Rumble Road (4 page)

Anyway, I found out that we were scheduled to have a tag match on
Raw
, so I decided, since there’s all sorts of stress and anxiety involved in wrestling in a bikini, that I’d send a text message out to all of the girls to convince Gail that we were going to be in a Bikini match just to stress her out. So she came to TV all worried, and we let her sweat it out for a while before she finally realized that we were just having a regular match.

I’ve known Gail for a long time and we’ve had a lot of matches against each other, so it was fun to be able to get under her skin a little bit. I really wanted to let it go as long as possible, even if that meant her getting in her bikini and getting ready for the match, but unfortunately it never got that far. Maybe next time.

The Kidnapper

Shelton Benjamin

When I first got on the road with the
SmackDown!
crew, there were a lot of us traveling together. I was in a group with Charlie Haas, Rikishi, Rey Mysterio, and a few other guys . . . all together, there would be about ten of us. We would rent a few SUVs or minivans and follow each other around from town to town. But what Rey and I would do, we’d stop for gas and walk into a convenience store. Obviously, no one would know who we are because a lot of people don’t recognize Rey without the mask, and at the time I was so new, I could pretty much walk around unnoticed. But me and Rey would always do this thing where, right in front of the cashier, we’d bump into each other and we’d get into it like we were about to fight. Like, “Hey man, watch where you’re going!” “No, you watch where you’re going!” We would get to the point where we’d be real loud and animated, and we did it just to get a rise out of the cashiers. The cashier would always be like, “Please, guys, calm down. Please don’t fight in here. Just calm down.” We’ve done it so many times, and I swear, it’s the funniest thing ever when these cashiers think a fight is about to break out in their store.

The best was one time, Rey said something and I was like, “Fine, we’ll see . . . I’ll get you!” So I walk out of the store and hop in the van we rented. Then when Rey walked out the front door, we sped the van in front of the store, slammed on the brakes, threw the door open, and snatched Rey into the van before speeding off. We looked back and the cashier was freaking out like you couldn’t believe. He thought we just kidnapped one of his customers. I don’t know if he ever called the cops or what. All I know is it was funny as hell.

The Kidnapper

Rey Mysterio

What’s funny about this story is, as soon as we’d bump into each other, we’d start arguing and we’d really work the whole scene good, raising our voices louder and louder the more we got into it. “Hey, watch where you’re walking!” I’d say. Then Shelton would snap at me, “Screw you!”

“No, screw you, man!” I’d shout back. Shelton would walk away, and I’d turn to the cashier and be like, “Man, what a jerk. This guy is walking around like he owns the store. You just can’t treat people like that.” And the cashier would always be on my side, like, “You’re right. You can’t treat people like that.” We would go into it with words for so long, like at least five minutes, and that’s a long time to argue in a convenience store in the middle of the night. And you could tell the cashier would be getting more and more freaked out, and then we’d do the big finish by taking it outside. The clerk never knew if he should call the cops or what.

The ultimate was when Shelton pulled up in the van, grabbed me, and threw me in like he was kidnapping me. We were laughing our asses off inside the van. We actually pulled this stunt about six or seven times, and it never got old. Sometimes we would even do it at a convenience store near an arena, so there would be a lot of fans hanging out there, and they would start to look at us like stuff was about to go down between Shelton and me for real. Everyone would be looking at us in shock like we really hated each other. Those were good times.

Think your back aches after a tough day on the job? Can’t wait to get out of rush-hour traffic just so you can get home and relax? Now think about driving three hundred miles to a show, getting suplexed a few times by a four-hundred-pound opponent, then cramming back into a small rental car with three or four other muscle-bound men as you drive three hundred miles more to the next show. Now do that over two hundred days a year. “The travel we do can be brutal at times,” Randy Orton tells me. “You figure a normal family goes on vacation across the country and back over a week, and that takes everything out of them to the point they almost
need a vacation from their vacation. And they might only do that once a year. We live out of a suitcase. We live out of hotels and rental cars where three-hundred-mile drives are the norm. I’m around these guys more than I’m around my wife and my child. It’s tough. We’re a close-knit group of guys. Guys you can depend on and talk to and we’re there for each other. Band of brothers . . . it really is.”

With all that time on the road, the Superstars and Divas have gathered quite a collection of road trip stories. From late-night crashes in broken-down rentals to run-ins (and posing) with the police, you’ll never view driving cross-country the same again.

Imagine driving down the freeway only to see Mark Henry lifting his car out of a ditch in the middle of the night . . .

World’s Strongest Man . . .
No, Seriously

MVP

I was in a car one night with Mark Henry, and Mark was driving us to the airport. We end up going in the wrong direction, so Mark decides to make a U-turn, and our car goes off the road a little bit and gets stuck in ice and snow. He kept hitting the gas, but our wheels were just spinning. We were stuck. We look at the clock, and time was really ticking down on us. If we didn’t do something fast, we were going to miss our flight. So Mark told me to stay in the car, and when he gave me the word, I was supposed to hit the gas. I see Mark walk around to the back of the car, and next thing I know, he’s actually lifting the back of the car up off the ground. And this wasn’t a small car. We’re talking about a Chevy Impala being lifted out of a ditch in the snow. The World’s Strongest Man literally lifted the back end of our car so we could make our flight on time. I was so stunned, I didn’t even have any words, and when he got back in the car, all he said was, “Man, I sure hope we don’t miss our flight.” The man didn’t have to say anything else. He knew what needed to be done and he did it. His sheer strength just left me in awe. Mark Henry is better than a tow truck.

Strike a Pose

John Morrison

I call WWE an express train with very few stops. You get on the train and you usually don’t get off until your career is over or you’re injured. I got on this train in 2003 and I’m still on this train and everything that I’ve done and seen feels like a blur. It’s like I just watched everything fly by at 100 miles per hour.

But when you’re on the road, some crazy stuff just ends up happening. I remember this one time I was driving through Cleveland at about 110 miles per hour, or something ridiculously unsafe. And of course, I get pulled over by a cop. I was driving with Melina, and when the cop pulled me over he started yelling at me to get out of the car. I could tell by his voice that he was really nervous. He didn’t have his gun drawn, but he must’ve thought I was some kind of drug dealer or criminal to be driving that fast. He’s watching my every move, yelling at me to get out of the car. I roll the window down and put my hands out, and I yell to him, “I’m really sorry, sir. I’m just a WWE Superstar.”

He’s like, “What!?!”

So I told him again that I was a WWE Superstar, but he didn’t understand what I was talking about, so I started to name-drop everyone from Hulk Hogan to Undertaker to The Rock. He looked at me and started shaking his head. “You don’t look like one,” he said.

So I was like, “Actually, I’m the Intercontinental Champion.” But he still didn’t believe me. That’s when I told him I’d make him a deal. I told him that if he’d give me a break and not give me a ticket, I’d show him the championship belt. He looked at me, still not really believing me, but then he said, “Okay, if you show me your championship, I’ll think about it.”

And I swear, the second I took my championship belt out of my bag, he forgot all about being an officer and reverted back into little-kid mode. I handed him the belt, and he was holding it up like he had just won the title. Then he put it over his shoulder, and then he actually had me pose in front of his cop cam on his car where I was holding his hand up.

I don’t think any of the boys would’ve ever believed this story if Viscera hadn’t driven by right when I was holding the cop’s hand up. The next day I was at the building trying to tell the story, and nobody believed me. They all thought it was BS. Five minutes later, Viscera walks in and was like, “Hey, Johnny, was that you standing on the side of the road just outside of Cleveland taking pictures with some cop and your belt?”

Everyone just looked at me, and I was like, “Yes, thank you. True that. That was me.”

Just goes to show, it doesn’t matter who you are, for some reason people see that championship and go nuts.

Divas in a Ditch

Mickie James

Life on the road is rough because if it’s under three hundred miles to the next town, we’re driving it. I remember there was a
Monday Night Raw
in Sioux Falls and I was driving back to Omaha because that’s where we were flying out of the next morning. There was this huge blizzard, and they had shut down the roads for a while and weren’t letting anyone drive. So they finally opened the roads, and I was riding with Katie Lea Burchill in this white Dodge Charger. Katie Lea is from Europe, and she was saying how she had never seen snow like this in Europe. So I start telling her, yeah, you need to be really careful because even though they cleaned the roads, there’s still a lot of black ice out there. I was telling her how you could see the ice patches, but how the black ice isn’t really something you could see. I’m sitting there explaining how you’re supposed to navigate your way through black ice while I’m driving, and just as I tell her what you’re supposed to do when you hit a patch of black ice, we hit a patch of black ice. I was like, “Oh no, oh no!” And we started to fishtail a little bit, but luckily I managed to steer the car straight. I was like, “Oh my God, that was a close one.” As soon as I said that, the whole back end spun out and I started doing 360 after 360 after 360 after 360. We were in the middle of the highway with cars flying by us from both sides. In the middle of the road there was this huge median with a big ditch, and we had already done four 360s at least, and there we were in the median still spinning. The only way I can describe it is like we were living in a real-life snow globe because there was snow spinning all around us and there was nothing we could do about it. I’m fearing the worst, and when I look over, Katie is holding on for dear life. We both just kept screaming, “Make it stop, make it stop!”

Finally we stopped, and we were stuck in the middle of the median in this big ditch and we were packed in about three feet of snow. I get out of the car, and I’m not sure what to do, so I call the tow company, but they tell me that they can’t come out and tow us because the police have just called all people off the road and the tow company needs to wait until the morning to find out if they get the all-clear. But that might not be until five or six in the morning. So I’m on the phone and I ask them, “So what am I supposed to do?” And they tell me that it’s a $1,500 fine if they come out onto the road and help. But I’m outside in this blizzard and my car is stuck in a ditch, so I tell them, “I’ll pay your fine if you come out.” I had a flight to catch the next morning, and I just really wanted to make it to the hotel and get warm. But they told me, “Sorry, ma’am, we can’t do that. It’s against the law.”

So I had Katie get behind the wheel, and I told her, “Okay, we’re going to rock it. When I tell you to, gun it. Gun it, then let it off, gun it, then let it off.” My job was to push the car while she gunned it, and I thought we could get the car back up the hill. Mind you, it is freakin’ freezing outside, I’m in three and a half feet of snow, and coming from the show I’m still wearing what I wore on
Raw
, which is Diva clothing: not much to it and definitely not snow appropriate. I have my little leather jacket on and my Diva pants and I have the car rocking, but all that’s happening is the tires are spinning and spitting dirty snow all over me. I’m frozen to the bone by that point, so I text John Cena and Beth Phoenix. I’m telling them how I’m stuck in this ditch and I don’t know what to do. Luckily, they were both only a few minutes behind us on the same road, but by this point, literally, I saw my whole life flash in front of me while I was in this snow globe. My body was shaking, I was so freezing, and the only gloves I had were to keep me warm while I was walking from my car to the hotel—they weren’t gloves to try to push a car out of a ditch during a blizzard.