Batista Unleashed (11 page)

“How many beers did you have?” I asked her.

“Two?”

“You got six cups in your hand.”

“Oh, I’m busted.”

My wife had been in the audience drinking beer, having a good ol’ time, while I was making an ass of myself in the ring. That wouldn’t have been bad at all, except that when we went out to try and find our car, she couldn’t remember where she parked it. We couldn’t find it. We must have spent like two hours looking for my car.

It’s a funny story now, but that night I wasn’t laughing.

HURRICANE

Hurricane—Gregory Helms—became a real good friend of mine later on. But the first night I met him, I had had such a fucking awful match. You know it’s bad when you go up to gorilla—the ready-room area during a wrestling show, named after famous wrestling commentator and wrestler Gorilla Monsoon—and no one will look at you, not make eye contact or anything. Well, it was one of those nights. I felt so bad and I was sitting down and pouting, just about heartbroken and maybe ready to cry because my match was so bad.

Hurricane walked over to me and he didn’t know me from anything, but he was looking out for me. He said, “Man, don’t let these guys see you like that. Pick up, put a fake-ass smile on your face, and don’t let these guys see you down.”

I’ll never forget that. He went out of his way to help me out. He’s my boy. Even though he is an abrasive dickhead.

There were other times when I was just so embarrassed I left without talking to anyone, not even saying good-bye. I’d get my stuff, grab Angie, stalk back to the car, and get out of there.

DEACON BATISTA

I was at OVW for two years as Leviathan, from 2000 to 2002. I had a shaved head, a big chain around my neck, and black trunks. Whatever was or wasn’t happening for me at WWE in those dark shows, I was doing pretty well at OVW. I had the look, and after a while, I became a really big deal there. I won the OVW Heavyweight Championship from Doug Basham, who was wrestling as the Machine.

I was ready to move up, or so I thought. I kept hoping the call would come.

Brock Lesnar had been at OVW around that time. Among other things, he and Shelton Benjamin were the OVW Southern Tag Team champs. Brock had been a star college wrestler before turning pro, he had a real good look, and WWE had very high hopes for him. He was called up and went on
Raw
, I believe in March 2002. Right away, they brought him out as a star.

I thought they’d do the same for me.

Heh.

It was Johnny Ace who finally called me and said they wanted me on
SmackDown!
Johnny Ace’s real name is John Laurinaitis; he’s head of talent at WWE.

“We’re starting you on TV next week,” he told me. “So we need you to go out and buy a really nice suit.”

He gave me all the other information I needed to know. I was beyond excited. I went out and bought a nice suit, a really nice suit. I spent five hundred bucks, which was a lot of money for us, because I still wasn’t making much. But I had the suit tailored and everything. It was perfect.

I showed up in my suit, and whoever I was reporting to said, “Come over here, kid. We need to cut the sleeves off of your suit.”

My five-hundred-dollar suit?

“You’re fucking kidding me,” I said.

“No, come here.”

“You’re
really
kidding me.”

Even here I look confused.

They weren’t. They cut the sleeves right off. I might just as well have taken out five hundred-dollar bills and set them on fire. At least I would have been warm for a second or two.

Then it got worse.

“Here, strap this thing on,” said somebody, holding out this big metal box in front of me. It was like a strongbox. It didn’t exactly look like a regular piece of wrestling gear.

“This is what you’re doing,” said the guy with the box. “This is your character: Deacon Batista.”

They put me out in this goofy suit and strapped this goofy box around my neck. They made me look like a cartoon character. I was a bodyguard for the Reverend D-Von. The box was supposed to be his cash box, where he put donations that he would collect from his congregation for his building fund.

I was totally confused. I was wearing a cut-up suit and carrying this dumb cash box around. I could have been anybody, dressed like a goon. They took away my star asset, my body, and I had no idea why.

Now I understand why they did it. They wanted to force me to learn how to work. They were doing it by taking away what I’d always relied on, my body, and forcing me to learn how to work the crowd with other tools. I wasn’t ready for the spotlight. Not by a
long
shot. I had dues to pay, and a lot to learn.

And WWE wasn’t exactly primed for me, either. D-Von couldn’t even pronounce my name right at first. When I came out he called me “Bas-ti-ta” or something like that. They had to voice over it later on before the show aired.

That first show I wasn’t in a match. I just came out with D-Von and looked menacing. The first thing I ever did as a wrestling move was clothesline Triple H outside the ring. I knocked the crap out of him. That was my first TV spot ever.

The week after that, I started on live event tours.

At my first house show, I went out and somehow managed to split my pants, from the front top to the back top. I had white underwear on, and black pants, so it was obvious that my pants were split. Bill DeMott—he was wrestling as Hugh Morrus at the time—just started laughing. He made a huge scene out of it. You could hear him throughout the whole place: “Ah, he split his pants. He split his pants.”

The whole arena started laughing. I was trying to play this big tough bodyguard, and ten thousand people were laughing at me.

From then on, I wore black underwear.

THE BUILDING FUND

The gimmick with D-Von was pretty funny, and after a while the crowds got really into it. Basically, D-Von was a crooked preacher. So he’d come out with this basket and collect money for his building fund. Well, just before I got there, someone had stolen the money. So enter Deacon Batista, the protector of the building fund—that big metal box with the chain—and the protector of the Reverend D-Von.

The thing was, we’d go out and do a show, and as we walked up to the ring people would wave money at us for the building fund. Of course we’d grab it.

The fans really got into it. As soon as that first person came out with a dollar, everybody else started pulling money out of their pockets. They wanted to be part of the show. Some of this was on television but it was really big at house shows. Guys wanted to be funny, wanted to be big time, so they’d pull out twenties. I think once we even got a hundred-dollar bill.

At night, we were leaving there with two or three hundred extra bucks every night. Which, as far as I could tell, mysteriously vanished. Maybe one of these days I’ll check to see if D-Von did build a church after all.

DEVON HUGHES

The Reverend D-Von, of course, was Devon Hughes, who fans may also know as D-Von Dudley. He started wrestling professionally around 1991 and was in the ECW before coming over to WWE. (They were separate companies in those days.) By the time I got there, Devon was a pretty big star and a well-respected veteran. After wrestling with Bubba Ray as the tag team Dudley Boys, he worked the corrupt preacher angle as Reverend D-Von on
SmackDown!
He’d just started doing that when I came on as his bodyguard.

The Dudleys, D-Von and Bubba.

Devon was the guy who broke me in on the road. He was the first guy I drove with consistently. He was a veteran but he really took me under his wing. He looked out for me, making sure I knew the ropes of being on the road. He was really my introduction to a lot of the things about this business that you can’t find in a book.

Devon liked to hang out a lot. He was real big on going out and having a few drinks after the shows. I’d always tease him because he drank white Zinfandel wine. A great big muscled-up black dude, and he’d go in and order white Zinfandel, a drink most of us think of as a girl’s drink. Now I get ragged on because I always order Malibu.

Devon also showed up with new jewelry every week. We used to always make fun of that, too. We said he had a Mr. T Starter Kit. He had a ring on every finger and about twenty gold chains around his neck.

IN THE EYE

I was nervous as a rookie. Trying to fit in, trying to show the veterans that you belong, can be difficult. It doesn’t take much to fuck up.

One of my early matches, we were working against Ron Simmons. I can’t remember who he was tagging with. You know, Ron’s a huge guy. He’s pretty intimidating. And with me just starting out, I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers or piss anybody off. Especially not Ron Simmons.

We worked a match with him and I accidentally thumbed him in his eye. I felt my thumb go in at least an inch. Well, maybe not an inch, but it definitely went into his eyeball. He fell out of the ring and he was holding his eye. He was covering it. I’m thinking, Oh God, this guy, he’s going to kill me. Here I am with the company only a few weeks, and I already buried myself with a veteran.

After the match we got backstage ahead of him. I told D-Von that Ron was going to kill me. Then Ron came in and I started apologizing all over the place.

“Hey, Ron, I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I’m really sorry.”

“For what?” he said. His eye was pretty much swelled shut.

“Your eye. I’m sorry I thumbed you.”

“My eye?” He tried blinking, but it wouldn’t quite open.

“Yeah, really, I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose. It was just an accident.”

“This?” He made a face and then rubbed it. “Naaahhhh, man, I just have some sweat in my eye.”

“I—”

“You didn’t do anything, kid. I just got a little sweat in it. Everything’s cool. No problem, man.”

He tried not selling it, pretending it was okay, but his eye was too swelled to even open right. But there he was, giving me a pass. He must have seen how nervous I was and really just felt sorry for me.

It shows you what a good guy Ron is. He could have easily ripped me apart, in front of everyone, and some veterans might have. But Ron Simmons was the kind of guy who had a lot of class, the kind who knew how to inspire a rookie just by being himself.

Thinking about Ron reminds me of some other friends of mine who really helped me out in the early days. Two I don’t want to forget to mention are Tommy Dreamer and Stevie Richards, who were great friends to me. They really encouraged me. Tommy still offers advice from time to time, but I don’t see Stevie much these days. Still, I just love them to death. Both of them have been wrestling with our ECW brand lately, and I love to watch their work every chance I get.

A ROOKIE’S MISTAKE

Riding with D-Von, I saw for the first time what it means to be a wrestling star. You go out and girls are throwing themselves at you, and guys are kissing your ass. People are really big fans and will do anything to hang out with you. That was a new world for me. D-Von had been everywhere. The Dudley Boys were a huge deal, really big in the wrestling world. We never went anywhere where they didn’t know who D-Von was.