Bret posted a very touching blog on his website about the death of Andrew "Test" Martin, he posted it on the day that would have been Andrew's 34th birthday.
Good-bye my friend. Bret's comments on the passing of Andrew 'Test' Martin
It’s with a very heavy heart that I somehow search for the right words to express my deepest sorrow over the loss of yet another of my wrestling brothers, Andrew Martin, aka Test.
I met Andrew, along with his equally huge friend George, at the Planet Hollywood restaurant in downtown Toronto in 1996. WWE exec, Carlo DeMarco brought them both up to meet me and to see if I’d be interested in possibly training them as wrestlers. Andrew was, as my father would say, a fine specimen; 6’ 6”, lean, hard and handsome with a big, boyish smile. I wasn’t actually looking for any more prospects but I saw something in him and told him if he could get over to Calgary I’d personally teach him, free of charge.
I was working a full WWE schedule back then and was preparing to begin teaching, or fine tuning, some of the many young wrestlers that were starting to pop up everywhere. I instantly liked Andrew and I can smile now at the memory of coming home from the road, physically exhausted, only to remember that I’d promised Andrew a real match in my dungeon. I found myself reluctantly wrapping my knees and lacing up my boots so I could wrestle Andrew on my precious day off. That day Andrew went from dreaming of being a wrestler to actually working with the WWE World Champion in his home. I wrestled Andrew for over a half hour and I knew back then that, with his size and ability, he was going to go far in the business. Unfortunately, my days in the WWE came to an end just as Andrew’s time was beginning. I’d gotten most of my students tryouts at the Raw TV taping in Ottawa, the day after the infamous screwjob in Montreal, and so our paths took a fork in the road. Even with me gone, Carlo, Edge, Christian and my bother Owen helped guide Andrew and he earned his spot on the WWE roster. I lost contact with Andrew for a time, but every now and then I’d catch him on TV and I felt very proud of him.
Death brought Andrew and I back together when we saw each other at Bryan “Krush” Adams’ funeral two years ago. It was during that sad, dark time - after the recent losses of Sherri Martel, Bam Bam Bigelow and the blackness of the Chris Benoit tragedy - I’d was hearing that Andrew was having drug addiction problems again and I was fearful he might be next.
I saw a need to keep in touch with him and do all I could to encourage him to save himself, and maybe some others too. We renewed our friendship and stayed in touch.
This past November I had the luck of doing a wrestling tour in France for two weeks with Andrew and he seemed to be a new man. He’d completed WWE sponsored rehab and had a new lease on life. Andrew clearly had his demons on the run and we talked about him becoming the poster child for wrestlers that desperately needed a voice urging, “If I can beat this, so can you!” Andrew convinced me he had the commitment and the determination to make a difference. I had a great time with him on that tour.
Following the tour I had painful knee replacement surgery and now it was Andrew calling me to see if I was doing okay. A few weeks ago he talked of coming to visit me here in Hawaii. He seemed so strong and focused that I never thought to question him about how he was doing. I again urged him to use his experience to reach out to the many wrestlers who are still losing their battle with drug addiction.
Now I wish so much that I could’ve somehow known that Andrew was losing his grip on his addictions, beginning to slip. I failed to see the signs of him losing a battle that I thought he’d already won. My heart has been since the news of his passing. In our last phone call, a few weeks ago, I kidded him about how he worked that entire France tour and never took one bump and I smile at the memory of his deep booming laugh echoing over the phone. That’s how I choose to remember my friend. I’m sorry I didn’t see his pain and suffering; had I known I’d have tried harder to save him. He slipped and we lost one of the good ones. Nobody has anything but the nicest things to remember about Andrew Martin. I will miss him. He was a dear friend, one of very few I had left in a profession where too many die too young. My thoughts and prayers go out to him and his entire family. Somehow, as hard as we all tired, we lost another good soul forever.
Bret Hart was interviewed this week by Alfonso Castillo of Newsday.com's Steel Cage blog, which can be read here. Some highlights:
His New Autobiography: "I wanted them to at least look and put themselves in my shoes and put themselves in the dressing room and asked themselves if they had been me, what would they have done? Would they have had – for the lack of a better word – would they have had the balls to get up and knock him out? To stand up and do something about it? I could sense that day that it was kind of like everybody, or a lot of people, would have expected me to just blow it off and maybe say a few words to him and tell him he was a real jerk or something like that – slam the door and walk out.
The Montreal Screwjob:"I think that’s what Vince (McMahon) was looking for. That’s all anybody ever does. Everyone is so job scared. But for me it was different. I grew up with wrestling, like Vince did. It was my whole life, and my whole family had given so much or the industry. And I thought about how much it would hurt my father at home and my kids were watching. I thought what I did and how I handled things was a defining moment for me and my character – not my wrestling character, but my own character as a human being. I always thought it was the best thing I ever did."
Working With Ric Flair: "People always talk about who the best wrestlers are. I actually go to maybe too much of an explanation about someone like Ric Flair for example. They rave about Ric Flair about being this great, great wrestler. And he was a great wrestler in many ways. But, in a lot of ways, like working with him in the ring, he was not so great. And for someone to contest that with me or argue with me that I don’t know what I’m talking about, things like that drive me crazy. Because it’s not true. They don’t know what they’re talking about. I know. I’ve worked with some of the greatest wrestlers of all time."
These are the dates scheduled for Bret's American book tour so far:
10/6/08 7:00 PM at Borders Books – Torrance Blvd. Torrance, CA. 10/7/08 6:00 PM at Hastings Books & Music – Colorado Blvd. Denton, TX. b 10/9/08 7:00 PM at the Boston University Bookstore – Beacon Street. Boston, MA. 10/10/08 1:00 PM at Borders Books – Broadway. New York, NY. 10/11/08 11:00 AM at Bookends - East Ridgewood Ave. Ridgewood, NJ. 10/11/08 4:00 PM at Borders Books – Commons Way. Bridgewater Township, NJ. 10/12/08 2:00 PM at the Ocean County Public Library – Washington Street. Toms River, NJ. 10/14/08 7:00 PM at Borders Books – Mercury Drive. Dearborn, MI. 10/15/08 7:00 PM at Borders Books – Golf Road. Schaumburg, IL. 10/16/08 7:00 PM at Borders Books – Douglas Blvd. Roseville, CA. 11/16/08 3:00 PM at Borders Books – Triple Seven Road. Sterling,
I've been anxiously waiting for this, but unfortunately Oct 10th is too soon for me =,( I was hoping to have a job by now but I still don't! You can thank the likes of JBL for that, word for word what he said after his match at No Mercy last night was true.
- Gail Kim has been romantically linked to Bret Hart and some are
speculating that she got an even better deal from WWE than she would
have, so that they can get back in the good books of Hart and hopefully
bring him on for some 24/7 programming. Gail Kim is in fact Canadian.
Remember guys, you have to take this all with a grain of salt, a lot of stuff posted on these wrestling news sites end up being just rumors, so take it for what it's worth.
Though I'd say if it is true, Gail is one lucky woman! =)
I got to see No Surrender tonight, which was live from somewhere in Ontario, Canada (an hour from Toronto apparently), and it opened with a promo from Sting saying how 10 years ago another great hero was fighting for the same cause that Sting is fighting for the respect that wrestling veterans deserve, and he said the hero he was talking about was Bret Hart!
And as loyal Canadians, Earl Hebner was thoroughly booed througout. One of the announcers even made another reference to Bret during the triple threat X-Division championship match, when Canadian Petey Williams was applying the Sharpshooter to Abdul Bashir (if memory serves me correctly), and one of the announcers said "the Sharpshooter with Earl Hebner as the referee?" Implying that it was some sort of deja vu.
