Batista Unleashed

by Dave Batista

  We get up to Chicago just about the time our plane is scheduled to leave the gate. Our checked carry-on luggage is late coming out, and for nearly ten minutes we stand around shivering in a boarding tunnel so cold that Kennedy’s hair freezes. Finally the bags come, and after following a maze out of the tunnel area we arrive at a gate right next to the one where our plane was supposed to leave from.

  Here’s a bit of luck—the plane hasn’t finished boarding yet.

  Two harried-looking gate attendants are handling tickets. Of course, all three of us head toward the cute-looking woman, Attendant No. 1.

  When we get there, we find out that her computer seems to be rebelling, maybe because the flight is so damn late, or maybe because it had heavy money on the Bears and they’re getting stomped in the Super Bowl.

  Whatever, she works around it and somehow gets the machine to spit out boarding passes. For some reason Lashley gets four passes, but there are plenty of seats left open on the plane and the clerk tells him not to worry about it.

  We shuffle over to the door, where Attendant No. 2 is living out his God fantasy by calling the names of the three people he managed to check in, anointing them with his blessing as he sweeps his hand toward the door.

  Which he then closes in our faces.

  “That’s it. Plane is full,” says Attendant No. 2.

  “Well, why the fuck did you give me a boarding pass?” says a passenger standing with us. “What the fuck is going on?” (For the record, he wasn’t a wrestler. And I’m toning down his language.)

  Attendant No. 2 squints an Undertaker-like eyeball at him.

  “What boarding pass?” he asks.

  The passenger shoves it in his face.

  “That other attendant just said there’s plenty of empty seats. You got half the plane sitting here, waiting to get on.”

  Attendant No. 2 takes the boarding pass and holds it up to the light to make sure it’s not counterfeit. He frowns when he sees that it’s genuine, then goes over to the other attendant to confer. Smelling the possibility of blood—and having to get on the plane—we follow along.

  After a short conference, Attendant No. 2 admits that the pass is genuine, but begins berating the passenger for not speaking up.

  “What the fuck do you think I’m doing now?” says the passenger.

  Attendant No. 2 ignores him, grudgingly stepping aside for him to pass into the plane.

  “Who else has a ticket?” asks Attendant No. 2.

  Along with the rest of the stranded passengers, we hand in our passes. Attendant No. 2 shuffles them and begins calling out our names. Things are going well until he gets to Bobby Lashley.

  “Why do I have four tickets for this man?” says Attendant No. 2. “Where is this man, this Lashley?”

  Lashley steps over to explain that there was a computer screwup, and that he only wanted the two seats he’d paid for. Because the seats on commuter planes are so cramped, a lot of us, myself included, will routinely pay for two seats; it’s more comfortable for us and the people who would have to sit next to us on the flight.

  But Attendant No. 2 isn’t buying that explanation. No one in his experience would pay for two tickets, let alone show up with four. Now he is certain there is a vile network of boarding pass counterfeiters working in the airport. He is determined that they will not get by on his watch.

  “No!” he shouts. “This cannot be! No four passes!”

  “Well, it is,” says Lashley calmly.

  “What will you do with four seats?”

  “I only want two,” says Lashley. “Your computer screwed up.”

  “Computer does not fail,” insists Attendant No. 2.

  “It didn’t fail, it screwed up.”

  “No, impossible.”

  “Don’t mess with me, man,” mumbles Lashley. “I beat up people for a living.”

  Unbowed, Attendant No. 2 shuffles through the tickets, lets everyone else on, then comes back to the four boarding passes with Lashley’s name.

  “This…this…is a problem,” he says, ignoring Lashley completely.

  “Who is this Lashley?”

  The other attendant finally comes over and provides enough of a diversion for Lashley to hustle onto the plane with us. The attendant tries to follow us on, but is kicked off the plane by the pilot, who’s anxious to get to Omaha sometime this century.

  The flight’s good, the stewardess is really helpful, and things are quiet…until we land in Omaha, where we discover that our bags have not come with us on the flight.

  Now, you know, and every person in America who has ever made a connecting flight knows, that the problem had to do with the fact that our plane from Urbana was late coming in. Either they messed up there in an effort to get the plane off because it was so late—unlikely but possible—or when we landed in Chicago they couldn’t find a numb-nut smart enough to grab the half dozen bags bound for Omaha and walk them thirty-seven feet from one plane to another.

  But the man at the baggage claim area believes a federal conspiracy is involved.

  “We’re only doing what the federal government allows us to do,” he says when Lashley, who has media interviews first thing in the morning, asks if there’s any way to have the bags delivered to the hotel very early. “Those bags may get here around nine a.m.—that’s when the next flight is—but we’re not allowed to deliver them until sometime between twelve thirty and four thirty.”

  “The federal government decides that?” asks Kennedy.

  The man looks at him pitifully. Obviously, Kennedy doesn’t understand the worldwide conspiracy.

  “Well, why didn’t the bags make it here in the first place?” asks Lashley, probably wondering if Attendant No. 2 decided to have them searched for a boarding pass machine.

  “That happens because of weight restrictions,” says the man with a straight face. “Very important, weight restrictions.”

  “With the bag or the plane?”

  “The plane. When they’re full, they can’t take off.”

  “Ours was half empty,” says another passenger.

  “There, see?” says the man. “Too much weight and they can’t take off.”

  Somebody probably ought to alert the FAA about that.

  Six

  THE LOVE OF MY LIFE

  There have been a lot of rumors and gossip and things about me and my now ex-wife, Angie, why we split up. A lot of bullshit, really.

  It’s not easy to be honest and open about what really happened between us. A big part of what happened has to do with me seeing other women—for a while, women became my drug of choice on the road. Some guys want alcohol or whatever; I wanted love. It hurts to talk about it, let alone to write it here for the world to see.

  But I’ve tried in this book to be as honest and open as possible, and if I didn’t talk about Angie, it would be like I was lying not just to you, but to myself.

  Because really, she was and is the love of my life.

  ANGIE

  Before anything else, I should say that I love Angie. We’re divorced now. Our marriage didn’t work. This is my perspective on why. It’s not meant to blame her, or even me for that matter. It’s what happened.

  I know that I’ve hurt her. The things that I did were not done to hurt her, but they did. Those things don’t make me look good, but they’re the truth. They’re there.

  Even good guys do bad things.

  OUR FIRST TROUBLES

  I think our problems really began because of the stress of my career, and Angie’s insecurity.

  It was really weird. I’d just started with WWE and I was on the road for the first time. People think that everybody they see on television is rich, but most wrestlers aren’t. I sure wasn’t. We moved back to Virginia from Ohio and right away started struggling financially. I wasn’t making that much money—remember, I wasn’t very important as far as the show went—but I had a whole batch of new expenses being on the road.

  There’s more than just travel
. First off there’s the hotels, food, and rental cars; the company usually only pays for airfare. There are dozens of little things. I mentioned the suit I bought earlier, for example; costumes are our responsibility. And then there are the expenses like gym fees and what have you. They all add up pretty quick.

  Financial problems put a stress on any family. In my case, things were worse because I was rarely at home with my wife. I’d leave for a house show Friday morning, then maybe get home Tuesday afternoon.

  Photo 20

  Me and Angie at Hunter and Stephanie’s wedding.

  From Angie’s point of view, I’m sure, it was as if she’d lost her husband. She went from having me home every night of the week to only seeing me a couple of days. And I mean “seeing” me: I would be so exhausted that I never wanted to do anything, not even go out for a simple dinner or a movie or whatever.

  That made her a little bit bitter. We started having fights when I’d come home. And then she became distant. It was as if she thought that by not giving me her love when I was home, it wouldn’t hurt her as much when I left. Which never made fucking sense to me, because I would think that while I was home, she’d try to get as much love as she could.

  I thought for a while that the fact she wasn’t working was part of the problem. Her not working was a sore point with me. Not just because we were struggling—which we were—but I think she really needed to feel as if she was doing something important, for herself and for us. She really has a lot of ability and talents, and I think she—like all of us—feels better as a person when she’s using those abilities and making a real contribution.

  Angie’s a really smart woman. She’s also very caring. I think with that combination, she would be an excellent doctor, a pediatrician. I’ve seen her with kids and she really just has a way of comforting them that I think would make her a natural. She just has all sorts of abilities and I’d love to see her use them someday.

  Anyway, Angie finally got a job. It was a bullshit waitress job. Her schedule was really close to nothing, a couple of nights a week, but it was something.

  One day I came home early for some reason and she was supposed to be working. I called her at work, and she wasn’t there.

  “Wasn’t she scheduled to work today?” I asked whoever I was talking to on the phone.

  “Yeah, but she called in sick.”

  I couldn’t figure out where the hell she was at. When she finally came home, she said she had been out boating with one of her friends all day. I just couldn’t believe it. I exploded. I don’t remember what I said, but basically I felt I was killing myself, we were struggling financially, and here she couldn’t even go to work the few days she’s assigned. Instead she’s going out and hanging with a friend on a boat.

  That was it. It fucking broke my heart. We split up.

  JEN

  While we split up, I started dating this girl who worked at one of the gyms I trained at. Her name was Jen and she was very cute, though a lot younger than me. She was a great girl.

  One night Angie came over to the apartment that I’d taken and walked in unannounced.

  I was there. Jen was there. And now so was Angie.

  Of course, Angie just flipped. That, according to her, justified everything she had ever thought about me, that I was unfaithful to her all through our marriage, which was absolutely not true. But in her mind, I think, finding me with a girlfriend was really the final straw. Maybe if that hadn’t happened, we would have worked our problems out. But now she thought that our whole marriage had been a sham.

  She said she’d never forgive me for it. I don’t think she has, either.

  We stayed separated for a while.

  CANCER

  I don’t know how much you know about cancer. At one time, it was basically a death sentence. People found out they had cancer and there really wasn’t much hope for them. The only thing a doctor could really do was predict how long they’d live.

  Now things are a lot different. The medical people know so much more about the disease now than they did even five years ago. There are a variety of different treatments, and being diagnosed with cancer is no longer a death sentence.

  But…

  But it’s still a pretty devastating disease. (I guess to be technical, cancer is actually many different though similar diseases.) The treatments can really take a lot out of the patient, and even with the best medical care, there are no guarantees that he or she will survive. Prevention is a lot easier than treatment. Early detection and surgery are by far the best line of defense against cancer.

  When you first hear that you or someone you love has cancer, it’s heart-stopping. I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done: if you have an ounce of emotion in your body, you think about what’s important in your life. If you’re smart, you rearrange what you’re doing and make those important things your top priority.

  ANGIE’S CANCER

  Sometime in the spring of 2002, Angie started getting pains in her abdomen. At first, she didn’t think they meant anything. They were just pains and she didn’t give them much thought. But gradually they got worse, and finally she realized she had to see a doctor about them. The doctors ran a bunch of tests.

  That fall or early winter, right around the time when Evolution was taking shape, Angie heard from a doctor that she had cancer.

  I never went to medical school, so I’ll leave the technical explanation to someone else. Angie had ovarian cancer. It started in her ovaries and spread to her small intestine. She also had cervical cancer, which is another type of cancer that affects a woman’s reproductive system.

  When I heard what was happening to her, I just had to be with her. I had to help her get through it. I just had to.

  In a strange way, her getting sick got us back together and saved our marriage. It definitely put things in perspective for me. And not just about Angie and me. Up until then, I had given up on just about everything outside of wrestling. I didn’t give a shit anymore about people, about a lot of things I should have cared about. I kind of didn’t know which way I was going. But her getting sick really woke me up.

  Angie went through radiation and chemotherapy. I suppose most people have heard about radiation—different types of radioactive material are used to basically zap the bad cancer cells. The basic idea in chemotherapy is similar. The patient takes very strong medicine that kills the cancer. In killing the cancer, the radiation and especially chemo do a hell of a job on the rest of the person.

  It broke my heart to see Angie so sick. She lost so much weight. I think she says it was thirty pounds, but I’d swear it was more. And she was slim to begin with. She lost her hair. She takes so much pride in her hair, that had to kill her.

  She’s such a beautiful woman. She’s so full of energy and life. Seeing her in bed, pale, wasted, maybe thinking that she wasn’t going to be around much longer—it broke me in two. I would have gladly taken on her pain myself to spare her. I’d’ve gone through anything.

  NO CHILDREN

  Angie has been through chemo I believe four times now. It’s never been as extreme as the first time she went through it, but it’s not pleasant under any circumstances.

  It’s also very expensive. Fortunately, she was involved in a cancer study that helped pay some of her bills.

  Cancer patients always have to worry about the cancer coming back. In her case, if it does come back, she’s gonna have to get a total hysterectomy. That would rule out her having a baby. That would be a very big blow to her. It’s something, unfortunately, she and I weren’t able to do while we were married. I don’t think there’s anything in the world she wants more than to have a child.

  Gradually, she got better. I remember we were doing some shows in Hawaii, and Angie and I flew out together early so we could be alone and relax and talk about our marriage. I can’t quite recall now exactly when that was, but I can remember how great it felt to be out there with her.

  I have to admit, though, we never did re
ally repair anything that was wrong with our marriage, not in Hawaii, and not later. We kind of tucked our problems away. Angie was still convinced that I had cheated on her, not when we separated but before that and all through our marriage. And there was always that undertone of resentment in our relationship. It was like an acid, eating away at us.

  PARTNERSHIP

  I have to admit, the more she pushed me away, the more distant she got, the more resentful I became.

  She didn’t do anything for herself, in terms of a career or a job. And she didn’t really contribute to the marriage in other ways. I wanted a partnership. I wanted someone I could share feelings with, and experiences; someone who would grow with me.

  But even after she recovered from the cancer, she remained very distant. She blamed it on abandonment issues she had.

  I think she used that as an excuse a little too much.

  Once again, she started being very cold to me when I came home because she said it made it easier when I left. And once again, it didn’t make any fucking sense to me.

  The same issues we had before came up again and again. There was a lot of insecurity on her part. And I became…

  What’s the right word?

  I can’t find it. I guess the best way to say it is this: the more insecure she got, the more pissed off and resentful I got.

  If she got insecure and accused me of doing certain things, I’d say, “Well, fuck you, I’m going out tonight and I’m going to party my ass off.”

  And I did. Which of course made things worse for her.

  I got to the point where I always felt like I was a prisoner, like I was on a leash, and I would do things to prove to her that I wasn’t her prisoner and I wasn’t on a leash.

  Stupid, stupid things.

  I was an ass. And eventually, she was right to be insecure—I did start seeing other women on the road.

  MY DRUG OF CHOICE

  I’m not bragging. I’m not one of those people who cuts notches into a belt or anything like that. I’m not going to go into too many details since other people are involved. But to say it plainly: I started seeing and sleeping with other women.