Rumble Road

by Jon Robinson

  And when it comes to eating, we got bad habits all over the place. We all come from different walks of life, so what works in one place might not work in another. We have people who like to eat with their mouths open and smacking their food. We have people farting all over the place. A guy like Big Show will stink out the bus until finally we’re all yelling at him to stop farting or we’ll all kick his butt. That’s what it takes, because not one of us could kick his butt by ourselves, but if there are ten of us, we could do it.

  Miller Time

  IRS

  One night we had a show at the Boston Garden, and during the show, the Iron Sheik had asked me if he could catch a ride with me back to Hartford so he could make it to the airport. But he was in a match that was on a little bit later than mine, so I told him I’d give him a ride, but we needed to leave before the show was over. So he has his match, then he just grabs his bag and walks out with me still in his wrestling gear, with his curled-up boots. It’s a Sunday in Boston, and you can’t buy beer on Sunday in Massachusetts, but Sheik says, “No, no, Mike Baba, I know this guy across the street from the Boston Garden.” So we pull up to what looks like a bar—it had these big bay windows that you could see through—and Sheik goes in the bar and I see his hands moving and they’re talking back and forth as Sheik tries to convince the guy to sell him some beer.

  This went on for like fifteen minutes before Sheik finally convinced the guy to sell him some beer. But sure enough, this took so long that here comes everyone out of the Boston Garden, and as people leave the building, they all see Sheik inside the bar in his wrestling gear. So they all start banging on the windows and they’re yelling, “That’s the Iron Sheik.” Meanwhile, I’m still in the car and I’m trying to scoot down as far as I can in my seat so no one will recognize me. Then finally, the Sheik comes out and gets into the car with a bag of beer, but now the fans all turn their attention to our car. They’re pounding our windows and shaking our car from side to side. I thought, “Well, this is the end of my life.” We had a pretty good mob surrounding our car to the point where we couldn’t even drive along the street. I actually had to jump the car onto the sidewalk just to maneuver around to a spot where we could get back on the road where traffic was moving and get on the highway. Both of us, our hearts were racing. It’s pretty scary when you have that many people out there shaking your car and pounding on your windows. Finally, we’re on the highway, and Sheik opens up a beer and says, “Oh well, at least the beer tastes good.”

  Instant Karma

  Kofi Kingston

  One night I was traveling with Cryme Tyme, and we were driving to D.C., and we stopped at a Roy Rogers because it was open twenty-four hours. I get in line, JTG gets in line, and we’re trying to meander our way around. Then Shad cuts in front of us . . . but this is karma at its best. Shad is looking at the food, and they didn’t have any chicken. So here is big Shad, a 6'8", 285-pound guy, and he asks this lady if they have any chicken, and she totally punks him out. She was like, “Does it look like we have chicken? Don’t you think if we had chicken it would be out there with all of the rest of the food?” It was just hilarious to see Shad get punked out by some lady with a hairnet. Shad just couldn’t say anything. He was speechless. But that was karma. Had he not cut us in line, then it would’ve been one of us asking about the chicken and getting yelled at by the hairnet lady.

  Almond Joy

  Dolph Ziggler

  My one guilty pleasure on the road is eating almonds. Almonds are pretty healthy for you, so I justify it by getting the chocolate-covered almonds and going low carb all day, then every once in a while waking up with an empty bag next to me.

  I Don’t Like Mustard

  Matt Hardy

  Life on the road is definitely challenging. First and foremost, when you’ve been doing this for a while and you start to get your body beat up, it turns into a full-time job just keeping your body together. Here, your body is your business. Your body is your product. People always ask me when I go to the gym. My response is, “Whenever I can.” If you work for WWE, even the people who look like they don’t go to the gym, they go to the gym. If you wrestle on a full-time basis, you go to the gym. You just have to. If you don’t, your ligaments and tendons are just going to fall apart. It takes a very special animal to do what we do.

  That being said, you won’t survive in this business for any amount of years unless you truly have the passion of loving the sport, and I do, and I know Jeff does as well. You have to look at what we do and see what it does to your body, and you have to realize that later in life, this is going to influence my health. This is going to affect my health. And I truly accept this. My motto is this: You only live one time, and I would rather have some aches and pains while living an amazing seventy-five years, than living a dull eighty-five years.

  I’m thirty-four right now, and I promise you, I’ve lived a life gazillions of people wish they lived. I couldn’t begin to tell you how great my life has been. Not only living my dream day after day, but this has also been very financially rewarding. And beyond even that, it’s just nice to wake up every morning and know that I’m doing what I love.

  To think that any week, I could be getting off a plane and be in any country in the world, that’s still amazing to me. It’s mind-blowing to me. And part of the reason why it’s so amazing goes hand in hand with another one of my mottoes: It’s not necessarily where you’re at, it’s who you’re with. If I’m with my brother or if I’m with some good friends, then we’ll make a good time out of a 370-mile drive. We’ll plug in the iPod, we’ll have some Kings of Leon playing, we’ll stop to eat a couple of times, tell some stories, joke around, and have a good time.

  I’m trying to retrain myself, though, because I’m in a real bad habit of going to bed at four or five in the morning and waking up around eleven. That’s just how my schedule is now. Even when I’m home, I have about four other business projects I’m working on. So during the day, I’m training or doing work. But when it gets to be around one in the morning, that’s what I love because that’s my alone time. My favorite thing to do at home is to sit back around two or three in the morning in my hot tub, maybe have a cocktail like a vodka cranberry, and just relax. I live on 140 acres, and there are no neighbors nearby. That’s when I can see a sky full of stars and just relax. To me, that’s the ultimate form of relaxation. And when I’m having a tough time on the road, all I have to do is think ahead to the next time I’ll be home sitting back in the hot tub, looking at those stars.

  But that’s not the only thing I miss about home. There is this place about ten minutes away from my house called the Checkered Flag. It’s a truck stop that stays open twenty-four hours. It’s a real hole in the wall, mom-and-pop–type joint, but they have the most amazing hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and hot dogs you can ever eat. There will be nights when we’re all hanging out at like four in the morning, and we’ll call our buddy to come pick us up and take us to the truck stop. I’ll get my cheeseburger with no mustard. I don’t like mustard. That was a Matt Fact that people liked a lot, that I dislike mustard—but anyway, I get mine without mustard and Jeff gets his all the way, and we sit back in this truck stop and we’ll eat cheeseburgers and fries. That’s truly our guilty pleasure. We talk about it all the time when we’re on the road. We’ll be sitting in a hotel in Texas or California or wherever, and one of us will say, “Man, nothing would beat a truck stop cheeseburger right about now.”

  Seven

  The Swerve

  “I walked out of the hotel and was like, ‘Why is V sitting on that guy?’ ”

  —KANE

  An unexpected plot twist. A story you think is heading in one direction that suddenly shifts and takes you to a whole other, shocking place. That’s what you call a “swerve.” Throughout my months collecting stories for this book, there were a few times when I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing. “Did this really happen?” I would ask, and every time, the Superstar would just stop and
laugh. “Just like I said,” they would repeat, “just like I said.” What can I say? When you travel more than two hundred days a year, something insane is bound to happen.

  Beating a Dead Horse

  Shelton Benjamin

  One night, I almost beat up Brian Kendrick over the movie Seabiscuit. We were in Canada, and we had the day off. There were a whole bunch of us there, including my partner at the time, Charlie Haas, and the referee Mike Chioda, and we all decided we were going to go out and get something to eat. We were all staying at this resort, and basically the town we were in was built around this resort. So we decided we were going to walk through the town to find a nice restaurant. But before I could even leave, the whole group left me for some reason and headed off to the restaurant without me. I’m walking around and I’m trying to find where they went, but no one would call me back or answer their phones. Luckily, I just happen to stumble into the right restaurant, but by the time I get in there, everyone had already ordered and was eating their food, so I sit down and basically start acting like a brat. I’m like, “Why did you guys leave me? Some friends you are.” It was all in fun, though, I was just busting everyone’s chops. At some point, the topic of conversation switched over to movies, and Seabiscuit was out in theaters at the time. But as soon as someone brought up Seabiscuit, Brian Kendrick started yelling, “Nobody talk about Seabiscuit. Nobody talk about Seabiscuit. I haven’t seen it yet and I want to see it.”

  Mind you, I have still never seen that movie, but I blurt out, “You want to know what happened, I’ll tell you what happened. The horse lost the race and died because his friends left him at the gate.” I’m basically playing off the fact that they all left me, but Kendrick starts going crazy. I don’t know what he was thinking, or what he thought he heard, but he looks at me and says, “I told you not to ruin it for me.”

  I had just made a salad, and as soon as he said that, he pours a whole glass of water in my salad. I looked at him and was like, “What the hell are you doing?”

  And he told me, “I told you not to ruin the movie for me!”

  “Are you kidding me?” I said. “I haven’t even seen that movie. Didn’t you hear me? I was joking about how you guys left me.”

  He started stuttering, like, “Oh, oh . . .” And I’m like, “You owe me a new salad. You ruined my salad. Now you need to go make me a new one.”

  He just looked at me with this bewildered look, then he said, “Dude, I’m not making you another salad.”

  I couldn’t believe it. First they left me, then I make a joke about a movie I’ve never seen, and now this guy who just dumped a glass of water in my salad won’t make me a new salad. To make matters worse, he started back with the whole “I can’t believe you ruined the movie for me.”

  We were like two kids, and up until this point I was laughing pretty hard. But then he completely changed his tone. He looked at me one more time and said, “I’m not making you another salad.” And as soon as his tone changed and it wasn’t funny anymore, my tone changed and I told him, “You’re going to make me another salad or I’m going to whoop you.”

  So he told me, “Go ahead and whoop me. I get my butt kicked for a living.”

  Only thing is, this time, it was going to be real.

  Now, all of a sudden, the whole mood of the table changed and everyone is tense. Charlie was like, “I’ll make you a salad, don’t worry about it.” And Charlie actually got up and made me a salad and brought it to me, but I was like, “No! He ruined it, so he’s going to make me another one.”

  Finally, after about five really tense minutes, I told him, “A s soon as we walk out that door, I’m going to whoop your ass. Bottom line.”

  So now we’re sitting there and I’m staring a hole through him and I have every intention of beating him up. Finally he gets up, throws together a little lettuce in what can only be described as an insult of a salad, and tosses it in front of me. Leaves were flying everywhere, and he says, “There you go, tough guy.”

  As soon as the plate landed in front of me, I picked it up and threw it at him. I told him, “Who do you think you’re messing with? You ever try something like that again, and I’m going to kick your ass.”

  Everyone was quiet, and Nidia grabbed me and brought me outside to cool things off. I don’t even remember if I finished my dinner or not, I was still so mad at that point, but we made it out of the restaurant without incident.

  Now, mind you, I’m still feeling like beating him up, and I don’t know what he’s thinking, but the very next day, we get to work, and guess who’s wrestling each other. It was one of those things where I could’ve made things worse, because when I showed up to work, I still wanted to beat him up, but I had to do the professional thing and put my personal feeling aside for the sake of the show. It was in the back of my mind to whip his ass the whole match, but he later apologized and everything, and we always tell this story and we still laugh about it today.

  Of all the movies for two wrestlers to fight over, would you have ever guessed it would be Seabiscuit?

  Roman Candles

  Goldust

  I remember Owen Hart used to always drive with one of his friends when he was in town. And this one night we were driving from Youngstown, Ohio, to Pittsburgh, and I see Owen and his friend are behind us on the road. I’m driving with Billy Gunn, Davey Boy Smith, and Bob Holly, and we were all the fun, rowdy type, and I remember we all pulled over to go to the bathroom. When Owen and his friend got out of their shiny white car, Davey Boy lit three smoke bombs and threw them in Owen’s friend’s car when they were busy peeing. As we got in our car to leave, I look in the rearview mirror and all you see is this green and yellow smoke coming out of the car. Smoke is everywhere, Owen is laughing his ass off, and his friend is freaking out because he thinks his car is on fire.

  We pull up a little bit, then we slow down and let them catch up, and Davey Boy leans out the window with these Roman candles and starts shooting them at this guy’s car. They’re bouncing off the windshield, and this guy starts speeding up. I don’t know how pissed off he is, but I know Owen is in the car, and Owen was always the instigator, so I’m sure he was in there just driving the guy crazy. Meanwhile, we’re flying down the freeway at around eighty miles per hour still shooting these Roman candles at his hood, and we’re throwing firecrackers out the windows at them any time they got close.

  I remember the next day, looking at this guy’s car, and it was black. This used to be a white car, but now it was a freakin’ mess with black smoke marks all over it. There were burn holes in the carpet from the smoke bombs . . . but he didn’t care. He was just a big fan of Owen’s, they were friends, so he was like, “It’s cool.” I’ll never forget that. It wasn’t even a rental. It was his car. Actually, it was a white van, or at least it used to be white.

  One of the funniest things about that night is when we were driving out on the turnpike, we were way ahead of them and they were trying to catch up, but I was hauling ass at this point, so they weren’t even close. I decided to pull over into a ditch and turn off the headlights so they wouldn’t see us. I wanted to let them pass us so I could fly up behind them with our lights off, get up on their ass, and shoot at them some more. So we do that, we’re all sitting there in the dark, and we see them haul ass trying to find us. I pull out of the ditch real slow, the lights are off, and all you see is black. They’re hauling ass over this hill, but they couldn’t really see behind them, and they couldn’t find us. So I pull right up on their ass, and I’m talking about within a foot of their car, and I’m just hoping they don’t slam on the brakes. So here goes Davey Boy, he lights up another Roman candle and—voom!—he starts shooting it at their back window. I turned on the brights and started honking the horn trying to freak them out. It was crazy . . . and a little dangerous.

  Press Slammed

  Kane

  When you walk out of your hotel and see Big Daddy V sitting on someone, you know something crazy just went down. And
that’s exactly what happened one time in England. We were all getting off the bus in either Manchester or Birmingham in the UK. Anyway, we were pulling into the hotel, it was really late, and there had been a kick-boxing match at the arena across the street and all of the fans were headed toward our hotel. Next thing we know, one of their fans punched one of our security guards and there was a short scuffle. Our guys were all very professional actually, but what stopped the whole fight was Big Daddy V sitting on two people. That was the end of the fight. I walked out of the hotel and was like, “Why is V sitting on that guy?”

  The next day, I read about it in the English papers, and the British newspapers are even worse than our press when it comes to sensationalizing things, and the paper had an interview with the kickboxing promoter. So of course, he told this self-serving story of how there was this huge fight between all of his guys and all of our guys, and he’s talking about how we’re tossing people around with suplexes and all his guys are throwing big roundhouse kicks at us . . . and none of it happened. Don’t believe everything you read in the press.