Batista Unleashed (16 page)

His Austin 3:16 (“…I just whipped your ass!”) and his Stone Cold single-finger salute were where that whole WWE attitude thing came from. He’s got an electricity about him. He would make the whole crowd stand up on their feet just with his entrance alone.

But he’s another one of those guys who is no great physical specimen. He’s not huge by any means. You’ll never look at him out on the street and think, This guy could kill me with his bare hands if he wanted to. When he hits the ring, though, he’s the baddest motherfucker on the planet. He’s got the it factor coming out of his ass. When he’s in character, he believes it, and the crowd believes it. He also happens to be one of the best workers of all time.

The funny thing is, he got fired from WCW before he came over to our company. I believe Eric Bischoff, who was running WCW at the time, said he wasn’t going to amount to shit. And look what he did. He really changed the whole tone of wrestling. He’s a good dude. I wish I knew him a little better, because I’d sit down and pick his brain.

Man, I bet he has some fucking stories.

STEAL THE SHOW

Not all of the advice I received in my early days in Evolution came from other wrestlers. Some of the best advice came from the boss.

Soon after I started in Evolution, Vince McMahon pulled me aside. I was still tentative. I wasn’t wrestling very aggressively, and Vince knew it. He felt that I should be more full of piss and vinegar.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you? Why don’t you have a little attitude?” he told me. “You walk around here, you always try to stay low-key. It’s good to be humble, but we really need you to have a little bit of an attitude.”

This is the boss of the company telling me this. Forget his character on the show—this is the guy who made sport entertainment what it is today.

“Dave, I want you to get in there and be aggressive. I want you to steal the show,” he said. “I’m giving you license to do whatever the fuck you want.”

He wanted me to be a star. He wanted me to steal the spotlight. He encourages that. Vince loves hams—guys who are going out there trying to steal the spotlight. That’s where it gets competitive. We’re trying to top each other. That’s all part of being a star in this business.

It’s not easy to steal the spotlight with guys like Ric and Hunter right next to you. But that’s what I had to do if I wanted to succeed, and Vince made that clear.

VINNY MAC

Vince is a fucking character. I think a lot of people take him wrong. Don’t get me wrong, he can be a fucking asshole. He’s ripped me apart on a few occasions. But I think deep down, Vince is just a real locker-room guy, one of the boys. He’s down to earth. Probably even a little bit shy. He’s someone you can always talk to on any level; you don’t have to talk business with him. He’s even interested in goofy shit that happens on the road. “Hey, Vince, I was out last night, and this hot girl showed me her tits.” He loves to hear those stories.

But Vinny Mac is the
boss
.

Right before the last
Survivor Series
in 2006, when I won the title back, I blew off a photo shoot I was supposed to do. I had a reason for blowing it off. I had been scheduled for appearances on both of the days just before it, one in New York on Friday, one in Houston on Saturday. That Saturday night I had to fly up to Philadelphia. By the time I got back to Philly, it was late and I was exhausted. The next day was going to be a big deal for me, because I was going to win the title back in the
Survivor Series
. So I decided to get some sleep and not go to the photo shoot that Sunday morning. I didn’t think it was a big deal.

I got a call from Vince. He started ripping me apart, saying I was being unprofessional. Which I thought was kind of ridiculous. I mean, I
was
busting my ass here, but then I missed one thing and rather than being tired or something, bam, I’m unprofessional.

I started laughing, kind of out of a little bit out of nerves, I guess. The more I laughed, the more pissed he got. He really laid into me. Vince is one of those guys, he’s pretty intimidating. By the end of that phone call, I felt about two inches tall.

I haven’t missed a photo shoot since, and don’t plan to, either. Tired or not.

Vince also trains harder than most of the guys I’ve ever met in my life. Which always impresses the piss out of me. I watched Vince go through a couple of training sessions. He used to train with this guy Gary who was in security for us for a while. Man, they literally busted their asses. You think a guy sixty years old is not going to train that hard, but man, he’s hard-core.

THE COURSE OF EVOLUTION

The Evolution story line built up from late fall 2002 until the end of January 2003, when the “stable” was officially announced. Ric and Hunter were the heart of Evolution; they linked the past and present together. Randy and I were seen by a lot of people as the future. Some of our best opponents over the year and a half or so that Evolution ran included Kane, Scott Steiner, Booker T, Shawn Michaels, Chris Benoit, Edge, Chris Jericho, Goldberg, Shelton Benjamin, and Maven. I’ve probably forgotten a few; blame it on the bumps they gave me in the ring.

In his book,
To Be the Man
, Ric talks a little bit about how great an honor it was for him to be part of Evolution. He also talks about Hunter and how great a performer he was. According to Ric, Hunter had been talking about putting Evolution together from the beginning of 2002. Ric talks about how Evolution seemed to complete a circle in his career. For me, it was an incredible launch.

At one point—
Armageddon 2003
—we held all of the WWE championships: the World Tag Team Championship (Ric and I), the WWE Intercontinental Championship (Randy), and the World Heavyweight Championship (Triple H). But before that happened, both Randy and I went out with injuries.

TRICEPS

We’d only been doing Evolution for a few months when I tore my triceps in March 2003. I felt terrible at the time, because I was working my way toward my first
WrestleMania
, at that point only about a month away. The injury was pretty serious and took me out of play for several months.

Randy got injured in the same match. It was brutal. We were in Pennsylvania, doing the television show. It was freezing cold, and we didn’t get a chance to warm up or anything before we went on. Randy and I were facing the Dudley Boys—Bubba Ray Dudley and D-Von Dudley—in a tag team match.

Right off the bat, I ran into Bubba awkwardly. I felt my triceps strain. The triceps is the long muscle that runs along the underside and back of your arm. Most of the time, we take it for granted, but if it weren’t there, we’d never be able to extend our forearm or have our shoulder muscles do any useful work.

My arm felt funny, but it didn’t really hurt; it didn’t feel as if I’d completely torn anything, though I could tell I’d done something a little more extreme than a pull. So anyway, I started wrestling in the match and my arm started hurting a little more. Then a little more, then a lot more.

I went over and tagged Randy, and told him I did something to my arm.

I swear not more than thirty seconds later, he came back and was tagging me, saying, “I think I broke my foot.”

I’m laughing just thinking about this, but it wasn’t very funny then.

“Well, my arm’s killing me,” I told him.

I went in just the same. D-Von was in the ring with me, and I told him I did something to my arm. He called a spot while I had him in a hold and I reminded him, “Hey, I got something wrong with my arm.”

I forget now exactly what he wanted me to do, but I think he wanted me to catch him in a cross-body block. In a cross-body, which is also sometimes called a flying cross-body, one wrestler jumps onto you, ordinarily across your chest, and puts you down to the mat. Two good hands to catch the other guy are pretty much required, which is why I wanted him to do something else.

For some reason D-Von ran the spot anyway. I caught him, but as soon as I hit the mat, I felt this hot, excruciating pain. My triceps had been ripped.

BUBBA DUDLEY IS AN ASSHOLE

The match continued for a while, and it was just a nightmare. When it ended, they hauled Randy out in an ambulance. I followed in a car. Even Bubba Dudley got hurt, injuring his back.

Or so he claimed.

See, the thing that really, really drives me crazy about that night was that Bubba Dudley bitched out Randy while he was being put into the ambulance. Bubba started yelling at Randy, claiming that because of landing on Randy’s foot, he had hurt his back.

Excuse me?

Because Bubba
broke
Randy’s foot by landing on it and
crushing
it, Bubba’s back
hurt
and it was
Randy’s fault.

Yeah, that’s it. Randy’s in the ambulance with a broken foot and Bubba’s screaming and yelling at him.

And you know, usually if somebody gets injured in your match, or even if it’s just a guy you work with, at some point you try to give him a call to check on him and see how he’s doing. You want to show a little bit of concern. He’s a coworker, and whether you were responsible or not, it’s just a polite thing to do. The
right
thing to do. Show you care.

Needless to say, Bubba never gave me or Randy a call just to see how we were doing. Nothing.

In my opinion, Bubba Dudley is a jerk-off. He’s one of those people who used to always bully guys and throw his weight around just because he had a good position in the company. He’d been around for a long time and he was one of those veterans who’d always treated the rookies like shit. He treated me like shit. He treated Randy like shit. To this day, I can’t forgive him.

I don’t have a whole lot of bad things to say about people, but Bubba Dudley will always be a piece of shit in my book.

MY FIRST BAD INJURY

So anyway, I went to the hospital and had an MRI done. It told me my triceps was torn. I had to have surgery to repair the tear. Of course, injuries are an occupational hazard for wrestlers, but this was the first really bad injury I’d had. It took me out of the ring for nearly seven months.

Part of the reason I was out so long was that I reinjured myself maybe two and a half months after the surgery. I was trying to get back into shape. I was gung ho, and was looking forward to starting to work out and get back into full shape so I could wrestle again. But while I was out running, I fell and re-tore the muscle. I just fell and landed on it wrong and it popped apart again. It actually didn’t hurt that much, but it was obvious that I’d torn it. I guess I hadn’t had enough time to heal and the repair wasn’t strong enough yet.

For some reason, people started spreading stories about what happened. I just don’t know why they’d do that, but they did. People were spreading rumors on the Internet that I was on a treadmill and fell off and re-tore it. Others “suspected” I was in the gym lifting weights and I re-tore it. It’s kind of strange that people spend energy coming up with stories about things that they have no idea about.

Not to discount the physical injury, but I believe I hurt emotionally more than anything else. It was pretty heartbreaking. I’d been really hoping to be in
WrestleMania
that year, and of course that couldn’t happen. And, since I was still new with Evolution, I was afraid that I would lose my spot. No matter what anybody tells you, I think you’re always just a little bit afraid that if something goes wrong it will blow your career. At least that’s the way I felt.

And they did start talking about replacing me. If I’m not mistaken, at one point they even looked at guys who might take my slot. I was very fortunate that Hunter felt strongly that Evolution wouldn’t be the same without me. So they held out and waited through the spring and summer for me. That’s a very long time in the wrestling world. I’m still thankful for that.

I should also probably mention that most wrestlers don’t get paid while they’re injured. In my case, I went back to my guaranteed salary, which wasn’t that much; it was barely enough for me to live on, though I was grateful for any income at that point.