Original subtitles

He had this magnetic charisma that you could feel across the gym.

You thought, "Hey, man, this guy's a star."

And I'll do whatever it takes!

To look adversity in the face and spit in its eye.

The wrestling world could never have imagined

that an undersized football player

would revolutionize the business, ushering in a whole new era.

Shut the hell up!

Brian knew what the deal was.

They're gonna screw anybody over.

And how he could make that play for his own advantage.

In an industry that depends on the illusion of reality,

no one did more to blur the lines than Brian Pillman,

who shattered wrestling's fourth wall.

He was going against the "script." This has never been done.

What are you doing? Easy!

Pillman's over-the-top antics

exposed the inner workings of the business,

leveraging trade secrets to make the deal of a lifetime.

That Loose Cannon gimmick, he just took it so far.

Don't go in there!

People thought, "It was too extreme."

You didn't know where Brian started and his wrestling persona ended.

Get him out of here.

He had troublesome relationships with women.

My mom had had enough and that pushed her over the edge a little.

He's being driven crazy at home, he's crazy at work.

And in between, he's probably really going crazy.

On track to become a wrestling superstar

at the price of his own sanity,

his rise to the top was tragically cut short.

I'm watching the pre-show for the pay-per-view.

We have some tragic news to report.

I just screamed.

He had a persona that he wanted to perpetuate, even if it killed him.

Man, this is the gold chain

that Brian Pillman got for me back in the day.

We were riding down the road one day,

and he goes, "Kid, we got to have gold chains.

That'll look great."

And years later, I don't have a lot of things,

you know, from my old wrestling days,

but this chain I'll always have.

It's very sentimental to me,

and it was a big part of the makeup

and the gimmick of the Hollywood Blondes.

I'm Steve Austin,

a friend of Brian's from our WCW days.

We were tag team partners.

Turned out to be good friends and a good tag team.

The Hollywood Blonds!

Brian didn't phone nothing in.

He wanted to go out and perform.

He was never supposed to be big or bad enough

or strong enough to do anything.

He blew everybody away with his tenacity and will to win.

He was a good-looking guy, great physique, high-flyer.

-Could do everything. -Oh, man!

Brian was very athletic.

It seemed like he was willing to try anything.

You could tell that he really wanted to be a pro wrestling star.

I'm Jim Ross.

When I was in WCW in the mid-80s,

Brian was a guy that we had very high hopes for

and really wanted to sign.

After we're done pounding you into submission,

the only thing prescribed for you afterwards

is a liquid diet of embalming fluid!

From when he got in the ring, you could tell he was a performer.

He was an exhibitionist.

He had the personality for wrestling.

I've been involved in wrestling for over 40 years

as a manager, promoter, announcer, matchmaker,

and I was good friends in the '80s and '90s with Brian.

He wasn't trying to be the move guy.

He wasn't just trying to be the guy with the mullet and the abs.

He hit this business on all fronts and fire on all cylinders,

trying to be the biggest star that the business had ever seen.

My name is Brian Pillman Jr.

I am only son of the late, great Brian Pillman,

known as the Loose Cannon.

Brian was a natural promo.

They stuck a mic in front of him,

he would just go off in that raspy voice.

You're not running this, I am! Because I'm Brian fucking Pillman!

Growing up, Brian had multiple polyps on his vocal cords,

and it was closing up his air passage.

They'd scrape them off and then, after so long,

they'd grow back again.

And that's why his voice was so raspy

because his vocal cords had been scraped so many times.

I'm Linda, Brian's older sister.

He had over 40 surgeries. I don't know the exact number.

When my mother came in one day,

she could hear breathing as she came in.

It was closing up his air passage.

And she called the doctor.

She had to hold the receiver up so he could hear him breathing.

And that's when he decided he needed emergency tracheotomy.

He had the ambulance bring them to his house

because his house was closer than the hospital.

And he put a tracheotomy in Brian

on his dining room table in the middle of the night.

But it never stopped him from doing anything.

He was always outside, playing and running.

He wasn't allowed to talk for three weeks after those surgeries

and he didn't talk.

As a result of that,

I think he overcompensated later on

by wanting to always talk, wanting to be an entertainer.

It formed him as the guy that was gonna overcome,

knock down the obstacles.

The son of a bitch was fearless.

I mean, he was... He was a tough, tough nut.

Kim Wood. I was the Paul Brown Strength Coach

for the Bengals.

And, Pillman had a chance to try out with us.

My instruction was to kill him, not literally, but damn close.

But he tried his ass off.

He said, "It's not about the size of the dog in the fight.

It's about the fight in the dog."

He had a reputation, being a street fighter.

I heard that he was at some bar that had an upper floor,

like a balcony or whatever you wanna call it.

And he was up there and some girl threw a drink in his face.

And her boyfriend came after Brian.

The guy was hanging...

Brian had him hanging by his ankles over the railing.

And Brian was banned from that bar.

After a brief stint in the NFL,

Brian heads to Calgary to play in the football league.

Soon after, Brian suffers an ankle injury,

cutting his career short,

which leaves him searching for what to do next.

One thing I knew was,

he wasn't gonna be a high-school teacher.

He wasn't gonna sell insurance.

There was a lot of things.

He could use his toughness and his physicality to make money.

When I was with the Bengals,

Kim Wood talked to me about getting into professional wrestling.

He thought I had all the tools needed.

It turns out, Calgary happened to be

the premiere training ground for wrestlers.

I said, "Hey, while you're up there, go check out this this Hart bunch."

The Harts are the first family of Canadian wrestling

with patriarch Stu Hart at the helm.

In addition to his children that would go on to be icons,

the family discovered and trained several other future superstars.

They take him into the Hart dungeon

and teach him how to wrestle to break into the business.

How would you sort of describe what the dungeon is

to someone who doesn't know it?

If you can't hear screaming coming out of it,

something's not going right.

Stu, the old man, would put people in submission holds

and not let them out of the thing for, you know, three or four hours.

If you survive that, you survive anything.

You get that great foundation right off the bat from Stu.

It was an easy bridge to cross from football to wrestling.

Brian gets his start in Stampede Wrestling,

and although it's a small territory in Canada,

its influence on the industry is felt around the wrestling world.

There were millions of wrestling fans,

but there was a small subset called "smart fans"

that knew the inside inner workings of wrestling.

The insiders all knew the name Brian Pillman.

I'm Dave, editor of the Wrestling Observer.

It's an insider publication. It's covered wrestling since 1982.

For a long time, it was really the only, what I would call,

true source of pro-wrestling information.

The sheets were a thing.

You didn't wanna get caught with them, it's like secret documents.

Then it got out and damn near all the boys are reading it.

Brian had started wrestling when he called me the first time.

He wanted to send me tapes, so we traded tapes.

As far as student of the game, top level,

more than almost anyone I ever dealt with.

Meltzer was a good gauge for talent.

So that tipped me off that Meltzer kept writing good things about Brian.

Brian wound up in WCW by me getting a hold of him.

Best of luck on that endeavor.

Upon arriving in WCW...

Brian Pillman!

...top star and matchmaker Ric Flair sees something in Brian

and looks to feature him on television in a main-event spot.

That match was one of the highest-rated

Saturday night programs on TBS at that point

in the previous years.

And the crowd popped for him.

Crowd's chanting "Go, Brian, go!"

Ric was the guy that wanted to go in the ring with Brian

and tear the house down.

Then he wanted to go to the bar with Brian

and tear the house down there.

That's the way he lived.

He lived a cartoon a life, a fantasy life

of limos and long black socks

and alligator shoes and, you know, babes.

I think Brian liked aspects of the lifestyle a lot.

He wanted to be like Ric Flair.

Brian Pillman was a lady's man.

He's a gorgeous guy on television, he's a professional athlete.

So, yeah, a lot of the women were attracted to Brian.

Rochelle was a woman that Brian met at a club, downtown Cincinnati.

You know, they were happy, and we all loved her.

She lived with him in Calgary for a while

before he got the contract in Atlanta,

and that's when Brittany was born in Atlanta.

My name is Brittany. I'm the daughter of Brian Pillman.

I was a daddy's girl.

You know, everyone sees him as this wrestler, always on the road,

and wrestling was his life, but outside of wrestling,

his children were his life.

My dad thought I was his firstborn child.

But when I was a year old,

he found out that he had another daughter.

I'm Danielle Pillman. I go by Dani.

And Brian Pillman is my father, and I am the oldest of his kids.

My dad met my mom in Cincinnati, like, some bar.

And, I mean, it was like a very brief love affair.

But she did end up becoming pregnant,

but my dad had Rochelle as his girlfriend at the time.

So, yeah, that's kind of why

she didn't want to disclose that to my father immediately,

but at a certain point, she felt like I needed my dad.

The second that I came into the picture,

he was there for me 100 percent and wanted me to be in his life.

That's something to be said about him.

He did care about his kids.

My dad living that lifestyle and all these different women

and he had obviously cheated on my mom many times.

I'm sure that was hard on her, but she stayed with him, you know.

She had a lot of issues. She suffered with major depression.

My mom and dad were living in Atlanta

and my dad was at a show.

The groundskeeper broke into the place

and attacked her with an ice pick.

And she was stabbed several times.

-Was he trying to rob her? -Rob her, whatever, I don't know.

Stabbed her in the face, stabbed her in the cheek.

So that'll mess you up.

Brian's looks and athletic ability allow him a spot on the card

as a generic hero,

but he's not content to stay in one place for long

nor do what he's told.

He was reasonably successful.

He wanted to be a main eventer,

and he wasn't a main eventer yet. He was a good mid-level guy.

You know, Brian's first couple years in WCW were tough.

I'm Eric Bischoff, former president of WCW.

And, once upon a time, Brian Pillman's boss.

Brian was relatively new on the scene his first couple years in WCW.

We had to earn his respect.

What probably made that even tougher

was the management transitions that took place.

Constant changeover in management

led to stop-and-start pushes in Brian's career.

As soon as he started to gain ground and earn respect,

new matchmakers would arrive, pushing Brian back down.

But finally, they put Brian together with Steve Austin.

He's ready to back you up 100 percent.

Stunning Steve Austin.

And I wasn't thrilled at all.

When people hear Steve,

they think he was always the biggest star.

At the time, in 1993, he was still finding his way

and hadn't got a main event yet.

And this is about when I eventually started getting a run

as a US champion.

I was looking forward to that.

I walked in, and here's Brian coming up behind me,

and I knew Brian.

He goes, "We need to come up with a finish."

"What are you talking about?"

He goes, "We're a tag team now." And I was really not, not happy.

I had nothing against Brian.

But it's like, I was... I was a single wrestler.

I enjoyed working with another guy in the ring,

having to depend on myself.

They didn't have no name planned for us, no this, no that.

It was two guys and they were gonna throw us together

as an interim tag team, basically to get other people over

because they didn't have plans for Brian and Steve Austin.

We were gonna try to make the most of the situation.

Any time that you start working together,

you become closer.

And, normally I'd be at the wheel, Brian would be riding shotgun,

reading dictionaries

because he was already trying to increase his vocabulary.

...and began the pilgrimage out to Florida!

Cut through the bureaucratic red tape and get that title shot!

As it goes, we're going down the road and he goes,

"Hey. Every tag team has to have a name.

So, what about the Hollywood Blonds?

It's been done before, but it's been awhile. Let's do that."

I was thinking to myself, "I ain't come up with a better one."

So I was cool with being the Hollywood Blonds.

-Guess what... -The Hollywood Blonds!

The vests, the trunks, everything was Brian's idea, and we were cocky,

brash, arrogant guys that we started rolling the camera footage.

Brian had that shit-eating grin or that laugh,

when you're getting heat on a babyface.

Brian and I developed this bond and this chemistry.

I loved tag-team wrestling once I figured it out.

I hate to say it because it sounds corny,

but they were made for each other. They complemented each other.

They worked hard to make each other look good.

The Blonds gave Brian a chance to open up as a heel, as a bad guy.

People are like, "I loved the Blonds,"

but back then, they were getting booed.

-You suck! -You loved to hate them.

It was more natural for Brian to be a heel.

He wasn't a guy that wanted to shake hands and smile.

He wanted to be a smartass, be obnoxious, show off.

You're all a bunch of losers!

He was getting better, getting exposure.

Partying, having fun.

Brian's fast and loose lifestyle doesn't mix well

with his turbulent situation at home,

and he pursues yet another woman who enters his complicated life.

I think Melanie was working in Atlanta.

She was a "showgirl."

He saw her picture in a Penthouse and says,

"I'm gonna marry that girl," and he met her.

My dad was sleeping with Melanie behind my mother's back

because he was in Atlanta.

Melanie would call the house and that's basically,

I think, how Rochelle found out about it, you know.

She was hurt because, you know, they had a nice home,

the family was happy.

But then he had this other life in Atlanta.

And then Melanie became pregnant.

And that's how we have Brian Junior.

After another unexpected pregnancy outside of their relationship,

Brian and Rochelle split up.

Shortly after, Brian proposes to his new girlfriend, Melanie.

We went to Vegas and he put on like a freaking St. Patrick's Day

white tux with a big ol' ugly green bowtie.

And I had a white dress, mind you, the stripper in a white dress. Yeah!

And I had a big ol' green corsage on, and I loved it, every second of it.

I wouldn't trade it for the world.

My name is Melanie Pillman. I'm the widow of Brian Pillman.

In private, like, he's just more laid back and sensible-acting.

He's one of the most intelligent men I've ever met.

So well-read and he just excelled at so many things.

He was... he was my soul mate, I mean,

I couldn't have picked a better guy to love... love, than him.

His first years with her, I thought he was very happy.

It'd be a big thing with his Christmas card.

It would be him and the wife,

and all these little kids.

Because I had my two kids, you know.

He would show up with four little kids.

They all had different mothers.

They'd be climbing on him.

One had his legs around his neck, and one is on his shoulder,

and he loved those kids.

He was counted on, he was depended on to provide.

That responsibility pushes you to keep going to work.

-You provide for your family. -Stunning Steve and Flyin' Brian.

They made the decision to give the Hollywood Blonds

a big main-event match

on a Clash of Champions, and Ric Flair was gonna be involved.

The rating came in and wasn't very good.

They couldn't blame Flair because he was a star,

so they put the heat on Brian and Steve.

"The Blonds didn't draw a rating."

And that kind of doomed them there

as being featured in a more prominent capacity.

It felt like betrayal.

I wish someone would finally tell me why the company broke us up

because we started getting over as a viable tag team that could hold,

you know, world championship belts. We did.

We make chicken shit into chicken salad

and now you split us up

with no real clear direction for either one of us.

So breaking us up broke my heart.

I don't know of any other talents buried because of a bad rating.

TBS was drawing a lot of bad ratings.

But I think somebody thought, "I don't want to use these guys."

They used that as an excuse.

How that was handled, I look back on it today

and still shake my head that we could have done better.

The period from 1990 to 1993, it was very frustrating for Brian.

Also, there was some knowledge early on

that his home life was not as happy as it could be.

I felt like my dad allowed Melanie to run the show.

Melanie treated my mom very poorly.

I feel like she was very jealous of my mother.

Melanie didn't like him talking to her.

She didn't like me and my mother talking to Rochelle.

She made it hard to like her because she just caused trouble.

Rochelle took off and didn't tell anybody where she was.

Rochelle is scheduled to see Brittany but never shows.

No one is able to get a hold of her,

resulting in a missing persons report.

Several days later, when Rochelle finally surfaces,

Brian and Melanie take decisive action.

Brian said, and I agreed with him, and I shouldn't have,

"We should just file for custody." And that changed everything.

Following the tag-team breakup with Steve Austin,

Brian's career has stalled.

The cracks in his family life start to break open,

consuming those around him.

The custody battle started

because Melanie didn't want Rochelle around.

Basically, Brian had more money and could keep the attorneys paid.

The attorneys work when you pay them.

And Rochelle just didn't have any more money.

I was delivering stuff to the lawyer.

I was bombarding her with these stupid things

about returning past child support

that she blew in, you know, just little minutiae

that was making me feel like a better person,

but I wasn't the better person.

Nobody should take kids away.

I should have never done that. I'd never do it again.

It just devastated Rochelle.

I was outside, riding my bicycle one day.

This was at a time when she wasn't allowed to see me,

and she came pulling up, and I went running to her,

so happy to see her.

Rochelle was hugging her, and they thought she was taking her.

Here comes my dad and it was just like this huge argument,

him pulling her away from me.

Melanie filed kidnapping charges against Rochelle.

My dad had got full custody of me, and in my mom's mind, she was like,

"I'm gonna lose my daughter,"

so my mom called my dad's house and she wanted to talk to my dad,

but he was out of town.

Melanie had answered and told her,

"Your own mother thinks I'd be a better mother

than you'll ever be."

And my mom called my grandma.

She called her mother and told her what she was gonna do.

And then she shot herself.

I got the call to go to the hospital because she was being airlifted in.

I was the closest.

And I was the one at the hospital that they told,

and then I had to tell everybody that she was gone.

She died on the helicopter.

So I had to call her mother and tell her mother.

Oh, it was very hard.

To tell somebody's mother that their child was dead.

It just destroyed Brian because he felt so responsible.

He was just so upset. He cried, and he said,

"Do you think it was all that pressure?

I think it was, Mel." I'd be like, "Yeah, it probably was."

Brian wanted to pay for her whole funeral and everything.

At the funeral, he held it together until they closed the casket.

And he lost it. He was hugging me and sobbing.

And, in fact, at one point, I kind of looked at him

because I thought he was gonna pass out.

He was devastated.

He was devastated.

I felt so guilty for that for years.

And I think I drove her. Maybe not just me,

but I think incidents drove her to shoot herself.

Rethinking it, I wouldn't have done it the same way.

Nobody should have to fight for their kid.

I don't know what my problem was back then.

It was devastating, and I know it was for Brittany.

I have a lot of anger built up towards my dad in a sense

because I do wish that he would have, you know,

allowed my mom to see me because maybe she'd be here today.

I don't know. She had a lot of issues,

but Melanie was the overall cause.

She's an evil person, and she's always been that way.

Melanie should have never said those words to my mom.

She's literally the devil, and they say, you know,

you reap what you sow, and now, she's living a life.

She should have been dead years ago,

because of all the drugs,

but I feel like she's gonna live to be 100

and miserable for all the pain that she has caused me,

and my brother, and you know, my Aunt Linda.

And I... And Brittany's the one that, you know,

I don't know how to make it up to her. I...

I don't really know how to make it up to her.

The guilt of Rochelle's death weighs heavily on Brian,

and he dives even deeper into his career.

With his contract renewal with the WCW looming,

Brian is determined to renegotiate for even more money.

It was like, "I have five kids. My body's falling apart.

I have to make big money now

because I got five kids!"

This was his shot.

He talks with Bischoff that was doing the contracts there,

and Bischoff says to him,

"Expect about what you're getting now."

He was happy that I got him back to 225,

but I think he wanted four.

I couldn't justify it when he wanted it.

He came to me and says, "What do I do?" What I told him was this...

It's a question of value.

And when everybody's using everybody else,

what can you do that other people can't do?

What can you do that gains notoriety?

This thing runs on attention.

It runs on very superficial things.

Create attention. How can we do that in the position you're in?

With his pulse on the wrestling landscape,

Brian knew that he had to find a way to up the ante

in order to shock even the most hardcore fans.

Brian knew if he could make people legitimately believe

that he was a loose cannon, that he was nuts,

he was capable of doing anything,

that he could be one of the hottest guys.

It was a pure money deal.

What do we really want?

Bischoff to offer you a hell of a lot more money,

and we want Vince McMahon to see that you are of value and offer more.

And then you flip a coin.

If he could play one side against the other

in the middle of the war,

he would come out much better, six figures per year better.

It's what he set about to do.

Brian Pillman's plan was simple. More attention means more money.

As the WWF and WCW are engaged in a ratings battle,

Brian exploits this to his advantage

by playing them off each other while driving up his own value.

Brian came up with the Loose Cannon idea

and started slowly integrating it into his television appearances.

Bobby Heenan was the color commentator.

Bobby had had a broken neck.

He was protective of his neck and Brian goes around behind Bobby,

grabbing him by the shoulders on live television.

-Bobby says... -What the F are you doing?

Then Brian knew he got it. He got gold out of it, right.

Everybody will be talking about the F-bomb

that got dropped on Turner Broadcast.

Bobby thought Brian was nuts.

I think the Brain has left.

People were confused whether it was real or not.

One guy he was involved with was Kevin Sullivan, the booker,

the matchmaker.

Oh, my goodness! They got a fight going on!

They're beating each other,

and when Brian Pillman was ready to quit,

-he was like... -I respect you, booker man.

"I respect you, booker man."

The fact that he was acknowledging on national television

that Kevin Sullivan was a head writer of a wrestling show

was something that had never been done before.

Those that knew, knew. And those that didn't know

need to find out what a booker man meant.

It was a big thing because those guys are sensitive

about exposing the business.

When you're acting out a story line, it's work.

And a lot of the boys backstage weren't really sure this was real

or if this was a work.

The locker rooms had never been invaded that way before.

He knew if the other wrestlers believed it was real,

then they would tell the newsletter editors,

"Wow, that guy's nuts," and the word would travel.

I thought, "This is going down bad. Brian's getting fired."

I'm out of contact with him. He's lost his mind.

He's not talking to me.

The "smart fans"

were starting to figure out that wrestling is manipulated,

choreographed, pre-determined.

That guy's nuts and he's real, and he won't do what they tell him.

That sells tickets. You had no idea what was supposed to happen.

He was convincing people that he was insane.

Not only were the fans ready to be fooled,

but all the wrestlers were,

the management people were.

There was people that you could play like a violin.

-Brian, I'd like to know... No. -Nervous?

-I'm not nervous. -You should be.

I don't think anybody at any given moment

knew if or not they were really being worked by Brian.

He ended up working Bischoff.

I said, "Get him to give you some release." From his contract.

"From your contract."

Brian says to Eric Bischoff,

"If you fire me, and then I bust out on TV the week afterwards,

people will know this has gone out of control."

"The people in the office,

if they see that I'm under contract, they'll tell Dave.

Everyone will know that it's a work. You have to really fire me.

Give me this legitimate termination letter.

I can show it to everybody.

'Look at what the guy did! Can you believe he fired me?'"

He did! He gave him a release.

So he was then free to negotiate with Vince McMahon and the WWF

against Eric Bischoff so he could get a better deal,

all because Bischoff thought he was working with Brian

to create this "illusion" and Brian was working Bischoff

to create his own illusion.

Dude, I mean, how do you do that?

How... I don't know anybody else would ever did that.

Yeah, stroke of genius.

It was a termination,

but it was a legitimate termination with a wink and a nod.

I said, "Brian, go to WWF. I can't give you what you want.

Get yourself over there so that when you come back,

it'll give me the ability to pay you more.

You've raised your value."

In his world, it's his stunt.

He is flattered that he's the guy pulling the great stunt,

even though he was the power to begin with!

For anyone to suggest that the Loose Cannon character

was designed to manipulate me into giving Brian Pillman more money,

when, in fact, Brian Pillman and I discussed how to make this work

even better so that at some point, I could give him the money,

it kind of flies in the face of the rumors and the innuendo.

That's the greatest thing you can do.

If you can fuck somebody over and have them think that it's great,

that's, you know, that's the trick of breaking up with a woman,

you know, make her think that it's her idea.

As a free agent, Brian takes charge of his appearances and publicity.

His insider knowledge, mastery of manipulation,

and disregard for exposing the industry solidifies his position

as the ultimate ring master.

In the wrestling war layout at the time,

the fans knew one thing, if you are really working for one promotion,

you can't appear for any others.

Tonight will be one of the most extreme hours of...

Wait a minute.

With trying to prove it was real,

WCW hated ECW, so Brian must be on the outs with WCW.

Renegade promotion ECW is gaining traction

for pushing the boundaries

and is the perfect stage for the unpredictable antics.

He could curse, he could say off-color things.

Eric Bischoff is each and every one

of these motherfucking smart marks rolled up

in a giant piece of shit!

I thought Brian was losing his mind, as opposed to being brilliant.

I loved it. I was entertained by it.

Damn near whipped it out and was gonna piss in the ring,

that's a pretty strong statement.

And I was like, "This motherfucker's out there."

In a good way.

Get him the hell out of here.

This was working on both levels.

The fans who weren't inside, they just thought that he was crazy

and he was doing wild things,

but the fans who did know the inside terminology

were like, "They can't allow him to do that."

When he'd have a television appearance,

it'd be arranged so it didn't look like he was supposed to be there

or he was doing something he wasn't supposed to do.

He protested the matches that he'd been given.

He wrestled a pencil because pencil in inside knowledge

was a name for the booker.

I always end up fighting with the pencil.

He's showing up and doing these funny vignettes.

He's cooking, and flames are going out of the frying pan.

And they hired a woman with a baby, and the guy comes to punch Pillman,

and he grabs the baby and holds the baby in front of him.

You scum! You piece of...

I never once called Brian and said, "Hey, dude, are you working?

Are you shooting?" You know, because I didn't want to know.

But I thought what he was doing was brilliant.

Some people think my dad was crazy and other people are like,

"Your dad was not crazy.

That was just a gimmick."

A lot of people say he fell into that.

They couldn't decipher it was... Is this Brian Pillman now?

Or, like, is he still in character?

Is this just how he is?

It's all just their perception of reality.

It was just like this blur between, like, what is actually going on?

You don't even know anymore, but that was the magic of it.

There was a lot of Andy Kaufman in Brian.

The Loose Cannon became Brian, that was who he was.

Brian was a renegade.

Brian was a bit of an outlaw.

Again, remember, when you're not the biggest dog of the litter,

and you got that gravelly voice you've had 30 throat operations

when you're a small child, you get an attitude.

The greatest wrestlers I've ever worked with

are essentially natural, organic extensions of their own personality.

And the Loose Cannon was just that.

The message that Brian at ECW sent to the other companies is

he was a free agent and he'd go to the highest bidder.

Vince is watching. It's the hottest thing.

The only one to know what was going on was Dave.

"We have to tell Meltzer."

I value his friendship more than I value any of this shit.

I called up Kim, and I go, "Oh, god, Brian's...

Brian's in trouble." He just goes, like,

"Brian's doing this.

He's come up with a character, and he's you gotta work everybody."

"What do I do with Dave?"

He goes, "Don't talk to Dave because if you tell him,

then he's gonna have to say it because that's his role.

I don't want you lying to him."

So, literally, he didn't talk to me for a couple months there.

He wanted to fool me with the character.

And he did for a while.

Who are the real marks? Who are the ultimate marks?

Bischoff, and we got Vince.

Vince McMahon was, then as he is now,

the undisputed leader, ruler, manipulator,

organizer, and owner of World Wrestling Entertainment.

-What did you think of Vince? -Vince?

-Personally. -What do you...

What do you do with a whore? Fuck them.

That's what I thought of Vince.

As Brian becomes the talk of the wrestling world,

it's time for the final step of his master plan,

track down and secure the attention of wrestling's biggest power player.

In perhaps his boldest stunt yet,

Brian plots to get the attention of Vince McMahon

at an insider industry tradeshow in Las Vegas,

the last place anyone would expect to see the Loose Cannon.

Okay, so I'm in Vegas.

I was in there and I was leaving,

and Brian's coming in full gimmick at this point.

And then I see him, "Hey, Dave." Whatever.

He goes, "Can I get your credential?"

I go, "Here's my credential."

And he went in and makes a beeline for Jim Ross and Vince McMahon.

He had an idea to be the most outrageous, outlandish,

over-the-top character that Vince McMahon had ever met.

He's gonna get Vince McMahon's attention.

Doing his whole Brian Pillman,

"Hey, Vince, let's take a picture!"

"Vince McMahon! Motherfucker! God almighty!"

"I got a chance to meet you!"

Somebody takes a picture.

And Vince is like, "Who is this guy?" He made an impression.

You didn't know whether he was a maniac or a guy having fun.

McMahon thought, "We can't hire this guy. He's crazy."

I said, "Crazy like a fox."

"What do you mean?"

"He told me what he was gonna do." "He did?" "Yeah, he's creative.

He's bold. He's like you, Vince.

He'll take a chance."

Brian's balls at that point would probably fit in a wheelbarrow.

You work Vince McMahon, you know, especially back in the day,

pretty good rib. And got his attention, too.

It was pretty freaking genius what he was doing.

But he wanted to stay in WCW. WWF didn't offer guaranteed money.

And Vince was always pushing the bigger guys.

Brian always felt that WCW was his company

and the company he'd do the best in.

People go, "He manipulated his contract."

No, he did the manipulation of his contract

to negotiate with WWF to raise his money with WCW.

Brian's bold plan is a success

as he's in negotiations for contracts

with both and WCW and WWF.

All he has to do is choose the right path.

It didn't matter where he would up, it was just...

No, it's money!

That's the bottom fucking line! It's money!

And these people are in fantasy land. And it's money.

The only problem is like the Hebrew saying,

"Man plans and God laughs."

We're talking about, "I got to save money,"

and then he buys an $80,000 Humvee.

I couldn't fathom the idea of, "I've got five kids,

I've got to make money now"

and then buying a Humvee.

God. He would drive that wherever, Brian wanted to drive that.

He didn't want to sit at the light,

he drove down a gully and up the other side in that Hummer.

He didn't, you know, follow the rules.

I was actually in Miami, modeling,

but I called to check on the kids,

and the neighbor across the street, I called her and she said,

"My God, I just passed the Hummer

and little Brian's car seat's out in the middle of the yard

and Brian's being flown to the hospital."

I remember he flipped and rolled it. It was severe.

The wreck happened during the negotiations.

-They're getting damaged goods. -It was truly,

you can get on the tiger's back, but how do you get off?

-Fate figured that out. -There'd been a lot of deaths,

but not of a guy who was actually on the way to the show.

It's like if Brian could just see the future,

Brian would have just, "Fuck, oh my God. No drugs."

It'd have scared him straight.

It's crazy how you go from having a silver platter

to not knowing when your next meal is going to be.

Evelyn Towne Iyuno-SDI Group