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Authors: Shaun Assael
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So in late 1983, the brothers convinced Barnett to give them control of his shares—a coup that gave them majority control and the right to strip Rogowski of his title.
In the course of fifteen years as a shit kicker, Rogowski had built up a fairly thick skin. In the days before wrestlers took painkillers, he’d lost most of the tendons in his left hand from seven different stabbings and earned a scar on his chest from the time a seventy-eight-year-old fan attacked him in Greenville, South Carolina. (One fan distracted him with a chair while the other gutted him from his neck to his ribs with a hawk-bill knife, leaving him for dead outside his dressing room.) 1 He’d also been sued three dozen times and claimed he’d never once lost. So when he got wind that the Brisco brothers were planning to depose him with their newly won voting control, he confronted them in the bar of the Atlanta Ramada Inn after a show in January 1984.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jack?” he said bluntly. “You can’t run a fucking thing.”
The three started arguing. But as they got drunker, the Briscos softened their stance. As long as he agreed to start mailing them better profit-sharing checks every week, they agreed to let Rogowski keep running things. Rogowski had watched The Godfather the evening before and drunkenly decided he wanted to seal the pact “like those mob guys do.”
What happened next is the subject of some dispute. Jack Brisco says Rogowski grabbed him and dragged him to the hotel bar’s bathroom. Rogowski insists it happened after the brothers invited him to their hotel room—an invitation that he suspected was made so they could get him alone and jump him. Either way, this much is certain: Gerald Brisco had a short-bladed knife, which Rogowski took and used to slice open a healed scar on his forehead with an old-time blading move. The brothers were dumbstruck as he gushed blood and handed Jack Brisco the knife, expecting him to do the same.
“Fuck you, you dumb Polack,” Jack replied. “I ain’t cutting my head. I ain’t gonna be no blood brother with a dumb fucking Polack.”
NOT LONG after that, Vince was sitting in an office he’d rented in Greenwich when he got a call from Jack Brisco, who was checking up on the health of a mutual friend in Vince’s employ. It was a few weeks after Vince had made his unavailing pitch to Turner and because he didn’t think he’d sealed the deal, he needed another way to get on TBS. He knew Brisco was a stockholder in Georgia Championship Wrestling company, so he quickly asked, “Can you talk?”
Brisco was in a room full of other wrestlers at the time, but looking around he said, “Uh, kinda.”
Vince got to the point quickly. “Would you and your brother consider selling your stock to me?”
When Brisco replied that he would if the price was right, all three agreed to meet the next day at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York. “I’ll have a prepaid ticket waiting for you,” McMahon said.
Early in the afternoon of the next day, the Briscos found McMahon waiting for them behind a cocktail table in the Ionosphere Lounge, alone. He was just as direct in person as he was on the phone. “Where does the stock lie?” he asked. “Who do you have on your side?”
Jack answered that he and Jerry were only too happy to sell out and were sure they could deliver the shares of Barnett and a fourth partner, comprising a total of 90 percent of the stock. The only person they couldn’t deliver was Rogowski, who had 10 percent. Vince told them they should all reassemble as quickly as possible—like next week in Atlanta.
On April 9, 1984, the group that convened in a downtown Atlanta law office included the McMahons and their New York attorneys, and the Brisco brothers. Al Rogowski wasn’t there. He was in Wisconsin, caring for his ill mother. One by one, the partners signed away their shares for a total of $900,000 and then walked to their office
In the course of fifteen years as a shit kicker, Rogowski had built up a fairly thick skin. In the days before wrestlers took painkillers, he’d lost most of the tendons in his left hand from seven different stabbings and earned a scar on his chest from the time a seventy-eight-year-old fan attacked him in Greenville, South Carolina. (One fan distracted him with a chair while the other gutted him from his neck to his ribs with a hawk-bill knife, leaving him for dead outside his dressing room.) 1 He’d also been sued three dozen times and claimed he’d never once lost. So when he got wind that the Brisco brothers were planning to depose him with their newly won voting control, he confronted them in the bar of the Atlanta Ramada Inn after a show in January 1984.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jack?” he said bluntly. “You can’t run a fucking thing.”
The three started arguing. But as they got drunker, the Briscos softened their stance. As long as he agreed to start mailing them better profit-sharing checks every week, they agreed to let Rogowski keep running things. Rogowski had watched The Godfather the evening before and drunkenly decided he wanted to seal the pact “like those mob guys do.”
What happened next is the subject of some dispute. Jack Brisco says Rogowski grabbed him and dragged him to the hotel bar’s bathroom. Rogowski insists it happened after the brothers invited him to their hotel room—an invitation that he suspected was made so they could get him alone and jump him. Either way, this much is certain: Gerald Brisco had a short-bladed knife, which Rogowski took and used to slice open a healed scar on his forehead with an old-time blading move. The brothers were dumbstruck as he gushed blood and handed Jack Brisco the knife, expecting him to do the same.
“Fuck you, you dumb Polack,” Jack replied. “I ain’t cutting my head. I ain’t gonna be no blood brother with a dumb fucking Polack.”
NOT LONG after that, Vince was sitting in an office he’d rented in Greenwich when he got a call from Jack Brisco, who was checking up on the health of a mutual friend in Vince’s employ. It was a few weeks after Vince had made his unavailing pitch to Turner and because he didn’t think he’d sealed the deal, he needed another way to get on TBS. He knew Brisco was a stockholder in Georgia Championship Wrestling company, so he quickly asked, “Can you talk?”
Brisco was in a room full of other wrestlers at the time, but looking around he said, “Uh, kinda.”
Vince got to the point quickly. “Would you and your brother consider selling your stock to me?”
When Brisco replied that he would if the price was right, all three agreed to meet the next day at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York. “I’ll have a prepaid ticket waiting for you,” McMahon said.
Early in the afternoon of the next day, the Briscos found McMahon waiting for them behind a cocktail table in the Ionosphere Lounge, alone. He was just as direct in person as he was on the phone. “Where does the stock lie?” he asked. “Who do you have on your side?”
Jack answered that he and Jerry were only too happy to sell out and were sure they could deliver the shares of Barnett and a fourth partner, comprising a total of 90 percent of the stock. The only person they couldn’t deliver was Rogowski, who had 10 percent. Vince told them they should all reassemble as quickly as possible—like next week in Atlanta.
On April 9, 1984, the group that convened in a downtown Atlanta law office included the McMahons and their New York attorneys, and the Brisco brothers. Al Rogowski wasn’t there. He was in Wisconsin, caring for his ill mother. One by one, the partners signed away their shares for a total of $900,000 and then walked to their office
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