by Jon Robinson
Driving up and down the road two hundred and fifty to three hundred miles every night, I did it for twelve years and it’s just too much for me. So the past couple of years I’ve been on my bus and it works out so much better. I’m done with hotels. I’m done checking into hotels at three in the morning. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve checked into a hotel, they see how big I am, but then they give me a room with two double beds. Give me a break.
Something Everyone
Should Strive For
Randy Orton
Show, Hunter, and Taker all have these tour buses that they travel on, and now that Hunter is getting a new bus custom built, I’m taking his old bus off his hands. So many guys don’t realize how great these buses are. Stone Cold, The Rock . . . these guys never did it. I think Hunter was the first one to do it, and it costs some money, but in the long run, we pay for our own rental cars and hotel already. That’s not taken care of. It’s a write-off for us, but we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on rental cars and hotel stays each year, and that cost will be erased by having the bus. Sure, the bus is a little more, but the benefits are unbelievable. Now when I fly into a town, that bus picks me up and I don’t need to worry about a rental car. My driver will take me to go eat, and inside the bus I have a fridge, an oven, a microwave, a washer, a dryer, bathroom, shower, king-size bed, a crew bunk, a bed for my baby with a crib, and even a little lounging area with two flatscreens. It’s like a traveling apartment.
So while I’m at the show, my driver can leave and go pick up some Outback or something to eat at the grocery store and make sure I have something for dinner. After my match, instead of hitting the showers in the locker room, getting dressed, and going out in the rental car and finding something to eat, a process that can take up to two hours before we even start our three-hundred-mile drive to the next town, now I can just go straight on the bus, eat dinner, and shower. And by the time I’m showered up, I’ve already eaten, and now I’m relaxing and playing video games on the bus or watching TV or sleeping, and we’re already in the next town . . . or at least halfway there. Then I get better sleep. And to top it off, I’m not sitting in the front seat of the car for hundreds of miles, which is horrible for your back, especially with what we do. I’m able to lie down, relax, and I can even bring my wife and child whenever I want.
As far as overall health, longevity, and stress level, it’s night and day. The bus gives you so much more opportunity, so much more time. Without the bus, you’re driving in the middle of the night, maybe get to your hotel at four o’clock, then you wake up at one in the afternoon, head to the gym, and it’s always rush-rush-rush-rush-rush just to make it to the next show. With that bus, I’ll be able to sleep and get up at a decent time and still be able to get my stuff done.
When I started, it was still like three or four years until GPS was around. But now having a driver and not even thinking about being behind the wheel and being able to sleep on the road, that’s as good as it gets. That should be the ultimate goal for any of us. Where you can get to a position in the company where you can afford the luxury of the bus. The bar has been raised to this. Now you know, if you can afford this type of luxury, you’ve made it. You’re finally where you want to be.
Three
Time to Play
the Game
“You know how embarrassing that is? A person who doesn’t even play that much to beat someone who plays every day?”
—THE MIZ
Back in the Nation days, Mark Henry once lost his European Championship to The Rock in a backstage game of Madden. Henry destroyed The Rock in the rematch and eventually took his title back with him to Raw, but this story just goes to show how invested some of these athletes are in their video games. In fact, Christian was once one of the top-rated online players at a tennis game called Top Spin 2. “I figured I’d play the game until I was ranked number one in the world,” he tells me, “then I could break the disk and never play it again.” Didn’t happen. Instead, Christian ended up losing to some guy from England after his opponent kept hitting lob shot after lob shot, frustrating the wrestler and throwing him off his game. “So afterward, I’m asking the guy why he did that and we end up getting into an argument over the headsets,” Christian explains. “Next thing I know the door to my game room swings open and my wife is standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring at me like a mother scolding a child.”
And while that might have been Christian’s last game of Top Spin 2, the video game competitions across the WWE roster continue to heat up, especially in a car full of Madden gamers as they play round-robin tournaments while they travel the world.
Who is the champ? Depends on who you ask.
The Referee
Evan Bourne
I usually drive the car when I travel with Kofi Kingston, Hornswoggle, and The Miz, and those three have a heated Madden rivalry. There’s so much smack talk going on, I can literally hear them shouting things like, “March, march, march, march, I’m marching down the field,” while they play. I’ll ask for score updates while I drive, but sometimes I actually need to referee these guys because they are getting really upset at each other. When Miz starts losing, he gets very upset. And whenever Hornswoggle wins, he just grinds that victory in. He digs it in and keeps reminding Miz who beat him, and he will ask about the score for the rest of the night. Just digging and digging it in. I would say the most fun I have is riding in that car with Hornswoggle, Miz, and Kofi when they’re playing that game.
The Underdog
Hornswoggle
When we’re on the road, Kofi and I constantly play Madden. We have a big video game rivalry, and a big rivalry in general about everything. It’s a friendly rivalry, and we play jokes on each other constantly. He makes fun of my love for the Muppets, and I make fun of his love for just about everything else. But when it comes to Madden, nobody can beat me.
Things can get pretty heated in the car when we play, though, especially between Kofi and Miz. One time they made a bet that if Miz won, Miz would autograph Kofi’s PSP. But if Kofi won, he would sign Miz’s stupid guitar that we all hate but he demands to bring everywhere we go. Kofi ended up killing him and immediately pulled out his pen. I even took a picture of the victory celebration using my iPhone. So now every time Miz wants to play his guitar, he’s staring at Kofi’s signature. Priceless.
The Underrated
The Miz
When I travel with Kofi Kingston and Hornswoggle, we always end up having these long video game feuds. One of us will drive while the other two are playing video games on the PSP. Now, Hornswoggle and Kofi are avid Madden players. Huge, huge fans of the game, and the thing about it is, I’ll play here and there. I play sporadically, and really, the only time I ever play is when I’m in the car playing against them. I don’t play anywhere else. But I beat them almost half the time we play, and these guys play every single day. They go online and play Madden all the time with their little headsets, like, “Ohhhh, I’m going to beat you, I’m going to beat you.” They’re doing that whole thing all the time, and here I am with my little PSP portable player, and I’m beating them. You know how embarrassing that is? A person who doesn’t even play that much to beat someone who plays every day? I think I’ve gotten better at the game, but I’ve also gotten smarter. Kofi always likes to play as the New England Patriots. We all know the New England Patriots are the best freakin’ team in the whole game, so that’s why he plays as them. So what do I do? I started playing as the New England Patriots so he couldn’t. I make sure when we get to the team-select screen that I pick them first. As I got better at the game, I’ve switched over to the San Diego Chargers. Granted, the Browns are my favorite team, but I’m not playing as the Browns in Madden. You have to be some kind of video game guru to beat anybody as the Browns in Madden. So now I have my Chargers, and the last game me and Swoggle played, I beat him 28–14. He still owes me twenty dollars. Swoggle, if you’re reading this, you still owe me twenty buc
ks.
The Abbot
Kofi Kingston
Miz and Hornswoggle both know that I am the Madden abbot and I run the Madden temple and give them lessons all the time. But as I can see, the lesson of humility has not been well taken by these two. To be honest, Hornswoggle lost to The Miz so bad that he really hasn’t been the same since. He hasn’t even played that much lately, the loss hit him that hard.
As far as The Miz, you know The Miz, he’s a big talker, but last time we played I beat him 21–0. We have a 21-rule. It’s the skunk rule, where if you’re beating someone by 21, the game is over because you’re basically just wasting your battery at that point. After Miz was doing all his talking about how he was going to pick the Patriots, he ended up switching up so he could pick whoever he perceives is the best team. If he manages to win one game with a team, whatever team that is, that’s his new favorite team. No loyalty to the Browns . . . that’s where he’s from. But I’m from Boston, I’m a huge Patriots fan, so that’s my team in the game, I play as the Pats. Last time we played, it was 21–0 and it wasn’t even halfway through the first quarter. I don’t think it was fun for him at all, but it was great for the rest of the car because it was one of the few times he actually shut up all tour.
Four
Lost
“We were seriously lost for my first ten years on the road.”
—CHAVO GUERRERO
Rey Mysterio calls me from the road to break down his GPS obsession. “I love this thing,” he says, and in the background I hear the GPS voice telling him to turn left. “I’m almost too obsessed with my navigation system, though, especially when I’m driving by myself. I’ll go back in and punch in the address two or three times just to make sure I’m going to the right place.” And why not, especially when one wrong turn can not only lead you in the wrong direction, it can sometimes even lead you to the wrong state.
Are There Mountains
in Nebraska?
Chris Jericho
I can’t believe we ever found our way anywhere before GPS. You’d drive into town completely blind and head to the gas station and ask where the arena is or where the wrestling is. Most big cities have signs on the road for the arenas, but other than that, you’re really heading into these cities blind where you need to pull over and ask somebody where you’re going. And the thing that’s funny is, when you do this, you’ll go to the gas station and you’ll ask somebody where something is, and they’ll say either, (a), it’s two hours away, or, (b), it’s five minutes away. And you can ask ten different people how far away something is and they’ll give you ten completely different answers. Oh, it’s about an hour away . . . Oh, it’s about ten minutes away . . . Oh, it’s about a half hour away. It’s all people from the same town we’re asking, and they’re all giving us different answers. Where is it? People in general just have a really bad sense of direction, so I don’t know how we got by without the GPS . . . or cell phones. I remember having to wait for a pay phone by the side of the road. Either that, or you’d wait by the phone in your hotel room for your girlfriend to call. You’d give her the room number and a time to call, and you would just sit and wait for that phone to ring. You would never go out because you were always waiting to talk to somebody. And it’s hard to believe, that was only ten years ago. Now life on the road is a cakewalk compared to what it used to be like.
We used to get lost all the time, though. It was Dumb and Dumber out there on the road. I remember one time with Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko, we made a right turn instead of a left and we were supposed to be headed toward Nebraska, when all of a sudden we saw mountains. We ended up in like Oklahoma or Colorado and were all like, “Where the hell are we?” There was this other time when we had a show in Gainesville, Florida, and we ended up in Gainesville, Georgia. Just stupid crap like that would happen because nobody would ever bother checking anything.
But for the most part, Dean Malenko was the best road partner because he was like a human GPS. Sure, we might make the wrong turn before we got to the right city, but once we were there, he would remember everything about every town. “Take a right, then take a left down here, and after the alley you’ll find the McDonald’s.” It didn’t matter if we hadn’t been in the town for two years, he just remembers everything. I always thought that it would’ve been smart to get an address book, and in this address book you put the town, say, Indianapolis. Then under the city name you put the gym you go to, the radio station you listen to, and the hotel you stay at. It would be so easy just to put all of this information together and just have it all in one place, because we go to the same towns over and over again, but you just forget after a while, and you’re forced to find out all over again where you should stay and where you should work out. Every time you come back to the same town, you’re forced to do the same work all over again. Stuff like that would make things a lot easier if I was a lot more organized, but I just wasn’t. Now that there’s GPS, you don’t need to worry about it as much, but even the GPS will throw you off from time to time. Like today, I punched in a tanning place, and instead of calling the number, I just end up driving there, and fifteen minutes later I pull up to a place that doesn’t even exist anymore. If only I was smarter, I would’ve had all that information in my address book.
The Two-Hour Turn
Rey Mysterio
One time I was on the road with Eddie Guerrero, and this was back before GPS, back before you could just punch in the address to your navigation, and I remember we were on the way to a show somewhere around Lubbock, Texas. We got turned around somehow and ended up driving two and a half hours in the wrong direction before we realized we were going the wrong way. When we realized it, we had to turn around and drive as fast as we could in order to still get to the show on time.
Usually when you’re driving, you see the signs: thirty miles to wherever you’re going, then twenty-five miles. But it was just one of those nights where we started talking about something, and the conversation was so good, neither one of us realized we were headed completely in the wrong direction. We just kept driving and talking, talking and driving, and then finally I asked him if he saw a sign to the city. He said no, so we decided to pull over and ask someone. Back then, that was our method of getting directions. So we stopped at a gas station, and they were like, “You guys are about two hundred miles away.” Oh my God, I couldn’t believe it. It was already six o’clock and the show started at eight. We hustled as fast as we could and ended up making it to the show at about eight thirty. We were late, but we were still able to wrestle that night. We didn’t miss the show, even with our bad sense of direction.
The Hangover
William Regal
I live a pretty boring life nowadays, but I didn’t used to. I remember one time when myself, Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, and Bobby Eaton were on a loop from Arizona to Lancaster, California, so we decided to base ourselves in Las Vegas for what turned into a three-day bender. We were pretty wild back then, and basically, while we were in Las Vegas, I hadn’t been to bed for three days. But on Monday, we needed to be in Lancaster, and it was Arn Anderson’s idea for us to rent a car and drive from Vegas rather than flying to Los Angeles and driving to Lancaster from there. But as we go to the rental car agency, there were hardly any cars to be had, so we ended up settling for the most ridiculously small car you’ve ever seen. Ric Flair was absolutely horrified by even the look of this tiny car, as he was used to riding everywhere in limousines. But here we were, the four of us crammed into this small car, all of us hung over and in need of some food before we get out of Las Vegas.
So we pull over to a Subway to get a sandwich, and while we’re in there, let me just say that for the two weeks leading up to this moment, Ric Flair had been—I won’t say bragging, but let’s just say he’d been overemphasizing to all the boys that he had just opened up a new gym in St. Martin in the Caribbean. So we’re inside this Subway, and Flair had just walked out and gotten into the car because he had decided he was go
ing to drive us to Lancaster. But while I’m waiting for my sandwich, I hear on the radio inside the store that a huge hurricane had just ripped through St. Martin and wiped out the whole island. So I get back into the car and sit in the back, and I waited until we were about five miles outside of Vegas until I decided to tell him. “I just heard on the radio how a big hurricane just blew through St. Martin and is blowing everything away.” Ric looked up at me through the rearview mirror and just went, “Oh no, brother.” The look on his face, I just started laughing.
Now some people, when they get nervous they smash things up, but to me, I get lost in these giggle fits where I just can’t stop laughing. I actually end up making myself ill from laughing so much. So I started laughing so much that Bobby Eaton started laughing, and there are bits of Subway coming down my nose by this point, and Arn Anderson sees this, so he started laughing. Flair had just spent over one hundred thousand dollars on gym equipment, and it all just blew away.
So we’re driving farther and farther into the desert, and every once in a while I just break out laughing again, and that gets everyone else laughing except for Flair. He’s absolutely out of his mind now as he just can’t find the funny side to this, but we were all hung over driving through the middle of the desert, just driving and driving, when he says to me, “Get the map out. Are you sure we’re going the right way?” So I took the map out, and I just read the map the way I saw it. He asked me where we were, and I said, “We’re in the Mo-Jo Desert.” He was like, “You stupid bastard, it’s the Mojave Desert.”
He then proceeded to cut a promo on us while he’s driving. He started saying how he’s the Nature Boy and how he’s used to riding in jets and limousines, but for some reason he was lost in the middle of the desert with three drunk lunatics and the Gila monsters. So we’re laughing even harder now and steam is just coming out of his ears at this point. Bobby Eaton then points to me and he says, “Lord keeps lizards.” Bobby always called me “Lord” because back then I went by the name Lord Steven Regal. Anyway, Flair then sees an opening to get the topic of conversation onto something else and get everything back to normal, so he asks me what kind of lizards I keep. I tell him, “I have a few of this and a few of that.” And then he asks me, “Are they still alive?” And Arn Anderson says, “No, he’s got them nailed to a board in his house.”