Batista Unleashed (22 page)

WrestleMania 21
took place on April 3, 2005. I spent the next three months in the ring proving that I really was the champ, fending off various challengers.

It was a great three months. As a wrestler, I felt I had really come into my own. Some of those
Raw
shows may have been the best ever.

Reminding the fans, and J.R., that I earned the title.

Then, just when things were getting comfortable, WWE shook everybody up by changing the lineups for the company’s flagship shows,
Raw
and
SmackDown!

CHAMP

Every time a title changes, wrestling fans watch the new champion pretty carefully. They want to see if the new guy is really going to reign; in a way, they’re trying to decide whether he’s worth rooting for, and whether he’s going to stick around. There have been some pretty short championships in this business. The new guy has to prove himself.

I didn’t have a problem with that. I had some great matches. Randy Orton and I went at it on
Raw
right after
WrestleMania;
Kurt Angle and I tangled, and there was at least one good match in there with Edge that got the crowd on its feet from practically the opening bell.

But I think the most memorable shows were the ones I had with Hunter. We locked horns again and again. No champ likes losing the title, and Triple H kept coming at me. Our feud built to an incredible Hell in a Cell match that June at
Vengeance.
I still think of that match as one of the very best I’ve ever had.

HELL IN A CELL

That Pay-Per-View was the third time I’d faced Hunter. The Hell in a Cell format is fairly recent. A twenty-foot-high cell is erected over the ring and apron area. Once you’re inside, there’s literally no way out—the top is caged, and the door is locked. The matches tend to be vicious.

The most famous Hell in a Cell took place in 1998, when Undertaker and Mick Foley battled mostly on top of a cell at
King of the Ring 1998,
at the time one of World Wrestling Federation’s Pay-Per-Views. That’s the match where Undertaker threw Foley off the top of the cage, not once but twice. Undertaker swears he thought he’d killed him the second time. Every Hell in a Cell has that awesome feel to it.

I think a lot of fans expected me to lose the title at
Vengeance.
And looking back, I think that was the match where people started to look at me really differently. I think they decided then that I’m not a flash in the pan, that I really am a champion. It’s not just a matter of who wins or loses a match or wears the title—it’s the entertainment value of the match a wrestler gives. That’s the sign of a champion. A champion gives fans a special experience.

At that match, Hunter and I took them on a ride, right down to the very end. I think right down to the very last second of that match, fans really didn’t know who was going to win. And that’s not easy to do.

Again, I have to give a lot of the credit to Hunter. He’s such a talented wrestler, there was no way I couldn’t look good. And in turn, his ability pushed me to elevate my work. He brought out the best in me, especially that night.

Hunter always got a bad rap for, uh, we’ll call it hogging the title. He’s been champ a lot during his career. The criticism was a really bad rap. Hunter was a champion so often because there weren’t that many other guys who could carry the company like he could. It was one of those things where it was a necessity for him to hold the title for the company to survive. And he backed it up with his performances in the ring. He put asses in the seats.

Of course, that’s just my opinion. I’m sure some people won’t like it, or think that I’m sucking up to Hunter.

Too bad.

At the end of that match, I felt like I had arrived. There was really a huge difference between being the champion and being
the man.
And that match made me the man.

CALLING A MATCH

Thinking about that show brings to mind another great match that I had with Chris Benoit. I believe it was January 3, 2005, on
Raw
, months before I got the title. I look back at it now as a milestone marking my career.

This, of course, was long before the terrible tragedy with his family. As I said before, the Chris who killed them and then took his own life was not the kind, unselfish man I knew.

The match was in Washington, D.C., my hometown. So even though I was a big-time heel at the time, half of the arena consisted of my friends and family, and I was really the hometown babyface. The match ended with a DQ, a disqualification, when I started just kicking the crap out of Chris and wouldn’t stop.

The thing is, working with Chris, it was very easy to completely forget yourself. We always use the term “suspend your disbelief.” People think of it mostly from the fans’ point of view, where the fans are forgetting that it’s entertainment. But it can happen with wrestlers, too. We can get sucked into the match and half think, half pretend that it’s only entertainment. It feels real. Chris made it easy for that to happen. It’s why he was so good.

I’m pretty sure Chris was the first guy to ever let me call a whole match. It happened before that
Raw
show, at some point when we were working together in house shows. I was still relatively new. He was the veteran, and for him to show that kind of confidence in me made me, well, it was pretty important.

Like a lot of wrestlers, Chris loved to call the match kind of on the fly because it made everything spontaneous and that much more real. He really liked to feed off the crowd. Plus he was such a talented guy that nothing could throw him.

I can’t remember where we were that night, but I do remember him saying, “Why don’t you call it?” I can see him as I’m writing this. He’s got a little bit of a smile on his face. Not really a challenge, more like, “Welcome to the club, kid.”

I was nervous as hell. I didn’t want to screw up in front of Chris Benoit. I had never called an entire match to that point. But you know, it was an old-school rule: the heel would lead the match back in the day.

So I took my best shot. And it was an incredible match. And he was so fucking happy afterward. I earned a whole bunch of respect from him, and tons for myself in the locker room. If you earned Chris’s respect, that went a long way. He put me over to all the agents, all the people in the office, even the veterans. Everybody. That was a big push for my career.

CHRISTIAN

Another good friend of mine whom I haven’t had a chance to mention yet is Jason Reso—known as Christian. He helped me find my home in Tampa, which I really appreciated. I always loved working with him. On more than one occasion I heard Arn Anderson say he could watch Jay work all day—a pretty big compliment, coming from one of the best.

This is just my personal feeling, but I always felt like Jay was never really given his fair shot in WWE. He really had tremendous star potential. Maybe that’s not for me to say, but I loved watching him work, and I loved watching and listening to him on the mike. He was funny, he was original—man, he had so much charisma.

I’ll never forget the day he left the company. It was after a show in 2005. He came up to me and pulled me aside. He said, “I just want you to know I’m leaving. I’m not going to be here anymore.”

He started crying. He was absolutely heartbroken, but he felt it was something he had to do. He felt like he wasn’t going anywhere with WWE. His contract was up, and even though he’d been offered a renewal, he felt they weren’t using him right and weren’t likely to. So he left on his own terms. He went to a different company—TNA—which really gave him a huge push.

He was a good friend of mine when he was with WWE. Jay was one of those guys who didn’t like to go out much—I don’t know if he didn’t like to or he just wouldn’t because his wife wouldn’t put up with it. He’d have just one drink and then be out of there. But no one ever held it against him because he was so much one of the boys. He had a lot of locker-room respect. We felt his absence for a long time. I hope one day he’ll return to us. I think he’s a hell of an entertainer, extremely underrated when he was here.

STARTING OVER

Not too long after
WrestleMania 21
, we started hearing rumors that the company was thinking of changing the lineups on
Raw
and
SmackDown!
I heard they were toying with sending Hunter over to
SmackDown!
And then there were rumors about me going over. Finally I went to Vince and asked him directly.

“Are you moving me to
SmackDown!
?”

“Yes. We’re moving you to
SmackDown!”
he said. “We’re counting on you. This is your show.”

That may sound flattering, but to me it felt like I was starting over. And I walked into a locker room that didn’t like me very much.

Some of those feelings came from an interview I did earlier that year. The interviewer was talking about the competition between
Raw
and
SmackDown!
asking which brand or show was better, that sort of thing. I was a
Raw
guy at that point, and so I was speaking up for my show. The thing is, I did it basically by ripping
SmackDown!
I really did put them down—pretty much ripped them a new asshole.

There were some guys on
SmackDown!
at the time who in my opinion didn’t work as hard as they could. I dogged them out.

Part of the interview was taken out of context, but the truth is I didn’t say anything I didn’t mean. I was being prideful and I thought I was representing our show and saying, “This is why we’re better.”

Now remember, I had been on
SmackDown!
Some of the guys there were more concerned about where they were going after the show than with the show itself. There were some guys who were very content with their spots. They didn’t want to move up; they just wanted their five minutes on TV because that was enough to go out and get them laid.

I thought I was being smart at the time by not naming any names, even though the interviewer pressed me. I think I talked about guys being lazy bastards and not showing pride, that sort of thing, but I didn’t name anyone by name.

CALLED OUT

Most of the people I was referring to in those interviews have long since been fired. But the problem was, by not singling anyone out, I seemed to be criticizing everyone over there. Which I hadn’t really intended on doing.

It’s funny, but I don’t think I realized it until Undertaker came up to me later and asked if I’d said what was printed in the interview.

“Yes I did,” I told him.

“Well, that’s fucked up.”

“Why?”

“Well, let me fucking tell you why.” And he explained—I have to say very reasonably—that I had left the door open for everyone to think I was referring to them. And that plenty of readers would think that, too.

Undertaker was very good about this, because he could have been a total asshole. But he made me understand what I’d done wrong.