.

You're a disgrace to professional wrestling.

You're nothing but a degenerate.

The show was gonna be all about them.

And they minimized everyone else to entertain themselves.

- We said what we wanted to say.

I got two words for "the hitman" bret hart.

We went places you weren't supposed to go.

Suck it!

Yeah, I mean, it pissed off everybody.

[laughs]

[tense music]

- Here he comes, ladies and gentlemen.

Hbk, along with chyna, along with triple h.

- There are a lot of people, they look at the '95

Through '97 and go, "oh, man, that's the best hbk,

Because he didn't give two--"

The heartbreak kid is in this business

'cause this business needs the heartbreak kid.

I wasn't scared of anything.

I didn't care about my life.

I didn't care about money.

I didn't care about anything.

And when you are like that in a creative line of work

Where it is wild, wild west,

You are freaking unbeatable.

- Who knows what's gonna happen?

[bell dings] - the juvenile michaels

And even more juvenile hunter hearst helmsley.

- People had said to me my whole career,

"you haven't lived enough life to hate [bleep] yet.

"when you learn to have hate,

"you're gonna make a fortune in this business.

[grunting]

"that anger, that hatred inside of you will burn,

And you'll be able to put that out there real."

- And triple h, I want you to unload.

'cause this is what you've been waiting for, buddy.

Get 'em. - The promos

That we were doing in the beginning,

There's a lot of anger in those.

That was a new world for me.

Whether by my own hand or not, like the curtain call--

"you can't do this, you can't do that,"

Like, always having these handcuffs and restraints.

I've been sitting back for a couple of years.

And anger coming out of that to know I can do more than this.

I wanna be more than this.

While you and the world wrestling entertainment

Have spread your legs like some cheap whore.

- You go back and you watch the promo

That he cut on vince,

When he finally got to unload on him,

That was real. [laughs]

- I can distinctly remember cutting that promo

And seeing vince's eyes change while I was saying it,

And thinking to myself, I might have just went

To the other side of the line.

I am now taking it in my hands.

And there is no stopping us now.

- There was nobody really like dx before,

In the sense that they were established stars

Who decided they'd had enough.

- We've had enough of this crap.

- What? What? - Let's go to break.

- Oh, here we go. - Go to break.

- He might fire us.

- They were trying to shake things up from within.

- He went to a break. How convenient.

- They were getting away with murder.

They were, like, pushing every boundary.

- They'll do anything to humiliate anyone.

- Every week, we're going on tv and we're crossing a line.

We're coming back, and vince is going,

"you can't say that, guys. You can't do that."

We might have to change our name to double d-generation x.

- Ohh!

- I remember looking around at the other guys.

We're watching the monitor.

On a weekly basis, we're looking at each other, going,

"can they say that? Like, I don't think

We're allowed to say that.

They might as well just say, 'suck it.'"

- D-generation x wants you to [bleep] it!

- Disgusting! And you've got a smile on your face.

- It became a battle cry.

- I remember in high school, my friends would be doing this

To each other all day.

That was just something that everyone

Knew exactly what it was.

- We couldn't flip people off.

And you couldn't curse at people.

One of the things that all of us used to do

Would be this crotch pointing thing.

And you could get away with it, 'cause nobody could--

"did--what did he do? Did he just point at his crotch?"

- I don't think it was over the line.

We were getting our tails kicked in the ratings.

Dx took it to the very tipping point of going too far.

- How dare you! - But that's what we needed.

- Ratings are going up.

Okay, this shock stuff

Is creating controversy that's working.

- Bret hart, obviously, you're not in a very good mood

Considering the antics of shawn michaels

And hunter hearst helmsley.

- You know, there's the bret side,

Complaining about the stuff we're doing on tv,

And they think it's disrespectful to the business.

But I'll be honest, we didn't give a [bleep].

- Bret hart did have

A problem with dx.

- You're a guy that has degraded

The championship belt.

- I'll give bret hart credit for basically naming dx,

Because bret, in a promo, talked about,

"you know what you are? You're just degenerates."

- Why don't you two degenerates come down here right now?

- And that's where--I remember sitting there with vince,

And he's like, "they are. They're degenerates.

They're d-generation x."

Dx was born.

- We are d-generation x. - D-generation.

- You make the rules, and we will break 'em!

- Yeah, I can't say I liked it.

That whole direction into the smut era.

You're looking at somebody that's got no respect

For anything or anybody.

They're so problematic, and they don't

Get along with anybody else.

- Dx did well in the ratings.

They were valuable in a lot of areas.

But you had to take the good with the bad with those guys.

- You talked enough.

- I can say that most of the guys in the dressing room

Were kind of disgusted with it.

- There's not a day went by,

Tv or someplace, where I didn't have to sit

And talk to somebody about how dx was perceived.

They did not endear themselves to the rest of the roster.

♪ ♪

You know, they're gonna eat at the same restaurants,

They're gonna go to the same gym.

They did it with themselves.

They didn't have an entourage. The three of 'em.

It's like a married couple.

- Yeah, it became a little family group.

You got, like, two dip[bleep] guys on the road.

Joanie brings in a different environment all of a sudden.

- Chyna's role, from a television standpoint,

She was bodyguard/babysitter.

Behind the scenes, look, she was babysitter

And kinda mama.

She took care of us.

You know, I was not always in the best of shape.

And everybody always sees hunter's role in that.

What they don't see is that she was in the car

Or in the hotel or not very far from that situation.

- When shawn would be miserable,

Like, she was somebody that could talk him out of it

And could keep him on a positive.

I couldn't talk him out of it.

I could just make sure he didn't kill himself.

It definitely became a family bond there.

- Triple threat, right here.

- In the mid-'90s, dx was the turning point in many ways.

We pushed the edge, we walked across the line.

And we stayed there for a while.

- You wanna raise the bar?

Ooh, here's a ratings clip.

- Dx was the guys dragging the line

As far as they possibly could.

This became the must-see television.

- Shawn and I both got jumbo weenies.

- "can you believe that this is what they're doing?"

- But chyna... - "how dare they!"

- Show us what you're bringing to the barbecue, girl.

- "they're ruining our children."

- That is the big stick.

- But the world was getting edgier.

Everything around was getting edgier.

So you either kept up with the times or you fell behind.

- Oh, no. - Wait a minute.

- Whoa, whoa, whoa! Oh, my--

- Oh, the crowd here loves it!

- So we're junkies for the crowd.

And the crowd is going nuts.

So we're out there just letting it all swing and,

Like, we're coming back,

And everybody's going, "you can't do that."

And we're going like, "they were going nuts.

Sorry."

"got a call from usa network yesterday.

"you guys are gonna get us taken off the air.

They're gonna go to black." [words echoing]

♪ ♪

- We interrupt your regularly scheduled program

For this special report.

- The usa network had sent vince a letter

Not being happy with some of the things

That we had done on television.

- And he came to us and threw it down.

Said, "what am I supposed to do with this?"

Right? Both shawn and were like,

"can we use it?"

- Vince mcmahon now

Was sort of at a point where

He's kinda getting into this rebellious thing,

So he's wanting to push back a little bit with usa.

- I'm gonna say this again. - And this was right at

The time clinton had just cut the monica lewinsky,

"I did not have sex with that young intern,"

And everybody knew he was lying.

Why don't you write it up top here, shawn, in big letters?

- And we were like, "let's do that."

- Good evening, my fellow americans.

- To reference bill clinton and monica lewinsky

Was really smart because it took it

From just being a "we'll do whatever we wanna do"

Sort of statement to a "we are what this culture

Has made us into."

- Dx was not the reason the late '90s

Were sort of edgy and at some times gross.

They were a reflection of it.

- Less [bleep] references. - Aw, [bleep]!

- Hey, watch your [bleep] mouth.

- "we're not the worst part of culture.

We're reflecting what american culture is."

- I did not sleep with that young intern.

As a matter of fact,

I was up all night. [laughter]

- But I remember getting a call.

"hey, just heard from usa."

And I was like, "uh, okay."

And then, like, "they loved it."

[the dx band's "break it down"]

- ♪ are you ready? ♪

- Ratings are going up.

Your segments are hot.

So now-- we were emboldened before.

The gloves are off now.

We are doing whatever we want.

- ♪ break it down ♪

- Wrestlemania is now x-rated!

- ♪ d-generation x ♪

- We were like the howard sterns of the wrestling world.

- Some of it felt a little childish, a little crass.

But it was the necessary revolution.

It was a transformation of what we're allowed to do on tv.

- So parents, get your children's permission to watch.

- "iron" mike tyson is here!

- Discretion is advised

But will be completely ignored.

- ♪ d-generation x ♪

- Mike tyson is the hottest thing in sports.

Many members of the media really

Don't understand, where do we belong?

Do we belong on the entertainment page?

Do we belong on the sports page?

So mike involved with the world wrestling entertainment

Brings the attention and the focal point to the wwe.

- So wrestlemania xiv is a crazy time.

Shawn michaels, steve austin, and mike tyson in the middle.

Shawn's a star.

Steve austin is becoming a big star.

Mike tyson's the biggest star in the world.

All in the main event

Of wrestlemania xiv.

- The one, the only, mike tyson!

[crowd cheering]

- No one was as big as mike tyson was in the late '90s.

People were scared of mike at that time.

All you thought about with mike tyson

Was him knocking people out

And, in one case, biting off your ear.

- He was a little bit of a, you know, persona non grata

In mainstream pop culture.

But to wwe, that was an opportunity.

- I'm telling you, you're perfect for d-generation x.

I'm not saying you have to make a decision now.

- I can remember first getting involved with the wwe,

The whole ordeal with the ear biting situation,

And I was just pretty much a pariah.

[crowd booing] - the baddest man

On the planet, "iron" mike tyson!

- I was just so happy to be involved with d-generation x.

I'm a fan. - Good god!

Don't tell me that mike tyson has joined d-generation x!

- Who had more attitude

Than mike tyson?

Nobody.

Dx, they're a perfect fit.

- They shared this common identity as the people who

Push the boundaries too far.

- Somehow, dx managed to also bring

The 12-year-old kid out of mike tyson.

- Look at this!

- We got to see a lot more from mike tyson

Than we'd ever seen before.

- Wrestlemania xiv, baby! - Yeah!

- Getting shawn to wrestlemania

Was a battle.

He had a bad back.

He was heavily medicated.

- Ladies and gentlemen, the following contest

Is a casket match for the...

- I had done the casket match with taker.

- I threw him over the top rope,

Over this giant coffin.

And I think he clipped his back.

- I just didn't quite get far enough.

Bam, I just hit the corner on my low back.

Wake up the next day, and I can't move.

I blew the disc and all that kinda stuff.

And he said, "you can't wrestle,"

And I said, "nobody tells me what to do,

"so I'll dope myself up

"and we'll make it to wrestlemania.

Then, I'll let my career be over."

[crowd exclaiming]

- So you had shawn, who was injured,

Who was self-medicating,

And really overdoing it.

- There was also just a lot going on up here with shawn.

His drug use was out of control.

- He knew that he became addicted to the painkillers,

The muscle relaxers, and so forth.

He was completely wasted.

And it was sad to see.

- I'd go get a luggage cart

And put shawn on the luggage cart,

Roll him up to his room, and get him undressed,

Take the dip out of his mouth,

And put him on his side, put a pillow behind him

So he wouldn't roll over and choke to death in his sleep.

Are you enabling, or are you trying to save his life?

That was my dilemma a lot.

- Wrestlemania, I'm always involved.

It's always big.

Big news and big things tend to follow me.

- Every day closer we got to that day,

I think shawn became a little more irrational.

- You don't just do this stuff for the jollies, pal.

You do it because you're a jock.

- He knew, "when this is over,

I'm gonna go away for a while."

- At 50%, on my worst day,

With the flu, hung over,

I could slap the taste out of your mouth.

- Shawn was in a lot of pain. Shawn needed to get fixed.

Hunter was the guy that you could depend on.

If shawn was unable to do something,

You can plug hunter in to do it.

And I think that paul saw that as,

"this is my opportunity to step up once shawn goes away."

[tense music]

- There were conversations with me

About going forward with dx from there.

There was also conversations that I knew

That were happening of, like,

"can he do that on his own?"

And at that point, I'm still seen as secondary to shawn,

And can I handle that?

Am I a main event player?

- Remember, you're replacing shawn michaels.

You just don't walk off the street

And pick out the next shawn michaels.

The audience aren't dumb.

[crowd cheering]

♪ ♪

- Ohh!

- Look out! - Oh, my--oh!

He got it in! The stunner!

Mike tyson, and...

[crowd cheering] austin is the champion!

[bell dings] stone cold!

- There's only one shawn michaels.

For many at that time, dx was shawn and hunter.

And how do you replace abbott and costello?

Hello again, ladies and gentlemen,

And welcome to "raw"!

Triple h of dx is gonna make

A major announcement here tonight.

- The next night, half the people coming up to me

Were saying, "dude, you gotta knock this out of the park

Or it's dead in the water."

And the other half were telling me that,

Thinking, "there's no way you're gonna do this.

It's gonna suck. So good luck."

When you set out to do what no one else can do,

You look to your friends.

You look to the kliq.

["break it down" playing]

- Well, look who's back.

♪ ♪

- When scott and kev left for wcw,

I was gonna leave too.

Long story short, I had, like, a overdose

In a production meeting before tv.

And so vince puts me in rehab.

And so I was in rehab when the curtain call happened.

[crowd cheering]

Vince has a meeting with me telling me, like,

"yeah, if you wanna go to wcw, I'll give you a week.

"if you stay here, you're gonna be in the doghouse,

Basically, like hunter was."

Yeah, no. No, thanks.

Whoo!

So I went to wcw.

- And you-- - welcome aboard.

You're nwo... All: For life!

- I ended up getting fired from there.

As soon as I got fired, hunter found out and he called me,

And he told me shawn was getting ready to take time off,

And he wanted to keep doing the dx thing.

And hunter was like, "we can be coleaders and, like--of dx."

And, you know, that's how-- that's kinda

How he pitched it.

One of my best friends in my entire life, triple h,

He says, "dx needs your help."

And it starts tonight!

I was so nervous that I was gonna screw that up.

I was just happy it turned out as good as it did, man.

- He shows up, crowd goes insane.

So now you have triple h, chyna, and x-pac.

That's not all for that night, though.

- The title is on the line in the cage.

- So later that night, the new age outlaws

Have a tag match against

Cactus jack and chainsaw charlie, terry funk.

And all of a sudden, in that match,

Dx shows up and interferes.

- That's dx!

Dx is here!

- Cactus and terry get beaten savagely.

It's ugly.

And then, out of that, what we're left with

Is this shot of the cage

With the new dx--

The new age outlaws, triple h, x-pac,

And chyna in the middle.

- My god, they're stronger than ever!

- I think that was, like, the first time I got to do this.

For some reason, I really wanted to do that on tv.

And I finally got to do it.

- We had no idea what we would do next.

But that opening salvo sure got everybody's attention.

- Who would have guessed that you take away

The greatest worker of our generation, shawn michaels,

And instead of dx dying, it becomes stronger than ever?

- This is my dx. My army.

♪ ♪

- I was born in marietta, georgia, the summer of '69.

I grew up there until I was in the fifth grade.

Then we moved down into the panhandle of florida.

My father was "bullet" bob armstrong,

Also a wwe hall of famer.

- Armstrong, he gets a victory over--

- I always wanted to be a professional wrestler.

My father actually tried to persuade me

Not to get into it at all.

Like, it is a rough life.

You sacrifice a great deal to chase this dream.

- Heavyweight wrestling champion bob armstrong.

[light music]

- Now, when I graduated high school,

I was, like, 6'4",

And I was about 165 pounds,

So I was not gonna join a sports entertainment

Community anytime soon.

So I went into the military.

I had a six-year stint in the marine corps.

- He's a marine, as you can tell here.

How you doing, brian?

- We went to desert storm.

I lived in a sand hole for six months of my life.

Ate more sand with every meal than I'd like to remember.

That was a really scary time of my life.

But on the flipside of that coin,

Like, it's the most proud I am of anything in my life.

- I figure someday, when you get out of the marines,

You're liable to be right there in that ring with 'em.

- Yes, I will, mr. Fuller.

I'm really proud of my service.

Would have done more, but wrestling came calling.

♪ ♪

- From music city, usa, jesse james!

- I got a tryout in wwe.

I was gonna be the singing cowboy.

♪ you know my baby's got me wrapped her little finger ♪

Times were changing, man,

And that singing cowboy gimmick wasn't quite as cool

As they once thought it was.

I would say probably '96, that's when

The real double j and rockabilly

Were first match every night, me versus billy.

- Rockabilly!

- [sighs]

[quietly] rockabilly. Rockabilly.

I don't really say that out loud.

[laughs]

[acoustic guitar music]

I was born and raised in florida.

I trained horses. I rode horses all the time.

I was really into the western thing.

I actually went to college on a rodeo scholarship,

Which I know people don't think that's a thing,

But it is a thing, and I did that.

Wrestling was never in the cards for me.

I didn't even know what wrestling was.

- Rolling into the ring, and you see 'em holding--

- Ron and don harris, they're two twins

Who actually got me started.

A buddy of mine owned a gym in orlando.

Ron and don harris came in there one day.

Like, "hey, what are you guys doing? How you been?

What's going on?" and they go, "we're wrestling."

And I go, "you're what?"

So, I finally gave in and went, "okay,

"let me give this a shot.

Let me try it, see what this is all about."

So the early part of '92,

Went and had a tryout with wwe.

Vince looks, he goes, "hey,

"we'd like to offer you a contract.

We'd like you to look it over."

So I looked at vince and said, "hey, I have a job.

Can I just do this on the weekend?"

He literally laughs, the old vince--

"heh, heh, heh."

Laughs the vince laugh, and goes, "no,

I think you'll be all right."

♪ ♪

- Hey, I'm bart, and this here is billy.

[gunfire]

♪ ♪

- If you watch "Monday night raw"

In the mid-'90s, you will see a lot of billy gunn.

The smoking gunns were a significant part

Part of a relatively diminished wwe roster.

But he's a member of a tag team of fake brother cowboys.

♪ ♪

When they tried to push him as a singles competitor,

It didn't work.

[crowd jeering]

- I was doing the rockabilly thing,

Which was going absolutely nowhere.

Nowhere. - For the ride--

- They were gonna fire me.

They were gonna fire brian--road dogg.

Then, all of a sudden, they said, "hey,

"these guys are going nowhere.

Let's stick 'em together and let 'em go nowhere together."

And this, people, is where we form the new age outlaws.

- Oh, you didn't know?

♪ ♪

Your ass better call somebody!

- The new age outlaws are a fascinating wrestling story.

They're one of those examples of sometimes

One plus one equals three.

- Those guys have both been around the block

In different incarnations.

But we haven't found the role for them to fit in.

- And it was shawn.

I remember shawn coming

To us and going, "hey, man,

"you get these guys out of these silly gimmicks.

Put them together as a tag team."

- The road dogg and rockabilly?

- "they'll be a hell of a team."

- I don't know who did it,

But I'm glad somebody had mentioned it.

- Why don't you shut your hole and allow me to do

The announcing around here?

- The best talents are natural extensions

Of their own personality.

- You do not deserve it.

- The closer you can be to being yourself

In this environment...

- But you about to get--

- The better off you're gonna be.

And those guys were spot on.

- The original badass billy gunn.

- Billy was such a great athlete

And such a motivated competitor.

One of the most competitive people I've ever met.

- Allow me to introduce myself.

- And then we get brian armstrong, road dogg.

We get to see his sense of humor.

- I am not an [bleep].

[crowd cheering] - every time we would go out

Of the curtain, he'd look at me and go,

"oh, my god, I'm so lost. I don't know what to say."

And our music would play, and I'd just kick him out,

And he'd just start rattling it off.

- You maple leaf loving freaks.

- [laughs] yeah. We were put together as a team.

And so they didn't have any time

To come up with the music.

So I just thought, well, man, who needs music?

Give me a microphone, and I'll get us to the ring.

♪ ♪

Whoa! What a flush!

- When the road dogg and billy gunn first teamed up,

There was a sort of ease in their shoulders.

There was a feeling that this was cool and right.

It just felt more fun and more interesting than

Just about everything else on the screen.

- Shawn and I, we liked both of them a lot.

They were both really good workers.

And kind of organically put this relationship on tv

And let them build.

And when the time comes... - Wait a minute!

I can't believe it! [bell dings]

- We'll pull them into the group.

We'll make a larger faction.

Eventually, it would work out great,

'cause once shawn was hurt and had to leave,

It gave me a giant shoe to drop.

It just gave life to something that

Was probably dead at that point if that didn't happen.

- We got two words for ya!

- They added what that dish needed.

The seasoning it was waiting for.

I don't think the second version of dx

Would have been successful whatsoever

If it hadn't been for road dogg and billy.

- Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

Children of all ages,

D-generation x proudly brings to you

Its tag team champions of the world,

The road dogg jesse james,

The badass billy gunn,

The new age outlaws!

[crowd cheering] - I had chased my dream

And caught it by the tail,

And I was living it.

[rock music playing] - oh, you didn't know?

♪ ♪

Your ass better call somebody!

- The second you hear

The beginning of their song,

It's over.

- It was just three notes.

♪ dun dun dun dun ♪

And the audience erupts.

"you better call somebody."

- Whenever you hear the dx music,

People lose their minds, legit.

- It's instantly recognizable,

And it's like a trumpet

Heralding the arrival of major stars.

- We got two words for ya!

All: Suck it!

Crowd: Suck it! Suck it!

- Let's get ready to suck it!

- The second version of dx

Had no business being as vital as the first version.

And yet, with the road dogg, with billy gunn, with x-pac,

And with triple h sort of reinventing himself,

In some ways, the quintessential version of dx

Was the second try at it.

- I feel like dx had two different versions.

The first version was shawn and hunter against authority.

The other version was the more hip.

They're cooler.

Everybody wants to have a dx on their shirt,

And everybody wants to say, "suck it."

Everybody was invested in dx because

You never knew what you were gonna get.

- What are we doing today?

What's cool stuff that we're doing?

- We're gonna go to wcw's offices.

- One of the most memorable things that dx did

Was the invasion.

- By the spring of '98,

Wcw had been winning in the ratings for 83 weeks.

Wwe is finally neck-and-neck.

Wcw, like, competing for viewers on a Monday night

I guess isn't enough, because they decide

To start running the same towns as wwe

Was running at the same time.

- If we were going into a marketplace,

They would try to go in there a few weeks before us,

Put tickets on sale, try to kill our business.

I was on a creative call maybe couple of weeks earlier,

And we were all just bull[bleep] about what they

Were doing, and man, these guys are running the scope,

It's just down the street.

A joke was made on that call about freakin' just,

Let's get a tank and roll it down there, and you know--

And then that slowly became a,

"what if we did something on that?"

- Attention!

- Wcw, goodbye.

[laughs] you are--you are done.

All: Let's go!

- "you guys are goin' over.

"you're gonna drive a tank.

"you're gonna have a loudspeaker.

You're gonna try to get into the building."

And we all looked at each other and went,

"oh, hell yes!"

- Ladies and gentlemen, d-generation x

Spits in the face of wcw.

All: Bischoff sucks! Bischoff sucks!

- When you do something like that,

There's major heat on you.

There's, like, two buyers in the industry,

And you're burning your bridge with one of 'em.

- This is d-generation x!

- They asked us, "hey, you okay with doing this?"

And, like, every one of us was like,

"hell--like, absolutely."

- D-generation x knocks at your door!

Get a shot of them closing the gate!

Wcw is a bunch of cowards!

- We start banging on the door.

"hey, eric bischoff, open the door!

We just wanna say hello."

- We need to talk to mr. Bischoff.

- All we wanna do is talk.

- Now, you look back, and you go, how dumb was it

Not to open the door?

You could've had the hottest thing at the time

On your show, for god's sakes.

- Pisses me off.

Just pisses me off.

Because, had I known, had I been aware,

In the moment--because I was doing live television.

I was in the freaking ring with a microphone in my hand.

Had I had the time to process this and react quickly enough,

I would have told 'em to open the doors and let 'em in.

We're gonna have the greatest television show of all time.

It would've been awesome.

I just didn't get that opportunity.

- It was a-- beyond a "holy [bleep]"

That we would do something like that.

And it couldn't have worked out any better for us.

- Who rules professional wrestling?

- Dx. All: Yeah!

- As soon as we went and knocked on wcw's door,

Our ratings overtook wcw, and we never looked back.

- The invasion really sounded the alarm

That something special was taking place.

- In the mid-'90s, when everything was exploding,

It was like the beatles,

No matter where they went.

You had the new age outlaws, megastars.

You had x-pac, megastar.

Chyna, megastar.

And you had hunter, and he sat on top of the heap.

- We were just happy to come to work.

We were happy to hang out with each other.

And we had chyna.

[grunting] she was the piece

Of the puzzle that stuck it all together.

- Chyna was sort of the glue, I think, in the group.

- She was legit, like, the magic ingredient

Of that whole thing.

- If anybody's gonna initiate a dx split, it's gonna be me.

[crowd cheering]

- What I remember most about dx, in terms of regular life,

It's the chop.

I mean, come on.

- There's just this bad boy edge to it

That was so much fun.

- Now the crotch chop is just everywhere.

A lot of people would see people

Doing the crotch chop different places

And not have any idea where it came from.

It was just part of culture.

- Oh, yeah! [crowd cheering]

- If you're from my generation, you've seen

So many kids go across the graduation stage

Doing a crotch chop.

- Doing the "suck it" probably caused more suspensions

Than any other thing, like, in the history

Of school in america.

- I'm at disneyland in 1999,

And my wife says, "mick, this sounds crazy,

"but I believe pooh bear

Is trying to say something to you."

And I look over, and pooh bear gives me the--

Pooh bear!

Pooh bear's doing the crotch chop.

- Suck it! - People who aren't

Wrestling fans, even they knew d-generation x.

♪ ♪

[coughs]

- Once you become somebody

In this industry,

Everybody wants a piece.

Great problem to have.

But you don't realize how much sacrifice

You have to make to carry on that way.

- It was just everywhere you went, man.

Like, grown-ass adults couldn't help themselves.

Like, they would just say, "I don't care

If you're with your family. Can I have a picture?"

Or, "sign this for me?"

- You gotta understand something.

If you came out of the attitude era,

You were a [bleep] rock star.

That's intoxicating to a lot of people.

- I got caught up. I got lost in the limelight.

You know, as I got more successful,

It got more out of hand and out of hand,

And I had enough money to buy anything I wanted,

And so that was a--that was a curse, not a blessing.

- We were unfireable.

So I pushed the limits of everything

As far as I possibly could,

Because I was unfireable.

And when that happens...

Then, you fall into a dark spot.

I got caught up in it.

I started buying into the rock star lifestyle,

The script stuff and the drugs,

And then it caught up with me,

And things got really bad.

I mean, really bad.

- You're young, making a lot of money,

Surrounded by people that just wanna be around you,

And I think that, out of everyone in dx,

The one that it hit hardest at the time

Was probably brian james.

[laughter]

- My drinking and drugging had gotten bad,

And I was separated from my wife for a little while,

And I couldn't see my kids,

And I had wrecked a couple of cars on pills.

And at one point, I was messed up in a hotel lobby,

And bruce prichard kinda walked up on me

And caught me there, all screwed up,

And I kinda just broke down and told him everything

That was going on in my life.

And I--he mentioned I should go home.

My downward spiral didn't stop there.

It continued.

I thought that was my rock bottom.

I had a little further to fall.

- This is my dx. My army.

When I'm hanging out with dx, yeah, we're doing

A lot of fun stuff, having a good time,

But what am I doing?

[crowd cheering]

Is it getting me any closer to where I wanna be?

Nobody wants to see me fight steve austin for the belt.

We're a bunch of good guys people like,

But because I'm a fan favorite and he's a fan favorite,

Nobody wants to see us go at it,

So they're not gonna push that.

So you know, you have to take things in your own hands.

- Hunter always wanted to be the guy.

Everyone should wanna

Have that desire.

Anybody that gets in this business that doesn't

Wanna be the top dog,

I don't know why you're in the business.

- Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready?

[cheering]

If you look at that sweep through the attitude era,

Austin is white hot.

- Gimme a "hell yeah."

All: Hell yeah!

- Rock, they put him in the nation of domination.

I take over dx.

As a group, we're sort of opposed to each other.

We're fighting over the intercontinental title.

Rock branches out of the nation.

Dx continues to move on, but I'm watching this environment

And saying to myself, we need a darth vader here.

So I go to vince and pitch

Dx needs to come to an end.

That did not sit well with the rest of dx.

- Do we all want it to happen? No.

Because we're all perfectly happy

In the positions that we're at.

[together] dx!

- We're getting six-figure quarterly

Merchandising checks, man.

We were all like, "hey, man, we don't wanna quit this.

Go turn heel or whatever, but don't affect our money."

[crowd cheering] - here comes triple h!

- Wait a minute! Wait a minute!

No! No! - What?

- Triple h has turned his back on x-pac!

- Ambition in this business is a dangerous thing.

- Triple h laid out x-pac!

- I've turned my back on my friends.

My friends have turned their backs on me.

- Pedigree!

- We all do it because we all have one goal in mind,

And that's to be the best in this business.

[cheering]

- Dx as we know it is dead.

And triple h now would go on to become

Honestly, one of the best

Bad guys of all time.

- I don't need anybody else, jr.

This is about me.

- The villain's sort of the straws that stirs

The drink in pro wrestling.

They're the number one thing you gotta have.

- Four years ago, madison square garden,

I walked to the ring to say goodbye to my friends,

Kevin nash, scott hall, shawn michaels.

Who got punished for that, jr?

Me.

- You can smoke and mirror

A top babyface, top hero, to some degree.

But the villains, boy, people gotta feel that villain.

- It's about me getting what I deserve,

And that is becoming the wwe champion.

You guys talk about being students of the game.

I am the [bleep] game, jr.

- We needed a great heel.

We needed a great heat-getting heel.

Hunter was looking forward to it.

He relished that opportunity.

[crowd cheering]

- There's a moment when you win that title

For the first time where it's all real.

- Triple h! Triple h!

- If you're a kid dreaming about football,

You win the super bowl.

If you're a kid dreaming about being in the wwe,

You're winning the wwe title.

It means something. It means that the company

Is putting its faith behind you.

- It was inevitable.

Hunter's got the brightest future

Of anybody in the group.

He's the guy you wanna invest in.

♪ ♪

- Once you have triple h kind of emerge

Into the championship picture,

Without that leadership,

I don't think that you have a dx.

It just kinda splintered off.

- It's really wild to think about how long

Or short the real run of dx at the top was.

The whole thing was

Essentially less than two years.

You talk about a meteoric rise.

I mean, dx-- [snaps fingers]

Shows up, instantly has their presence felt,

Affects pop culture,

Has the whole world crotch chopping,

And by the time you blink-- you went from being

14 to 16 years old-- it's over.

♪ ♪

- I think everyone wants to spread their wings

And show that they're capable of more.

- Please welcome the one and only, chyna.

- Chyna comes out of the dx situation

And is a bona fide star.

- It's like an onion. You peel that back,

It makes a grown man cry.

- She was the most ground-breaking thing

They had at that time.

She could be in the ring wrestling one minute

And then do the cover of "playboy" the next.

♪ ♪

- I have fought the odds.

And for that, I believe that I'm a pioneer.

[crowd cheering] and I believe

That that's why my guys named me

The ninth wonder of the world.

♪ ♪

- I mean, she was larger than life,

In, like, a superhero sort of way.

Her impact to a generation of wrestling fans,

Especially female wrestling fans,

Is just impossible to describe.

[bell dings]

- The intercontinental title on the line.

- Jeff jarrett wrestles chyna in this housekeeping match.

- Will she be the first woman to wear intercontinental gold?

- All of these antiquated items were meant

To indicate that a woman should remain in the household

And cleaning, and chyna was obviously

The antithesis of all of that.

And I'm watching it with my mom and my grandmother,

Three generations of women, and it really

Did resonate with us. All: Two, three!

[bell dings] - chyna has made history!

Chyna, the first woman to become

The intercontinental champion!

- Joanie thought, based on what she had done

For the company, that she wanted to be paid

On a par with the top male superstars.

- I remember one day she came to my office

And said, "I know I deserve to make as much as stone cold."

"excuse me?"

She wanted to be the highest-paid talent

On the roster.

- She, I think, believed that she was going

To be the biggest star in hollywood,

And that she didn't need this place anymore,

So she demanded stuff that vince was like,

"I just can't even get close to any of that."

- I get the fact that you gotta have confidence

In yourself in such a crazy-ass business.

She was the first woman that I ever managed

In my close to 50 years of the business

To make a million a year.

But I could not meet her contractual demands--

And they were demands--

To prevent her from leaving.

[crowd cheering]

- The attitude era was by far the craziest time in my life.

[engine rumbling]

When you're in the midst of it, it's like

You're in a drug-addled, violent tornado

That's just carrying you along.

[pensive music]

When I got off the drugs, I started looking inward.

I started working on myself and trying to figure out

Why I was the way I was.

It was the first time I realized,

Like, I have a choice in this.

♪ ♪

I learned to control me and dig down deep

And find serenity, a peace.

I can take a deep breath and walk around here

And not have a worry in the world.

It's what life's all about.

♪ ♪

- After triple h leaves dx, dx breaks up.

Triple h's star just continues to rise and rise and rise.

- Please welcome the one, we hope the only, triple h.

- And the same is definitely not true for everybody else.

X-pac, well, he teamed up with kane for a while,

And then he was in this group called the x-factor.

The trajectory was going down.

Road dogg got released.

Then chyna got released.

Billy gunn, you know, they tried.

They gave him the king of the ring.

[bell dings] - we've got a new

King of the ring, and he's billy gunn!

- Remember, he feuded with the rock for, like, a hot second.

It really seemed like

They were gonna make something of him.

- An elbow, hook of the leg.

- Yeah! - For a crew that was

So, so popular together,

You know, it's sad to watch the trajectory.

And eventually, triple h was just sort of

The last man standing.

- I get hurt in a match with the dudleys.

I put bub on a table and jump higher

Than I've ever jumped before in my life.

- Look out! No! A famouser!

A famouser through the table!

- I caught the table, and it slung me sideways,

And when it did, my elbow hit and blew

My entire shoulder in half.

By the time '04 comes around, on my birthday,

I get a phone call that says I'm no longer needed.

♪ ♪

- So I had been fired for a couple of months now,

And then I heard wcw was coming to panama city.

And I thought, "oh, well, I'll just go down there,

See some old friends, and maybe put my name in the hat,"

You know? - Shane mcmahon is on "nitro."

- What in the hell is he doing?

- It's the night that shane mcmahon shows up,

And they buy wcw.

- That's right. I own wcw.

- There went my plans.

And so I got drunk and got in a fight at a bar

And went to jail in panama city.

♪ ♪

- I had an incident at the airport.

I was taking muscle relaxers.

They hit me--they hit me hard.

I get home, and I get a call from jr, and he's like,

"yeah, vince is hot. He wants you to go to rehab."

I'm like, "no. I didn't fail a drug test.

I didn't--like, I was fully transparent with you guys."

I said, "so, no. I think I quit."

♪ ♪

And that was it.

Whew. Yeah.

The start of over a decade of darkness, so--

♪ ♪

- We all have our moments of when things went bad.

Mine, more or less, went bad after I'd left the company.

Um...

[sighs] um...

♪ ♪

We all have our demons.

♪ ♪

But luckily for me, I'd done enough stuff

And had enough value in my name

That I could go do the indie stuff,

And then I went to another company for a while,

And then things just went screamin' downhill.

- Billy and I joined forces in tna

To be a tag team called the voodoo kin mafia,

Which stands for vkm.

Crowd: [chanting] screw you, vince!

Screw you, vince! Screw you, vince!

- I'm completely off the rails,

Me and brian, and we just talk crap about everybody,

Try to bury everybody.

- People would come up to me and go, like,

"oh, did you see the interview brian and billy did?

They buried you," or whatever.

And I'm like, dude, the guys, they're on drugs.

- Every week, you are chopping at the very foundation

Of the dynasty of the legacy

That we were damn sure a major part of.

- It was just a complete disaster.

- No angles. No spots. No finish.

Just men versus you two [bleep].

[cheering]

- [clicking tongue]

♪ ♪

Yeah, I just found myself in a really bad spot.

Like, on my floor,

My house wrecked, everybody gone.

Literally crashed two cars.

And I'm not trying to make this sound bad.

I'm just saying what happens.

My wife and everybody was over it.

They didn't want that phone call.

I don't want that phone call sitting there going,

"your husband died because he took a bunch of stuff

And ran into something."

- Look, I was 42 years old.

I'm a father of three.

I'm doing these indie shows

Where I'm getting $300 a night.

And it didn't matter, because if I could

Get some drugs while I was there, too, awesome.

But it was-- it just gotten where

My life was miserable, where--

Literally contemplating suicide.

Me and my brother were driving back

From alabama, from a little town,

And I was screwed up.

And, like, I was crying, and I was--and he was like,

"you know, you don't have to live like this."

- I got caught up. I ended up doing meth.

And, like, it might not kill you like--like, you know,

Shooting heroin or something,

But it robs you of your soul, you're just--

Just about--you're just like a walking zombie, man.

- Kid and I wouldn't talk for long periods of time.

Every now and then, we'd touch base,

And it was usually miserable.

- Eventually, I ended up down in mexico,

And I hung myself.

I was--I was in a coma for three days

There in mexico city.

♪ ♪

- The one thing I've learned in the process

Is you can't help somebody until

They wanna help themself.

Like, there's just no-- you just can't.

As much as you try, as much as it breaks your heart,

You can't make it happen.

- It's like, we knew. Like, kevin nash was--

He flew down there to pick me up and brought me

To me third and final rehab.

I went from mexico to orlando

And never went back to mexico again.

I left all my [bleep] in mexico.

And just never came back.

♪ ♪

- The only person that could fix

What was going on with me was me.

You do something about it or you die.

Like, the later part of 2011, 2012,

I go to rehab and clean up

And get everything straight in my life,

And then it took some work.

And then my wife came back, my kids came back,

My dogs came back, my job came back.

Everything came back.

- I got clean and sober.

I had to go back and make some amends.

I had to go back and right some wrongs,

Or try to, anyway, and humbly ask them to forgive me.

Hunter went to vince three different times,

And vince said no twice.

And he literally, the third time,

Said, "he's a drug addict, hunter.

When he screws up, it's your ass."

That's what he told hunter.

And so hunter gave me an opportunity

After I'd been sober about a year,

And I became lead writer of "smackdown!"

For three or four years.

Hunter still believed in me, and for that,

I'm forever grateful.

♪ ♪