I was a 20-year-old kid trying to make my hooves.

Brian Sutter was the coach of the Blues, and the night before my first training camp in 1988, he says, “Lads, this is what I want. If you’re a goal scorer, score goals. If you’re a defenseman, be a defenseman. If you’re a goaltender, stop the puck. If you’re a fighter, be a fighter.” So I’m going down the elevator, and I look at Todd Ewen and say, “I guess you and I are going tomorrow, huh?” He says, “I don’t have to fight you,” and I said, “The f— you do.”

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My second shift of my first scrimmage, I went after Todd, and he wouldn’t fight. So my next shift, I left my gloves, stick and helmet on the bench, went to center ice, and I’m doing the chicken with my arms. I’m calling his name and saying, “bok, bok, bok!” So we fight, and it was a good fight. There was no winner, but I got cut over the eye. The trainer said, “You’ve got to get stitches.” I said, “Put a couple Steri-Strips on it, and we’re going out there to do it again.”

It’s training camp, so I’m in the same locker room with Todd, and he says, “I’m not fighting you again.” I said, “The f— you are!” So I grab the Steri-Strips as I’m walking out of the room and said, “I’ll see you outside!”

I didn’t know any better. I was a junior hockey player, and that was the old junior mentality. The Blues were an older team, and they were like, “Where did this kid come from?” I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, but I was. I was a kid. I got sent down to the minors that year and fought six times in the preseason. Wayne Thomas was the coach, and he says, “This is exhibition. What are you doing?” I said, “I’m setting the tone.” He says, “For what?” I said, “For the season. If you’re going to f— around, you’re going to lay around!”

My skill set was brutal. Was I a liability? Probably. There were games where I never touched the ice. But my second training camp with the Blues, Todd was suspended for the first 10 games, and they needed a heavyweight.

That’s where it all started. But let me back up and give you a bit of my background, and then I’ll take you ringside to see what it was like to be an NHL heavyweight — and what the game has lost without enforcers.

I went to a Catholic school. In Canada, all the degenerates went to Catholic school because the public school wouldn’t take them. From Grade 3 all the way up, there was always a scuffle.

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But I was a captain and a guy who could put the puck in the net all the way through junior hockey at age 16. I got pigeonholed, though. Len McNamara was the coach of the Prince George Spruce Kings, and all he did was send me out to fight. We went to all these cities — Grande Prairie and Williams Lake — and there were no rules. They were from logging communities, and there would be 25 players with full beards in warmups, and they were there to chop players, not trees.

At 17, I quit hockey. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it. But fighting’s all I was doing. If we played 45, 50 games, I fought pretty much every game. You could only fight once per game, so the first and second periods you’re holding back because in the third you were going to fight. And I was always fighting guys four years older than me.

I had set a goal to go to college, but that’s when my rights in the WHL were traded from Kamloops to Saskatoon. So I went to Saskatoon’s camp, but even there, I was only put in the game to fight. I remember having a discussion with my pops, and I said, “I’m a better player than this.” But it was either integrate or migrate. I got it. This is who I am.

I never watched the NHL draft, but one morning, my dad came upstairs and said, “Hey, you got drafted.” I go, “Whatever.” I get up and start making breakfast, and he says, “No, really. St. Louis drafted you.” Then I get a phone call. Yep, ninth round. The NHL had never even entered my mind, but all of sudden I’m signing my first contract, which meant I was ineligible to play in college. That’s how fast it happened.

I played my first NHL game against Chicago on Oct. 5, 1989, and fought Wayne Van Dorp. He was their heavyweight, and what better place? It was the old Chicago Stadium. For a kid coming up at that time, your first game, fighting their heavyweight … talk about perfect!

I had 104 NHL fights in my 10-year NHL career, and if you include juniors, minors, the bars, and the streets, it’s got to be 500. I fought Bob Probert four times. I give all the credit in the world to Bobby because he was the measuring stick for everybody that walked into the league. Not only was he on a line with Stevie Yzerman, but he was knocking the s— out of people. He was the king. The first thing you did when you got called up was you went after him.

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Well, that was the first thing I did.

The first two times I fought Proby, he rag-dolled me. He wasn’t overpowering, but he had more upstairs. The third time, I handled him, and every fight after, I beat him without any ifs, ands or buts. The coup de grace was 1994. He was with Chicago, and it was the opening faceoff. Proby looked and me and said, “Twister, I’m getting too old and you’re getting too big!”

I became the king, and that’s a powerful feeling, but it comes with a lot of responsibility. It gives you a one-up on everybody before you even drop the gloves, but you’ve got to own it. And then guys were scared to fight me. Was it frustrating? No, it actually felt pretty good because you have to have an ego to be a fighter. Not the Tie Domi ego. That was way too f—— much for me, bringing WWE to the National Hockey League. After the chicken episode with Todd in my first camp, I never taunted anybody. That doesn’t service anybody. But this fist does.

People say, “Who was the toughest guy?” I promise you there is no toughest guy. If you start putting people on a pedestal, mentally preparing for a fight in a different way, you’re going to lose. Because you’re no longer being robotic and nonemotional. You can’t be emotional about anything when you’re fighting. If you train yourself the same way — it’s a job and everybody is the same — you’re going to have more success. There’s some guys who do it for the crowd, and they’re not around very long. Watch the guys that are doing it for their 20 teammates without prejudice. That’s who you should be scared of.

Was I nervous? No. Don’t get me wrong: If you don’t have butterflies, you’re overconfident and something bad is going to happen. It only takes one punch.

I immersed myself in the job to make myself feel as comfortable as I could so none of those other feelings would overtake my ability. Always in the gym, always studying. Anytime there was a fight on ESPN, I was recording it. Whenever we went to another city, I’d trade tapes with guys who collected the fights. I would meet this guy, Joe Lozito, at the rink, and he’d give me Jersey, both New Yorks, Boston, all the guys in that area. It was research. I’ve fought the guy 100 times in my head before I even hit the ice. My style wasn’t changing. I wanted to kill you. But it made me feel better, where I was head-wise.

The intimidation factor was real, too. We went to Toronto one year and Pat Burns brought this guy up named Frank Bialowas from the minors. It’s all over the paper that the fight card had been set. So in the morning skate, I go over to their bench. I’ve got no shirt on, and I’m taping my stick on their bench and I’m drinking their water. Nobody said a word. I fought Frank that night, and he didn’t last long in the NHL.

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If I caught myself thinking too much about somebody, I’d take a nap, disconnect, get up and regroup. You might start thinking about it on the way to the rink, but it’s still not time yet. Come 6 p.m., I’d be gearing up. Any warmup, any team, any city, I would split that red line with my stride, and try to make eye contact with the guy. Smell fear, see fear. He might say, “We gonna go?” I’d say, “Yeah, we can go.” He’d say, “When the puck drops.” I’d say, “No, I’ll catch up to you.” He’s going to jump when I say jump. That’s the ownership part of it.

But this doesn’t always mean that you have to fight their tough guy or even that you have to fight.

We were playing in Detroit and Martin Lapointe ran Chris Pronger. I went after Lapointe and he ducked. Well, out comes Joey Kocur. Joey and I both have our heads down and we’re laughing. He goes, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to break Stevie Yzerman’s ankle.” He said, “You can’t do that.” I said, “I get it, but you’ve got to tell Lapointe not to run my guy.” Puck drops, I whack Stevie, and Joey and I are getting into it, and the linesmen break it up before we start firing mitts. That’s how it worked. The message was sent from Kocur to Yzerman, Yzerman to Scotty Bowman, and Bowman to Lapointe. But they have to believe that I would break Stevie’s ankle, and there’s no doubt. There was no if.

It was believable because that’s the way the league was. The intimidation set the tone so that everybody could play and the fans got to watch the best players: Brett Hull, Wayne Gretzky, Al MacInnis. Nobody’s taking cheap shots. Why? Nuclear weapons. Mike Keenan instilled in me, “It’s not how many times you fight. It’s how many times you don’t have to fight because your presence is enough to keep everybody in line.” One of MacInnis’ greatest lines was, “If I could just have a cardboard cutout of Tony Twist on the bench.” Guy Carbonneau came to St. Louis from Montreal and he said, “Do you know what our pregame speech was in Montreal? ‘Nobody wake up the animal on the other side.'” Carbo said they called me ‘Thing’ from “The Addams Family” because he had the right hand. Thing. Classic.

The game isn’t like this anymore, though.

The game is so much better. I don’t watch a lot, but I’ve watched a couple of periods here and there. The talent pool? Holy cow! It’s so much faster. The speed, the execution, it’s amazing when you look from my era to today. The last year I played, 1999-2000, that was the last of the gunslingers, the last of the hired hitmen. There were two or three of us on every team, but you can’t afford that now. You’d never be able to compete. I get it.

Still, that doesn’t mean everybody has to lay down and throw their f—— binky in the middle of the ice when they see something happen. They don’t have to skate by and pretend they didn’t see it. The whole mindset has changed, and I blame the league, but I also blame the players for buying into the league’s program. When you take the opportunity to police yourselves out of the game and expect the league to police for you, nobody’s doing that. It’s like any other industry, everybody is going to skate outside the lines. But the ones that skate outside the lines have to feel the repercussions. You don’t have to have the toughest team to stick up for each other. But how do you expect to be a dragon when you’re carrying a Bic lighter? You’ve got to have gasoline, propane and methane to be a dragon.

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Also, the skill today doesn’t forgive the lack of locker room knowledge and kinsmanship. At the end of the day, it takes a passing of the baton to make a championship team, and you can’t build a baton-passer. He builds himself. His testimony and performance dictates that he can pass the baton. Those guys that have the baton, well, it’s either not being recognized by that player or there’s no responsibility to owning the value you have to that team. I’m tired of hearing the whiny little f—– who says, “The world is against me.” No, you know what? Own your job! Own it! Find an answer. Don’t whine. Don’t make excuses. Own the job. I want to see more of that, and then the rest will follow suit.

As a consequence, your third and fourth lines are mutes. Their influence on the game can only be measured by their minutes on the ice. When, in fact, your third and fourth lines, when given the opportunity, will keep the team in check. So it’s not the minutes on the ice as much as it’s the minutes off the ice and how valuable that player can be in the dressing room and in practice. The podium is given to you through respect, and that respect is osmosis. It’s not given by permission. It’s felt.

When we were on the bus and Gretz told a story, they were always hockey-related and everybody listened with enthusiasm. The stories were created to try to tell everybody something without having to really say it. That’s where the podium is built. The hammer, the saw, the nails … building the podium for those players to have the opportunity to be given that power. There has to be common ground between every player on that team, and that common ground has to be the emblem. And you better be passing down that f—— baton!

(Photo: Elsa Hasch / Getty Images)

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