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  Rumble Road

  Untold Stories from Outside the Ring

  Pocket Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster Ltd

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  Copyright © 2010 by World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  World Wrestling Entertainment, the names of all World Wrestling Entertainment televised and live programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans and wrestling moves, and all World Wrestling Entertainment logos and trademarks are the exclusive property of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Nothing in this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

  This book is a publication of Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Ltd, under exclusive license from World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 222 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8HB.

  First Pocket Books trade paperback edition August 2010

  Pocket Books and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-4391-8257-4

  ISBN: 978-1-84983-179-6 (ebook)

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-84983-179-6

  Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham ME5 8TD

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  one

  Ribs

  two

  Road Warriors

  three

  Time to Play the Game

  four

  Lost

  five

  Hotel Hell

  six

  Good (and Bad) Eats

  seven

  The Swerve

  eight

  Back in the Day

  nine

  Legacy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Introduction

  It’s my first road trip with WWE and I’m lost. And when I say lost, I mean lost in the GPS-actually-shows-two-arrows-pointing-directly-at-each-other-like-I’m-somehow-about-to-crash-into-myself lost. But it’s not just the signs that read “Wrong Way” and “Do Not Enter” that are freaking me out. It’s the fact that while everyone in the car is frantically trying to search for alternate directions on an iPhone that can’t catch a signal, a light inside the car pops on to warn us of low tire pressure. And of course, when we stop at the gas station to check our tires, fill up, and catch our breaths (not to mention catch that satellite signal), the gas cap of the car actually shatters into three pieces as we simply twist the top to the left. So now not only is our GPS still freaking out, we’re about to run out of gas and might have a flat.

  This all happened over the course of what should have been a simple three-hour drive and back between Pittsburgh and Penn State. A trip that should’ve been a quick trek along scenic roads but turned into start-and-stop traffic along countless construction sites, and the only things even mildly scenic were the crazy sideshow-like attractions in the random parking lots of strip clubs and adult video complexes we passed along the way.

  “Welcome to our world!” MVP laughs when I tell him about the trip. “I actually had a meeting with Vince McMahon once where we were talking about my career, and I explained to him that wrestling is my passion, it’s my craft and I love it. I’m one of the guys who worked the indies and would drive five hundred miles for five dollars just for the chance to perfect my craft and work in front of a crowd. What I explained to Mr. McMahon is this: What I do in front of our audience, I do it for free. What I charge Vince McMahon for is all my time on the road. It’s the grueling air travel, the car rides, and the bus rides. I charge for travel. I don’t charge for performing. The travel is the real work of this business.”

  And judging by my one experience between shows, he’s absolutely right: Once you get to the arena, once you step inside that environment, that’s when the adrenaline kicks in, that’s when the excitement of the spectacle takes you away from all your broken gas caps and wonky GPS machines. Once you get to the show, that’s when the fun really starts.

  “People think it’s all glitz and glamour, that we’re jet-setting around the world,” adds Christian, “but the reality is, we fly into a city, rent a car, find a restaurant, find a gym, go to the hotel, find the arena, perform at the show, find somewhere to eat after the show, and either drive on to the next town or spend the night in that hotel and drive off to the airport the next morning. Rinse and repeat. It’s the same thing over and over. Sometimes we get lucky when we’re overseas and we might get to spend an extra day in one place and go sightseeing, but for the most part, we’re in and we’re out. It’s all about getting to the next arena and entertaining. That’s what we live for. That’s what we do. Everything else in between is just a means to an end of getting to that arena in order to perform for our fans.”

  And the more I was able to talk to these stars about their lives of 200-plus travel days a year, the more I kept hearing the same word pop up over and over again: family. These Superstars spend so much time traveling across the world in order to entertain their fans that their second families are their fellow men and women in tights, performing together in a raucous show CM Punk describes as a “rock concert where the band is beating each other up on stage while at the same time performing improv comedy.”

  But maybe nobody better sums up what it means to live your life out of a suitcase traveling alongside everyone from a leprechaun to a Glamazon to a king better than second-generation wrestler Cody Rhodes.

  “Life on the road is a unique thing. It’s such an experience because you’re taking a bunch of different people from different parts of the world with different life experiences, who come from different social circles and have very different behaviors,” he says. “But you get all of these people on the road together and they become a family very quickly. It’s a lot like a real family. It’s not necessarily people you like very much or you want to hang out with on your off days, but we all certainly depend on each other.

  “There is a long-standing tradition in wrestling, that when you get to the building, you shake hands with everybody. People have forgotten why we do that, but I am very fortunate to know because I was reminded regularly by my old man [WWE Hall of Famer Dusty Rhodes]. It is just a way of saying thank you. What you have to realize is that the top is not just one person. It takes two. You need someone in the ring. You need someone to work against. You need someone to work with.

  “So when we travel on the road, I see it as family because that’s truly who we are.”

  Rumble Road follows some of this WWE family as they dish the dirt on some of their most memorable stories between performances. From their favorite practical jokes to the shenanigans that happen at three in the morning to the time Santino punched a Tasmanian Devil and made her cry, here are some of the funniest moments straight from the Superstars who lived them.

  Now if only I can get this GPS working again, maybe I can get back on the road for another trip of my own. And I still don’t understand how a gas cap shatters into three pieces. . . .

  Rumble Road

  Untold Stories from Outside the Ring

  One

  Ribs

  “Don’t ever fall asleep first. If I had one piece of advice for future wrestlers traveling in groups, that would be it.”

  —CHRISTIAN

  Forget everything you know about curved bones and barbecue sauce. When it comes to the world of sports entertainment, any type of practical joke or prank is referred to as a rib. It can be wrestler on wrestler, wrestler on wrestler’s car, wrestler on entire backstage, and even wrestl
er on poor convenience store clerk who just happens to be working at three in the morning. Whatever the combination, the amount of effort and thought that goes into some of these setups (some unfold over months!) is downright amazing, but there’s no denying, the results are hilarious. “We like to have fun with each other, and the ribs are all in good fun,” explains Kofi Kingston with his trademark smile. “But once you rib somebody, you have to expect to get ribbed back, and it’s probably going to be worse than the rib you did, so it kind of keeps spiraling. It tends to get out of control at times, but I try to stay out of the whole ribbing scene just because I don’t want to be ribbed. But we’re on the road so much, we have to find something to keep ourselves entertained, otherwise it’ll just be us driving on the road listening to boring conversations and bad radio.”

  So here they are, the best road ribs in recent WWE history. Ever hear the one about Chris Jericho’s deaf music fan?

  Can You Hear Me Now?

  Christian

  Back when I was in the Independents, I had this manager in Detroit who was deaf. And basically, if someone who is deaf wants to call you on the phone, they call this other person first and they type in what they want to say. This other person then reads what is typed word for word almost like a translator. They have to say the words exactly like it is written to them, no matter what it says. So back in the day, this manager used to rib me all the time and he’d call me throughout the week with his deaf telephone interpreter and he would say these really rude things. He’d use language not befitting a woman, and this poor woman operator would have to say it to me word for word. I’d have to respond, and I would be so embarrassed listening to this woman that I’d just give one-word answers. Yes. No. Maybe. That’s all I’d ever say because all I wanted to do was get off the phone as soon as possible. It was so embarrassing, and this manager just got a big kick out of it because he knew how uncomfortable it made me.

  Anyway, out of the blue years later, I get a call and it’s the same sort of thing happening. I figured out right away that someone was trying to pull a rib on me, so I hung up and I immediately looked up the area code where this number came from. The number was a Minnesota area code, so I scrolled through my phone and looked to see who I knew from Minnesota. There was only one wrestler . . . Daivari. So I called him up and said, “Why are you trying to rib me, kid? You’re just a rookie here.” All of a sudden he got so quiet, so I told him, “Hey, you didn’t answer my question.”

  He started apologizing, but I told him it was all right. All I wanted to know is if he told anyone what he was up to. When he told me no, I asked him to help me rib Chris Jericho.

  So for months and months and months, Chris was with his group Fozzy, and we pretended we were a deaf fan of him and his music from England named Gertrude and we’d contact him using this same deaf translating service. We said that we got his number, and even though we attended all his concerts and we couldn’t hear him actually sing, we just knew he had a beautiful voice and we could tell that he was singing to me. We even went so far as to have Gertrude say that she told her mom about him and her mom told her it might be a long shot, but that she should go after him and try to make the relationship work. What’s funny is, Chris would come up to me and tell me what she’d said during the call and he’d ask me if I knew anything about this. He’d tell me how he had this crazy fan who loves his music and loves his words but she’s deaf. He was really starting to get freaked out. And then any time we’d head to England, we’d really crank up the calls. We’d hide around the corner and watch him answer his phone. He’d talk for a second, hang up his phone, and then we’d see him sitting there just shaking his head. So we’d call back and we’d see him look at the caller ID and he wouldn’t want to answer it, he’d just put the phone away and pretend it wasn’t ringing.

  We actually had this going on for months until we finally let the cat out of the bag and told him it was us. He got a pretty good laugh out of it. The funniest moment was probably when we called and told him that Gertrude was going to his concert and that after the show she was going to head to the hotel so they could finally meet and talk about things, talk about their future together. You’d see him walking through the lobby of our hotel and he’d be looking side to side as he hurried to the elevator. The look on his face was too funny. I think he was really scared this deaf stalker was going to jump out at him from the elevator or something.

  Yeah I Hear You, But That’s Not the Whole Story

  Chris Jericho

  When Christian was off one time for an injury, for some reason I got this e-mail about celebrity phone calls. It was this service where you could get various celebrities to call you on your birthday or for a special occasion or whatever it was. And one of the names on the list was this guy named Lash LeRoux. He was listed as a “WCW Wrestling Superstar” . . . he was in WCW for like five minutes and he had this really bad Cajun gimmick that always made Christian and me laugh. He’d talk like he was “Cay-jon,” the “Cay-jon” man. So I signed up for the celebrity birthday call, and you could choose the celebrity you wanted, and these celebrities were like Frank Stallone, Todd Bridges, Urkel, and Lash LeRoux. So I signed up for Lash LeRoux, and in the e-mail, you could type in the message you wanted to send. So I wrote: “To little Jason Reso [Christian’s real name], I hear you’re not feeling good. Keep your head up, buddy. We’re all pulling for you, little trouper.” So Jay was at home and he got the call: “Hey, this is Lash LeRoux!” Jay was like, “Yeah?” And Lash went through the message, like, “Hey little buddy, hope your knee feels better soon,” then he hangs up after like fifteen seconds. That was Christian’s celebrity call, and that was the reason he wanted to get his revenge with the deaf fan/stalker. It’s because I got him first with the Lash LeRoux celebrity birthday call. That’s what started it off.

  But the thing about the deaf calls, he had the woman sounding like a complete psycho. He was having her say Fatal Attraction–type stuff, about how we were meant to be together, and I kept getting these calls every couple of weeks that would just get progressively crazier and crazier and crazier. And the one I remember most is this time when I was on a bus in England. Christian was on a different bus, but they had pulled up next to each other, so he was watching my reaction when his deaf stalker was saying things like, “Just because I’m three hundred and fifty pounds doesn’t mean I’m not beautiful.” And what’s funny is, I didn’t even know you could do this. The operator literally has to say whatever the message is, so the operator is saying everything so stoically, but what he’s saying is things like, “I’m going to come to your room and bury this knife in your chest if you don’t want to have sex with me.” It was crazy. And this one time when we were sitting on the bus, he could see me through the window being like, “What the hell is going on?” It was insane.

  The get Back

  Shelton Benjamin

  Everyone knows that character-wise, I’ve had my problems with Cryme Tyme, but some of the problems extend outside the show as well. Like one night after a Pay-Per-View in Indianapolis, traffic was crazy and we were all trying to get out of the building. I’m trying to navigate through the crowd and through traffic, and as I pull up to the light, Cryme Tyme was in the car next to me. We’re pretty good at ribbing each other, so just for the heck of it, I threw an empty bottle of water from my car right into their car through an open window. We were all laughing and everything, and I pull away. But when I stop at the next light, I see Cryme Tyme pull up behind me and Shad gets out of the car. He runs up to my car and pours a complete bottle of some sort of chocolate protein shake over my windshield. It was so thick, even when I turn my wipers on, I can’t get this stuff off and I can’t even see through my windshield. I actually needed to pull over to a gas station a few blocks down the street just to clean this shake off, and there was chocolate everywhere. It was at that point I gave them a warning that there would be payback.

  So about two or three weeks later, there was a super show in Nass
au, and myself and one other wrestler stopped before the show and bought a couple of quarts of oil, peanut butter, and a down pillow. While Cryme Tyme were in the ring, me and this other gentleman proceeded to go out and pour the oil all over their car. Then we ripped the feathers out of the pillow and put the feathers all over the top of the car, all over the backseat, all over the front seat, and I spread peanut butter all over the steering wheel and the handles. It was a complete mess.

  When Cryme Tyme came out and saw the car, they couldn’t believe what happened. But as it turned out, it wasn’t their car. They were actually riding with Primo, so poor Primo just got caught in the cross fire. The funny thing is, Cryme Tyme started yelling, “Ha-ha, you tried to get us, but you didn’t get us!” And I was like, “Okay, so what you’re saying then is you’re still in my crosshairs.” And they both look at each other, then they turn to me at the same time and were like, “Yeah, you’re right. You got us.”

  I ended up paying Primo for the car to be cleaned, but it was worth it.

  Boom Boom Pow

  Randy Orton

  We were in Tijuana about three years ago, and Revolution Avenue is notorious down there for all their little shops and clubs and strip bars and the craziness going on. I used to frequent that area when I was in the Marine Corps, back in 1999. All of us guys would go down there, taking the bus to San Diego, then taking the trolley to the border at San Ysidro and finally taking a cab to Revolution Avenue. It took about three hours for us to get there from base, but it was worth it. It was a ton of fun. Now I come back there all these years later, only now I’m a WWE wrestler. Back in the Marine Corps, no one bothered us. Now there are like a hundred kids following us up and down the street. It’s crazy.