Batista Unleashed (27 page)

I regret that.

People thought I made him move out of Florida, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. I brought Ricky to Florida. I paid for his apartment and car; I gave him extra cash when he needed it. I encouraged him to be there. I was very supportive of him. I just wasn’t willing to let him hurt my daughter or make her life any more stressful. It was unfortunate that it got like that for a while.

I told him I’d help him be a dad as long as he wanted to be. But he couldn’t handle the rejection of my daughter, and that was the reason he left.

I’m hoping someday Jacob will read this and know that I loved his dad. His father was very special and truly loved him dearly.

MORE TROUBLES

Unfortunately, the problems with Ricky didn’t help the situation with my older daughter at all. She ran away again and, though I don’t know how she managed this, got married. Because of that, we lost custody of her, even though she was still only sixteen.

It gets worse. Her marriage meant that we lost custody of my grandson as well.

After she ran away, her mom and I managed to locate her and got her to meet us at the airport in Florida. She’d taken Jacob with her, and we expected that when she returned he would be there, too. But he wasn’t. Both her mother and I became very upset that she didn’t bring the baby back. She flipped out again and started to run away.

We thought we were lucky because we were able to get some police to help us when we explained that she was running away. But after the officers spoke to her, they came over and gave us the bad news.

“Your daughter’s married now,” said one of the cops.

“Yeah, we heard,” I said.

“Well, in the state of Florida, your daughter’s now emancipated.”

Basically, that meant she was no longer in my custody. Neither I nor the police could tell her what to do.

We got a court order that said she was supposed to bring the baby back home. My first wife made the mistake of taking the baby and hiding him, which ended up with her getting arrested for not complying with the court order.

I know this is getting a little hard to follow, so I’ll cut to the ending: we got Jacob back, but only for a month. In the end, the fact that my daughter was emancipated trumped everything else. My grandson went back to her. And in the meantime, she’s had another kid, Aiden. I love him a lot, but unfortunately I haven’t had much contact with him.

I love those little kids. I pray that they’re going to be okay, and I’ll do anything I can to make sure they are.

LOVE RUNS DEEP

I’ve always told Keilani this: I love her unconditionally. I’ll always love her.

I’m more than a little pissed off at her, though. I’m not really pissed off at her because she got herself pregnant and had two babies, or dropped out of school. I’m pissed off at her because, for one, she never came to me and said, “Well, I did this. I messed up.” She just ran away.

And two, she always treated me like the enemy when I was the constant in her life. I was always there for her. I never judged her. I always told her I loved her, and I’ve felt like her mother did the opposite. I always felt like her mother wanted her to choose one of us. With me she never had to choose. She could still see her mom. I wanted her mother to be a part of her life.

I tried to offer her the best life she could have. I don’t know what she was running away from. I was never physical with her, or my other daughter. I never even raised my voice. When they were little, I didn’t have to.

She had everything she could want. I still can’t figure out why she was so mad at me.

I guess most people might think, Well, he wasn’t there when she was little. But I think that I’ve always made an effort to be in her life.

Someday maybe these wounds will heal. Someday I hope love wins out. Because I deeply love my daughters, both of them. And my grandchildren. It’s unconditional, and it’s forever.

Photo 7

I make it to Omaha in world-record time and pull around to the back of the Qwest Center, where the security guys are already waiting for me. I park the car and head backstage to check in with Michael Hayes and make sure everything’s ready for the show tonight.

Somewhere in here I should mention Nicole Dorazio. She works in talent relations and she makes my day-to-day life as easy as it can possibly be. She handles all my travel and scheduling and is a very good friend and confidante. She’s also become a very good friend of my mom’s. I don’t think I could get through a day without her, especially one like today where I’m doing so much traveling and having the right connections is absolutely essential.

Typically we do three house shows a week, and the last day of the tour is always our TV day. That’s a long day, because we always have to show up to the ring very early, about noon, and we don’t get started with the show until seven thirty or eight. Even later with
Raw
.

We spend a lot of the day sitting around, kind of waiting. It’s one of those days when they have catering, so there’s always food around, which is hard. You have to fight to stay away ’cause it’s usually not very healthy food. If you’re bored, it’s real easy to fall into that, you know, pigging out on junk food all day.

But TV days are really a down-to-business day. You can be sitting around one minute, and then hard at work the next. It’s kind of the calm before the storm.

The pretapes—the little vignettes that air between wrestling matches—are shot on TV day. We try to get them done in one take, though a lot of times that’s impossible. You just keep working at it until you get it right.

At the same time, guys will try to get in the ring to get their workouts done. Sometimes you’ll see guys running steps in the arena, trying to stay in shape. Especially on a day like today, when it’s really cold outside.

Once my taping is done, I put on some sweats and go out into the ring. The production people are working their butts off. I think a lot of times the boys take the backstage people for granted, because they don’t actually see the work they put in. I know I do. But when you think about it, they’re already there before we get there, and they tear everything down after we leave, so they’re working even longer than we are. They’re spending their lives on the road, away from their families just as much as we are.

The production crews function like a well-oiled machine. These guys don’t miss a beat. A lot of the crew guys have multiple jobs. They drive the trucks, and they’ll put up the ring, and then they’ll have a role in the show. Take Tony Chimel, who’s the
SmackDown
!
announcer. Every
night, he’s the guy setting up and breaking down the ring. He comes in, he puts it up, changes into his suit, and announces the show, then he puts on his sweats and breaks down the ring. A lot of our refs do that, too. They double as crew guys. They travel on the crew bus and they’re going around the clock.

The talent guys aren’t the only characters in our company. You have to travel with the camera crew sometime to see characters. They’re true-blue characters. Hysterical. They’ve got some stories.

One of the referee/production guys who I’m close to is Charles Robinson. He’s been very good to me. Sadly, his wife passed away from cancer. He knew Angie was going through chemo, and we shed a lot of tears together around that time and became very close. He’s one of those guys I love on a personal level, not just as a professional.

Man, he’s a hard worker. All of them are. Charles goes in, sets up and breaks down the ring, refs matches, and in between he’s taking photos for us.

Our crew members are great. One of these days, I’ll bet they’ll get together and write their own book. I just hope they’re kind when they talk about me.

I had a really strong desire to become WWE Champion, and an even stronger desire to become a man people in the company looked up to. Those are awesome responsibilities, and I wanted them, as heavy as they might seem.

After I got injured, my desire to make it to the top the first time was nothing compared to my desire to get back there. I guess that’s one thing about leadership. You don’t stop proving yourself.

COMEBACK

I rehabbed my triceps for a couple of months in Birmingham, then eventually got to the point where I was able to go home. There I worked to get back into shape and maintain my edge. I’d go back periodically to the doctors and the Birmingham rehab, where they’d check me out and see how I was coming along.

Finally, I was ready. I was really psyched to come back, but the company had to pick the right spot. And the spot they picked was the place where I’d left off: Philadelphia, where I’d surrendered the title.

I have to admit, when they told me that, all I could see in my mind’s eye was me walking out of the building, teary-eyed. I was nervous going back there. Philadelphia’s a very tricky crowd. They don’t like mushy babyfaces. Philadelphia is a city of fighters, tough guys, and they don’t like crybabies. I was afraid that’s what they were going to think of me as—a crybaby.

People don’t realize it, but I’m an emotional guy. It’s who I am. And I was afraid the people in Philadelphia were going to misinterpret that.

I was wrong, though, very wrong. They’re tough, but boy, those people in Philadelphia—you get them behind you and you can do anything. The place just blew up when I walked in. It was as if each fan were telling me individually to get back in that ring and take what was rightfully mine. When people are behind you like that, you really want to perform for them.

I called Mark Henry out and you could feel the tension in the building. The crowd loved it. They were really sucked in. Forget about suspending disbelief—they were practically writing the show for me. Mark walked out and I gave him a good old-fashioned ass-whipping and that building just went nuts. I think the walls are still vibrating. It was my night: July 7, 2006.

What’s mine is mine.

HENRY’S TURN

I knew Mark Henry and I were really going to have a real good thing. The injury, the revenge angle, it was really going to work. We were just getting warmed up.

But then, less than a month later, Mark blew his knee out. So that ended that.

Mark’s injury sent us scrambling for a couple of weeks, trying to come up with a new story line. They threw me into a quick thing with Ken Kennedy—Mr. Kennedy. It was a transition, just to get something going until me and King Booker hooked up for a title chase, but it was a sign of things to come with him. As I’ve said, Kennedy is really a good worker and I think he has a good future with this company.

Some of the matches I had with King Booker in those few weeks didn’t go all that well, and things were a bit awkward until Booker and I finally got on track. Whether the fact that there was a bit of real heat between us helped or not, I don’t know, but people have certainly speculated on it.

KING BOOKER

Booker and his brother Stevie Ray first came to national attention as the tag team Harlem Heat on WCW in the mid-1990s. Back then he was known as Booker T. As a solo wrestler, Booker won most of WCW’s titles, including the WCW Championship, which he held five times.

He came over to World Wrestling Federation in 2001, after our company bought WCW. Since then he’s been involved in a number of important matches and feuds, starting with an attack on Stone Cold at the
King of the Ring 2001.
He began calling himself King Booker after defeating Bobby Lashley at
Judgment Day 2006.
A big part of his act as “king” is the very gorgeous Queen Sharmell Huffman, his wife. Outside of the ring, both are very involved with charity and other causes; they do a lot of good things for people. Together they have a foundation called Booker T Fights for Kids, which sums up what they’re about.

Booker and I had had a falling-out the spring before my comeback. We were in L.A. to do a photo shoot for
SummerSlam.
We got into a disagreement that escalated into a fistfight.

A real fistfight. It wasn’t part of a promo or anything like that.

King Booker had become champion while I was gone, and I think in his opinion I didn’t give him the professional courtesy or respect that any veteran wrestler, let alone the champion, deserves. Which was true. I showed up at the photo shoot and I pretty much said hello to everybody except him.

I had a personal problem with Booker, which was why I was rude. People have pushed me to talk about the personal aspects, but I don’t care to go into it. We move ahead. And the point is, no matter how I felt, I should have at least been respectful and said hello, not acted as if he didn’t exist. He’s earned respect in this business. I didn’t show it, and I was wrong.

Anyway, one thing led to another and there we were in a fistfight. Kind of silly. But that’s where it ended. The next weekend, Johnny Ace—John Laurinaitis, the head of talent—set us up together for an appearance. The real reason he wanted us there was so that he could be there and make sure we talked. And we did. I apologized to Booker for not giving him the respect that he had earned. And that was it. Our problems were pretty much squashed after that. We decided we were both going to be professional and put our personal differences aside. We really have the same goal, the betterment of the company. We had to work like professionals, have some good matches, and try to make some money with each other. Which we did.

It wasn’t easy. There was still a little bit of personal tension between us. I think that Booker was hell-bent on showing people that I wasn’t the star that he was.

But that didn’t last very long. We started having fun out there, and all that personal stuff and grievances went right out the window. We started having fun with each other, and there were some real good matches. Real good matches.

REAL HEAT

There’s a perception out there that if two wrestlers have some real disagreement between them—if there’s real heat like there was between me and Booker—the matches are better. But the opposite is true.

When people actually have real disagreements or dislike each other, their shows usually don’t do very well. It comes back to the need to trust people, I think. And the fight in the ring depends on both guys working together to make each other look good, so you have to be on the same page with that.

Plus, when fans know that two guys actually do have disagreements or personal problems with each other, they’re expecting so much violence, they’re bound to be disappointed.

Matches are always better when wrestlers are on the same page, if they’re clicking and they have one goal in mind. That goal isn’t to show the other guy up. Because it takes two really excellent performances to make the show really click.

I don’t think you have to love each other. Booker and I, we’ll always have disagreements. We’re always going to be—let me put this politely—two different people. But we can still get in there and have fun working together. I believe I have earned some respect from Booker, and I definitely have given him the respect that he has earned and has a right to after all these years in the business.

THE BIGGEST-DRAW BULLSHIT

One of the things that preceded my dispute with Booker were rumors that I was going around saying that I was the biggest draw in the company, that I was carrying
SmackDown!
and WWE on my back. Booker threw those rumors in my face, and it really pissed me off.

I didn’t say anything like that. I didn’t think it. I don’t think it. I don’t even wish it.

But you can deny something over and over, and it just keeps coming back, for whatever reason. Maybe some guys want to believe the worst.

Those words have never come out of my mouth. Not anything even remotely close to those words came out of my mouth or ever would. Because really, that would be disrespecting Hunter, disrespecting Ric, disrespecting Shawn Michaels, disrespecting Undertaker, disrespecting every other wrestler in the company, not to mention guys the public hasn’t heard of because they work behind the scenes. I’m just not a piece of shit like that.

The opposite is true. I’m one of those guys who sometimes wonders how he got to the big time. I know my limits. I’m not extremely talented. I’m terrible on the mike. I have physical limitations.

Where I think I’ve had success is in using what other people have taught me about wrestling, about working the crowd. Things I’ve picked up from Ric on how to tell a story in the ring. Things from Hunter about how important the little things are, about what really counts in a match. If anything has set me apart, that’s what it is. I’ve tried to put the lessons I learned into practice.

I’ve worked hard to get where I am, very hard, but I don’t forget where I’ve come from, and I sure don’t forget the people who have really given me the lessons and chances I needed to succeed.

I’m not this extremely talented savior of wrestling that some people either think I am or, much worse, think that
I
think I am. I’m Batista.

BOOKER AND ME

But as I was saying, King Booker and I had a little trouble generating some heat when I first came back. Besides our personal difficulties, I think that one of the things that made it hard for us had to do with the way our two characters worked off each other—or didn’t. I’ve always been the kind of babyface who can be easily disliked. Remember, the fans turned me from a heel, and I still have a lot of heel characteristics. I never really changed anything major about the way I worked. I didn’t change much about my wrestling style, except to sell it a little more. And I’m not Mr. Personality. I’m not Mr. Ha-ha.

Booker, on the other hand, is one of those heels who’s so entertaining, he just makes you laugh. He’s hard to dislike. He really is. Just because he’s so entertaining, he makes you laugh. It’s hard to hate a heel like that who’s entertaining the hell out of you. So I think fans were caught in the middle there a little. They couldn’t really feel that strongly about me, because they didn’t want to hate Booker. And they couldn’t really hate him, because my character wasn’t someone they could identify with.

Finding the right balance can be awfully difficult.

CHAMP AGAIN

Booker and I worked up to
SummerSlam 2006
, where we fought for the title. We had a thing where I thanked him for holding on to “my” title, and he of course objected. The showdown was inevitable.

Becoming champion the second time could never be as sweet as the first. But it was still a fantastic honor. It means a lot to be champion, whoever you are, but especially for me.

I still had—have—a lot to learn. That’s the great thing about wrestling: there’s so much to it that you almost have to grow as you go along.

When I first moved up to WWE, I was pretty much like a robot. I knew how to do all the moves, but I couldn’t tell you why I was doing them. I would move from A to B to C, going through the steps but not really understanding what they were about. There was no rhyme or reason, at least in my head, to my moves. I didn’t pay attention to the crowd; I didn’t understand the story that I was trying to tell them. It made for bad wrestling matches.