Rumble Road (8 page)

As far as overall health, longevity, and stress level, it’s night and day. The bus gives you so much more opportunity, so much more time. Without the bus, you’re driving in the middle of the night, maybe get to your hotel at four o’clock, then you wake up at one in the afternoon, head to the gym, and it’s always rush-rush-rush-rush-rush just to make it to the next show. With that bus, I’ll be able to sleep and get up at a decent time and still be able to get my stuff done.

When I started, it was still like three or four years until GPS was around. But now having a driver and not even thinking about being behind the wheel and being able to sleep on the road, that’s as good as it gets. That should be the ultimate goal for any of us. Where you can get to a position in the company where you can afford the luxury of the bus. The bar has been raised to this. Now you know, if you can afford this type of luxury, you’ve made it. You’re finally where you want to be.

Back in the Nation days, Mark Henry once lost his European Championship to The Rock in a backstage game of
Madden.
Henry destroyed The Rock in the rematch and eventually took his title back with him to
Raw
, but this story just goes to show how invested some of these athletes are in their video games.
In fact, Christian was once one of the top-rated online players at a tennis game called
Top Spin 2
. “I figured I’d play the game until I was ranked number one in the world,” he tells me, “then I could break the disk and never
play it again.” Didn’t happen. Instead, Christian ended up losing to some guy from England after his opponent kept hitting lob shot after lob shot, frustrating the wrestler and throwing him off his game. “So afterward, I’m asking the guy why he did that and we end up getting into an argument over the headsets,” Christian explains. “Next thing I know the door to my game room swings open and my wife is standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring at me like a mother scolding a child.”

And while that might have been Christian’s last game of
Top Spin
2, the video game competitions across the WWE roster continue to heat up, especially in a car full of
Madden
gamers as they play round-robin tournaments while they travel the world.

Who is the champ? Depends on who you ask.

The Referee

Evan Bourne

I usually drive the car when I travel with Kofi Kingston, Hornswoggle, and The Miz, and those three have a heated
Madden
rivalry. There’s so much smack talk going on, I can literally hear them shouting things like, “March, march, march, march, I’m marching down the field,” while they play. I’ll ask for score updates while I drive, but sometimes I actually need to referee these guys because they are getting really upset at each other. When Miz starts losing, he gets very upset. And whenever Hornswoggle wins, he just grinds that victory in. He digs it in and keeps reminding Miz who beat him, and he will ask about the score for the rest of the night. Just digging and digging it in. I would say the most fun I have is riding in that car with Hornswoggle, Miz, and Kofi when they’re playing that game.

The Underdog

Hornswoggle

When we’re on the road, Kofi and I constantly play
Madden
. We have a big video game rivalry, and a big rivalry in general about everything. It’s a friendly rivalry, and we play jokes on each other constantly. He makes fun of my love for the Muppets, and I make fun of his love for just about everything else. But when it comes to
Madden
, nobody can beat me.

Things can get pretty heated in the car when we play, though, especially between Kofi and Miz. One time they made a bet that if Miz won, Miz would autograph Kofi’s PSP. But if Kofi won, he would sign Miz’s stupid guitar that we all hate but he demands to bring everywhere we go. Kofi ended up killing him and immediately pulled out his pen. I even took a picture of the victory celebration using my iPhone. So now every time Miz wants to play his guitar, he’s staring at Kofi’s signature. Priceless.

The Underrated

The Miz

When I travel with Kofi Kingston and Hornswoggle, we always end up having these long video game feuds. One of us will drive while the other two are playing video games on the PSP. Now, Hornswoggle and Kofi are avid
Madden
players. Huge, huge fans of the game, and the thing about it is, I’ll play here and there. I play sporadically, and really, the only time I ever play is when I’m in the car playing against them. I don’t play anywhere else. But I beat them almost half the time we play, and these guys play every single day. They go online and play
Madden
all the time with their little headsets, like, “Ohhhh, I’m going to beat you, I’m going to beat you.” They’re doing that whole thing all the time, and here I am with my little PSP portable player, and I’m beating them. You know how embarrassing that is? A person who doesn’t even play that much to beat someone who plays every day? I think I’ve gotten better at the game, but I’ve also gotten smarter. Kofi always likes to play as the New England Patriots. We all know the New England Patriots are the best freakin’ team in the whole game, so that’s why he plays as them. So what do I do? I started playing as the New England Patriots so he couldn’t. I make sure when we get to the team-select screen that I pick them first. As I got better at the game, I’ve switched over to the San Diego Chargers. Granted, the Browns are my favorite team, but I’m not playing as the Browns in
Madden
. You have to be some kind of video game guru to beat anybody as the Browns in
Madden
. So now I have my Chargers, and the last game me and Swoggle played, I beat him 28–14. He still owes me twenty dollars. Swoggle, if you’re reading this, you still owe me twenty bucks.

The Abbot

Kofi Kingston

Miz and Hornswoggle both know that I am the
Madden
abbot and I run the
Madden
temple and give them lessons all the time. But as I can see, the lesson of humility has not been well taken by these two. To be honest, Hornswoggle lost to The Miz so bad that he really hasn’t been the same since. He hasn’t even played that much lately, the loss hit him that hard.

As far as The Miz, you know The Miz, he’s a big talker, but last time we played I beat him 21–0. We have a 21-rule. It’s the skunk rule, where if you’re beating someone by 21, the game is over because you’re basically just wasting your battery at that point. After Miz was doing all his talking about how he was going to pick the Patriots, he ended up switching up so he could pick whoever he perceives is the best team. If he manages to win one game with a team, whatever team that is, that’s his new favorite team. No loyalty to the Browns . . . that’s where he’s from. But I’m from Boston, I’m a huge Patriots fan, so that’s my team in the game, I play as the Pats. Last time we played, it was 21–0 and it wasn’t even halfway through the first quarter. I don’t think it was fun for him at all, but it was great for the rest of the car because it was one of the few times he actually shut up all tour.

Rey Mysterio calls me from the road to break down his GPS obsession. “I love this thing,” he says, and in the background I hear the GPS voice telling him to turn left. “I’m almost too obsessed with my navigation system, though, especially when I’m driving by myself. I’ll go back in and punch in the address two or three times just to make sure I’m going to the right place.”
And why not, especially when one wrong turn can not only lead you in the wrong direction, it can sometimes even lead you to the wrong state.

Are There Mountains
in Nebraska?

Chris Jericho

I can’t believe we ever found our way anywhere before GPS. You’d drive into town completely blind and head to the gas station and ask where the arena is or where the wrestling is. Most big cities have signs on the road for the arenas, but other than that, you’re really heading into these cities blind where you need to pull over and ask somebody where you’re going. And the thing that’s funny is, when you do this, you’ll go to the gas station and you’ll ask somebody where something is, and they’ll say either, (a), it’s two hours away, or, (b), it’s five minutes away. And you can ask ten different people how far away something is and they’ll give you ten completely different answers. Oh, it’s about an hour away . . . Oh, it’s about ten minutes away . . . Oh, it’s about a half hour away. It’s all people from the same town we’re asking, and they’re all giving us different answers. Where is it? People in general just have a really bad sense of direction, so I don’t know how we got by without the GPS . . . or cell phones. I remember having to wait for a pay phone by the side of the road. Either that, or you’d wait by the phone in your hotel room for your girlfriend to call. You’d give her the room number and a time to call, and you would just sit and wait for that phone to ring. You would never go out because you were always waiting to talk to somebody. And it’s hard to believe, that was only ten years ago. Now life on the road is a cakewalk compared to what it used to be like.