Batista Unleashed (31 page)

The match was fifth, which ’Taker and I both felt was kind of a slap in the face. I thought our match had really sold. Our story was the biggest story going into
’Mania.
Putting us on fifth was a little insulting.

Leaving Undertaker to the mercy of Cena and HBK.

When I found out we were going to be fifth, Michael Hayes and Pat Patterson were there. Pat said, “It might be a good thing. Do you want to follow Shawn?”

Meaning Shawn Michaels, who was wrestling John Cena for the WWE title in what became the final match.

Automatically I said, “Fuck yeah, we want to follow Shawn. We can follow anybody.”

Pat Patterson died laughing because he loves the cockiness and competitiveness of wrestlers, but I did truly believe we could follow anybody.

I should say that for a lot of my better matches, the biggest matches of my career, I’ve had Michael Hayes and Pat Patterson working with me as agents. They were both on my
WrestleMania 23
match with Undertaker, and my Hell in a Cell match with Triple H. I want to thank them for that. They’ve helped me tremendously.

But I guess management didn’t think we were the main event at that
WrestleMania
. I think we proved them wrong, because the fans really responded to us. I thought we stole the show, and that our match was by far the best of the night.

A lot of times big guy–big guy things sound good on paper—you think it’s going to be the clash of the titans, but I don’t know, they just don’t come off. They just don’t gel. But even though ’Taker is taller and heavier than I am, he works like a hundred and fifty pounder, and I think that was one of the keys to this match. He was just amazing. In fact, I learned a lot from him just by working with him. I felt kind of like a sponge, absorbing his lessons.

At one point in the match he hit me with a shoot right hook that got me right on the jaw. “Shoot” as in real, as in son of a bitch, that mother hurt.

He got me right on the fuckin’ button. You can tell if you watch it carefully. I fell back against the ropes, kind of dazed. He knocked me silly. I was dizzy, and it took me a couple of seconds to clear my head.

I thought it was just a potatoey slip, no big deal, but when I came back to throw the next big punch he said, “That was a receipt. You broke my eardrum.”

I said, “Oh fuck, I’m sorry.”

“No, no, come on, man. Come on,” he told me, and we carried on from there.

I still don’t know where it happened. I didn’t ask, either—it’s one of those things you don’t want to keep bringing up.

When I came off after the match, I screamed out to Pat Patterson and anyone else who could hear, “Fuckin’ follow that.” I knew we’d had a great show.

Besides the story coming in, we had so many milestones in that match. ’Taker has never held the World Heavyweight title; he’s held the WWE title but never the World. We had never worked with each other. It was a big babyface-versus-babyface match. And it was the first time anybody had ever kicked out of my finish.

I don’t know where ’Taker is in his career. From what I’ve heard, he may be winding it down, and if so this was his last big title run. To me, that’s got main event written all over it. I thought we should have ended that show with Undertaker holding the championship belt in the air.

But I think we stole the show anyway.

The only way it could get better would be if it were a Hell in a Cell match. That’s my next dream match, Hell in a Cell with the Dead Man.

DREAM MATCHES

Speaking of dream matches—one of the guys I would have just loved to have been in the ring with in his prime was Hulk Hogan.

I have no idea what a match with him would have been like. He doesn’t have to do a whole lot to get the fans involved. They’re automatically sucked in. I would imagine that if we had a match, it would have been him kicking my ass a whole lot. Me bouncing around for him like a Ping-Pong ball. Then somewhere at the end, it would have been me lying on my back.

But it would have been a great match.

There’s a lot of guys that I would have loved to be in the ring with. Can you imagine tag teaming Arn Anderson? Hell, I wish I could just crawl inside of Arn’s brain for ten minutes. It’d be incredible.

I’m such a big Four Horsemen mark, I would have loved to have been part of that.

Stone Cold is another guy that I would have loved to wrestle with during his prime. Just the electricity he generates is incredible. I told him that recently and his answer was, “Ah, I was just havin’ fun.”

DON’T LET ME FORGET CHAVO OR DUSTY

I just realized that I’ve written nearly the entire book and not mentioned either Chavo Guerrero or Dusty Rhodes. They’re two great guys who have been incredibly important to me.

Chavo—also known as Chavo Jr.—is the son of wrestler Chavo Guerrero (aka Chavo Sr., aka Chavo Classic), Eddie Guerrero’s brother. Wrestling is in that family’s genes. If I could choose a brother, I’d choose Chavo Guerrero. Enough said.

Wrestling fans probably most remember Dusty Rhodes for his legendary feuds with the Four Horsemen. Now he works behind the scenes as a booker. Dusty has not only been a very strong influence in my career but I also believe that he is the coolest human being on the face of the Earth. And that’s really saying something, because I’ve met a lot of people.

I’m not lumping them together—they’re pretty different guys, each with his own achievements—but I don’t want to let this book go without mentioning them and how much they mean to me.

BACKLASH

The sequel to
WrestleMania 23, Backlash,
featured another great match between ’Taker and me. We were debating on the finish right up until the end. We were doing a huge stunt at the end—a spear from me that drove us both off the stage, flying down and ending up unconscious. It sounded incredible, but when we went through it in rehearsal we weren’t that impressed with it. We were debating right up until the end to decide what the ending would be. We were literally talking about it on our way to the ring. Undertaker said keep your ears open, we might pull an audible at the end. But it came off so good that it would have been completely unnecessary to add on.

We were both injured coming into the match. Most people knew about my hamstring tear.

It had happened a few weeks before, when I was in Europe doing a match with Fit Finlay. It was obvious right away; I tried rubbing it out but I could barely get through the match. It wasn’t serious enough to have surgery, but it definitely had an effect on my wrestling; hamstring injuries are hard to work with. They don’t heal up very fast.

I wrestled with tape on my leg for a few weeks. The funny thing about that is, some guy on the Internet was convinced—absolutely convinced—that I was faking the injury and wore the tape to cover a new tattoo. He was absolutely positive that I had a new tattoo I didn’t know about.

Anyway, Undertaker tore his biceps on the same tour. Kane and MVP were also hurt. As a matter of fact, we had to start doing six-man Tag Team matches on the tour to camouflage the injuries that a lot of us had. At one point, I think only Fit Finlay wasn’t hurt.

Wait, I take that back: he had his thumbnail ripped off. He had a big bandage on it—we ribbed him good for that. We’re all beat up—me with my leg, ’Taker with his arm, MVP with his back, and Fit with the bad thumbnail…

It was a tough tour. We did something like twelve cities in twelve days. There were detours everywhere, and Italy had this new law where you couldn’t have a bathroom on a bus, so we were constantly stopping: a two-hour ride would take six hours at least.

When we got back, Undertaker knew that he was going to have to have surgery after
Backlash,
because his biceps was completely detached at the tendon. So we had one final Cage match on TV, because we couldn’t wait for the next Pay-Per-View, which was the original plan. Undertaker had only a small window of opportunity to get his biceps fixed before it couldn’t be fixed at all.

It’s too bad, because the original plan was great. We were going to have a Cage match that would end up in a draw again. Then the Pay-Per-View after that we were going to do the Hell in a Cell showdown that I’ve always dreamed of. But we had to get the title off ’Taker because he was going into surgery and was going to be out for a while.

I worked with ’Taker a lot in 2007, before his surgery. Everywhere we went, we tore the house down. It was such a good learning experience for me. ’Taker is truly a ring general. He’s also a real good guy. We had a chance to hang out, have a few drinks together on tour. I mentioned earlier that I had some heat with him when I came over to
SmackDown!
because of some things I said. I think he’s finally forgiven me for that, and I think he enjoyed working with me.

Every night after a match he’d say he was proud of me. It may seem like a simple thing, but for me being in there and earning his respect—it’s icing on the cake. I put everything, my passion, my soul, into this business, and having someone with the legendary status of Undertaker saying he’s proud of you, having his approval: I can’t put it into words, I guess.

I know he was crushed about giving up the title. No one wants to give up the title because of an injury, especially someone like Undertaker, who’s so proud. And at the same time, we had such a good thing going that it was a real heartbreaker to have to stop it. Our feud was awesome for
SmackDown!,
awesome for the business.

The first replacement plan called for Kennedy to cash in his Money in the Bank contract, which he had won at
WrestleMania.
He’d have then taken the title. In the meantime, I would have worked into a thing with Fit Finlay before getting my chance to go after the title.

But then we thought that Kennedy had a torn triceps—it turned out he didn’t need surgery, though he was out for several weeks—so we had to change things again. Edge won the Money in the Bank contract from Kennedy, then cashed it in and took the title off of ’Taker in a match that Mark Henry was also involved in.