Original subtitles

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program for the special report.

I've never seen a more controversial entity than D -Generation X.

Here we go.

In three, two... Good evening, my fellow Americans.

This past week, D -Generation X was... This past week, D -Generation X

a full sentence.

If you took a group of great athletes, stuck them in a frat house... Mix that

with a bunch of I don't give a **** attitudes and stir vigorously.

You get DX to come out of it.

Generation X was the counterculture, anti -establishment crew inside WWE.

They were rat pack for a millennium. We're total badasses. We're gangsters.

You had Triple H, Shawn Michaels, X -Pac, Billy Gunn, Road Dogg, and of

you had Chyna.

Their entire purpose was to push the boundaries and make you uncomfortable

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

you. Suck it! Suck it! It became a battle cry. We got two words for you!

Suck it!

Let's get rid of those suckers!

Degeneration 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, 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 just carried you along.

I got caught up. I got lost in the limelight. For a guy that didn't need

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

could. Then you fall into a dark spot.

We all have our demons. It robs you of your soul.

We've all gotten through that.

Man, we are blessed to be alive.

There used to be more of us. They define maybe the most memorable time ever in

WWE.

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 a Degeneration Act today, as far as I'm

But it is fun to look back on. You will never forget

Degeneration Act.

Try not to take any of it too serious.

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 going to

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

kicked completely out of you, D -Generation X has got two words.

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 Sean, New Age Outlaws, China, X -Pac.

Triple H and Sean, it was the brainchild of that friendship that started DX.

We are the business today.

There's a bit of discrepancy on Sean and I's first meeting, and I'll stick with

my version of it because Sean had issues at the time. I remember distinctly

because Sean, he's a fashion assassin.

Sean came in wearing no shirt, bandanas all over him. He had cowboy boots with

his jeans tucked into the pants.

And, like, that was a street close.

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?

That is something, and again, that's what, you know, I'm not sure if it's the

drugs or, you know. That's the way a hunter's always better, telling the

stories.

I was born July 27, 1969, Nashua, New Hampshire.

It's 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 stopped on Chief J. Strongbow. I remember specifically who it was. I had

plastic football helmet. I remember putting the football in the helmet,

it on the floor, climbing up on my dad's lap and just sitting and being

fascinated by it.

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.

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 could 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

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.

Then it took off from there. Lock up your doors. I'm coming to your town.

They better pray when I'm around. What a future.

Young, big man, aggressive, got everything going for him. Pat Patterson

we had been invited to a show that was run by Walter Kowalski. And Walter had a

student, Paul LeVette.

His name was Tara Rising.

Great name.

By the time that his show came around,

Paul Levesque had signed a contract with WCW in Atlanta.

We met, watched his match, and told him that night, when your contract comes up,

WCW, please give us a call.

Hunter Hearst!

Paul came in and became Hunter Hearst Helmsley.

Hunter was the quintessential snob.

Hello, Hunter Hearst Helmsley here.

When Hunter arrived in WWE, I...

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

What an aggressive athlete Miss Hunter Hurt -Tomsley is.

He looked good, student of the game.

Gathering of the minds between Sean and Hunter was pretty quick.

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 sat down and like, what do you want to be when you grow up? But I just

recall, I made the comment to my mother, like, I'm going to be a professional

wrestler. That's nice, honey.

You know, I was saying that at 12. And by the time I was graduating high

I'm still saying it. And I think I trained for three months. He is Shawn

Michaels. In the ring, it's nothing short of an aerial sight.

Bill Watts got me booked in Kansas City.

And that's where I met Marty.

We walked into the dressing room, and it was this guy who had real short hair,

and he had green tights pulled up to under his chest.

I was like, oh, damn, we got some work to do.

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 going to 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.

So all of that stuff was on the table, and we partook in that on an extremely

regular basis.

If we was over 300 days a year, we partied 290 of them.

Marty and I were just hell to deal with. But inside the ring, we were really

good.

Shawn Michaels, him and his partner, Marty Jannetty, they came from the AWA

the late 80s to the WWE, and they were popular immediately.

Sean's reputation early on was always one of a top -notch performer.

I think Sean always saw himself as the star and the biggest star.

So being in a tag team, Sean, in my opinion, looked at that as a stepping

to his single stardom.

Recently, there's been a lot of controversy, a lot of rumors that maybe

are going to break up.

From the time I got in, I never pitched myself in a tag team.

In any theater of my mind or dreams was it ever me and this other guy.

I would argue the barbershop window is the greatest tag team breakup of all

time.

He literally smashed the version of Shawn Michaels as we knew it.

I'd been a rocker forever, and I had no idea who my character was going to be.

Then all of a sudden, one day, I'm just sort of out there.

It comes out.

Being in love with yourself.

Heartbreak Kid was a mix of Elvis meets Freddie Mercury and of the lead singer

Judas Priest.

All of them were so secure in their entertainment and in their sexuality.

It is fact that I am the sexiest man alive.

This grown man shaking his ass and he's got the chaps and the song. It's 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. If your open wants her, you're going to go up and kick his ass.

But maybe he's going to kick yours and take her anyway.

I mean, there was a lot to dislike.

The World Wrestling Federation reeks of jealousy for the Heartbreak Kid.

When he first turned into the Heartbreak Kid...

He was becoming sort of this cocky kind of 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 is 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.

If you ask anybody to describe Shawn Michaels in those days, one of the first

two words out of their mouth is going to be 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

on his shoulder.

You will not ever.

See a man more charismatic, more flamboyant, or more talented than the

heartbreak kid Sean. For the longest period of time, I didn't care for Sean

all.

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

But there was no one that I'd rather work with in the ring.

Sean was doing things nobody else was and working on a level from an 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.

They're not going to give me a pat on the back, so I'm going to be obnoxious

about it. It just started to turn to anger.

After a while, it just got to be, I at least need to have

that.

The only guys I got real with were my buddies, The Click, Hunter, and Kev.

The Click was a bunch of guys that hung out together, went to the bars together,

ate together, I mean, a whole nine yards. Had very strong opinions on the

business. These five guys looked at professional wrestling in the early 90s

said, this is kind of lame. These guys who were kind of too cool for school

started telling Vince that his product wasn't up to date.

It's hard to argue with that look back.

Safe to say that the 90s became the decade of the anti -hero.

Music, TV, even movies, people started pushing boundaries in a way that just

seemed really edgy at the time.

As pop culture in America is getting darker, WWE

is like the complete opposite.

A lot of cartoon characters, everyone in WWE had a job.

The plumber, the race car 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?

We wanted to make wrestling better.

At least to where like an 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.

Sean had reached a boiling point. It was just the five of us sitting around

BSing with each other, and you sort of couldn't get yourself worked up. They

snapped. 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 here, but doing

and just saying, this needs to be a shift.

Yes, some of the tradition is respectful, but too much of it is just

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.

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, pass 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 a 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 super kick. And Diesel was laid

out in the middle of the cage.

Here comes Triple H. Here comes Razor, who had a match earlier in the night.

Like, what the hell is this?

Your champion, your hero, Shawn Michaels.

Now hugging and kissing the guy that he just spent 20 minutes beating the hell

out of.

The garden just erupted.

I'm screaming like a little girl.

People were going ballistic.

They're seeing something they've never seen before in 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 both taboo in the wrestling room.

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 clique was an insult to our business.

If they had done that in the 70s, early 80s, they'd have all four of them. We

watched right up until the point, I think, that the four of them raised

hands and doing their little curtain call.

And the men said, let's go.

Ooh.

Everybody's pissed.

Everybody's taking it as they're crapping on the business, not expressing

friendship. Nothing you can do to Razor, nothing you can do to Diesel. They're

gone. They're WCW's problem now.

Okay, Sean's the champion. There's only so much. You know, Sean, don't you ever

do that again.

Hunter, man, we can't go any further with him based on the decision that he

on that night.

One of Vince's famous quotes, you're going to have to learn to eat like the

taste of it.

I was supposed to win King of the Ring, and he said, obviously that's not going

to 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. What was the loudest reaction in Madison

Square Garden? I don't understand how that's wrong. The business is changing.

We've got to change with it.

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 Kevin 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.

After the curtain call, Shawn Michaels was still on top of everything.

But for Triple H, it was, you know, back to square one.

He was supposed to win the King of the Ring tournament.

It ended up being Stone Cold Steve Austin, which changed the course of

in its own way.

He was going to have to start back over on the bottom.

He took a good hit, no doubt.

Creative hit.

And that was his way of punishing Triple H. He lost some money because his

position of cards lowered.

He wasn't looked at as exaltingly as he once was.

And I said this to him, you just got to let the water go under the bridge and

you got to get past it somehow.

Maybe you want to reinvent yourself a little bit.

It's over.

I can't pull it. Foot to the leg. One, two in.

You got him.

As my punishment came to an end, I was told, hey, you know what, we're going to

start you back up.

The business was slightly changing, so Vince had offered me to slowly

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.

Sean and I at that point had met Joni.

She was an extremely impressive and jacked young lady.

You could not...

help but notice her right away we were like oh my goodness sean and i both

looked at each other at the same time and we're like that's my heater no one's

ever done that in the business before you have a woman bodyguard which was

a heat getter but have one that was so unbelievably impressive that it could be

taken realistically we brought it to vince and he hated it Didn't see it at

I 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, that girl hasn't signed with WCW yet. Tell her she can be your

eater. But if she's a screw -up, if she's a head case, it's on you. It's

fault.

Live for Monday Night Raw, his lights have been dimmed.

My initial memory of Chyna was when she snatched Terry Reynolds and was flinging

her around like a ragdoll. Terry looked like she had not a bone in her body.

My reaction was like, oh my God, I've never seen anything like this.

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 black woman!

These are newborn. Look at how tiny she is. These are newborn pictures of her.

It's kind of hard to believe that this 6 -pound, 10 -ounce thing would grow up

to be the ninth wonder of the world. I mean, it's, like, kind of awesome.

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 kind of flitted from

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 kind of drug. And so we called her down and we confronted her.

And that was kind of the beginning of the end. When she was 16, she left and

went with her father.

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

China definitely broke the mold of what a female was supposed to look and act

like in sports entertainment.

I mean, we had women before might get involved in a little extracurricular

activity, but nobody who had that sheer force of will and power that

Joni brought to the table.

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 China 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 China was something no one had ever seen.

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

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 going to do it. Why?

Because I can.

We get to Lowell, Massachusetts, and this is the night that Sean loses his

smile. Here, ladies and gentlemen, to surrender the World Wrestling Federation

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

this belt.

One thing that's not going to 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 them 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 has said no. And he understood that, look, what you enjoy about this

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

to do. So whether it was from a business standpoint or a personal standpoint, he

wasn't going to release me.

It's unraveling for Sean.

So the lose the smile thing is, I got to step away for a minute or I'm going to

die. And I'm always God now.

They ain't nothing else.

Like, nothing.

WWE's fighting battles on two fronts.

They're 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

defeated. Every penny that we spent.

was analyze 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 Federation 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 push, and you push, and you push. And what happens when you push the

heartbreak kid? You get a reaction.

I'm a little bit at a point like, listen, I'm going to do what I want to

What's the worst that's going to happen?

The X is born.

You no longer know a step.

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 going to acquiesce to pretty much anything Sean wanted to do within

reason. So DX, Sean was the catalyst for that.

We are.

It was filling a need for me personally with the friendship that Hunter and I

had. And Joey was coming with us. And it goes back to seeing society, the sort

of rebellious atmosphere that was going on. Generation X was the counterculture,

anti -establishment 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 going to be all about them, and they minimized everyone else to

entertain themselves.

We said what we wanted to say. I've got two words for the hitman, brother. We

went places you weren't supposed to go.

Suck it. Yeah. I mean, it pissed off everybody.

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 because 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.

People had said to me my whole career, you haven't lived enough life to hate

yet. When you learn to have hate, you're going to make a fortune in this

business.

That anger, that hatred inside of you will burn and you'll be able to put that

out there real.

I want you to unload.

This is what you've been waiting for, buddy. Get up. 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

you can't do that. Like always having these handcuffs and restraints. I've

sitting back for a couple of years. And anger coming out of that to know I can

do more than this. I want to be more than this. While you...

and the World Wrestling Federation 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.

I can distinctly remember cutting that promo and seeing Vince's eyes change

while I was saying it. I'm thinking to myself, I might as well see 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.

They were trying to shake things up from within.

They were getting away with murder. They were like pushing every boundary.

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.

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.

Generation X, one, two, two.

It's 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

what it was.

We couldn't flip people off.

You couldn't curse at people. One of the things that all of us used to do would

be this crotch -pointing thing.

You could get away with it, because what did you do? Did you just point at his

crotch? I don't think it was over the line. We were getting our tails kicked

the ratings.

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

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

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...

Brett Hart did have a problem with DX.

You're a guy that has degraded the championship belt. I'll give Brett Hart

credit for basically naming DX because Brett, in a promo, talked about, you

what you are? You're just degenerate.

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

And that's where I remember sitting there with Vince. He's like, they are.

They're degenerates.

They're D -Generation X.

DX was born.

We are the generation that eats. You make your rules and we will bring them.

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 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

it.

There's not a day we went by a 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 going to eat in the same restaurants, they're going to go to

the same gym. They did them with themselves.

They didn't have an entourage, the three of them. It's like a little married

couple.

Yeah, it became a little family group.

You got like two dips.

Guys on the road, Joni brings in a different environment all of a sudden.

China's role from a television standpoint, she was bodyguard slash

Behind the scenes, look, she was babysitter and kind of mama.

She took care of us.

You know, I was not always in the best of shape. And you always see Hunter's

role in that. What they don't see is that she was in the car or in the hotel

not very far from that situation.

When Sean 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.

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 want to raise the bar?

Oh, here's your radio.

DX was the guys dragging the line as far as they possibly could. This became the

must -see television.

Can you believe that this is what they're doing?

How dare they?

They're ruining our children.

But the world was getting edgier.

Everything around was getting edgier. So you either kept up with the times or

you fell behind.

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, hey, we're going

nuts.

Sorry. Got a call from USA Network yesterday.

You guys are going to get us taken off the air. They're going to go to black.

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.

So what am I supposed to do with this, right? Both Sean and I were like, can we

use it?

Vince McMahon now is sort of at a point where he's kind of getting into this

rebellious thing, so he's wanting to push back a little bit with USA.

I'm going to say this again. And this was right at the time Clinton had just

the Monica Lewinsky. I did not have sex with that young intern, and everybody

knew he was lying.

You write it up top here, Sean, 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

it from just being a we'll do whatever we want to 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 it's sometimes gross.

They were a reflection of it.

References. Hey, watch your 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.

But I remember getting a call.

I just heard from USA, and I was like, right, okay. And then, like, I loved it.

Are you ready?

Rain's are going up.

Your segments are hot.

So now, we were emboldened before.

Gloves are off now.

We are doing whatever we want.

WrestleMania is now X -rated.

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.

Get your children's permission to watch.

Iron Mike Tyson is here.

Discretion is advised, but will be completely ignored.

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 Federation, brings the

the focal point to the WWF. So WrestleMania 14 is a crazy time.

Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, and Mike Tyson in the middle.

Shawn's a star.

Steve Austin's becoming a big star. Mike Tyson's the biggest star in the world.

All in the main event of WrestleMania 14.

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

But to WWE, that was an opportunity.

I'm telling you, it's perfect for the Generation X. You know what I'm saying?

Bring your decision down. I can remember first getting involved with the WWE,

the whole ordeal, the air -biting situation, and I was just pretty much a

pariah. The baddest man on the planet, Iron Mike Tyson!

I was just so happy to be involved with the Generation X. I'm a fan.

Good God!

Who has more attitude than Mike Tyson?

Nobody.

DX, they're a perfect fit.

They share 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.

We got to see a lot more from Mike Tyson than we'd ever seen before.

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.

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 kind of stuff. And he said, you can't wrestle.

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.

So you had Sean, who was injured, who was self -medicating and really

overdoing it. But there was also just a lot going on up here with Sean.

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 Sean on the luggage cart, roll him up to his

room, get him undressed, dig 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?

This is 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 Sean 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 was over, I'm going to go away for a while.

At 50%, on my worst day with the flu, hungover.

I could clap the taste out of your mouth. Sean was in a lot of pain. Sean

to get fixed.

Hunter was the guy that you could depend on. If Sean was unable to do something,

you'd plug Hunter in to do it.

And I think that Paul saw that as, this is my opportunity to step up once Sean

goes away.

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 Sean.

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 down.

There's only one Shawn Michaels.

For many at that time, DX was Shawn and Hunter.

And how do you place Abbott and Costello?

Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Raw.

Triple H of DX is going to make a major announcement here tonight.

The next night, half the people coming up to me were saying, do you got to

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 going to do this. It's going to 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 clique.

Well, look who's back.

When Scott and Kev left for WCW, I was going to leave too. Long story short, I

had like an 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.

Vince has a meeting with me. Tell me like, yeah, if you want to go to WCW,

give you a week. If you stay here, you're going to be in the doghouse

like Hunter was.

No, no thanks.

So I went to WCW.

I ended up getting fired from there.

As soon as I got fired, Hunter found out and he called me. And he told me Sean

was getting ready to take time off and that he wanted to keep doing the DX

thing. And Hunter was like, we can be co -leaders of DX.

And that's kind of how he pitched it.

One of my best friends in my entire life, Triple H.

He says, DX needs your help.

I was so nervous that I was going to screw that up. I was just happy it

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.

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.

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 China in the middle. 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

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 a bullet Bob Armstrong, also a WWE Hall of Famer.

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.

Now, when I graduated high school, I was like 6 '4", and I was about 165 pounds.

So I was not going to join the sports entertainment community anytime soon. So

went into the military.

I had a six -year stint in the Marine Corps.

We went to Desert Storm.

I lived in a sand hole for six months of my life, ate more sand with every meal

that I'd like to remember.

That was a really scary time in my life, but on the flip side of that coin, it's

the most proud I am of anything in my life.

I figure someday when you get out of the Marines, you'll be right there in that

ring with them. Yes, I will, Mr. Bullard.

Really proud of my service. Would have done more, but wrestling came calling.

From Music City, USA, Jesse G.

I got a tryout in WWE. I was going to be the singing cowboy.

Times were changing, man, and that singing cowboy gimmick wasn't quite as

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,

versus Billy.

Rockabilly!

I don't really say that out loud.

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

was.

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 have 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 and 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 the contract.

We'd like you to look it over. So I looked at Vince and said, hey, I have a

Can I just do this on the weekend? He literally laughs.

The old Vince laughs.

The Vince laughs and goes, no, I think you'll be all right.

Hey, I'm Bart, and this here's Billy.

If you watch Monday Night Raw in the mid -90s, you will see a lot of Billy Gunn.

The smoking guns were a significant 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.

I was doing the rockabilly thing, which was going absolutely nowhere.

Nowhere.

They were going to fire me. They were going to fire Brian, Road Dogg. Then all

of a sudden they said, hey, these guys are going nowhere.

Let's stick them together and let them go nowhere together.

And this, people, is where we form the New Age Outlaws.

Oh, you didn't know?

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 a role for them to fit in. And it was Sean. I remember Sean coming

to us and going, Hey, man, you get these guys out of these silly gimmicks. Put

them together as a tag team.

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 announcement around here? The best talents are national extensions

of their own personality.

You do not deserve this. The closer you can be to being yourself in this

environment, the better off you're going to 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.

And then we get Brian Armstrong, Road Dogg. We get to see his sense of humor.

I am not an ass.

Every time we would go out of the curtain, look at me and go, oh my God,

lost. I don't know what to say in our music play. And I just kick him out and

he'd just start rattling it off.

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 rain.

Whoa, what a flight!

When the road dog 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

interesting than just about everything else on the screen.

Sean 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.

the time comes, we'll pull them into the group. We'll make a larger faction.

Eventually it would work out great because once Sean was hurt and had to

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 you!

They had it with that dish needed.

The seasoning it was waiting for.

I don't think a second version of DX would have been successful whatsoever if

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.

I had chased my dream and caught it by the tail, and I was living it.

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. 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 to work for you, suckers!

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

it. I feel like DX had two different versions. The first version was Sean and

Hunter against authority.

The other version was the more hip. They're cooler.

Everybody wants to have a DX on their shirt. Everybody wants to say, suck it.

Everybody was invested in DX because you never knew what you were going to get.

One of the most memorable things that DX did was the

invasion.

By the spring of 98, WCW had been winning in the rating for 83 weeks. WWE

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

few weeks before us, put tickets on sale, try to kill our business.

I was on a creative call maybe a couple of weeks earlier, and we were all just

bullshitting about what they were doing, and, man, these guys are running the

scopes just down the street.

A joke was made on that call about...

freaking just get a tank and roll it down there, you know, and then that

became a... But if we did something on that... Attention!

WCW, goodbye.

You are done.

You guys are going over.

You're going to drive a tank. You're going to have a loudspeaker. You're

to try to get into the building. Then we all looked at each other and went...

Oh.

Hell yeah.

Ladies and gentlemen, D -Generation X spits in the face of WCW.

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 them. This is D -Generation X.

They asked us, hey, are you okay with doing that? Every one of us was like,

absolutely.

We start banging on the door. Hey, Eric Bischoff, open the door. We just want to

say hello.

Now you look back, you go, how dumb was it not to open

the door? You could have 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

them to open the doors and let them in.

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

It would have been awesome.

I just didn't get that opportunity.

It was beyond a holy that we would do something like that.

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

If 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. China,

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 China.

She was the piece of the puzzle that stuck it all together.

China was sort of the glue, I think, in the group. She was legit, like the magic

ingredient of that whole thing.

If anybody's going to initiate a DX split, it's going to be me.

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.

If you're from my generation, you've seen so many kids go across the

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.

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 got to understand something. If you came out of the attitude era, you were a

rock star.

That's intoxicating to a lot of people.

I got caught up. I got lost in the limelight. And, 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 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 want to be around you.

And I think that out of everyone in DX, the one that hit hardest at the time was

probably Brian James.

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

pills. At one point, I was messed up in a hotel lobby.

Bruce Prichard kind of walked up on me and caught me there, all screwed up, and

I kind of just broke down and told him everything that was going on in my life.

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.

You know, I'm hanging out with DX. Yeah, we're doing a lot of fun stuff, having

a good time, but what am I doing?

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

Nobody wants to see me fight Steve Austin for the belt.

We're a bunch of good guys people like because I'm a fan favorite and he's a

favorite. Nobody wants to see us go at it, so they're not going to push that.

So, you know, you've got to take things in your own hands.

Hunter always wanted to be the guy.

Everyone should want to have that desire.

Anybody that gets in this business that doesn't want to be the top dog, I don't

know why you're in the business.

Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready?

If you look at that sweep through the Attitude Era, Austin is white hot.

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.

Brock branches out of the nation.

DX continues to move on, but I'm watching this environment and saying to

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.

We were getting six -figure quarterly merchandising checks, man. We were all

like, hey, man, we don't want to quit this. Go turn heel or whatever, but

affect our money.

Here comes Triple H!

Wait a minute! Wait a minute!

No! No!

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.

We all do it because we all have one goal in mind, and that's to be the best

this business.

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 villains are the straws that serve the drink in pro

wrestling. They're the number one thing you've got to have.

Four years ago, Madison Square Garden, I walked to the ring to say goodbye to my

friend, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Shawn Michaels.

Who got punished for that, JR?

Me. You can smoke and mirror a top baby face, a top hero, to some degree.

But the villains, well, people got to feel that villain.

It's about me getting what I deserve, and that is becoming the WWF champion.

You guys talk about being students of the game. I am the f***ing game, JR.

We needed a great heel. We needed a great heat -getting heel. Hunter was

forward to it. He relished that opportunity.

There's a moment when you win that title for the first time where it's all real.

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 for anybody in the group.

He's the guy you want to 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 kind of 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 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.

She was the most groundbreaking thing they had at that time. She could be in

ring wrestling one minute and then do the cover of Playboy the next.

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

impossible to describe.

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 China 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.

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

and that She didn't need this place anymore, so she demanded stuff that

was like, I just can't even get close to any of that.

I get the fact that you're going to have confidence in yourself in such a crazy

-ass business.

She was the first woman that I ever met. She might have close to 50 years in the

business to make a million a year.

But I could not meet her contractual demands, and they were demands to

her from leaving.

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

When you're in the midst of it, it's like you're in a drug -addled violent

tornado that's just carried you along.

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

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 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.

Xbox. Well, he teamed up with Kane for a while, and then he was in this group

called the X Factor. That trajectory was going down.

Road Dogg got released.

I think China got released.

Billy Gunn, you know, they tried.

They gave him the King of the Ring.

I remember he feuded with The Rock for like a hot second. It really seemed like

they were going to make something of him.

For a crew that was so, so popular together, you know, it's sad to watch

trajectory.

And eventually Triple H is 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.

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'd 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!

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 was fully transparent with you guys.

I said, son, no, I think I quit.

And that was it.

Yeah, the start of over a decade of darkness.

We all have our moments of when things went bad. Mine more or less went bad

after I'd left the company.

We all have our demons.

But luckily for me, I'd done enough stuff and had enough value in my name

could go do the indie stuff, and then I went to another company for a while, and

then things just went screaming downhill.

Billy and I joined forces in TNA to be a tag team called the Voodoo Ken Mafia,

which stands for VKM. Screw you, Ben!

Screw you, Ben!

Screw you, Ben!

I'm completely off the rails, me and Brian, and we just talk.

crap about everybody trying to bury everybody people come up to me and go my

did you see the interview brian and billy did they buried you or whatever

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

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

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

drugs while I was there, too, awesome. But it had 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 he was like, you know, you don't have to live

this.

Got caught up. Ended up doing math and, like, It might not kill you like, you

know, shooting heroin or something, but it robs you of your soul.

You're just like a walking zombie, man.

Kid and I wouldn't talk for a long period 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 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

want to help themselves.

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 do. Like Kevin Nash was, he flew down there to pick me up and

brought me to my third and final rehab.

I went from Mexico to Orlando and never went back to Mexico again. I left all my

in Mexico and 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'd 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

sober about a year.

Then I became lead writer of SmackDown for three or four years.

Hunter still believed in me, and for that I'm forever grateful.