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The World According To Dutch: A WWF European Wrestling Tour From Hell

Posted: Jan 19th 2010 By: CMBurnham

When I was in the WWF in the mid 90's, following Wrestlemania 12 which was held at the beautiful Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, California, now called the Honda Center, we were scheduled to embark on an overseas tour of Germany. The tour was a 10 day romp of Germany with events scheduled in Munich, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Heidelberg, Frankfort, Bonn, Hamburg, and E. Berlin. As this was scheduled to begin immediately following WrestleMania 12, that meant we were scheduled to work every day in Germany without any down time. The first day and the last day were assigned as travel days which can be as hard or harder than the days we worked. I could see that this tour would be a hard one with traveling from California to Germany would be one long ass trip.

WrestleMania was a huge success and I remember seeing Shawn Michaels take the rappell ride to the ring as he entered the arena for his match with Brett Hart. It had been a whirlwind Wrestlemania 12 weekend, with a company wide award show that was broadcast over USA Network on Saturday night preceding the PPV. The PPV in Anaheim was sold out with over 18,000 in attendance and was a great show. We had all flown in on Thursday and I could see that by the time we left for Germany, we would already be tired. By the time we would leave, we would have worked the award show, the PPV, MondayNight Raw and the Tuesday night tapings and then leaving on a 10 day tour on Hitlerville with no days off.

I was working then as Zebakiah and managing Justin Hawk Bradshaw who is as crazy as they come. I had originally come into the WWF a year earlier as Uncle Zebakiah managing Jacob and Eli Blu, the Blu Brothers who were in real life, Ron and Don Harris. Don't ask me where the Uncle Zebakiah name came from because nobody ever claimed authorship over it. At the time, I didn't care where the name came from. Vince could have called me the "dangling participle" because I didn't care. I had bills to pay. I ended up managing Bradshaw because Ron and Don became disenchanted with the WWF and one day, just up and quit. This was after the incident involving Shawn Michaels in Madison Square Garden where both of them jacked him up against a wall and threatened to beat the crap out of him over Shawn allegely bad mouthing them to Vince Jr.

When Wrestlemania was over, Bradshaw and I worked in two California towns which, to the best of my knowledge, were Bakersfield where we did Monday Night Raw and Sacramento the next night. I distinctly remember Bakersfield because Bradshaw worked with the Undertaker that night. Bakersfield and Sacramento are up north around San Francisco where we would depart the next morning to being our trip to Germany by flying first to NYC's LaGuardia Airport.

Early on a Wednesday morning, without a lot of sleep, we all showed up at the San Francisco Airport on a cool gray and rainy day to head to New York's La Guardia Airport on a non-stop Delta flight. We would then transfer to a United Airlines flight to London and then on to Germany. This tour was already becoming complicated and it was tiring just to think of all the traveling that we had in front of us. When we all were standing in line getting ready to board the plane to NYC, I could see the cast of characters booked on this trip had disaster written all over it. As I looked down the line, the cast of stars read like this.

Kevin Nash as Diesel

Shawn Michaels as the HeartBreak Kid

Scott Hall as Razor Ramone

Sean Waltman as XPac

Hunter Hearst Helmsly before the Triple H days

Glenn Jacobs as Isaac Yankem and before the Kane days

Jake the Snake

Bradshaw with Zebakiah/Dutch

The Body Donnas, Chris Candido and Tom Prichard with Sunni

Owen Hart

Al Snow

Savio Vega

Earl Hebner

and starring Jerry Brisco as the Beaver. Actually, he was the agent for the tour or the company representative who would have to answer to Vince McMahon if anything went wrong. Which it did. There were a few more that I can't remember now but I do remember those guys.

Now I dare anyone to look at this bunch above and tell me that this was an ordinary tour? I could see right away that this tour could spell an interesting time.

The flight to NYC's LaGuardia Airport was over 5 hours and sitting 5 hours on a cramped plane isn't easy. We left San Francisco at 6AM which is 9AM in New York and we landed at 2PM. We had a 2 hour layover at LaGuardia and then we would board another United Airlines flight direct to London where we would then catch another flight to Dusseldorf, Germany. It was already starting out to be a tour from Hell. But we made the flight to New York without incident but the crew was already getting a little cranky.

We were all tired by the time we landed at LaGuardia but the trip was just beginning. The main part of the trip lay ahead of us as it was a 7 hour flight to London and then the flight to Dusseldorf was another two. Let's add up all these air hours, shall we. 5 + 7 + 2 = 14 hours in the air plus 4 hours of layover and you can see that whoever scheduled this tour didn't have the wrestlers comfort in mind. Plus leaving from California without a lot of sleep and going to Europe is a 10 hour time zone difference. I can't begin to tell you how this affects the human body not to mention the jet lag.

At La Guardia, we had a two hour layover before we boarded the flight to London. But at least on the flight to London, we were all seated in business class with a lot more leg room than we had on the flight from San Fran to NYC. I've said it a thousand times but wrestlers, in a lot of ways, are still little boys who never grew up. Here we were, all grown men, playing make believe and pretend and making money doing something that we all enjoyed doing. But the little boy mentality bothered me somewhat because idle time makes devil's play and on a flight, there's not a lot to do but drink or sleep or think of ways to get into trouble. Since this was going to be a long, long flight, I chose my seating arrangment so I could sit in the rear of business class with everybody in front of me. I did not want anybody to be behind me simply because I knew this group to be strong ribbers. With the Kliq and Owen Hart on board, anything could happen.

I was one of the first to board the plane so I got to my seat first and I watched as the rest of the crew boarded. The Kliq all boarded together and then the rest of the tour slowly took their seats. Bradshaw was sitting next to me and he asked me why I wanted to sit in the back of business class. I remember telling him that I read a long time ago, a story about Wild Bill Hickok. He got killed when he sat, for the first time in his life, sitting with his back to the door playing poker. For his lapse of security, he became a murder victim and ended up with a gunshot to the back of his head. I didn't think I would be shot in the head but I did worry about some of these characters sitting behind me especially with 7 hours to kill.

We took off around 5PM headed to London and within 30 minutes, we were flying in total darkness. The flight attendants were all fans and were excited to see all the WWF stars on their flight. Drinks were FREE in business class and that's right in every wrestler's price range. They served up food and right after that, everybody started drinking and the party began over the Atlantic Ocean. I knew the party wouldn't last long because everybody was dog tired but just in case, I tried to stay awake til everybody went down but I was too tired and finally, I passed out.

I woke up about 4 hours later from a hard sleep and what I saw looked like it came straight out of an Animal House movie set. The entire business class section was trashed!!! I must have been sleeping hard to have missed all this mess. There was food all over the walls, all over the floor and even on the ceiling of the aircraft. It looked like there was a massive food fight that had gotten out of hand. Two seats ahead of me I saw a fork sticking straight out of the wall as though somebody had thrown it like a knife into the wall. I looked up at the ceiling and I saw a jumbo shrimp lodged in the light fixture. Savio Vega and Scott Hall were engaged in some sort of argument. Somebody had cut some of Razor's hair while he slept and he was blaming Savio. Somebody had used a Magic Marker to write on Savio's bald head while he was fast asleep and he was blaming Scott. Apparently, while I was dead asleep, some of these guys were busily engaged in nefarious behavior against each other which ended up with food being thrown at each other and the pilot had to be called from the cockpit to tell them to calm down. I'm sure alcohol had a lot to do with this but regardless, when a pilot has to leave the cockpit, it is a serious breach of airline protocol.

When I awoke to see all this, it was all after all the strong stuff had already happened and we were about 30 minutes out of Heathrow. When we landed, I thought it would be all over but to my surprise, the pilots had reported this incident to the British air marshals who met us at the gate. They immediately boarded the plane and held us there until everybody else had deplaned. They wanted to know two things. What happened and who was in charge of this wild bunch of American heathens who obviously had little regard for proper British behavior. Jerry Brisco, who was the head agent of the tour, was taken aside and interrogated over exactly what had transpired on the plane. The rest of us were held in a small room and segregated from the other passengers in the concourse while they spoke with Jerry.

The security personnel and air marshals then informed Jerry that due to our outrageous behavior on the flight, United Airlines was denying us further transportation to Dusseldorf, Germany and that we would have to find another way to get there. I don't know what went on with Jerry and the airline officials but I do know there were some calls back and forth between WWF legal and the British air marshals. Jerry somehow got the airline officials to allow us to catch our next flight to Dusseldorf but barely. The airline officials turned out to be huge wrestling fans and they relented but told Brisco that if anything happened on the way to Germany, the offending parties would be arrested on arrival. We barely made the gate to catch our flight to Dusseldorf as it was in another concourse. Before we boarded the flight to Germany, Brisco called us all together and told us that if anything happened on the way to Dusseldorf, even if it was a sneeze, the offending party would be fired and sent back home immediately. He also fined Savio and Razor one thousand dollars each which didn't go over well with either of them. The tour hadn't even officially started and Savio and Razor were both down a grand apiece.

The tour was just beginning but it wouldn't be the last of the shenanigans that would happen on this tour. The tour would continue but not without incident. We still had 9 days to go and one thing I've learned in this business...put wrestlers, alcohol and idle time together...and problems crop up. ''

To be continued...

Next time...how one person left the tour early and why? Who was blamed for their leaving? What I saw on the way into East Berlin and the streets of Hamburg...and why Munich and Berlin freaked me out.

Tags: Dutch Mantell, WWF, Jake Roberts, Al Snow, Jerry Brisco