Notes: We are sorry for how long this took to get out. I asked Jules once if it was a book. Doesn't look like I was far from that question huh? Jules gets complete credit for this great chapter. It looks like chapter 70 will need to be rewritten unless I want to wait forever to get it off a computer that's not hooked up! I have more time on my hands then Jules does.
When I woke up the next morning, I had a phone call from my Mom that went about was typical for us these days: Her fearing retaliation from Vince and wanting me not to be involved in this. Kind of late to stay out of this now. There was also some admonishment for actually going to Phillip's arena.
After we hung up, I let the answering machine take the rest of my calls. They went pretty much the way I expected: Several were from media outlets, wanting a comment on Monday night; one was from Tatem which I took before she hung up and went pretty much how the conversation with my mother went. One was from David, asking how Megan was which reminded me to call Uncle Ric and find out for myself since it had been about two days since I'd seen her, and I knew she was probably scared not knowing where I was after what she found out at RAW. The rest of the calls where from my Dad and Mom's friends from their wrestling days, at least those who didn't know that Dad was alive. There were a few I wondered about how they got my number, but just figured that they probably got in touch with Mom and she gave it to them.
The last call had been from Uncle Eddy telling me where he and Eric were staying and the phone numbers. I was going to assume Uncle Ric wasn't staying at the same place they were.
As I sat on my couch, I got to thinking. I know almost everybody else's story in this whole mess, if some of them came about in a roundabout way. There were a few I didn't know about. I suspected that Tammy's story was an extremely personal one and tied into how she and Athena looked like they'd been crying after they'd talked that day at the cabin, so I decided I wouldn't ask her about how she got involved in this. There was another I was curious about, but I didn't know where to find him, and quite frankly I wasn't sure if I wanted to ask him about his role in this right now anyways. The third was easy to find and I was wanting to know more about his role in this.
Going back to the phone, I quickly dialed the number of the hotel and the extension Eddy gave me. As I heard the voice on the other end bark out 'hello,' a sign that he'd just woken up, I took a deep breathe and made a fateful choice.
"Eric, this is Danny Benoit. I was wondering if you were interested in a chat."
___________________________________________________________________
As I was waiting for Eric in a private area in Antonio's (no one bothers to come in here much during the day and I made damn sure I came in disguised. Well, a better disguise than Dad had used at OVW), I wondered if this was such a good idea afterall. Growing up I'd head nothing but negative things about the man from Mom and my Dad's friends. Despite the fact that the man did help save my father, the man to me, came off as braggadious and arrogant. The matters with my Uncle Ric was proof enough of that. So I was more than a little nervous as I sad in the booth waiting for Eric to arrive.
Eric walked in five minutes later. He was sporting sunglasses, jeans, and a T - shirt underneath a leather jacket. Not much of a disguise, but then again, at this point, I was probably more recognized around here than Eric was.
As Eric found my booth, an old country song from the early '00's came over the jukebox. Eric gave a smirk as he sat across from me.
"Long Black Train huh?" he said commenting on the song, "maybe someday me and Vince will ride it together."
"Didn't take you for a country fan," I said, more to start a conversation than anything else.
"Yeah well, keeps a guy sane when he's flying an airplane," he responded. "So how have you been holding up?"
"Okay, I guess," I answered, "though the other night felt a little bit like that show Buffy with Austin waking up."
"Yeah I bet it was," Eric said with a small smirk, "but I doubt that you woke me up at 8am in the morning to talk about Austin waking up from the dead."
"No, it's not," I said. Didn't see any point in beating around the bush so to speak if he wasn't.
"You want to know how I got involved - "
"I'm more interested in the 'whys' of it at the moment than the 'hows' of it," I blurted out, wondering where it was coming from. I did want to know how Eric got involved in this, but now that the man was here, I ha d a sudden desire to know why. Why did this man, who I'd heard nothing but negative about all my life help safe my father? Not only help, but put his life on the line, literally to help save men like my father and Steve Austin and Shane McMahon. All of whom he had acrimonious relationships with.
Eric took a sip of the beer that he'd ordered and nodded as he set the glass down.
"Eddy was right," he said, "you are like your dad. He likes to get straight to the point too."
"Why did you help save my father?" I asked again.
"Well," Eric began, "if we're going down this road, then would you mind if I was completely blunt and honest with you?"
"By all means," I replied. Honesty was what I wanted wasn't it?
"Your Uncle Ric can go to hell for all I care and I'm sure he feels the same about me. Never a secret that we hated each other and quite frankly for a lot of years I felt the same way about your Dad as well."
I wasn't sure how to respond to that, so I waited for him to continue.
"I know my reputation. I know what I've said and done over the years. For the most part, I don't care. It's what I had to do to get ahead and survive in this business and if a few throats got figuratively cut so to speak, and a few careers got ruined or sidetracked along the way, then so be it. I never claimed to be a saint and I almost always knew what I did and said wouldn't please most people. I can be the worst person in the world and I can look myself in the mirror, right in the eye and safely say there are very few things of everything I've ever done or said that I genuinely regret."
There are a few reasons as to why I did what I did to save your father, Steve Austin, Shane McMahon and kept Owen being alive a secret. The obvious one, of course, is that the fact of taking out the man who put me effectively out of business, Vince. Won't lie and say that I didn't get a certain amount of sadistic joy in seeing the old bastard hauled off in a pair of handcuffs. The other reasons are more personal."
"Like I said, I'm not a nice person, I realize that. But what I am is a guy with certain lines that he just won't cross, not even for business or personal hatreds. One of those likes is murder. If I'd let Vince murder those people, I'd never would have been able to look myself or my family in the eye. I felt I had to do something to keep Vince and Stephanie from committing all of the murders and other stuff they'd done over the years. Wasn't always successful," he finished taking another sip of beer.
"Maybe if I explained how I got myself involved in this, you might understand some of the whys."
"That would be nice," I said quietly.
"I'd say it started off innocently enough," he started, "but rarely anything I do is innocent, so let's just say it started out simply enough. Me and Vince Russo were forced together by AOL/Time Warner brass - Ted Turner didn't have any sort of control in anything by this point - in April of 2000, as a pseudo last - ditch effort, in their view, to make WCW profitable. I always thought that Russo was sent by Vince McMahon to destroy the company from the inside out. Pretty convenient that things went completely to hell AFTER he got there. But conspiracy theories have nothing really to do with this."
"Anyways, things started out easily enough. Me and Russo didn't get along, but we were civil enough to each other to make everybody believe we did. This went on for a couple of months or so, presenting a so - called united front while each was plotting how to stab the other in the back. Then as they say, one fateful morning in June, I walked into his office, I don't remember the reason why I did now, and everything changed.
"Russo always had a tone of VHS tapes stacked up, sometimes to the ceiling. Anyways, there was a lone tape in the middle of his decks, didn't have any markings or anything that screamed that it was something important or anything, which in itself was odd because Russo was obsessive about labeling everything in his office. I figured it must important for it to be left lying around unlabeled. That or porn, I don't remember which one I thought it was. So I took it back to my office to have my own view of it."
"If I'd known then what it was, I would've killed Russo then and there and used a ten or maybe twenty foot pole to handle the tape.
"Well, you could only imagine what was going through my head as I watched that tape for the first time, and keep in mind, unlike you and Athena, I didn't know Owen was alive at that point. I can watch a man get his skull bashed in and take delight in it, but watching somebody pay off another to kill his employee, I think that was the first time I ever remember throwing up over something that was essentially business related. Done and said a lot of reprehensible things, but that had to be the worst I'd ever witnessed.
"I was shocked at what I'd seen, angry, sick at it all. I wasn't just angry for myself but also for Bret. The guy had gone through so much from 1997 onward. Vince pretty much took everything from the guy, including his own brother, I had thought. I said earlier that I didn't car much of anybody or anything in this business, but I'd actually came to care for Bret and his family as time went by. I saw first hand how Owen's death devastated him, hell I was the one that had to tell Bret about Kemper in the first place! To have proof that Vince ordered Owen's murder, well, that made my quest to ruin Vince personal as a result of my friendship with Bret. From the time I saw the tape, it wasn't purely business anymore. It was for blood as well."
"Why didn't you just tell Bret after you saw the tape?" I thought it made sense.
"Fair enough question," Eric replied, "the answer isn't as clear as it was back then. Sometimes I think it might have been simpler if I'd just gone directly to Bret and bypassed the Feds. Who knows? Might have prevented everything else that happened since then. Bret was still having medical problems from the concussions he'd sustained back at the end of 1999, and we didn't know at the time I found the tape that his career was done as a result of it. Plus I guess there was the fact that since I was the one that told him that his brother was dead, I didn't want to bring him anymore bad news, he'd suffered enough. There have been times when I thought that I was nothing but trouble for Bret. Things started to sour for Bret when I signed him away from Vince in 1997 and they've been sour since.
"Anyways, I headed down to the local office of the FBI to turn over the tape. I wanted it out of my sight as soon as possible. While I was there, I ran into Eddy, who I hadn't seen since before I'd been fired back in the middle of 1999. I knew, he, Dean, Perry and Chris were working for Vince. But I hadn't known until I saw him in that FBI office that he was also working for the FBI to spy on Vince. I think he had a deer in the headlights look when he saw me."
"He's good with those expressions," I quipped.
Eric snorted. "Well, I certainly was the last person he expected to see in that office that day and certainly, he was the last person I'd ever expected to see in an FBI office. Michael came out behind Eddy and asked if it was true what I'd said about having information on Owen's 'death.' I handed him the tape and all three of us watched it. They for the first time, me for the about the third or fourth since I'd replayed it a couple of times after the first view to see if I'd really seen what I'd seen. Eddy started cursing up a storm in both Spanish and English and somewhere in that profanity laced tirade, he'd let it slip that Owen was alive. The last time I'd seen his face so pale when he'd realized what he'd revealed was when he was in that New Year's car crash a year earlier. Have to admit looking back now it was comic. Of course back then I wasn't really amused."
"Of course they told their reasons for what they'd done, and why Owen's continued existence needed to be kept a secret. Of course with Vince still roaming free and Michael and Eddy telling me what else they thought Vince had done over the years, well I didn't need to be told twice to keep my mouth shut. If somebody could murder they're own employee and not only not blink an eye at it, but put on a pretty good act of being sincere about the death of the employee he murdered, well I figured that was the type of guy that was capable of doing anything at that point. Plus I figured it wouldn't be too long before they had enough solid evidence to convict Vince and allow Owen to come out of hiding.
"How wrong we all were."
"We'd all underestimated Vince. He was quite good at so meticulously planning things that he made sure he wouldn't get caught by making the evidence disappear or making the people involve disappear or taking the blame themselves. Add to the fact Vince is a master manipulator, and well maybe we shouldn't have been surprised that it took this long to catch Vince. If Russo hadn't come forward, we might still be trying to find things and everybody might still be hiding.
"Anyways WCW was bought out by Vince and I went to Hollywood for a while, trying to get started in that area. Eddy got fired for a painkiller addiction he'd been having and with nobody else on the inside, we thought we'd seen our last chance to nail Vince go away. Then that stupid InVasion storyline failed and Ric was brought aboard as a short lived 'Co - owner' which initiated a split of both rosters. Eddy was rehired, unfortunately he was on the RAW roster and Vince was spearheading the SMACKDOWN roster. Well, Austin walked, it necessitated dramatic changes, including Ric being demoted so to speak. Russo was rehired for a short time and he suggested a GM storyline with him as one GM and somebody else, I never found out who Russo had suggested as the other GM was. Anyways he left again, but Vince liked the GM storyline enough to take it and run with it. Eddy was scheduled to be switched to the SMACKDOWN side of things which meant the Feds needed somebody to get onto the RAW side. Douglas had too much shit with Vince to be rehired and Eddy didn't want to burden anybody else with what he knew about Owen. Even though we'd fought for several years, we'd never had a face to face meeting, so I figured I could sweet talk my way into a job with Vince."
"Worked like I charm if I may say so myself; I was the RAW General Manager and for the rest of the Brands split, there were two of us keeping eye on Vince and his family to see what else they might be planning next. When the split ended I talked myself into being one of Vince's right hands. I also have a pilot's license, so I was able to do some ferrying with Austin and your dad without Vince looking or being suspicious. While he didn't trust me with much dirty work, we managed to slowly build a case against the bastard. Just wish it hadn't taken so long. When I found out that Vince was plotting to kill his own son, I was the one that acted. I'm a father myself and I could never imagine a circumstance where I would order my own children murdered. That made me believe Vince was truly Satan at that point.
"Like I said earlier, this became personal the moment that I saw that tape of Vince paying off Russo. I have very few personal regrets about following through with this. My only regrets lay with the families Vince hurt."
"Why did you send the tapes?" I asked. That was the one thing I really wanted to know since that's how I got involved in this mess.
"You were looking into what happened to your Dad that day in Vince's office, so I figured that you needed to see what was on the tape. I didn't figure that Eddy had told you a completely different version of that day or that Chase's words could be heard since we'd thought at that point the mics around the ring had been turned off. I'd completely forgotten about Athena being Sierra when I sent it out. When I saw you two at Kemper, I'd already heard it from Michael about you guys having gone to the cabin so I figured that Athena knew the truth and that it was time for Bret to know as well."
"The day I sent those tapes out, me and Ric had crossed paths. He and I were both doing personal appearances in North Carolina and well, words were exchanged. I got so pissed off that I turned on auto pilot and sought away to piss him off. I bitched myself out after I sent the tapes to Ric. I may hate the man, but that certainly wasn't how any of us wanted him to find out. Did he really squeeze himself into the trunk of Tammy's Porsche?"
I nodded, taking everything in. The conversation had certainly been honest enough and I probably learned more than I thought possible, not just about what these men had been doing but about the man in front of me. Complex seems like an understatement.
"I think I should head home," I said. "I probably have a lot of phone messages on my machine. Probably all from my mother." As I went to pay for the beers (It was my idea to talk, so I figured the least I could to was pay), a song came over the jukebox that caused me to tense. Eric noticed.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Um, nothing," I started. "It's just that 'My Immortal' was played at my Dad's funeral." I flashed back to that horrible day where I thought my Dad had been buried forever. Despite everything I know now, that song still takes me back to that day and I hated that song with passion. I went to get up and leave. I had to get out of there now.
"Hey Benoit," Eric called back.
"Yeah," I turned back. I wondered what else he wanted.
"There was an additional incentive for me in helping save your Dad from Goldberg."
I sat back down.
"I may not have very many regrets, but one thing I do regret is creating the monster that was and is Goldberg. Guy had an ego a mile long but he caught with the fans and I figured that it would silence many of the critics who said I had to utilize Vince's talent. That I couldn't 'create' a star of my own. In the process I gave Vince the perfect weapon to ruin a lot of lives and careers."
"Do you think he deliberately ended Bret's career?" I asked. I hadn't planned on bringing up Goldberg, but I figured since Eric had, I would ask the question that had been on my mind since that day at Steve's house.
"Mark told me about what he'd said to you about Goldberg before we left Texas. Do I think Goldberg deliberately caused several of those concussions? That's a good possibility. He showed no remorse for what he'd done while Terry Funk, who'd caused the rest of the concussions, was genuinely sorry. Do I think Vince paid Bill to end Bret's career? That I don't know. I suspect only two men do, and that's Vince McMahon and Bill Goldberg. But that alone if I'd known nothing else, despite my feelings about your dad at the time would've been enough to make me want to stop Goldberg from killing your dad."
I left with a lot on my mind and knowing that my conversation with Eric Bischoff would stick in my mind for a long time to come.
When I woke up the next morning, I had a phone call from my Mom that went about was typical for us these days: Her fearing retaliation from Vince and wanting me not to be involved in this. Kind of late to stay out of this now. There was also some admonishment for actually going to Phillip's arena.
After we hung up, I let the answering machine take the rest of my calls. They went pretty much the way I expected: Several were from media outlets, wanting a comment on Monday night; one was from Tatem which I took before she hung up and went pretty much how the conversation with my mother went. One was from David, asking how Megan was which reminded me to call Uncle Ric and find out for myself since it had been about two days since I'd seen her, and I knew she was probably scared not knowing where I was after what she found out at RAW. The rest of the calls where from my Dad and Mom's friends from their wrestling days, at least those who didn't know that Dad was alive. There were a few I wondered about how they got my number, but just figured that they probably got in touch with Mom and she gave it to them.
The last call had been from Uncle Eddy telling me where he and Eric were staying and the phone numbers. I was going to assume Uncle Ric wasn't staying at the same place they were.
As I sat on my couch, I got to thinking. I know almost everybody else's story in this whole mess, if some of them came about in a roundabout way. There were a few I didn't know about. I suspected that Tammy's story was an extremely personal one and tied into how she and Athena looked like they'd been crying after they'd talked that day at the cabin, so I decided I wouldn't ask her about how she got involved in this. There was another I was curious about, but I didn't know where to find him, and quite frankly I wasn't sure if I wanted to ask him about his role in this right now anyways. The third was easy to find and I was wanting to know more about his role in this.
Going back to the phone, I quickly dialed the number of the hotel and the extension Eddy gave me. As I heard the voice on the other end bark out 'hello,' a sign that he'd just woken up, I took a deep breathe and made a fateful choice.
"Eric, this is Danny Benoit. I was wondering if you were interested in a chat."
___________________________________________________________________
As I was waiting for Eric in a private area in Antonio's (no one bothers to come in here much during the day and I made damn sure I came in disguised. Well, a better disguise than Dad had used at OVW), I wondered if this was such a good idea afterall. Growing up I'd head nothing but negative things about the man from Mom and my Dad's friends. Despite the fact that the man did help save my father, the man to me, came off as braggadious and arrogant. The matters with my Uncle Ric was proof enough of that. So I was more than a little nervous as I sad in the booth waiting for Eric to arrive.
Eric walked in five minutes later. He was sporting sunglasses, jeans, and a T - shirt underneath a leather jacket. Not much of a disguise, but then again, at this point, I was probably more recognized around here than Eric was.
As Eric found my booth, an old country song from the early '00's came over the jukebox. Eric gave a smirk as he sat across from me.
"Long Black Train huh?" he said commenting on the song, "maybe someday me and Vince will ride it together."
"Didn't take you for a country fan," I said, more to start a conversation than anything else.
"Yeah well, keeps a guy sane when he's flying an airplane," he responded. "So how have you been holding up?"
"Okay, I guess," I answered, "though the other night felt a little bit like that show Buffy with Austin waking up."
"Yeah I bet it was," Eric said with a small smirk, "but I doubt that you woke me up at 8am in the morning to talk about Austin waking up from the dead."
"No, it's not," I said. Didn't see any point in beating around the bush so to speak if he wasn't.
"You want to know how I got involved - "
"I'm more interested in the 'whys' of it at the moment than the 'hows' of it," I blurted out, wondering where it was coming from. I did want to know how Eric got involved in this, but now that the man was here, I ha d a sudden desire to know why. Why did this man, who I'd heard nothing but negative about all my life help safe my father? Not only help, but put his life on the line, literally to help save men like my father and Steve Austin and Shane McMahon. All of whom he had acrimonious relationships with.
Eric took a sip of the beer that he'd ordered and nodded as he set the glass down.
"Eddy was right," he said, "you are like your dad. He likes to get straight to the point too."
"Why did you help save my father?" I asked again.
"Well," Eric began, "if we're going down this road, then would you mind if I was completely blunt and honest with you?"
"By all means," I replied. Honesty was what I wanted wasn't it?
"Your Uncle Ric can go to hell for all I care and I'm sure he feels the same about me. Never a secret that we hated each other and quite frankly for a lot of years I felt the same way about your Dad as well."
I wasn't sure how to respond to that, so I waited for him to continue.
"I know my reputation. I know what I've said and done over the years. For the most part, I don't care. It's what I had to do to get ahead and survive in this business and if a few throats got figuratively cut so to speak, and a few careers got ruined or sidetracked along the way, then so be it. I never claimed to be a saint and I almost always knew what I did and said wouldn't please most people. I can be the worst person in the world and I can look myself in the mirror, right in the eye and safely say there are very few things of everything I've ever done or said that I genuinely regret."
There are a few reasons as to why I did what I did to save your father, Steve Austin, Shane McMahon and kept Owen being alive a secret. The obvious one, of course, is that the fact of taking out the man who put me effectively out of business, Vince. Won't lie and say that I didn't get a certain amount of sadistic joy in seeing the old bastard hauled off in a pair of handcuffs. The other reasons are more personal."
"Like I said, I'm not a nice person, I realize that. But what I am is a guy with certain lines that he just won't cross, not even for business or personal hatreds. One of those likes is murder. If I'd let Vince murder those people, I'd never would have been able to look myself or my family in the eye. I felt I had to do something to keep Vince and Stephanie from committing all of the murders and other stuff they'd done over the years. Wasn't always successful," he finished taking another sip of beer.
"Maybe if I explained how I got myself involved in this, you might understand some of the whys."
"That would be nice," I said quietly.
"I'd say it started off innocently enough," he started, "but rarely anything I do is innocent, so let's just say it started out simply enough. Me and Vince Russo were forced together by AOL/Time Warner brass - Ted Turner didn't have any sort of control in anything by this point - in April of 2000, as a pseudo last - ditch effort, in their view, to make WCW profitable. I always thought that Russo was sent by Vince McMahon to destroy the company from the inside out. Pretty convenient that things went completely to hell AFTER he got there. But conspiracy theories have nothing really to do with this."
"Anyways, things started out easily enough. Me and Russo didn't get along, but we were civil enough to each other to make everybody believe we did. This went on for a couple of months or so, presenting a so - called united front while each was plotting how to stab the other in the back. Then as they say, one fateful morning in June, I walked into his office, I don't remember the reason why I did now, and everything changed.
"Russo always had a tone of VHS tapes stacked up, sometimes to the ceiling. Anyways, there was a lone tape in the middle of his decks, didn't have any markings or anything that screamed that it was something important or anything, which in itself was odd because Russo was obsessive about labeling everything in his office. I figured it must important for it to be left lying around unlabeled. That or porn, I don't remember which one I thought it was. So I took it back to my office to have my own view of it."
"If I'd known then what it was, I would've killed Russo then and there and used a ten or maybe twenty foot pole to handle the tape.
"Well, you could only imagine what was going through my head as I watched that tape for the first time, and keep in mind, unlike you and Athena, I didn't know Owen was alive at that point. I can watch a man get his skull bashed in and take delight in it, but watching somebody pay off another to kill his employee, I think that was the first time I ever remember throwing up over something that was essentially business related. Done and said a lot of reprehensible things, but that had to be the worst I'd ever witnessed.
"I was shocked at what I'd seen, angry, sick at it all. I wasn't just angry for myself but also for Bret. The guy had gone through so much from 1997 onward. Vince pretty much took everything from the guy, including his own brother, I had thought. I said earlier that I didn't car much of anybody or anything in this business, but I'd actually came to care for Bret and his family as time went by. I saw first hand how Owen's death devastated him, hell I was the one that had to tell Bret about Kemper in the first place! To have proof that Vince ordered Owen's murder, well, that made my quest to ruin Vince personal as a result of my friendship with Bret. From the time I saw the tape, it wasn't purely business anymore. It was for blood as well."
"Why didn't you just tell Bret after you saw the tape?" I thought it made sense.
"Fair enough question," Eric replied, "the answer isn't as clear as it was back then. Sometimes I think it might have been simpler if I'd just gone directly to Bret and bypassed the Feds. Who knows? Might have prevented everything else that happened since then. Bret was still having medical problems from the concussions he'd sustained back at the end of 1999, and we didn't know at the time I found the tape that his career was done as a result of it. Plus I guess there was the fact that since I was the one that told him that his brother was dead, I didn't want to bring him anymore bad news, he'd suffered enough. There have been times when I thought that I was nothing but trouble for Bret. Things started to sour for Bret when I signed him away from Vince in 1997 and they've been sour since.
"Anyways, I headed down to the local office of the FBI to turn over the tape. I wanted it out of my sight as soon as possible. While I was there, I ran into Eddy, who I hadn't seen since before I'd been fired back in the middle of 1999. I knew, he, Dean, Perry and Chris were working for Vince. But I hadn't known until I saw him in that FBI office that he was also working for the FBI to spy on Vince. I think he had a deer in the headlights look when he saw me."
"He's good with those expressions," I quipped.
Eric snorted. "Well, I certainly was the last person he expected to see in that office that day and certainly, he was the last person I'd ever expected to see in an FBI office. Michael came out behind Eddy and asked if it was true what I'd said about having information on Owen's 'death.' I handed him the tape and all three of us watched it. They for the first time, me for the about the third or fourth since I'd replayed it a couple of times after the first view to see if I'd really seen what I'd seen. Eddy started cursing up a storm in both Spanish and English and somewhere in that profanity laced tirade, he'd let it slip that Owen was alive. The last time I'd seen his face so pale when he'd realized what he'd revealed was when he was in that New Year's car crash a year earlier. Have to admit looking back now it was comic. Of course back then I wasn't really amused."
"Of course they told their reasons for what they'd done, and why Owen's continued existence needed to be kept a secret. Of course with Vince still roaming free and Michael and Eddy telling me what else they thought Vince had done over the years, well I didn't need to be told twice to keep my mouth shut. If somebody could murder they're own employee and not only not blink an eye at it, but put on a pretty good act of being sincere about the death of the employee he murdered, well I figured that was the type of guy that was capable of doing anything at that point. Plus I figured it wouldn't be too long before they had enough solid evidence to convict Vince and allow Owen to come out of hiding.
"How wrong we all were."
"We'd all underestimated Vince. He was quite good at so meticulously planning things that he made sure he wouldn't get caught by making the evidence disappear or making the people involve disappear or taking the blame themselves. Add to the fact Vince is a master manipulator, and well maybe we shouldn't have been surprised that it took this long to catch Vince. If Russo hadn't come forward, we might still be trying to find things and everybody might still be hiding.
"Anyways WCW was bought out by Vince and I went to Hollywood for a while, trying to get started in that area. Eddy got fired for a painkiller addiction he'd been having and with nobody else on the inside, we thought we'd seen our last chance to nail Vince go away. Then that stupid InVasion storyline failed and Ric was brought aboard as a short lived 'Co - owner' which initiated a split of both rosters. Eddy was rehired, unfortunately he was on the RAW roster and Vince was spearheading the SMACKDOWN roster. Well, Austin walked, it necessitated dramatic changes, including Ric being demoted so to speak. Russo was rehired for a short time and he suggested a GM storyline with him as one GM and somebody else, I never found out who Russo had suggested as the other GM was. Anyways he left again, but Vince liked the GM storyline enough to take it and run with it. Eddy was scheduled to be switched to the SMACKDOWN side of things which meant the Feds needed somebody to get onto the RAW side. Douglas had too much shit with Vince to be rehired and Eddy didn't want to burden anybody else with what he knew about Owen. Even though we'd fought for several years, we'd never had a face to face meeting, so I figured I could sweet talk my way into a job with Vince."
"Worked like I charm if I may say so myself; I was the RAW General Manager and for the rest of the Brands split, there were two of us keeping eye on Vince and his family to see what else they might be planning next. When the split ended I talked myself into being one of Vince's right hands. I also have a pilot's license, so I was able to do some ferrying with Austin and your dad without Vince looking or being suspicious. While he didn't trust me with much dirty work, we managed to slowly build a case against the bastard. Just wish it hadn't taken so long. When I found out that Vince was plotting to kill his own son, I was the one that acted. I'm a father myself and I could never imagine a circumstance where I would order my own children murdered. That made me believe Vince was truly Satan at that point.
"Like I said earlier, this became personal the moment that I saw that tape of Vince paying off Russo. I have very few personal regrets about following through with this. My only regrets lay with the families Vince hurt."
"Why did you send the tapes?" I asked. That was the one thing I really wanted to know since that's how I got involved in this mess.
"You were looking into what happened to your Dad that day in Vince's office, so I figured that you needed to see what was on the tape. I didn't figure that Eddy had told you a completely different version of that day or that Chase's words could be heard since we'd thought at that point the mics around the ring had been turned off. I'd completely forgotten about Athena being Sierra when I sent it out. When I saw you two at Kemper, I'd already heard it from Michael about you guys having gone to the cabin so I figured that Athena knew the truth and that it was time for Bret to know as well."
"The day I sent those tapes out, me and Ric had crossed paths. He and I were both doing personal appearances in North Carolina and well, words were exchanged. I got so pissed off that I turned on auto pilot and sought away to piss him off. I bitched myself out after I sent the tapes to Ric. I may hate the man, but that certainly wasn't how any of us wanted him to find out. Did he really squeeze himself into the trunk of Tammy's Porsche?"
I nodded, taking everything in. The conversation had certainly been honest enough and I probably learned more than I thought possible, not just about what these men had been doing but about the man in front of me. Complex seems like an understatement.
"I think I should head home," I said. "I probably have a lot of phone messages on my machine. Probably all from my mother." As I went to pay for the beers (It was my idea to talk, so I figured the least I could to was pay), a song came over the jukebox that caused me to tense. Eric noticed.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Um, nothing," I started. "It's just that 'My Immortal' was played at my Dad's funeral." I flashed back to that horrible day where I thought my Dad had been buried forever. Despite everything I know now, that song still takes me back to that day and I hated that song with passion. I went to get up and leave. I had to get out of there now.
"Hey Benoit," Eric called back.
"Yeah," I turned back. I wondered what else he wanted.
"There was an additional incentive for me in helping save your Dad from Goldberg."
I sat back down.
"I may not have very many regrets, but one thing I do regret is creating the monster that was and is Goldberg. Guy had an ego a mile long but he caught with the fans and I figured that it would silence many of the critics who said I had to utilize Vince's talent. That I couldn't 'create' a star of my own. In the process I gave Vince the perfect weapon to ruin a lot of lives and careers."
"Do you think he deliberately ended Bret's career?" I asked. I hadn't planned on bringing up Goldberg, but I figured since Eric had, I would ask the question that had been on my mind since that day at Steve's house.
"Mark told me about what he'd said to you about Goldberg before we left Texas. Do I think Goldberg deliberately caused several of those concussions? That's a good possibility. He showed no remorse for what he'd done while Terry Funk, who'd caused the rest of the concussions, was genuinely sorry. Do I think Vince paid Bill to end Bret's career? That I don't know. I suspect only two men do, and that's Vince McMahon and Bill Goldberg. But that alone if I'd known nothing else, despite my feelings about your dad at the time would've been enough to make me want to stop Goldberg from killing your dad."
I left with a lot on my mind and knowing that my conversation with Eric Bischoff would stick in my mind for a long time to come.