Batista Unleashed (6 page)

Having worked at Lulu’s was like coming out of college with a degree from Harvard Business School, so even though I was let go, I found it pretty easy to get jobs. As I got a little older, into my twenties, I lost the chip on my shoulder and took things a little more maturely. I realized I shouldn’t be a jerk-off. I let my size do the talking, not my fists.

After a while, I made a name for myself and started working at better places, more high-end clubs. I began making a lot better money. And I discovered that there are places where people do actually come to have a good time and dance, not get drunk and fight.

At the classier places, bouncing was a lot easier. It was a cake job. I started working with a group of promoters. We’d go to different clubs. All I had to do was show up, stand there, and look big and I’d get paid two or three hundred bucks a night.

About the worst thing that would happen at a club like that was finding people having sex somewhere inside. I’d have to tell them to break it up, get their clothes back on or get zipped up or whatever.

“I realize you guys are drunk and in love,” I’d say, “but go out to the car or get a room or something.”

I hated to break things up, but I had to.

Every so often, I’d have a brush with a celebrity. Billy Idol came into one of our clubs one night, and they asked me to look after him. So I watched his back. It was no big deal. Billy stood there at the bar and drank and I stood by him and looked big. Nobody bugged him.

We had some other celebrities from time to time. Marky Mark came in, Mark Wahlberg. I’d look after the guy, keep everything cool. It wasn’t really a big deal, but the pay was pretty good.

I did a little bodyguarding as well. I bodyguarded for Jamie Foxx and even Michael Moore. Moore came into D.C. to do a documentary, and I was hired to follow him around all day. That was a pretty cool job.

IMANI

I made some good friends while I was bouncing, and a few of them have stayed close. One’s Imani Lee, still one of my best friends in the world.

If he wanted to transition into wrestling, he could have at any given time. He’s got about a million times more charisma than I do. He’s also huge. Right now, he fights for K-1—a mixed martial arts promotion. I keep telling him he ought to go into wrestling.

For a while we went everywhere together, did everything together. We’ve lifeguarded, bounced, and survived some pretty violent situations together. We watched each other’s backs when the shit was flying.

There was this one situation at a bar where there had recently been a shootout inside the club, and we had to try and keep the peace. The place was owned by a friend of ours in D.C., and not the good part of D.C. either. We’d always had some problems with gangs down there, and we nearly got caught in the middle when two different factions decided that they were going to war, and the club was going to be the battleground. It got to the point where we had to wear guns to work, which as a general rule a bouncer won’t do.

Imani and I were right there together. One night when things got crazy we had to go outside, literally back to back, and just sweat out the situation. Luckily, things came out all right, but there easily could have been a tragedy. Death was definitely in the air that night.

You go through something like that with somebody, you’re going to be tight with them the rest of your life. I guess that’s the closest to having a war buddy that someone like me, who’s never been in the military, will ever have.

LIFEGUARDING

Another of my jobs at that time was lifeguarding.

Imani and I worked together for a company in the Alexandria, Virginia, area and we were probably the biggest lifeguards those pools had ever seen. The management would have us work the pools in the troubled neighborhoods because there’d be no problems when we were there.

It was at one of these pools that I met another one of my closest friends, Chris Smith. I call him my little brother and he calls me his big brother.

These days, Chris owns his own small business, but when I first met him fifteen years ago, he was a real hell-raiser, nothing but a punk. Chris was about fourteen or fifteen then. He was a white kid but he grew up in an all-black neighborhood. He was raised by a single mom who did all she could to keep him in check, but she must have had her hands full. He had all the potential to be a serious gangbanger.

The first time I ever met him, he started talking shit to me at the pool. I was probably about 325 pounds at the time, and he was a squirt, but that didn’t stop him from firing off his mouth.

“Listen, you little fucker,” I told him. “Watch your mouth or I’m going to take you in the back, spit on your ass, and prison-fuck you.”

He immediately shut up and gave me his respect from that day on.

I realize that wasn’t exactly politically correct, and these days it might get a lifeguard fired. But we needed order at that pool for the safety of the kids there, and we got it.

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Chris Smith with Angie and my mom.

Soon after that, Chris and I became great friends. A few years later he got a job as a butcher at a big grocery store chain. It was a time when I was struggling, and he would always manage to find me discounted meat, like really good steaks for two bucks. Since then, he’s gone on to start a trucking business and do really well for himself. I was lucky enough to be in a position to help him invest in it; it was one of those things that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I hadn’t been in wrestling. He’s very hardworking, very driven. He’s one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known. If I could choose brothers, he’d be one.

BODYBUILDING

I was still doing a lot of weight lifting and hanging out in the gym while I was a bouncer. I worked at a number of gyms on and off for years. As my body built up, I started thinking about competing.

The bodybuilders were my heroes at the time. I looked up to them and admired them. They worked hard and were able to make their bodies look extremely powerful. And since all the guys around the gym were competing, I thought I should too. It looked like that’s what you did. Lift weights, bodybuild, and compete.

I don’t completely remember my first bodybuilding contest. I think I was still a teenager, actually. One thing I do remember is that most of the guys backstage were pretty much arrogant pricks. I didn’t like the atmosphere. But I kept at it for years, because I really wanted to get big physically.

The truth is, I never really liked the competitive aspect of bodybuilding, the part where you were being judged against somebody else. I liked the performing part. I didn’t mind being up there and posing. I thought it was pretty cool. But the guys around you—arrogant pricks.

THEY JUST WALKED ON BY

I competed in three big bodybuilding contests. The first was Teenage Virginia State. Then I did the Southern States two years in a row, I believe in 1995 and 1996. The ’96 contest was my last one and I was really in good shape. But it left me with a bitter taste about bodybuilding.

I’d finished in sixth place as a heavyweight in the Southern States competition in 1995. That sounds good, but the truth is I really got my ass handed to me. It was kind of a humble check, because I went in thinking I was going to go in there and kick everybody else’s butt. I was a really big kid, and I really thought I was going to do well.

Didn’t work out that way.

I learned from that. I came in the next year and I was so much better. I’d improved a lot, and this time not only did I really think I was going to win it, I probably had a valid shot at it. I had a good look and with the experience of the year before, I knew what I had to do.

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I’m 330 pounds here.

But it was right around then that I had started using diuretics, and whether it was because I had taken too many or I had some sort of other problem that I’ve never figured out, I ended up cramping up so bad just before the contest began that I wasn’t able to line up and go onstage. I literally fell on the ground, writhing in pain. I’m not kidding. I was all seized up, rolling in agony.

All of the heavyweights lined up right in front of me and walked out onstage and nobody ever once said, “Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong?” They just walked on by and left me.

When I didn’t come out onstage, my girlfriend Marianne ran back to see what was going on. I was lying there on the ground, totally cramped up. She had to drag me out of the locker room and help me recover. If it wasn’t for her, I’d probably still be there. None of the other competitors would have lifted a finger for me, and I don’t know where the organizers were.

That was it. I was done with bodybuilding.

I thought to myself, This is ridiculous. I’m killing myself for nothing, for a plastic trophy and people who don’t give a shit about me. I realized the other bodybuilders were probably glad to see me lying on the ground. I’m sure they thought, “Great. Now I don’t have to compete against him.”

So that was it.

MARIANNE

I’ve mentioned Marianne before without really introducing her.

She and I started going out together sometime in 1991, I think, when we were both still working at Lulu’s, me as a bouncer and she as a bartender. She was really hot. Extremely hot. We kind of hit it off right away. In one way, we were opposites: she was a big-time flirt, and I was real quiet. But it was an extremely easy fit. She started helping me out after I split with my first wife, Glenda. We started seeing each other and things just seemed to take off.

I was with her for six years. The funny thing is, I didn’t want to get married to her. I didn’t think she was the right woman for me to get married to. And I didn’t think I was the right guy for her to marry.

She wanted to get married. I think she liked the idea of being married more than she wanted to marry me, but the way it worked out, she wanted us to get married and I put it off.

Her dad hated me. He’d say things to her like, “Don’t you want somebody with goals, with suits in their closet?” Her mom wasn’t that keen on me either.

But she wanted a commitment. So what did I do? Instead of asking her to marry me, I went out and had her name tattooed on my shoulder.

It would only be a year before I had it covered.

ANGIE

I was working out at a Gold’s Gym in Alexandria, Virginia. I noticed this woman, a lot younger than me, working out and thought, Wow, she’s drop-dead gorgeous. She stood out right away. Her face was so amazing, exotic, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Her hair was Halle Berry short, which was a real turn-on. She also had this tattoo on her shoulder. Nowadays it seems like every woman has a tattoo, but in those days it wasn’t as common, and it was another thing that made her stand out.

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