Rumble Road (13 page)

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.

Wee-Man

Kofi Kingston

Ever since the draft, I’ve been traveling with Hornswoggle. We were in New Orleans one time, and I actually got to the hotel first, but the garage was full so I had to park along the street. The next morning, I was walking with Hornswoggle out to the car, and when I go to put the bags in the trunk, I notice this guy with dreadlocks and gold teeth riding an old-school BMX bike. I look at him, and I see he’s staring at us, then all of a sudden he slams on the brakes. He’s looking at Hornswoggle, and we know he’s going to say something, then he starts yelling, “Hey, shorty, hey, shorty, I see you.” Then he called Hornswoggle Wee-Man. He thought Hornswoggle was Wee-Man from
Jackass
.

What’s funny is, we always call Hornswoggle Wee-Man because everyone always mistakes the two of them. Hornswoggle hates being called that. And now here is this guy with gold teeth riding a bike calling him Wee-Man first thing in the morning.

Then later that night, we went down to Café du Monde, which is this old French place in New Orleans, and one of the waiters was so sure he knew who we were. He wanted our autographs and everything, but he had no idea. He thought we were all the
Jackass
guys, and he thought Hornswoggle was Wee-Man. So he got called Wee-Man two times in less than twenty-four hours. Boy, was he mad.

Do You Work Out?

Beth Phoenix

To your average person, if they go on the road, they’re away from home. But the amount we travel, I would say that you have to adapt to the road so that it feels like home. So you start to pick up little habits and nuances so that you feel like you’re living a normal life on the road. You need to have a regimen so that you can feel normal anywhere you are on the road anywhere around the world. So for myself, in particular, a big part of my character and a big part of what I do is staying in shape. A lot of times, for me, the biggest challenge is actually just trying to find a gym or someplace to work out. I need more than a Curves, so most of the time I need to turn to the male Superstars to find the best places to work out. The type of training that I do is strength training and power lifting, so I need a serious gym. For the most part, that’s my focus when I get on the road. That’s how I find my sense of normalcy, through training. Constantly working out on the road is really the only way we can keep our bodies healthy—and eating, that’s a whole other issue when we’re on the road. You have to prepare yourself with healthy things to eat, you have to carry around healthy foods with you so you’re not stuck in Mobile, Alabama, somewhere and your only options are eating Ho Hos and Ding Dongs at the Kwik-E-Mart down the street.

What I’ve noticed is that everyone carries things with them to remind them of home. I know some of my friends on the road, some of the guys will set up their area in the locker room really meticulously, and they do this on a regular basis. They put their boots in a certain place every time, they have their bag open a certain way, and it’s their way to make their own special space in the locker room. It feels like your space because it’s your stuff and it’s set up the same way. It’s just another way to try and find that normalcy. Maybe when you’re home, the first thing you do is plop down on your couch. Well, when you get to your hotel, maybe you always plop down on your bed and turn on the TV or you set up your area in the locker room the same particular way just so you have that home away from home.