And I’m never eeevvveeerrr gonna let you live this down, Mikey baby . . . NEVER!
—
Because we were only filling in for Sevendust for a few shows, we didn’t have a tour bus as usual, so the plan was to fly after the show in Edmonton to our next show in Seattle. The budget for the mini tour was tight, so to save some money (and because I thought it would be fun), I asked Matt if I could ride to Seattle with Avenged.
He agreed, so after the Edmonton show I got on the bus, bearing gifts of Grey Goose vodka and Glenfiddich Scotch, our poisons of choice. A few minutes later Matt Tuck, the singer of Bullet for My Valentine, came on to see what was up. I had just met Tuck the day before and found out that he and his bandmates were huge Rich Ward fans. Matt was too nervous to speak to him at first, so he sent his guitar tech over to break the ice, and Bullet’s bass player, Jay James, had THE WARD IS MY SHEPHERD tattooed on his wrist. (He had also broken his nose moshing at a Fozzy show in Cardiff six years earlier.)
Tuckie and I had hit it off right off the bat much the same way Shads and I had. The two Matts were good friends already, so we suggested Tuck ride with us to Seattle as well. A man of few words, Matt nodded his head and sat down. He’d come onboard with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a bottle of NyQuil . . . not exactly the fancy Scotch I’d contributed, but it would do.
The bus pulled out at midnight and a dozen of us sat in the front lounge having a few cocktails, telling tall tales, listening to tunes, and just talking about life on the road in general. As the night wore on, the rest of the guys went to bed one by one until it was just me, Gates, and the two Matts. We were all were pretty loaded at this point and the conversation moved in a more serious direction when the subject of Rev’s passing came up. I’d been a fan of Avenged for years before I actually met them and was shocked and saddened when he’d passed away. I sent a message of condolence to them through Portnoy, partly out of respect and partly because I knew what it was like to lose one of your best friends unexpectedly.
I still found it hard to talk to random people about the Chris Benoit tragedy, but now that this mutual connection had been discovered, I found it easy to open up to them about Chris’s death. I suspect that’s the same reason why Shads and Gates were able to confide in me about Rev’s passing.
Most of the time when someone asks about Chris, a wall goes up and I become very guarded, because while it’s easy to vilify him for the atrocities he committed during the final days of his life, most people didn’t KNOW him the way I did.
Chris was one of my best friends and there was so much more to him than the horrible murders he commited, just as there was so much more to Jimmy than the drug addictions that caused him to overdose. It was such a cathartic conversation for me (and I assume for them as well) because there were no judgments, no false sympathies. I told the entire story of Chris’s death from my point of view and answered all of their questions, and they did the same about Jimmy’s. It took a long time to get all of the emotions out of our systems—the sadness, shock, betrayal, uncertainity, love. The anger we felt toward them for leaving us behind, the anger we felt toward other people for their callous reactions, and the helpless guilt we felt in ourselves for not preventing the tragedies. It was a total cleansing, a bonding moment that I’ll never forget, because sharing these feelings with two guys who’d been through a similar soul-crushing situation helped me to let go.
After our melancholy reflections ended, there were two options left: go to bed or stay up and keep drinking. Gates chose the former, while me and the two Matts (Tuck listened to our conversation in complete silence but heard every word) decided on the latter. The cocktails continued flowing until we had the bright idea to listen to some Helloween (one of Shads’s and my favorite bands, so much so that we got matching tattoos of the Helloween pumpkin on the Sunset Strip a few years later) and sing along to the incredible vocals of Michael Kiske, which is never a good idea when you’re fucked-up drunk.
After a little time, the combination of the long hours of talking, the hard alcohol, and the high-pitched screaming took its toll on all our voices, leaving us with nothing more than squeaky rasps. We had the next day off, thankfully because in one fell swoop of a drunken night, all three singers from Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet for My Valentine, and Fozzy had blown out their voices.
Maybe some of Tuckie’s NyQuil could’ve helped?
—
The sun was up when we arrived at the U.S. border and filed off the bus to go through customs. I was dead tired, my throat was killing me, and my eyes were burning as the three of us sat on a bench in the corner of the customs area, waiting for our passports to clear. I looked around the room and noticed the rest of the band had subtly distanced themselves from us, and I don’t blame them. With the way we looked and smelled, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we were denied entry forever.
Then I saw three guys on the other side of the room who were in even worse shape than us. They looked like three derelicts and I knew there was no way customs was going to let THEM through. I looked at one guy in particular, who looked about a thousand years old, with hair matted to the side of his head, and deep dark bags supporting his cherry-red bloodshot eyes.
Wow, is that guy ever a mess, I thought to myself. Then I noticed the guy looked vaguely familiar, as did the tattooed dude to his left, and the long-haired bloke to his right.
I realized I was looking in a mirror. The three derelicts were us.
Bonus Track
There’s an Iron Maiden song called “Total Eclipse” that was recorded in 1982 during the Number of the Beast sessions. It’s a great track that contains all the classic elements and techniques that make up a killer (pun intended) Maiden tune, but for some reason it wasn’t included on the original version of the album. It became a “lost song,” until it finally resurfaced on a Number of the Beast rerelease years later as a bonus track.
There are a few of these “lost songs” from my previous books, good stories that for whatever reason didn’t make the final cut of ALT or UD. Most of them weren’t included because they were only mildly entertaining or just plain irrelevant, but there’s one story in particular that I could never figure out why it didn’t make it. After all these years, I’m now going to rectify that situation and include the story . . . as a bonus track if you will.
—
Back in the spring of 1996, I weaseled my way onto the lineup of the World Peace Festival, a multipromotional wrestling show promoted in Los Angeles by Antonio Inoki, the president of New Japan Pro Wrestling. I wasn’t getting paid much and had to provide my own way there, but it was worth the gamble as I was a free agent hoping to get a job with New Japan or even WCW, who were also involved at the show. My plan worked. It was at that Peace Festival that Benoit first introduced me to Eric Bischoff, and the rest is history.
Konnan, a friend from my time working in Mexico, was running an AAA show the next day in Tijuana and asked if I would do him a favor and wrestle it. I’d never worked for any company in Mexico besides CMLL for Paco Alonso, the promoter who brought me to Mexico City in ’93. I considered Konnan’s offer for a few days, wondering if doing the single show would betray Paco and hurt my chances of going back to CMLL if I ever needed to. I decided it wouldn’t, plus I could use the five hundred bucks Konnan was offering to pay some of my Peace Festival travel expenses. I agreed to the gig but made Konnan promise to throw in a hotel room and a plane ticket from San Diego back to LAX so I could catch the flight home to Calgary that I’d already booked.
I wrestled the show and was surprised by the reaction I received, or maybe I should say the lack of reaction. Even though I’d only been off Mexican television for a year, I’d never worked for AAA or in Tijuana and you could tell. I was expecting a returning hero’s welcome, but just like when I returned to FMW in ’92, nobody knew who I was. Plus, I was booed out of the building whenever I tried to work the crowd
, which wasn’t a good sign since I was supposed to be a babyface.
After the match, I grabbed my five hundred bucks, packed up the pieces of my broken ego, and headed back to the hotel. I briefly considered going to see the infamous Tijuana donkey show but decided to catch some sleep instead, as I had an early morning lobby call to take me to the airport. I didn’t have my actual plane ticket yet, but Konnan told me my ride would be there at eight A.M. and I assumed I’d get it then.
The hotel Konnan had booked was quite seedy, but since I was only going to be there for a few hours, I was fine with it. Fine, that is, until I went into the room and found La Parka sprawled out on my bed. Well, I guess it wasn’t officially MY bed . . . as there was only one, along with a ratty old couch. Parka was obviously more into the “first come, first served” way of doing things, instead of the “he’s a guest in our country” way of thinking, and had no intention of giving up the room’s only bed. So I settled down on the lumpy onion-smelling couch, which had probably soaked up the DNA of many a thrifty lothario, and tried to relax.
Then Parka went into the bathroom for over forty minutes, doing who knows what, and when he emerged, there was no water left. And by that I don’t mean no hot water, I mean NO water of any kind.
Did I mention La Parka is an ugly duck? Imagine Donkey from Shrek (or Donkey from the donkey show) with bad acne and you’ll get an idea of what he kind of looks like. That has nothing to do with my narrative, by the way; I just had to throw that out there.
Anyway, I slept horribly due to a combination of the lumpy onion couch and La Donka’s bleating snores, so I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there when the morning finally came. I went to the lobby ready to go at seven forty-five A.M., a full fifteen minutes early, and was quite annoyed when the driver didn’t pick me up until eight thirty A.M.
“What time is my flight?” I said and he assured me we were headed “straight there” with plenty of time. His tone worried me as I had a seven P.M. flight out of LAX to Calgary and had used my frequent flyer points to book it. If I missed it, I was screwed.
We drove in silence through the city (passing the infamous donkey show bar) until we pulled up at the border, the one you see in every movie that takes place in Tijuana. While it was a famous landmark and the gateway into the United States, it wasn’t an airport.
“Here you go. The bus station is right over there,” the vato said, pointing to a brown brick terminal across the road.
“Bus station? I thought we were headed to the airport?”
“Don’t know anything about that, mano,” he said, handing me a ticket and pulling away, tires screeching.
I couldn’t believe that Konnan would screw me like this after all the years I’d known him! But considering that I was standing in a parking lot in TJ with no way to L.A. other than the bus ticket in my hand, I’d say I’d been stiffed harder than Sasha Grey.
Bottom line was I had a flight to catch out of LAX, so I had no time to mess about. I walked into the bus station and was directed over to my transportation, which wasn’t a bus at all but a white Suburban. The driver was wearing a twelve-gallon hat with a twelve-gallon mustache to match and motioned me to get in. I warily climbed into the back, with my head ducked down so I wouldn’t hit the ceiling, and took a seat in the last row. I hardly had any room in the cramped backseat and that got even worse when someone else got on and then someone else and so on. Pretty soon all of the space in the sixteen-seat van was gone and I felt like a cow in the back of a cattle car. Everybody was sitting with their bags on their laps and my fifty-dollar Target special looked like a Louis Vuitton compared to the cardboard boxes and garbage bags the other passengers were holding.
They were all speaking Spanish at one hundred miles per hora and then, for no apparent reason, they started singing.
I felt like the hitman sitting between Lloyd, Harry, and the Mexican hitchhikers in Dumb and Dumber, except I had no rat poison to put myself out of my misery.
“Mock!”
“Si!”
“Bird!”
“Si!”
Then the driver put on some mariachi music and the passengers went loco clapping along and doing those “Aiaiaiaiai!” noises that only true Mexicanos can make. The fiesta was in full swing . . . until we pulled over into a U.S. Immigration checkpoint.
We got off and lined up outside the van so the federales could check our credentials. The officer had probably seen nothing but Mexican passports all day, so his head was down as he gave a cursory glance to each person and mumbled a few words in Spanish. When he got to me, he looked at my passport and did a double take.
“Canadian? What are you doing here?” he asked with total surprise.
“Just trying to get to L.A.,” I said dejectedly.
“Why didn’t you take a bus? These transport vans can be dangerous!”
I explained my predicament and asked if he could give me a ride to LAX. He shook his head no and told me to be careful the rest of the way, as I cursed Konnan under my breath with every English, Spanish, and Klingon curse word (baktag!) I knew.
A few hours later, after making sixteen different stops for each passenger in sixteen different parts of SoCal, I finally got to LAX and made my flight back to Calgary. I was furious at Konnan, but the van ride wasn’t a complete waste as I’d had two epiphanies along the way.
One: I’d never work for him again.
Two: I still wanted to see that damn donkey show.
Deadman to Burning Man
In January 2010, after six months of rehab and recovery, Edge was ready to come back to the WWE. He was going to return as a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble and eliminate me quickly. I’d been keeping our angle alive by dropping his name and burying him on a semiweekly basis for being injury prone and telling him to stay away from me if he ever came back, because he would get hurt worse.
Since it was only January, we still had enough time to salvage our angle and make the match a headlining attraction at Mania, but we’d have to act fast. So I had an idea that would make our bout a headliner instantly; we would wrestle for the world title.
If Edge came back and won the Royal Rumble, he’d be guaranteed a match at Mania for the World Championship currently held by The Undertaker. But Taker was scheduled for a rematch with HBK of their classic from the year before and didn’t need the title to make their story line stand out. Therefore, if I won the belt at the Elimination Chamber, I could face Edge for it on the grandest stage of them all. Good plan, right? But it was easier said than done.
Vince hadn’t made up his mind if he wanted to go with Edge or have Batista win the Rumble and challenge Cena for his world title (there were two world titles at the time . . . like in boxing). I thought it was a better story if Edge came back from a serious injury and won the Rumble. It would make his return that much more of an inspirational tale and was the perfect way for Adam to come back as a babyface, since Vince still wanted him to be the new face of SmackDown.
I wanted to speak to Vince to give him my thoughts before he made his final decision, feeling I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least try. So I phoned him from the lobby of the Disney Animal Adventure Resort while on vacation with The Irvine 5, but I kept losing reception and it was pissing him off. He didn’t like losing control of any situation (he doesn’t even like sneezing) and the more my signal cut out, the angrier he got and the less chance I had of selling him on my idea.
The reception got better, and after my pitch, he said, “Well, that’s certainly an option.” This was Vince-ese for “I’m thinking about it, so don’t bother me with this again.” So I went back to watching giraffes with my kids and awaited his decision.
A few days later I got a call from Michael Hayes saying that Vince had made up his mind to go my way: Edge would win the Rumble, I’d beat Taker at the Elimination Chamber, and Edge and I would wrestle for the world title at Wrest
leMania 26.
Edge made his surprise return in Atlanta to a monstrous reaction and tossed me out of the Rumble immediately. Even though I’d only lasted a few minutes, Fozzy’s “Martyr No More” was the theme song for the PPV, so I had that going for me.
The next month in St. Louis, the plan was I’d pin The Undertaker in the Elimination Chamber to become the World Champion, after an interfering Shawn Michaels nailed him with a superkick. I was honored, for it was a big deal to beat The Undertaker in any situation as he was still THE locker room leader and had the respect of every single employee in the WWE.
The froot thing was, Taker never abused his position or his pull, but he also had no problem reminding people of it when the situation warranted.
This was evident during our rehearsal for the Chamber match with me, Taker, Punk, Morrison, Mysterio, and Truth. When Truth and Rey showed up a half hour late, Taker gave them both a tongue-lashing, specifically laying into Truth, who was getting the biggest push of his career.
“Is this how you’re gonna prove to me that you want to be a top guy? Show up late? If I can be here on time, you sure as hell can too. This won’t happen again, WILL it?”
Truth stared at his boots and mumbled that it most certainly would not.
Nobody ever wanted to get on Taker’s bad side, but Truth wasn’t the only one to end up there that day. While he got on Taker’s shitlist for being late, the other guy ended up on it by setting Taker on fire. Literally.
I was the third of the six performers to enter the 2010 Elimination Chamber and was standing in my pod of thunder awaiting Undertaker’s entrance. I was stationed directly in front of the stage, so I had a bird’s-eye view of the rampway as The Phenom entered the arena. It never ceased to amaze me how ominous his entrance was, and I was still in awe as he came down the ramp staring straight ahead unwaveringly, his arms slowly swinging by his side like an undead Terminator.
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