Batista Unleashed (19 page)

This was it. I became the World Heavyweight Champion.

I rose to the top extremely fast. I always tell people that Ric and Hunter put me on the fast track to becoming champion. If I hadn’t been able to ride with them and pick their brains, I wouldn’t have learned as much as I did, not nearly so fast.

The funny thing is, since I’d started so late, I was a lot older than most guys when I became champion.

I think that may have helped me in a way. You take a guy like Randy Orton. He started wrestling really young and became, I believe, the youngest World Champion ever. I think that was his downfall. He just wasn’t ready for it He just didn’t have the maturity and ended up having some personal issues that got a little out of hand. I would like to think that now he does have the maturity. Now he’s older and you can see that he acts more in line with what the profession expects from a champion.

Frankly, I don’t know how he did it at all when he was twenty-four. If I had gotten the title at twenty-four, I would have cracked.

PAIN

In some ways, I almost
did
crack in the weeks and months right after I got the title. Not because of the pressure of appearances and such, but because of the pain in my leg and back.

We went to Australia soon after
WrestleMania 21,
and it was there that I think that I finally broke down and got a prescription for painkillers. I had never used them before. It’s not a regular thing for me, even now. I don’t believe in them. I’ve seen guys get hooked on them, and I’ve also seen guys out of their mind on them. I don’t want to be one of those guys in the ring with half his wits about him. If I ever become dependent on painkillers, I don’t belong in this business.

The pain in my back was so bad that not even the pills the doctors prescribed could get it under control. When we came back from Australia, the doctors started on this treatment with epidurals in my spine to take care of it. The discs still bother me a little bit once in a while, but proper medication got it down to a manageable level.

THE COMPANY FACE

Football players joke that they’re going to Disney World if they win the Super Bowl. A wrestler who wins at
WrestleMania
and becomes champion definitely doesn’t go to Disney World—unless it’s part of a promotion. One thing’s for sure: he doesn’t take a vacation.

What you do as champ is pack your bags and hit the road. You’re suddenly in a lot more demand. You’re the face of the organization, and you’re expected to show yourself in as many places as possible. When other guys are having days off, going home and taking it easy, you’re still on the road, doing interviews and appearances, and promoting this or that. Even at home, the champ ends up on the phone a lot, doing interviews for the media or whatever.

Being champion involves a lot more than just walking out into the arena with a big gold belt. You have to bust your ass in every way possible to fill up the arenas. Your job is to put asses in seats. You work harder, and at the same time, you have to keep yourself in top shape, because a champion can’t look soft. No one can, but especially not a champ.

You participate more, even in backstage stuff, coming up with ideas and contributing to the show. You work with the younger guys who are coming up. You set an example.

I can’t tell you how important leadership by example is in WWE. That’s huge with us. I’ve tried to make my mark by remembering that.

I have to say, Ric and Hunter helped groom me for that stuff. I was definitely still learning when I got the job. But I knew what to expect. I knew the weight that would be put on my shoulders.

And I
wanted
it. I really did. I still do. I still want to be the face of this company. It’s such an honor. Even after all this time, it’s still an honor and a privilege. I don’t mean to sound cheesy or hokey or anything. But there’s a lot riding on the guy who’s wearing the gold. The company is counting on you to carry that weight.

Greeting the fans Down Under.

Photo 5

I accept that. It’s why I’m in this business. I look down on anybody who doesn’t aspire to be the champion. I don’t even understand how they could even be in the business if they didn’t want to be on top.

There are sacrifices, though. Your family takes a hit. It’s hard to be a pro wrestler without some stress and strain on your family, some emotional injuries.

In my case, though, a lot of the wounds were self-inflicted.

I literally travel thousands of miles every week. The majority of times, maybe nine out of ten, things go pretty smoothly.

Maybe four out of five.

The bad times tend to bunch up, and after the Super Bowl Sunday show in Urbana, Illinois, they come in a pile. I’m traveling with Ken Kennedy and Bobby Lashley; we meet up at the airport and hit the only food place just before it closes, buying out the last of the tuna salad and nacho cheese dip. Kennedy has his fifth and sixth cans of Red Bull energy drink for the day, while Lashley struggles with one of the rudest airline ticket clerks going—and they’re a rude breed—trying to make sure he’s booked on the right flights.

Through security, we find out that our plane to Chicago has been delayed—a bit of a problem, since we have to make a connection there to Omaha.

There’s nothing to do but wait. The plane shows up about forty-five minutes late, which happens to be exactly how much time we were supposed to have to make the connection at O’Hare.

We get up to Chicago just about the time our plane is scheduled to leave the gate. Our checked carry-on luggage is late coming out, and for nearly ten minutes we stand around shivering in a boarding tunnel so cold that Kennedy’s hair freezes. Finally the bags come, and after following a maze out of the tunnel area we arrive at a gate right next to the one where our plane was supposed to leave from.

Here’s a bit of luck—the plane hasn’t finished boarding yet.

Two harried-looking gate attendants are handling tickets. Of course, all three of us head toward the cute-looking woman, Attendant No. 1.

When we get there, we find out that her computer seems to be rebelling, maybe because the flight is so damn late, or maybe because it had heavy money on the Bears and they’re getting stomped in the Super Bowl.

Whatever, she works around it and somehow gets the machine to spit out boarding passes. For some reason Lashley gets four passes, but there are plenty of seats left open on the plane and the clerk tells him not to worry about it.

We shuffle over to the door, where Attendant No. 2 is living out his God fantasy by calling the names of the three people he managed to check in, anointing them with his blessing as he sweeps his hand toward the door.

Which he then closes in our faces.

“That’s it. Plane is full,” says Attendant No. 2.

“Well, why the fuck did you give me a boarding pass?” says a passenger standing with us. “What the fuck is going on?” (For the record, he wasn’t a wrestler. And I’m toning down his language.)

Attendant No. 2 squints an Undertaker-like eyeball at him.

“What boarding pass?” he asks.

The passenger shoves it in his face.

“That other attendant just said there’s plenty of empty seats. You got half the plane sitting here, waiting to get on.”

Attendant No. 2 takes the boarding pass and holds it up to the light to make sure it’s not counterfeit. He frowns when he sees that it’s genuine, then goes over to the other attendant to confer. Smelling the possibility of blood—and having to get on the plane—we follow along.

After a short conference, Attendant No. 2 admits that the pass is genuine, but begins berating the passenger for not speaking up.

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing now?” says the passenger.

Attendant No. 2 ignores him, grudgingly stepping aside for him to pass into the plane.

“Who else has a ticket?” asks Attendant No. 2.

Along with the rest of the stranded passengers, we hand in our passes. Attendant No. 2 shuffles them and begins calling out our names. Things are going well until he gets to Bobby Lashley.

“Why do I have four tickets for this man?” says Attendant No. 2. “Where is this man, this Lashley?”

Lashley steps over to explain that there was a computer screwup, and that he only wanted the two seats he’d paid for. Because the seats on commuter planes are so cramped, a lot of us, myself included, will routinely pay for two seats; it’s more comfortable for us and the people who would have to sit next to us on the flight.

But Attendant No. 2 isn’t buying that explanation. No one in his experience would pay for two tickets, let alone show up with four. Now he is certain there is a vile network of boarding pass counterfeiters working in the airport. He is determined that they will not get by on his watch.

“No!” he shouts. “This cannot be! No four passes!”

“Well, it is,” says Lashley calmly.

“What will you do with four seats?”

“I only want two,” says Lashley. “Your computer screwed up.”

“Computer does not fail,” insists Attendant No. 2.

“It didn’t fail, it screwed up.”

“No, impossible.”

“Don’t mess with me, man,” mumbles Lashley. “I beat up people for a living.”

Unbowed, Attendant No. 2 shuffles through the tickets, lets everyone else on, then comes back to the four boarding passes with Lashley’s name.

“This…this…is a problem,” he says, ignoring Lashley completely.

“Who is this Lashley?”

The other attendant finally comes over and provides enough of a diversion for Lashley to hustle onto the plane with us. The attendant tries to follow us on, but is kicked off the plane by the pilot, who’s anxious to get to Omaha sometime this century.

The flight’s good, the stewardess is really helpful, and things are quiet…until we land in Omaha, where we discover that our bags have not come with us on the flight.

Now, you know, and every person in America who has ever made a connecting flight knows, that the problem had to do with the fact that our plane from Urbana was late coming in. Either they messed up there in an effort to get the plane off because it was so late—unlikely but possible—or when we landed in Chicago they couldn’t find a numb-nut smart enough to grab the half dozen bags bound for Omaha and walk them thirty-seven feet from one plane to another.

But the man at the baggage claim area believes a federal conspiracy is involved.

“We’re only doing what the federal government allows us to do,” he says when Lashley, who has media interviews first thing in the morning, asks if there’s any way to have the bags delivered to the hotel very early. “Those bags may get here around nine a.m.—that’s when the next flight is—but we’re not allowed to deliver them until sometime between twelve thirty and four thirty.”

“The federal government decides that?” asks Kennedy.

The man looks at him pitifully. Obviously, Kennedy doesn’t understand the worldwide conspiracy.

“Well, why didn’t the bags make it here in the first place?” asks Lashley, probably wondering if Attendant No. 2 decided to have them searched for a boarding pass machine.

“That happens because of weight restrictions,” says the man with a straight face. “Very important, weight restrictions.”

“With the bag or the plane?”

“The plane. When they’re full, they can’t take off.”

“Ours was half empty,” says another passenger.

“There, see?” says the man. “Too much weight and they can’t take off.”

Somebody probably ought to alert the FAA about that.