Rumble Road (5 page)

But then I think we’re saved because a cop in a truck pulls over before John or Beth even arrive. He calls me over, making me climb out of the ditch and walk all the way over to where he parked for some reason instead of getting out and walking toward us. Then he goes, “Ma’am, where do you think you’re going?” So I tell him I already called the tow company but they wouldn’t come out, and he goes, “Of course they’re not going to come out. And ma’am, you can’t be down there trying to push your car out of the ditch.” So I ask him, “What am I supposed to do? I have a flight to catch in the morning.” Then he tells me, “I can either take you to a hotel or you can come to the station and wait until the road is clear, but that won’t be until five or six in the morning.” But my flight was at seven, so I told him there was no way I could do that. So he asks me, “What do you want me to do then? Do you want me to take you to a hotel, or do you just want me to leave you here?” Next thing I know, he starts asking me if I’m the one who sideswiped some car. He’s like, “Are you sure you didn’t hit anybody?” And when I tell him no, he just goes, “Huh,” and he leaves Katie and me there. He just drove off.

So there I was, walking back to the car and then trying to push it back up the hill again while Katie tried to gun it one last time. I still remember John finally pulling up and looking down at us after the cop had already left. He was like, “Get back in the car and warm up.” Within a few minutes it ended up being John, Beth, Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase, and one of our security guys all out there trying to push my car out of this ditch. And I’ll tell you how crazy John is, he was in sneakers and shorts, the shorts he wears to the ring, and a T-shirt. While the rest of us were trying to get bundled and wrapped up with as much as we can find, he’s out there in a blizzard in his shorts.

Anyway, we all get behind the car and push it out of this ditch and back onto the road. Somehow, someway, we were able to all work together and get my car back on the road. So what we did was, we all followed each other the rest of the way to the hotel. We were this big trail of cars slowly working our way through the blizzard at 30 mph down the highway. Then we saw some guy who had also spun out up ahead, so we all pulled over and tried to get him out of the ditch as well. Then that same cop pulled up and told the guy that he had to leave his car there, so the guy hopped in someone’s car and took off.

But all I kept thinking was, “Why would that cop just leave me there?” What if I was all alone? Would he have just left me to freeze? But looking back, we’re just lucky there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic on the road when we started to spin. Once we started into our 360s, I was just so worried that we were going to keep going all the way through the median to the other side and spin through the oncoming traffic. We’re very fortunate that we ended up in the ditch, even if it did take us a long time to get out. Luckily, with the muscle of all our guys and the sheer brute strength of a couple of Divas, we were able to get out of there.

Wrestler’s Rhapsody

Santino

One time we were on a long road trip. I was with Kennedy and Randy Orton, and they were both taking naps while I drove. Then that song “Bohemian Rhapsody” came on from Queen. I turned it up a little bit. I looked back and they were still sleeping, so I turned it up a little more. All of a sudden that part of the song comes on where it goes, “Figaro! Figaro!” and they both woke up and sang the different parts. Right from his sleep, Randy wakes up and sings, “Figaro! Figaro!” and Kennedy wakes up and sings, “Galileo! Galileo!” It was too funny. It was like a real-life
Wayne’s World
moment.

Hungry Man

Mark Henry

As far as the camaraderie and enjoying the journey, life on the road is good. But being a big guy, it’s hard to maneuver around hotels, flights, and small rental cars. It’s difficult.

One of the funniest things that happened was the night Tony Atlas and I were in a car after a show in Monroe, Louisiana, and as we were driving, I kept telling him that I was hungry and that we needed to pull over and get something to eat. But Tony kept saying we’d stop later, even though I told him over and over that I wanted to eat. Next thing we know, the tire on our car popped and we’re stuck on the side of the road. But the rental car agency, they didn’t put all of the tools to fix the tires in the trunk. So we called Avis and started fussing at them, and in the meantime I’m cussing Tony out because I’m hungry, I’m stuck on the side of the road, and because he never pulled over I have no food.

So I call Justin, our announcer, and I tell him what happened, how we called Avis and they’re sending someone out to repair our tire, and I tell him that if he passes a Subway or something, that he should bring me a sandwich. So Justin actually finds a Subway that’s still open, and he buys me a sandwich and brings it to me before they come fix our tire. So there I am, sitting on the trunk of the car eating my sandwich as traffic flies by. I’m just hoping I don’t get hit, but I don’t care, all I wanted to do was eat at that point.

Tony was sitting in the car because he was scared. All he kept saying was, “There are snakes out there. I don’t want to get bit by no snakes.” I told him, “C’mon, man, there aren’t any snakes on the highway.” So now Jesse and Festus pull up, and they have the same kind of car we rented, so we go into their trunk, pull out the tools, and start fixing our tire. Next thing we know, Tony jumps out of the car to help, but he doesn’t have the car in park. When he was in the car his foot was on the brake, but now he jumps out, taking his foot off the brake, and Jesse was underneath the car changing the tire. The new tire wasn’t even on yet and now the car starts rolling back. Everyone was like, “Oh no!” Jesse gets pulled back out of the way—he almost got crushed by the car. That’s not the funny part. We were all like, “Damn, Tony, why didn’t you put the car in park?” And he said, “Why does everybody always try to blame everything on me? Awww!”

So now they go back to fixing the tire, but we were right on the edge of the road, and I’m standing there making sure no car gets close to hitting us. By that time the roadside assistance guy calls and says he’s lost. We told him exactly where we were at, the highway, the mile marker, and everything. So I told him, “We got the car fixed now, so you can just turn around and go back.” This was an hour and a half after we initially called. And the guy goes, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to tell Avis that I helped you so I can get paid.” I was like, “I mind.”

After the tire is fixed, Tony tells me that we should drive to Nashville . . . that was like four and a half hours away! I told him, “There’s no way in hell I’m riding on this donut for the next four and a half hours.” He tells me, “Well, if we go fifty miles per hour, we’ll be fine.” And I’m like, “Tony, it’s going to take us six or seven hours to get to Nashville on a donut, with a good chance we’re going to end up popping the donut and be on the side of the road once again.” I told him we’d stop in Birmingham, change cars, call the office, and tell them that we might be late for the show. We’d get there when we get there. Tony started panicking. He wasn’t used to calling the office and dealing with problems. He was used to dealing with problems his own way, but that’s another story. I still just remember Tony sitting there mad, saying, “We’re stuck on the side of the road and you worried about eating.” I was like, “That’s because you didn’t work today.” What can I say, I wanted a sandwich.

Jumping the Wrong Curb

Jack Swagger

The road: That’s where you really earn everything that’s thrown at you. The travel schedule is crazy. Once you get into it, three months seems like a year because you’re working every weekend. There are a lot of good times too, because we have a good group of guys, a really good atmosphere backstage, so to travel with these guys, they really become your family. The three-hundred-mile drives can be tough, but it’s worth it.

Strange things end up happening, though, when you spend so much time driving. A few months ago, we were in Laredo, Texas, trying to get to this Outback Steakhouse. I’m driving down the street and all of a sudden it turns into a one-way street heading into this hotel. But instead of pulling all the way around to get to the Outback, I think I can cut through the hotel parking lot, but as I pull around, I see that the parking lot is all blocked in. So I’m driving around and I see this little area open up, and it looks like a little service road, so I figure I’ll just drive down off what looked like a little curb and we’ll be right there. Only thing is, as I’m driving out of the parking lot and onto the grass in front of this curb, I realize the drop is actually about four feet down, right onto cement. So I try to stop, but I hit the brakes too late and we can’t stop and the front wheels are off the curb. I try to back up, but the tires are just spinning, so the only place I can go now is down. So I take the rental car and we do the drop.
Bam!
Not too much damage, just messed up the bumper a little bit. But now we realize we’re not even in the Outback parking lot. We just dropped into the parking lot of some speaker store, and not only is the store closed, they have their parking lot gated off and the gate is locked. So not only did we just take a four-foot drop in our rental car, but now we’re locked in this speaker store’s parking lot.

So we’re looking around and we find some little wooden pallets, and there we are in the middle of the night, trying to build a bridge back up the four-foot drop so we can drive back to our original spot by the hotel. Unfortunately, all we end up doing is messing the car up some more. Next thing we know, a cop pulls up and he’s just looking at us, like, “What do you guys think you’re doing?” Luckily for us, the cop ended up calling the owner, and the owner of the speaker store came down and unlocked the gate for us. The whole time, though, the cop just kept looking at us like we were idiots.

Full Moon

Maria

I like to drive fast. Very, very fast. And this one time I was driving fast, and of course I get pulled over, but what I didn’t realize is that I had another speeding ticket that I forgot to take care of. So I’m driving by myself in the middle of Ohio, there’s nobody around for miles, and I’m going about eighty-five to ninety in a sixty-five-mile-per-hour zone. When the cop pulls me over, he tells me, “I can’t let you drive. You don’t have a valid license.” I was like, “What?” I didn’t realize that I had this other speeding ticket out, so they ended up towing my car and I was stuck on the side of the road with all of my suitcases waiting for a cab to come pick me up. All of a sudden, this other car goes zooming by and my phone starts ringing. It’s Matt Hardy, and he’s like, “Are you on the side of the road?”

I started telling him what happened, how I don’t have a car, and he ends up pulling around, and he’s with his brother Jeff, and they pick me up and bring me to the show. They always tell me they’re my angels now because they picked me up from the side of the road. It was absolutely ridiculous, but yes, this really happened to me.

The other thing that happens a lot on the road is people mooning each other. Of course, I can’t name names on that one, but we like to entertain ourselves with that.

And of course, it’s always an adventure driving with Maryse because she doesn’t know where anything is inside the car. I even have to tell her where the blinker is. I remember this one time we were driving through some town and we decided to stop at a Starbucks. We figure there are so many places to stop that we wouldn’t see anyone, so we get our coffee and hop back in the car. But when Maryse goes to pull out, she somehow hops up on a curb, and for like two minutes we’re seriously driving over this big curb in front of Starbucks. We just laugh it off and think it’s no big deal because nobody was around to see what was happening, but then when we get to the show, Fit Finlay was like, “Was that you guys?” He had seen us driving over the curb laughing our butts off and not even caring. We figured that between shows was about three hundred miles, no way anyone saw that. But it’s always that way. We always end up stopping at the same gas stations, the same places to go to the bathroom, the same food places. For some reason, everyone always stops at the same places.

Tennessee, Part 1

Shad

My most messed-up road story is the time Jay and I were driving through Tennessee. We left our hotel and started driving, but when we were on the road, some guy in his minivan, driving his family, he cut us off. And so me, being a New Yorker, I sped up and got ahead of him and cut him off back, then just kept driving. A couple of miles up the road, a cop came flying up on us, got in front of us, and pulled us over. First thing he asked us is if we had drugs in the car. I told him we didn’t have any drugs. Then he wanted to see my license and registration, and I said, “Cool.” I tell him it’s a rental car, then I reach over to grab my license and the cop rips the door open. He pulls out his Taser gun and points it at me, telling me to get out of the car. I didn’t want to get out, but he said he was going to Tase me if I didn’t get out, so I got out. When I stand up, I’m 6'7", this guy is 5'8" and he’s an old, fat, hillbilly cop. Next thing I know I’m in handcuffs and the cops are telling me how they know we’re drug dealers and how they just know we’re transporting drugs over state lines. I’m like, “Really?” Then all of a sudden, there are like six more cop cars pulling up along with a drug dog. The dog goes in and starts sniffing the car, and the only thing they find is some weed residue that must’ve just been left over from the rental car. I’m telling him it’s a rental car, that we don’t have any drugs, and that the residue is not from us . . . it’s a damn rental, but he tells me that he’s taking me to jail.

To make things worse, we had an autograph signing that we needed to get to and it was two hours away. So I’m sitting in the back of the cop car, and we’re on our way to jail, and I tell the cop, “You know why you’re doing this, right?” And he’s like, “Why?” So I tell him, “It’s because I’m black.” The cop was like, “No, you were breaking the law.” So I asked him, “What law was I breaking?” And he tells me I was speeding. After all that, he was taking me in for speeding. I was going like two miles an hour over the speed limit and they were arresting me! So I kept talking. I told him how he screwed up. How he put me in handcuffs in front of everyone, so he had to arrest me even if I didn’t do anything. This guy argued with me the entire way to the police station. We finally pull up, they close the gate, and this guy tells me I have two choices: I can either wait until Monday and go to court, or if I give him one hundred dollars, he’d let me go right there. So of course, I gave him a hundred dollars, and on the hundred-dollar bill I wrote “F—- you!” I walked out of there a free man.