This thing isn’t going to die out, this ’85 Bears thing, baby. We were entertainers, you understand? We were entertainers as well as a great football team. That’s why everybody remembers us in the pantheon of pro football. We could’ve been the team of the decade if McMahon had stayed healthy. But he didn’t.
I knew there was going to be something special downtown when we left the airport and all the exits from O’Hare to downtown were blocked off. There was no traffic. There was no traffic even waiting to come on where it was blocked off. So I knew everybody was downtown.
Mike Ditka brought the “Monsters of the Midway”back to Chicago. They’d been gone since Dick Butkus. That’s why he’s beloved.
Listen, baby, we were vicious. That’s the Cro-Magnon that Hampton talked about, and teams were scared to come in here and play us.
I’m not talking about scared whether they were going to win or lose. I’m talking about scared if they were going to get out of the game walking or on a stretcher.
When Wilber Marshall hit Joe Ferguson in Detroit, ooohhh, my goodness. You can’t do it anymore, but it was legal back then. Ferguson was out before he hit the ground, and how I knew he was out was Richard Dent, like a referee in boxing, he picked up Ferguson’s arm and let it go and it just flopped back down.
I think we put out six starting quarterbacks that year.
They gave me the paper that we wanted Halas to keep Buddy no matter who the coach was, and I signed it, even though Buddy wasn’t playing me yet. That’s the kind of respect I had for him. I wanted him to stick around long enough for him to put me in the game and play me. Then I knew I’d done something. I was proud of myself when that happened.
One of the best games I played in pro football was that year against the San Francisco 49ers in Candlestick Park. I got a game ball and we beat them 26-10. That’s when I knew we were going to win the Super Bowl, because they were the defending world champions, they were there in all their glory, they didn’t have any injuries, it was in their house and we whipped their [butts].
Buddy would give us a little speech before the game and walk out of the meeting, and Dale Haupt, the defensive line coach, would run the projector and we’d watch one more reel of film. Well, the night before the Super Bowl, he got up in front of us, and the last thing he said before he walked out of the room was, “No matter what happens, you guys will always be my heroes.” I knew he was gone. Tears in his eyes, you understand?
After he walked out and closed the door, I stood up, picked up the metal chair that was under me, those folding chairs, and threw it into the blackboard that was right in front of me. It was like a movie special effect. I was trying to shatter the board. All four legs impaled the thing and just hung there. The room erupted.
That’s when Hampton clubbed the projector and said, “This meeting’s over.” And we all filed out yelling and screaming.
That fever pitch that started right there kind of carried through till about halftime, and we’d already blown this game out.
I might not ever be in the Hall of Fame, but there’s guys in there that are, and I’ve whipped their [butts].
In every Shakespearean tragedy, there’s some comic relief, and that’s what William Perry was for us.
The book is called “Tales from the Chicago Bears Sidelines,” by Steve McMichael, of course. It’s a chronicle of my life in football.
“Mongo” I got from the Bears practices and fighting all the time.
You know the Bam Bam character from the Flintstones carrying the club around and beating the [heck] out of everything? That was me. In the book, I talk about being a bouncer in a strip joint, and when I cruised the parking lot, I had a bat in my hand, so I did look just like Bam Bam.
I won a local Emmy doing TV in Chicago, you kidding me? It wasn’t with Mark Giangreco1.We had the No. 1-rated show. But it was me and Bruce Wolf my last year in town on Fox. You don’t remember that, do you?
You know why most wrestlers have long hair and it’s flowing? It sells better when you sell the fake punch.
All-Pro, Super Bowl champion, Monster of the Midway.
That’s the triple crown, baby.
1: Then on WMAQ-Ch. 5.
