Batista Unleashed (13 page)

D-Von told me once that in terms of my wrestling education, I was in high school when I rode with him, and college when I rode with Triple H and Ric Flair. It’s really true. I learned so much from those guys that I can never repay them.

But I might never have graduated from high school to college if David “Fit” Finlay and Chris Benoit hadn’t stepped in and helped me get myself straightened out. They were like summer school teachers who you have for a few weeks and then they save your butt just when you’re about to wash out. Those teachers never really get any credit, but they may end up changing your life.

Finally, I was able to leave the Deacon behind me.

PET PROJECT

When my bit with D-Von ended, I was having a lot of trouble in the ring. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know that much—which was definitely true—I was even having a hard time doing what I knew. I couldn’t relax, and that meant I couldn’t perform. I had so much to learn and I knew it—and I just couldn’t make it work.

I think it was as kind of a last-ditch effort to help me succeed that Johnny Ace said to Fit Finlay, “Batista is your pet project. See if you can do something. Take him under your wing and train him. If he doesn’t get better, it’s your fault.”

That’s the story I heard. Whether it’s true or not, Finlay really did take me under his wing, and I really did get better.

Finlay has a long history in the business. He started in Ireland and Great Britain, and before coming to WWE he was in the WCW, where he first got attention as “The Belfast Bruiser.” He’s a guy with tremendous ability and tremendous knowledge about wrestling. Even more important as far as I was concerned, he knows how to communicate it. The guy can teach.

At the time, Dave Taylor had a camp in a suburb of Atlanta called Peach Tree City. Taylor is another veteran originally from England. We went to his camp. There were only four of us: me, Finlay, Taylor, and Chris Benoit.

It’s difficult to mention Chris now without thinking of the horrible events in June 2007, when the police say he killed his wife and son and then committed suicide. I don’t know what demons were possessing him. The Chris I knew wouldn’t have done that.

The week before the murders, he had his wife and son on the road with him. If you saw them, you’d know his son, Daniel, worshiped him, and Chris truly loved his son. And Nancy—well, she always had a smile for everyone.

We were all in Houston for our Pay-Per-View,
Vengeance,
that Sunday, when Chris didn’t show up. Everybody was in disbelief—Chris Benoit missing a match? A Pay-Per-View?? So you can just imagine what we felt when we heard the news the next day.

I still can’t believe it. It’s just so far out of line with what I knew of him.

Up until that tragedy, Chris’s career spoke for itself. I loved working with him. He always brought out the best in his opponents. In this case, he came along to help not because we were great friends or anything, but because he thought I was a good guy and worth taking a chance on. He’d do anything to help anybody out, as long as he knew that you wanted to be there.

FINLAY

I should really take a little time here to give a lot of credit to Fit, not just for what he’s done for me in my career, but really for what he’s done for the business in general. I’m impressed with him on so many different levels it’s not even funny. For one, he was out of the ring for I think something like five years, and made probably one of the most successful comebacks that I’ve ever seen. When everybody heard that he was going to come back into the ring, go from being an agent to a performer, a lot of people smiled behind his back and maybe even laughed a little bit. They were saying things like, “What’s he got to contribute?” and “He’s past his prime.” But now he’s a top guy. He’s one of the people everyone is begging to work with.

Fit is not the largest guy in stature that you’ll ever meet, but he is by far one of the toughest sons of bitches you’ll ever meet. A lot of guys in our business are tough, but Fit doesn’t feel he has to prove it. He doesn’t take liberties on anyone, he doesn’t hurt anyone, and isn’t too snug. He is naturally snug, though—that first whack from Fit, he really lets you know he’s there. But that’s the way our business should be. Whenever we’re working together and I get that first whack, I say, “You stiff Irish prick.” He giggles a little, and we go from there.

Fit is an old-school wrestler. He’s one of those guys who, like I’ve said before, listens to the crowd and works for the moment. He doesn’t like to put together big, elaborate spots; he likes to work and create art. Somehow, he never loses sight of the entertainment value and how important that is. He knows wrestling is entertainment. He wants people to believe. He wants it to look like a fight, which it is when you’re in there with him, but he’s not afraid to make the audience laugh. That’s a very delicate balance. And he’s not afraid to be the butt of the joke. That’s something Eddie Guerrero had, too. He wants to make the match look like a shoot, like it’s real, but he also wants to entertain you.

Like his leprechaun, who really has added a lot to our shows, just fun stuff. I’m pretty sure Hornswoggle was his idea. It’s kind of crazy when you think about it—especially considering Fit and what a tough son of a bitch he is—having a leprechaun hiding under the ring to be part of his act, but that’s who he is.

Now, Fit might not like me to say this, but outside the ring he’s a very compassionate person. He’s not afraid to be kind. It’s impressive today in general, but it’s especially impressive in our business. He’s a true gentleman.

One last thing: I’ve always noticed and admired how proud he is of his family and his kids. A couple of times he’s brought his kids over, you see him gleaming, just glowing, because he’s so proud of those kids. That’s awesome. That’s a dad.

STRETCHED INTO THE MOMENT

These guys had the same kind of working styles and philosophies on wrestling. They’re all very, very talented men. They really stretched the shit out of me from the very first minute I got there.

I mean that literally. They’d put me in a hold and kind of stretch me a little bit, not to hurt me, just to work me out. They took turns. One guy would get in the ring and wrestle a little bit, doing a lot of mat wrestling, a little chain wrestling. When he was blown up, a fresh guy came in to take his place. Meanwhile I’m still blown, I’m tired and struggling. But they were in there pushing me, seeing how bad I wanted it. They ran me into the ground. I lost ten pounds of water weight every day I was there.

I ended up getting a lot of heat later on because I said that I learned more from Finlay in two days or whatever than I learned from OVW in two years. Jim Cornette never forgave me for saying that. But it was true. I never really learned how to work at OVW. I learned how to kill guys in squash matches, Goldberg-type matches. You go in and just obliterate the guy, like Bill Goldberg did in his undefeated run at the start of his WCW career.

Well, down in Atlanta, they picked up on it right away. As soon as they put me in a move, I would try to get out of it. The guys told me to live in the moment. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Somebody’s got you in a hold, you work to get out of that hold, you don’t just pop out of it.

Live in the moment.

For me, that was the main difference between what I had been doing and what I should have been doing. That was the key to making it all believable. It changed everything. I realized that wrestling wasn’t about going through the motions and knowing all the moves. It’s about working, taking your time in the ring, and getting it right.

Things didn’t start turning around right away. It wasn’t like in a movie or a television show, where your whole life changes in one sixty-second scene. But it definitely turned on a lightbulb in my head. It gave me a new outlook on wrestling. I realized it was an art, not a science.

WRESTLING IS AN ART

There are a handful of guys who are so good, they can go out and call a match on the fly with literally anyone and still have a five-star match any day of the week. Guys like Ric Flair, guys like Triple H, guys like Stone Cold, The Rock. Those guys. They are naturals, and they are the best. There’s only a handful of them, and however they got there, through whatever combination of hard work and natural ability, they’re in a special class by themselves. They make it happen, and it seems, at least to me, that they never struggle doing it.

But for me, wrestling is an art that takes patience and practice and, above all, work. There’s much more to wrestling than just knowing the moves. In a way, it’s the art of selling. You have to get in the moment and feed off the crowd and make it real. You sell not the moves, but what’s behind the moves. Everybody knows it’s entertainment, and that makes it harder, because you’re trying to suck them in. But if you really live in the moment, make the people believe, they will. Because they want to believe.

EVOLUTION

When I got back to WWE, they had me start working with Triple H and Randy Orton. They were getting me ready for Evolution.

Evolution was a heel group that was modeled after the Four Horsemen. People who are familiar with wrestling history know that the original Four Horsemen—Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson, and Tully Blanchard—were extremely popular heels in the late 1980s. Though traditionally heels are bad guys who fans boo, the Four Horsemen had a tremendous following and great success in the ring. They had swagger and flash, and really lived it up with the women. The group went through a couple of different incarnations over the years, but the basic premise never really changed.

Evolution was a heel stable for the new century, but otherwise we were modeled exactly on the Four Horsemen. Everything from the way we dressed, to the way we carried ourselves, to what we bragged about was based on that.

Evolution was so cool, it was hard to hate us, even though we were big-time heels. We were four badasses. We had a style and a profile. We were getting all the girls. We were having fun. Running things. Beating up whoever got in our way. In the wrestling world, how could you not love that?

I believe Evolution was Hunter’s idea. He wanted to do it, and he picked me and Randy. He thought he could turn us into stars and give us big futures in the company. And he did. Hunter created two world champions.

HUNTER

Hunter, of course, is Hunter Hearst-Helmsley, aka Paul Michael Levesque, and known probably to every wrestling fan in the world as Triple H. I don’t know that there has ever been a better, more natural, more successful heel in professional wrestling. As I mentioned earlier, Hunter is one of the very few wrestlers who is in a class by himself.

Fans have recognized his talent from his early days in WCW, though I guess you could say that he didn’t really come into his own until he left for World Wrestling Federation in 1995. I’ve heard it said that he’s held more world championships than anyone in WWE’s history.

I believe he’d been thinking about the Evolution concept and including me in it for a long time. I had heard rumors about the group—or “stable,” as some call it—ever since I came up to WWE, though when they stuck me in the goofy suit, I thought there was no way it was going to happen. Putting me in that suit, though, had been smart. Because I couldn’t just use my body—I couldn’t just be big and intimidating—I had learned to act a little. Even though it confused the hell out of me, it helped me grow.

“FUCKING RELAX”