Batista Unleashed (14 page)

Hunter is a tremendous store of wrestling technique and know-how, but probably the most valuable thing he taught me had to do with attitude.

His advice:

“Fucking relax.”

Just like that. “Fucking relax.” I can still hear his voice telling me that. “Fucking relax. Why you so wound up? Everyone fucks up. I fuck up. That’s where you learn. That’s what you do when you fuck up, it makes you, you know, it makes you.”

Him saying that put me at ease in the ring. I started having more fun and paying attention to the crowd.

Technique-wise, there were countless suggestions he made that improved my act. Simple suggestions that ended up making a big difference.

I used to set up my finish by using a spinebuster. I’d use a spinebuster and then go directly to the finish.

Now, I hope everyone reading this knows what a spinebuster is, but just in case: the move starts with me facing my opponent. I grab him around the waist, elevate him, then slam him to the mat. There are a couple of different variations to the basic spinebuster; when you put a spin in there you’re paying homage to Arn Anderson, who made that variation so famous a lot of people call it the Anderson Spinebuster.

My spinebuster would daze my opponent and lead directly to my finish—and again, I really hope you know this—the Batista bomb. When I first started, it was really a quick progression: spinebuster, bomb—one-two-three and out.

“Man, I wish you had something there to call for your finish,” Hunter told me. “To let people know you were going for the finish.”

He wanted me to watch a tape, I think it was from
WrestleMania,
of a big match between Hogan and Ultimate Warrior. He felt Hogan had a way of making matches have a big-fight feeling. So when we watched it together, I saw Ultimate Warrior and his intensity. Hunter suggested I shake the ropes before I go for my big finish. That’s where all that comes from.

It’s a simple suggestion, but it makes a big difference. When I shake the ropes, the crowd knows I’m coming for my big finish. They lose their minds. They’re into it and the finish is that much better.

THE BATISTA BOMB

Shane McMahon actually recommended that I do the Batista bomb as my finish. This was soon after I first came up. He thought it would be cool, because he never really saw any big guys doing it. Of course, it wasn’t called the Batista bomb then. I think it was J.R.—Jim Ross—who dubbed it the Batista bomb. It’s really just a sit-out powerbomb. There are a bunch of other names for the move, Tiger bomb is one. It looks fairly simple, but you need a bit of strength to pull it off.

For maybe the one person reading this who hasn’t seen it: the move is generally set up by action that’s left your opponent dazed and confused, in my case, the spinebuster. You grab him and stick his head between your legs. Then you curl your arms around his waist, and lift and spin him up so that he ends up sitting on your shoulders. At that point, your opponent is basically toast, because your next move is to bring him to the canvas really fast by sitting down.

The slam knocks what little sense he has left out of him. Most of my opponents are so wiped that all I have to do is lean on them to get the pin. It’s such a big move and makes such a huge noise that it looks and feels like a finish. Nobody’s going to get up from it. It even leaves me a little dazed.

It didn’t take long to learn. I can’t remember who I practiced it with, but we went down one day and did it on a crash mat. I think I began using it the same night. It was one of those things where the crowd liked it right away. It’s pretty devastating. Like I said, it’s a big move and it makes such a huge noise: it looks and feels like a finish. Nobody’s going to get up from it.

It does take a bit of strength to pull off. It’s also one of those moves that takes two. A lot of times, especially if it’s a bigger guy, if they don’t crunch up for me it’s just impossible. Even when they do, it can be hard. There was one match I did where I was actually working with Kane, and I was really sick. He’s bigger than I am and between being sick and mis-timing the move, I couldn’t get him all the way up. I think I got him halfway up and he dropped back down.

Laying the Batista bomb on Gregory Helms, Hurricane.

That was a match that didn’t go well, obviously. People shit all over it. They started booing. Then there was another where I did the same thing with Booker. I got him halfway up and had to bring him down, because we had mistimed it or something. But I actually snatched him and went back up with it and never let him go. That one I salvaged.

Usually, though, it’s up, down, count him out.

ANIMAL

I mentioned The Warlord earlier, and his connection with the Road Warriors and the original Animal, Joseph Laurinaitis. He’s a real big guy who grew up in poor neighborhoods and worked as a bouncer before he got into pro wrestling. Some people might think there was a connection there between us, but the truth is that my nickname as Animal was something that just evolved on its own. I didn’t even have anything to do with it.

I believe Jim Ross dubbed me the Animal. He started saying that I wrestled like an animal or that I had an animalistic style to my wrestling, something like that. I think he meant that I was more a brawler than a technical wrestler. And I was a big guy, so I had that beast image, hovering over guys and being relentless and ruthless. Nothing pretty about it.

The name came about during Evolution, though I don’t quite remember when. It fit, though, and it stuck—one of J.R.’s many inventions over his long and illustrious career.

HEELS

As a heel with Evolution, I started getting booed. A lot.

I took pride in that. It meant I was doing my job.

I think being a heel is a lot of fun. You know, you can’t have a kick-ass babyface unless you have a kick-ass heel. It’s like good and evil: no evil, no good. It just goes hand in hand.

There have been some great heels in pro wrestling. I’ve always preferred cool heels to, say, a chickenshit heel. Hunter’s cool; he has that rebel thing going that you can’t take away from him under any circumstance. When he’s a heel, he’s a badass, an ass-kicking heel. Those are the kinds of heels I like.

Ric Flair and Hunter of course come to mind when you mention cool heels, but there have been a lot of others. To me, Stone Cold Steve Austin was always a heel. People loved him so much, but he was a heel. He was just a badass, ass-kicking, rednecked heel. Because he was
so
over with the crowd, people turned him into a babyface. But to me, he’ll always be a cool heel.

Then there’s Arn Anderson.

ARN ANDERSON

Arn—his real name is Martin Lunde—had such a great career in wrestling that I can hardly sum it up in a few words. He’s worked with the biggest names in the industry: Ric, Ole Anderson, Dusty Rhodes, Sgt. Slaughter—it just goes on and on. Right now Arn works as a producer or road agent for WWE. Road agents help wrestlers develop story lines, work on moves, and in general help us do what we have to do in the ring.

I tried to model myself after Arn, because Arn was the enforcer in the Four Horsemen, and I was the enforcer in Evolution. So I really tried to get with him every chance I could, just to pick his brain and be a sponge around him. I learned so much from him it’s ridiculous. I’m often guilty of not giving him credit. And most of what I learned were little things, the simple subtleties of being a heel.

Arn has always been real big on making things very simple. As a wrestler, he would do things people could relate to. They weren’t huge spots. Like he’d kick somebody in the knee. You kick somebody in the knee, that’s dirty. That hurts. It’s something nasty, especially if you’re a guy like me who’s big and usually wrestles guys who are smaller.

Why would somebody my size kick somebody in the knee? Why? Because I’m a dirty fucking prick. I’m a nasty-ass heel.

Arn taught me something else that has always stuck with me. Heels make you uncomfortable. One example: when I was in the ring beating up on somebody, he suggested I lean in over them. He told me to get uncomfortably close. Hover over them, be in their space. It’s a bully thing.

That’s what a heel is.

Arn was never a big physical specimen. But he made people hate him. He was just a nasty prick in the ring. I wish Arn had extended his career, because I would have loved to have had a chance to work with him in the ring. He was forced to retire because of injuries. Wrestling fans missed out on a lot when he went out.

ARN AND RIC

The funny thing is that even though Arn and Ric are the greatest of friends, really big friends, Arn would just cringe at some of the things that Ric does in the ring. Arn is very serious, a brutal, serious heel. Ric is just—well, over the top.

Hilariously goofy.

Ric is famous for doing a spot where a guy will give him a sunset flip and end up pulling his trunks down. Ric will run around the ring with his ass hanging out while the crowd roars.

We were doing six-man tags with me, Hunter, and Ric during Evolution. They wanted to do a three-way thing where we would do a triple sunset flip and end up with our trunks down, running around the ring. I at first refused to do it. My character was serious; I had the enforcer role and it didn’t seem to fit. But Ric and Hunter did it, and of course everybody loved it. So Ric and Hunter gave me shit about it, just tons of heat, so the next night we all did it. Of course, we made total asses of ourselves—excuse the pun—running around with our trunks down to our knees, dragging guys around behind us.

Arn Anderson was the agent on the house show, and he was backstage. We walked back into the locker room and there he was, up on a chair, one end of his belt tied around his neck, the other in his hand about to be tied to a pipe.

He’d seen enough. He was about ready to hang himself.

It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

BOUNCING FOR THE FACES

Part of being a successful heel is making people hate you. You watch someone like Mr. Kennedy, for example. He just goes out and practically from the first word out of his mouth he’s egging on the crowd. He just riles them up until any one of them would give a year’s salary to spit in his face.

But there’s a lot more to being a successful heel than getting people to hate you. When we were in Evolution, we were badass heels, but look what we did for the guys who came in against us. We’d bounce around for them and make them look like a million fuckin’ dollars.

Even guys who weren’t the best workers, in terms of making a match look real. Take Goldberg, for instance. He’s a great guy, but he’ll tell you, he’s not the best worker. He has a hard time with the psychology and story that you tell inside the ring; it’s hard for him to translate that into something with his body that sucks the fans in. The people he works with have to do a good job to make the match look good.

A babyface’s success depends a great deal on the heels he’s facing. It’s all in how you make them look. A good heel will make your babyface look like Superman. Or you get a guy like Scottie Steiner, who was an awesome worker, but by the time he came to the company, he physically was having so many problems that it was hard for him to do anything. And he’s a great guy, by the way, so I don’t by any means want to show him any disrespect. Take nothing away from Scottie. His matches when he was at his peak were excellent, entertaining as hell. But by the time he got to our company, he had a lot of physical problems. He really needed a break. We’d bounce around for him and by the time we were done he looked like the baddest motherfucker on the planet. Even with Randy Orton—who started out as a heel with us on Evolution—when we turned Randy into a babyface and started bouncing around for Randy, by the time we were done, Randy was the
man.