Rumble Road (2 page)

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 Nassau, 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.

That night, we found a shop that sold fireworks. Not your normal little Fourth of July fireworks. These were quarter sticks of dynamite. And I’m not just calling these things quarter sticks of dynamite, these were legit
quarter sticks of dynamite
. . . these things would blow your hands off. They were eight inches long with a twenty- or thirty-second wick on them that burned slow just so you could run away. They were nuts and they were only like eight bucks each, so I bought a dozen of them.

Later that night, we were doing a show outdoors at this bullfighting arena that was probably a century old if not more, and the place was huge. They had all of these little pits where they kept the bulls, but the pits were empty and they had all of this loose dirt, so a couple of us dug this big hole and put a quarter stick of dynamite underneath. And this fuse was so long that we were able to use some old shovels lying around and bury this thing pretty deep. Before this, we had lit a few off just to see what they could do, and man, were they dangerous! But this one that we buried, dirt went flying everywhere and the noise was just unbelievable. It sounded like a bomb went off. The vibrations and the percussions of this arena with 20,000 seats and all of the old stone and cement of this bullfighting arena . . . the walls shook when this thing exploded.

The thing is, we had a lot of
policia
down at the arena. The Mexican police were guarding the building outside and keeping order with all of the big mobs of people who were lining up to come in. All of these
policia
were armed with machine guns and pistols, and they heard this big boom and they all drew their weapons and ran inside. It was total chaos.

I thought I was going to get in trouble when they found out what I was doing, especially when you see all of these guys with machine guns running in your direction, but it ended up that they all thought it was funny . . . so we did it again.

At that point, Santino and I put our heads together and came up with the idea that we should act like I got arrested. So they handcuffed me and dragged me out like they were arresting me for lighting the dynamite. We actually walked through the backstage area with me in handcuffs, and I just kept my head down, like, “Damn, what have I gotten myself into.” Nobody knew what to think. They all thought I got arrested by the Mexican police, which is definitely not something you ever want to do.

Miz gets Down to Basics

Ted DiBiase

You need to be strong-willed and mentally tough for this life on the road or it will catch up with you. You need to eat right and train and you’re away from your family, so if you don’t love sports entertainment, if you’re not passionate about it, there’s no way you can do it. But the fans are amazing, and they make all of the travel and everything that goes along with it totally worth it. It’s tougher than people think because we’re not just traveling on Mondays and one Sunday a month. We’re traveling from town to town, and we’re not driven, we drive ourselves. We have to find hotel rooms, we live out of a suitcase, and you see the world out of a window. It’s hard, but it’s worth it. It’s especially worth it when we’re all together in the same hotel and something happens that just makes you laugh harder than you could ever expect.

I remember this one night we were all in France. We were all sitting down eating inside the hotel at the restaurant after the show, and it was late. It was the last night of our tour, and we were all just hanging out and talking. When it’s our last night of a long tour like this, we don’t usually sleep that night because then you can just sleep easier on the plane the next day. So most of us were down in the restaurant along with Hornswoggle. He’s a funny guy as it is, but he was ready to cause some trouble that night. He’s asking everyone, “Where is The Miz?” We were all looking for The Miz, but The Miz had already gone to bed. So Hornswoggle leans over to me and he’s like, “Teddy, we need to go find The Miz and wake him up. We need to do something to him.” We didn’t know what we wanted to do, but one thing we knew, we already had stolen the key to his room from earlier in the night. So we go up to his room, and Hornswoggle was carrying this giant bottle of water. I was actually just there to protect the little guy in case The Miz tried to kill him. I was his bodyguard.

So we go up there, and all the lights were out. Hornswoggle sneaks into his room, and while The Miz was sound asleep, he dumps the entire bottle of water over The Miz’s bed. Miz jumps out of bed, Hornswoggle starts to run out of the room, I’m running behind him, and Miz is running after us, and he chucks this bottle of water at us as we race down the hall. But what’s funny is, The Miz is running down the hall and all he’s wearing is his underwear, and I swear, we all stop at the same time and hear the door behind him go
click
. So now Miz has been woken up, he’s just had water poured all over him, and he’s locked out of his hotel room half naked. Hornswoggle and I then head down to the hotel lobby and tell all the boys to gather around and watch what’s about to happen, as the only way Miz could get back in his room was to go up to the woman at the front desk . . . we weren’t going to do it for him.