Up Till Now: The Autobiography

how I became involved in professional wrestling and eventually went to the WWF Hall of Fame. The way it was planned I would appear on their show, stand near the ring, and tell viewers, “Stay tuned after wrestling for my new movie!”
    I thought it was a great idea. I’d never attended a professional wrestling match but I’d looked at it on television. I knew what it was all about and I thought it was a lot of fun. It was wrestling; people got hit over the head with chairs, eyes got gouged out, nobody got hurt. But it occurred to me if I was going to fly all the way to Texas I wanted to do more than stand next to the ring. “Can we do something better than that?” I asked. “Can I get in the ring?”
    What is wrong with me? Where do these ideas come from? “Sure,” they said with great joy. “If you want to get in the ring that’d be great.”
    Now I was excited. I could see the possibilities. This is what happens when my enthusiasm takes control of my brain. Usually I endup convincing someone to try the sushi, rarely does it involve my medical insurance. “Well, what do you think about me wrestling?”
    Two weeks later I was in the men’s room of the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas, with the legendary wrestler and broadcaster Jerry “The King” Lawler, working out moves for the ring. An hour later the two of us were in the ring—promoting TekWar —and Lawler started with me. With me! He may be the King, but I was the Shatman! After he poked me, I pushed him into the ropes and he said, “I know these idiots look like they’re from another planet, but there’s nobody with pointed ears gonna come out and save you!”
    “These are not idiots,” I immediately responded. “This is our audience. These are the people who watch TekWar !” There. Finally, when the King persisted, I picked him up and tossed him over my shoulder. The crowd went wild.
    I loved it, just loved it. So I decided to make a second appearance. That was when I became Bret “Hit Man” Hart’s manager. The “Hit Man” was my man. I appeared with him the following week to promote TekWar —but also to promote his upcoming match on USA with Double J, Jeff Jarrett. “I got his back,” I snarled.
    When “Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels asked me, “Mr. Shatner, who’s gonna be watching your back?” I laughed at that question.
    And then I warned him, “I took care of Lawler last week. I’ve got something to tell Roadie . . .”—Roadie was Michaels’s partner— “. . . Don’t touch Bret Hart. Roadkill, that’s what your name will be, not Roadie!”
    It was great fun and quickly done. It was quickly forgotten. I thought. But fifteen years later I got a call from Jerry Lawler. Apparently he hadn’t forgotten. He was being inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame, he explained. Would I come to Detroit to introduce him?
    Coincidently I was flying to Toronto that weekend, so I agreed. They had written a nice speech for me and it was a great pleasure being there with Vince McMahon and a group of legendary wrestlers. There were about three thousand people there and when I wasintroduced I walked out on stage—and about five hundred of them started booing me. Booing! Me! Booing the Shatman! Some people started screaming, “Get off the stage.” I spoke as loudly and as rapidly as I could and got off. They were booing me. Later it was explained to me that this was a wrestling audience and they didn’t want to hear from some phony actor, they wanted to hear from some real fake wrestlers. Now, if I had thought about it, I would have told them that yes, maybe I was just another Hollywood phony, maybe I was willing to make things up to please an audience, but I was there because I so deeply loved wrestling. That would have won them over. And if it hadn’t I would have tossed Lawler over my shoulder.
    In all the years of my career, with all the fascinating places I’d traveled to and all the shows I’d done, there was still one thing I had never learned how to do. I didn’t know how to not work. The curse of the actor’s life. I am absolutely fascinated as I look over my shoulder at my past—and Jerry Lawler—at how the simplest decisions I’ve made have had the most complex reactions. A career is a series of connected events. So when I turned down an offer I wasn’t simply rejecting a job and a paycheck, I was completely eliminating the possibility that it might lead to something else. When you turn down an opportunity