by Jon Robinson
Typically wrestlers, what we do now is use Hotwire. It has great rates, and it lets you know the amenities of each hotel. Two stars is really cheap, two and a half stars is pretty cheap, three stars is a pretty decent rate, and four is your high-end rate that is usually over one hundred dollars. Usually we stay at the three-star hotels, but every once in a while you make a concession to go down to a two-star just because it’s available, it’s cheap, and it’s right by the airport. Besides, most of the time, we’re only in our rooms to sleep, so how bad could it be?
Well, let me tell you about my two-and-a-half-star hotel in New Jersey. It was right by the airport, and I thought it would be great. But then I get dropped off at the front office and say, “Hi, I made a reservation under Hotwire.” I give him my name, and the guy looks at me and shakes his head. That’s all he would do, shake his head. I was like, “What does that mean?” And he finally says, “We don’t have any rooms.”
“But I already paid for this room,” I tell him. “You have to have a room because I paid for it. That’s the whole point of making the reservation and paying in advance.” Next thing I know, the guy is making me fill out some paperwork, all the usual—name, address, phone number—and he’s like, “Yeah, room 32, right up there.”
I lug my bags up the stairs, and the room looks pretty decent, until I go into the bathroom. When I flushed the toilet, everything backed up to the point water started pouring over the side of the toilet and flooding the bathroom. Water hit the side of the tub, then it hit the other wall, and the water just kept on coming. I couldn’t believe how much water was flooding my room after just one flush. It was literally a disaster. And this was at like one, one thirty in the morning. So I knew I wanted out. I looked out my hotel-room window, looked up the street, looked down the street, and saw a sign for Dunkin’ Donuts in the distance. I made sure I had my wallet and my cell phone, and I went for a walk. Twenty minutes later I get to the old Dunkin’ Donuts and hang out there for an hour. Got a donut, a coffee, and a cheese-whatever, then I got some more, then I started my long walk back to the hotel. When I was on my way back, I stumbled upon a gentlemen’s club that was halfway between the Dunkin’ Donuts and my hotel. And that’s where I spent the rest of my night. The club was alcohol free, so I just sat there and drank bottled water and enjoyed myself.
Blame It on Eve
Tyson Kidd
One weird trip was this time we were headed to New York City for TV. In our car was the Hart Dynasty and the Great Khali. And then, whoever Eve was riding with originally on the loop had to go to Raw, so now Eve was riding with us to New York as well. We’re all crammed in this car. And Khali, he has to sit like this—it’s not his fault, but he has to sit in the front seat with the seat leaning all the way back. So whoever is sitting behind him, and it’s usually me, Khali is right in your lap. We always try to make things easier for Khali, and I have a hotel room where Khali is staying, but we decide we’re going to drop off Khali, then drive Eve to her hotel, which is totally out of the way, then we’re going to drive back to our hotel. So we drop Khali off, and this is after a show and after eating, so this is like three in the morning, and now we’re driving Eve back to her hotel, but there is all this construction on the road, so now it’s like four in the morning. On our GPS, it says we’re going to get back to our hotel at five, and there’s all the same construction we just drove through in order to get back. So we decide to forget it, we’re just going to look up hotels and stay at the closest one to us. We end up finding some little rat-hole hotel in New York, but we figure it’s worth it just to save the time. But when we get to the hotel, the room is so hot, we can’t even breathe. To make things worse, the people staying in the room above us were running around, and the walls and floor were so thin, it sounded like these people were in our room. I didn’t sleep the whole night at all. Then the next morning, we had to go back and drive another hour to go pick up Khali and take him to the building. And guess what? The hotel we were originally going to stay at was right next to the arena. The moral of the story: Don’t help Eve. And that’s because she’s associated with Cryme Tyme. Don’t ever help out anyone associated with Cryme Tyme. That’s my recommendation.
Roll of the Dice
Chris Jericho
If you go to one hotel and it’s sold out, that usually means that all of the hotels in that area are going to be sold out, and that means you have problems. There have been plenty of times when Eddie Guerrero and myself and this referee named Mark Curtis had to sleep in the car in the parking garage of the airport. I’d put my alarm on the dash so we didn’t sleep late, then I’d brush my teeth with a bottle of water and go from there. There are other times when you wish you slept in your car because you get to your room, there are towels everywhere, pubic hairs on the toilet, stains on the carpet that you don’t even want to know where they came from. You never really know what you’re going to get, especially if you’re not smart enough to make your own reservations. Sometimes you just roll the dice and hope for the best with the type of room you’re going to get.
Not the Best Time for a Swim
Nikki Bella
We are in Green Bay, and we are staying in this hotel that also has a casino. So after dinner and a few glasses of wine, I tell Brie, “C’mon, let’s just go to bed. We have to catch our flights in the morning.” But she was like, “No, no, let’s go to the casino.” But I kept telling her, “No, it’s time to go to bed.” So we get to our room and I’m getting into bed, but she is stomping up and down on the bathroom floor. I can hear her in there because the floor was this loud tile. She was stomping, trying to wake me up, like, “I want to go to the casino.” So I tell her, “Bri-anna, are you serious right now? Just go to bed.” So she gets into bed, and I fall asleep. Next thing I know I’m woken up by someone knocking on the door. I look over, and there’s no Brie. So I hurry up and answer the door, and there’s Brie. She’s standing there dripping wet in her white dress, with two security guards on each arm. Security was like, “Excuse me, miss, is this your sister? We found her at the pool swimming laps by herself.” I was like, “Brie, get in this room right now!” It was like three in the morning, and she was down there swimming laps in an all-white dress that went above her knees. I couldn’t believe it.
Blame It on the A-A-Alcohol
Brie Bella
If there’s a pool, you’ll find Brie in there, it doesn’t matter the hour of the night or what clothes I have on. That’s just the way I am . . . especially if I’ve had a few drinks first. And that’s basically what happened that night in Green Bay. I just wanted to go to the casino so bad, but my sister wouldn’t go with me, and you know how when you’re a little intoxicated, things get exaggerated in your mind. So I was mad she wouldn’t come to the casino. I was just like, “Screw this, I’m going for a swim.” It wasn’t the smartest thing I ever did because I totally ruined my white dress, but at least I remembered to take my shoes off so I didn’t ruin those as well. If you want to know anything else about this story, you’ll have to ask Jose Cuervo.
Brood Awakening
Tommy Dreamer
Whenever I travel with Edge and we only have a few hours of sleep until we need to catch our early-morning flight, we’ll end up sharing a room just to save money. I will always want to go to bed, but a lot of times Edge will be so amped up, he’ll want to go out and stay up all night before our flight. Then, of course, he’ll call in his partner in crime, Christian, and I’ll be dozing off and then all of a sudden someone will do a Superfly Splash off their bed onto me or someone will drop an elbow on me while I’m sleeping, and then we basically have some sort of semifight because they’re both pulling covers off of me or wrapping the covers around me while they double-team me just to wake me up. So what always happens is, they get me woken up, I’m all wound up and fired up, and then they wind up going to bed.
The New Gambit
Kofi Kingston
When things really get crazy is late at night in the
hotel. When Hornswoggle and I check in, we both get a copy of the key. Then as soon as we get in the door, we know it’s time to be on alert because we try to throw the keys at each other like Gambit from X-Men. And those things hurt if they get you in the right spot.
At first we never hit each other, then one time he hit me in the eye, so I tried to lock myself in my room. But then when I tried to get out, I realized that there was this hair dryer that was attached to the wall, and the cord was just long enough that Hornswoggle wrapped it around the door handle. So he locked me in my room. We got a good kick out of that, but there’s always shenanigans going on inside the hotel.
Kofi Still Owes Me
Hornswoggle
Oh yeah, the ninja hotel keys. It all started when he and I started sharing rooms to save money. I like two-star hotels. I like to save money. Kofi stays in nothing but three-star and above, but it’s really just a waste of money. But anyway, ninja hotel keys all started one night when he walked in the room, I picked up a key and I whipped it at him, and it hit him in the face. That’s when the war started. I’m still winning the war, as he has a lot of catching up to do. He finally caught me in the cheek the other day, and it was great. I actually applauded him. But then I also tied the door to his suite shut with a blow dryer to get back at him. He then proceeded to rip the blow dryer off the wall, and it cost me $150. He still owes me the money to this day.
Six
Good (and Bad) Eats
“When you’re on the road, it’s not just about finding something to eat . . . it’s about making sure it doesn’t come back to get you.”
—CHAVO GUERRERO
Finding something to eat at four in the morning can be a challenge. Scratch that—finding something healthy to eat at four in the morning is the real challenge. “I’m a big fan of the Wendy’s Baconator,” Kane confesses with a laugh. Make that a Double and we’re talking almost 1,000 calories and 2,260 mg of sodium in one meal . . . and that doesn’t even count fries and a drink. Yikes. “That’s one of the worst parts about life on the road, all the fast food you end up eating as you travel from one stop to the next,” he says. Then again, when you’re a WWE wrestler, sometimes finding a place to sit down and eat healthy is only half the battle. The other half? Eating with each other.
One Man’s Trash . . .
The Miz
I used to travel with Elijah Burke, and let me tell you, Elijah Burke is a character. Whenever we were on the road, we would stop at Cracker Barrel or Denny’s or a Waffle House, whatever we could find open late at night. And every time Elijah would sit down, he would immediately ask the waitress for a glass of hot water. She would bring the hot water, and he would stick all of his silverware into the hot water. I’d ask him why, and he’d say, “Daddy, have you seen the silverware here? There are spots everywhere on it.” Okay, I’ll let that go. But then we would get our food, and I would have some extra fries left. Now, if you’re a nice guy at the table and you have extra fries, you always ask the other person at your table, “Do you want my fries?” That’s the nice thing to do. So here I am, “Elijah, would you like my fries?” And he’s like, “How dare you, Daddy!” He’s screaming at me in the middle of a restaurant, and all of these old people inside Cracker Barrel start turning around wondering what’s happening. “How dare you offer me trash! That is your trash!” Elijah is screaming at me. “That is your trash, Daddy!”
I’m like, “Elijah, this isn’t my trash. I’m done eating it.” And he says, “You’re done eating it? Well, where does it go when you’re done eating it?” So I tell him, “Well, when the waitress takes it, she puts it in the trash.”
“That’s right,” he says. “She puts it in the trash.”
So we actually went around and started an argument through the entire restaurant whether extra fries on a plate are trash. We’re asking all of these old women, like, “Ma’am, excuse me, but if I had extra fries and I was offering them to you, would that be me offering you trash?” And this one little old lady tells us, “No, I don’t think so.” And Elijah yells out, “Are you kidding! That is trash. You’re telling me you would eat this man’s trash?” This poor lady is like, “Well, I wouldn’t eat his fries because I don’t really know him, but I would eat my husband’s fries.”
Elijah just looks at her and says, “I can’t believe you eat trash. That is disgusting.”
Needless to say, I can’t believe this guy. He’s incredible. But that’s not where the weird late-night food stories end with Elijah Burke. This other night we go to Denny’s, and let me tell you, Elijah loves carrot cake. “Love” might not even be a strong enough word for how Elijah feels about carrot cake. Anyway, the waitress comes over after our meal and asks us if we’d like dessert. “I’d love dessert. In fact, I’d love carrot cake. Thank you very much,” he says. Then she asks me if I want dessert, but I tell her I’m full and that I don’t want anything. Elijah can’t believe I didn’t want anything. “Daddy, she’s giving us free carrot cake.”
“Elijah, she’s not giving us free carrot cake.”
“But she offered it to us,” he says.
So I tell him, “It’s her job to ask us if we want dessert. She’s just doing her job.”
“Now, now, now, now, now, Daddy, she’s giving it to us for free. Trust me on this. You should get a piece of carrot cake from her and give it to me. Get it to go so I can take it with me on the airplane.”
“Elijah,” I tell him, “she’s not giving this to us for free.” But he just keeps insisting until I finally give in and ask for a piece of carrot cake. Lo and behold, what’s on the receipt? Carrot cake.
“But you offered it to me, ma’am,” Elijah insists. The poor waitress tries to explain that after every meal, they ask if you’d like dessert, but he sits there and complains for a half an hour. Half an hour about stupid carrot cake. Half an hour over $4.95. That is what he is complaining about. I paid for my carrot cake just to give it to him, but he didn’t pay for his carrot cake. She gave it to him for free. She actually took it out of her check, just for Elijah Burke.
No Shakes for You
John Morrison
My biggest pet peeve is any time we go anywhere and it’s late, the first thing that all of the fast food places do is turn their shake machines off. And it’s only because they’re lazy. I don’t know what it is—that they don’t want to make the shakes or they don’t want to clean their machines. But it doesn’t matter where you go, whether it’s McDonald’s or Wendy’s or wherever, my favorite cheap meal is a milk shake, and whenever we pull in, I just have this sixth sense of when the shake machine is going to be turned off.
No Translation Necessary
D’Lo Brown
This is back in 1998, when Taka first came to the company. He didn’t speak any English, and he was the only Japanese guy there at the time. So Jim Ross sees me as the responsible one and he tells me, “Hey, we’ve got this kid Taka here, he doesn’t speak any English. For a couple of road trips, can you take him on the road with you? Since he can’t speak English, he can’t read road signs, so we don’t want him to drive.” So Taka, the whole time, all he would say to me was, “Thank you, D’Losan . . . okay, okay.” That’s all the English he knew.
So we were doing a show in West Virginia one night and we flew into Columbus. It’s about a four-hour drive to Huntington, and after the show, we’re driving back to Columbus in the middle of the night. The highway we’re riding on is this desolate, two-lane highway, and about halfway through, we see this oasis of two gas stations, a McDonald’s, and a Burger King. In the car it was me, The Rock, Mark Henry, Grandmaster Sexay, and Taka, and Taka was sleeping in the back. I’m driving along and I’m like, “Guys, what do you want to eat?” Everyone chimes in, but Taka’s still sleeping. Mind you, it’s about two o’clock in the morning at this point, so I start yelling, “Taka, what do you want to eat?” Taka shakes his head, looks up, and says, “McDonald’s or Burger King, it doesn’t really matter to me.” Taka then closes
his eyes like he’s about to go back to sleep, then he realizes that he just spoke in perfect English. He sits up and says, “Ah, D’Losan, McDonald’s or Burger King . . . okay, okay.” He knew how to speak English the whole time but he was just pretending not to know English. He even tried to go back to his Pidgin English, but I told him, “You let the genie out of the bottle now.” All he could say was, “Oh, I’m sorry. My boss told me to keep it a secret that I know English.” We all got on him after that and gave him the keys. Here we were chauffeuring him, now it was his turn to drive. All this time, we’ve been trying to help him around, and you’ve got Rocky talking to him like he’s a five-year-old kid, and the whole time, the guy speaks better English than Mark Henry.
Nose Plugs, Please
Maria
Natalya and Eve love to eat corn nuts, and I hate the smell of them. I’ll be sitting in the car trying to plug my nose. The smell of corn nuts is gross. I remember one night in Tampa, I was traveling with Layla and there was nothing open, so we stop at a gas station, and as they’re stocking up on corn nuts, I buy three packs of tuna and a bottle of mayonnaise. This store had a hot dog stand, so I took some relish and onions and I stirred it into my tuna in this big to-go cup, and I ended up eating it with crackers. It didn’t make me sick or anything, but it sure did smell bad in the car. Not corn nut bad, but it was bad.
The Shakes
Chavo Guerrero
Late-night food is awful. The Waffle House is open 24/7, so a lot of times that’s all you can eat. I’ve done it before where I had Waffle House at three in the morning and I ate a chicken breast that wasn’t totally cooked, so I had them cook it more. The very next day I was sick to my stomach. I remember I was in Florida at the time, and the sickness started to really kick in. I couldn’t even wrestle that day it got so bad. I was just sitting there shaking. Billy Kidman actually had to drive me to a hotel by the airport, and I couldn’t even get out of the car without help. I was sitting in my room, and my back just started really tightening up. I don’t know if it was because of cramps or what, but my back was really tight. I was freezing cold, I’m throwing up, and now even though I’m freezing, I had to put ice on my back because it was so tight I couldn’t even lie down. It was a horrible night, and that’s happened to me a few times. When you’re on the road, it’s not just about finding something to eat . . . it’s about making sure it doesn’t come back to get you.
