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The World According To Dutch: A WWF Overseas Germany Tour Part 2

Posted: Jan 28th 2010 By: CMBurnham

As you read in the first part, this tour had all the markings of a tour with a recipe for failure. With all the characters we had on this tour, I couldn't help but believe that something else was going to happen. It did. But the tour turned out getting better and then, at the end, it got worse.

The flight from London's Heathrow Airport to Dusseldorf, Germany was close to a two hour flight. Nothing happened on the way over because Jerry Brisco had laid down the law. By fining Savio and Scott Hall one thousand dollars, he made his point that he meant business. Of course, the idea in pro wrestling is to make money, not lose it or pay fines. So the crew was on its best behavior on the way to Germany. But of course, the bad boys among the crew were too tired to try any new shenanigans. They mostly slept during that entire trip and the shenanigans would wait for later in the tour.

We landed in Dusseldorf and I halfway expected the crew to be met with a molly of air marshals much like we had been greeted in London's Heathrow Airport. But as we deplaned, there were no extra security people and as we made our way to the immigration and customs areas, everything was fine. Even going through customs and immigration was a breeze. There was no extra screening, no extra questions, no how long are you going to be in Germany questions. I thought to myself...do these German authorities realize that a bunch of WWF wrestlers have invaded their country?

Of course, what had happened on the plane from NYC to London would not be tolerated today. Actually, pre 9/11, flying was relatively fun but not today. September 11th, 2001 changed all that. If what had happened on the plane to London in 1995 had occurred in 2010, we would have all been in jail for air piracy. I thought we were lucky then. Today, we would have all been arrested and sentenced and then deported with a huge fine. Then we would have all been fired by WWE. Damn, I miss those good old days.

But we got through it and made it to Germany. We flew through immigration and presto...we were in Germany. I couldn't help but think that getting into a European country was so much easier than say...passing over into Canada for a day shopping trip. I don't know what it is about Canada...but everytime I've ever been there...they looked at me like I was coming in to rob them or attack their grandmothers or something. The border guards in Canada looked at me in such a way that sometimes I even felt guilty of breaking the law. But going into into Germany was a snap. They just looked at my passport, gave it a stamp and I was in like Flynn. The WWF Germany Tour was officially underway.

We collected our bags and one thing I must say right now that in those days, when you went on a 10 to 14 day tour, you had to be prepared which meant packing more than you oridinarily would. Bags were heavy and getting these heavy bags from place to place was a chore. One reason it was such a chore was that in those days, bags were not equipped with 'wheels'. Who would've thunk it? A bag without wheels? Unthinkable today. Whoever invented 'wheels' on luggage bags should be rewarded every year with a million dollar bonus. You can imagine trying to carry, by hand, a 60 to 80 pound bag from airport concourse to the other concourse and trying to hurry to make the flight. It wasn't easy. Today, you could just roll it along and take your time but in those 'dark ages', we were at the mercy of the weight of the bag and the distance you had to transport it.

There was a big beautiful tour bus waiting on us when we exited baggage claim. This bus would be our 'road home' for the next 10 days. We all gathered outside the luggage level of the Dusselfdorf Airport and stored all our luggage in the underneath carriage area of the bus and one by one, we all boarded. The seating arrangement of the bus, from that day forward, told a story that, if you knew how to interpret it, spoke volumes about the hierarchy of the WWF at the time. There was a pecking order with the Kliq holding the most power. The Kliq made their way to the back of the bus...so they chose their seating first...and most of the rest of us, remained in the front of the bus.

The sections of the bus were separated by a small lavoratory in the middle and a small partition on the other side of the aisle which conveniently made for a demarcation line that wasn't crossed for the remainder of the tour. What we ended up with was a weird dynamic. We had one group in the back and one group in the front with very little or next to none crossover. The Kliq stayed to themselves and the non-Kliq stayed to ourselves. Needless to say, I was in the non-Kliq category. A in the front of the bus. As it worked out, the Kliq and the rest of the crew ended up being completely segregated that lasted the entire 10 day tour. When we mingled, it was in the dressing rooms but on the bus, we were totally segregated. All we needed to break the ice was Rosa Parks.

The Kliq crew roster, in the back of the bus, read as follows: Kevin Nash, Shawn Michaels, Scott Hall, Triple H, X Pac, Aldo Montoya and for some reason, Chris Candido and Sunni were included in that group. The non-Kliq roster read as follows: Bradshaw, me, Kane, Al Snow, Owen Hart, Savio, Earl Hebner and of course, Jerry Brisco who spent most of his time up with the driver as we drove from town to town. Jake the Snake was in there someplace but all I saw him do during the trip was sleep. Actually, Jake was an island to himself. He didn't mesh with the Kliq nor did he mest with the rest of us. Jake was a loner...and he made it clear that he was not to be disturbed.

WWF tours were well organized. There was no problem with getting to the arena or the the hotels. We would always board the bus, with everybody in their segregated areas, and lay back while the driver got us to where we had to go. We would get to the arena every day at 4PM and catering would already be set up and the food was always ready. Before we worked that night, we placed an order with the catering crew of what we would like for our nightly meal and it was always ready when we walked out the door to reboard the bus to our hotel. Everybody had their own room when we would get back to the hotel at night. One thing about the WWF, when you went on tour, you went first class. We would stay at the best hotels usually in the center of the city we were wrestling in. There was no hedging on money or amenities and I always thought that WWF should implement fan tours in foreign countries because WWF tours were fun and they were nothing like Japanese tours.

The tour started in the south of Germany and we worked our way north. Actually, Germany is a beautiful country and for me, going to Germany for the first time was a huge thrill for me. I'm a WW2 history buff and seeing the country and imagining what it was like back during the war days, was highly intriguing for me. As we rode down the AutoBahn, where there is no speed limit, was a great visual. BMW's, Lamborgini's and Saabs would pass us on the Autobahn, sometimes in speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. They were literally flying down the highway and the whole time I was there, I never witnesed an accident. How? I have no idea. If that happened in the States, there would have been huge accidents.

Back on the bus...we begin to hear rumors that the Kliq group were having a problem. One night, we heard some loud talking from the back of the bus and it was the Kliq going off on Sunni and Candido for something. The incident passed but it would rear its head later on in the tour.

I remember riding on the bus going into East Berlin and passing through where the Berlin Wall once stood. I was speechless going through an area where East Germans had been shot and killed by East German border guards as they tried to make it from East Berlin to West Berlin back in the 60's and 70's. The wall had only been torn down for about 10 years when the WWF made this tour and you could still see small remnants of the wall that had not been claimed by souvenir hunters but most of it was gone.

The street leading into East Berlin was a huge, wide street and we came into East Berlin late at night on the way to our hotel. I couldn't believe that we would be staying in East Berlin instead of the western part of the city. But more surprising than that was what was on the street. The street was a four lane wide avenue and on each side of the street, there were hundreds and hundreds of prostitutes lining the avenues. And I'm not talking average street level hookers either...I'm talking some of the most beautiful women that I've ever seen in one place. Seriously, it looked like a Vegas Strip Club but on the street. Apparently, the German are kinda horny type people. I've never seen anything like that in the States and probably never will. Of course, the wrestlers all went crazy when they saw the prostitutes and all gathered at the windows to get a better look. For me, this Germany trip was getting interesting.

We stayed at some older hotel...it was nice but it still had the throwback motif of a Communist country. It looked like the hotel came right out of a James Bond movie. Later on that night, I went down to the bar area of the hotel, and I saw a lot of women in the lobby and the bar area that eerily resembled some of the ladies that I had witnessed on the Avenue on the way to the hotel. I didn't stay long in the bar area but the next day, there were some weird stories floating around that one 'lady of the evening' left the hotel with no hair. Hmmmm...sound familiar.

We wrestled in an old civic building in Berlin that night and the place freaked me out. It had to be at least 60 to 70 years old at the time and looked, felt and smelled like it too. It was wintertime so the building was huge, cold and drafty and our dressing rooms were downstairs. I hate to sit in a dressing room so I started wandering around and I ran into an older German security guard so I started a conversation with him. It surprised me that his English was perfect. I asked him where he had learned his English and he told me that most everybody, in Germany, speaks English. He said that after WW2, English became a required subject in all German schools starting in elementary school.

I asked him about the building and what he told me freaked me. He said that in 1939, Adolph Hitler, in this very bulding had delivered the famous Final Solution speech to the German people and to the world. The Final Solution Speech was the blueprint that the Nazi Third Reich had devised to eradicate the Jewish population from not only Germany but the world as well. I couldn't believe that in this very same building that I stood, was the very same building that der Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler had once walked, talked and made history that changed the world.

If the guard was right, 1939 was right around the time that Germany invaded and occupied Poland which to me always signified the REAL beginning of World War 2. For me, to be standing in the same building and walking in the same hallways as a HUGE figure of HISTORY as Adolph Hitler was humbling. I can't describe how I felt but it was weird.

This Germany trip was starting to get interesting. When we went to Munich, we worked in an arena named Olympiahalle which sat adjacent to Munich's Olympic Stadium where, in 1972, the World Summer Olympic Games suffered one of the most heinous crimes ever staged on a world wide scale. The militant Muslim group, Black September, after sneaking into the village at night, captured the Israeli Olympic team in their apartment and held them hostage for 4 days. This was carried LIVE on WORLDWIDE TV and ended with 11 members of the Israelis being murdered by the terrorists before being overcome by German security forces.

The exact location of the spot where the Israelis were held hostage was just a mere two blocks from where we entered the arena where we were scheduled to work that night. Walking into that building that night and knowing that such an historical and violent event had happened right down the street 20 years earlier put things in perspective. I vividly remember the massacre as it unfolded LIVE and I still remember John McKay, who was an ABC Wide World of Sports announcer at the time, announcing to the world...and these are his exact words, "They're gone. They're all gone." It was a chilling time in world history.

It was funny thinking back on it now but riding down the Autobahn in Germay, you could look out the window and out of nowhere, a HUGE castle would come into view. I asked our German handlers the story on these huge castles with moats and draw bridges out front if there was anybody living in the castles? The answer I got was that the castles were abandoned because the overhead in keeping them maintenanced and working was just too expensive. It was nothing to just be riding along and all of a sudden, a huge, big castle would appear on the horizon which you could see plainly from the Autobahn. For an outsider, it was a spectacle but for a native German, it was commonplace.

As we worked our way north, we came upon a city by the name of Hamburg, Germany. I've always heard the term 'the red light district' and understood what it meant but never understood the origin of the name. In Hamburg, I found out. After the matches, I went out with Bradshaw, Al Snow and Kane to see the sights. We were walking down a street in Hamburg and came upon a HUGE RED GATE that was at least 10 feet in height that blocked off the view from the street. We watched as the big Red Gate opened and closed with men going in and out through the gate. We didn't see any women going behind the huge Red Gate. We all wondered what was the big deal with the secrecy behind the big Red Gate?

When we saw that men were passing through without hindrance, we decided to check it out ourselves since it was apparent that anybody could enter. We opened the gate and stepped inside to see what was there. As we walked down the street, what I saw was something I've never seen before. It was a block long street which housed brothels, on both sides of the street one right after the other. One this one block long street, there were at least 15 brothels all sitting side by side to each other. The brothels advertised their 'merchandise and services' by having their 'ladies' sit in store front windows where the potential 'customers' could examine the wares.

The men would stand outside the storefront window with the prostitute sitting inside the window behind glass with only 3 feet between them. The practice of prostitution was legal and, to me, this was a good common sense way to handle it. Prostituion wasn't going away since it's been with us since Biblical days and the Europeans seemed to have a much better grasp on legislating it than the Americans do. But, politics aside, now I truly understood the meaning of the term, 'red light district'.

I had heard that Germany was just like the states when, in reality, it was nothing like the states. Hell, I was starting to like Germany. It was much more liberal and open. I started liking Germany more and more the longer I stayed.

So far on this trip, we had almost been arrested, I had seen and been in the same building that Adolph Hitler had delivered the Final Solution speech, saw up close the scene of the 1972 terrorist attack on the Olympic Village and now, a close look at a real "red light district'. Up to this point, I was really enjoying the WWF Germany Tour.

On the bus, however, unbeknownst to me, there was a rift going on with the Kliq crew. There were rumblings that the Kliq had become disenchanted with the presence of Chris Candido and Sunni. Sunni and Chris Candido had taken up residence in the back alongside the Kliq and whether they had been invited or not was never determined. But somehow, Sunni had gottenon the bad side of several members of the Kliq. What she had done to get on their bad side was never disclosed but apparently, something happened.

In those days, Sunni was being groomed by Vince McMahon himself as a HUGE STAR. Sunni, at the time, was the GOLDEN GIRL. I remember one day before a RAW taping, I looked out on the floor right beside the ring and there was Vince McMahon himself tutoring Sunni on what he wanted her to do that night. Rarely, if ever, did you ever see Vince McMahon individually instructing talent other than the top stars like Austin, Rock or the Undertaker. When the rest of the crew saw Vince personally tutoring Sunni, everybody knew that Sunni was HIS GIRL and nothing but a huge push lay in store for her.

I was glad for Sunni because I had met her a few years earlier in Smoky Mountain and I could tell she was a natural from day one. She was always nice and cordial to me every time I had met her. But Sunni...was a polarizing figure for some reason.

Getting big pushes sometimes didn't bode well with certain members of the wrestling brotherhood for a variety reasons. In the front of the bus, we heard rumors of the origin of the rift. I can only surmise what the reason was but even to this day, I still don't know what it was. Maybe the Kliq were jealous of how close she was getting to Vinny Mac himself or the fact that she was appearing to be the female heir apparent...or...maybe on some of those long rides Sunni had said something that pissed off one of the members of the Kliq. Whatever it was, Sunni, somehow managed to get on the bad side of the Kliq. We all knew that the Kliq could get by with a lot of things that the rank and file wrestler would have been sent home for. I learned long ago that to be able to survive in the wrestling business, one had to learn to distance themselves from internal squabbles. I followed my gut feeling and did just that and along with Earl Hebner, I advised all my upfront buddies to steer clear of the problem.

Sunni knew she had some issues but she never let on to me or to anybody that anything was wrong. She was always the friendly Sunni that she always was to me.

Then one morning after the show in Hamburg, we all learned that Sunni had suddenly left the tour. It was like she was there...and then...the next morning, she was GONE LIKE THE WIND!!! The question wasn't where she went because we all knew she went back home. The question became...WHY? Why Sunni left was the burning question of the day and you didn't need to be a member of CSI New York to figure it out. I knew it had to be serious because we heard that it cost WWF an extra $8,000 just to get her out of Germany and off the tour. When somebody spends bread like that, there has to be a compelling reason. The reason for her departure wasn't immediately known but you can't keep a secret like that in such a small group of people.

Slowly word began to leak out what had 'allegely' happened. Every night on the tour as the wrestlers would leave the arena, they would all stop by the catering area and pick up their designated 'tin of food' that they had ordered earlier in the day. The food would then be taken back to the hotel and then eaten in the privacy of their room.

As per custom, Sunni picked up her food that had her name on the box and took it back to the hotel. As Sunni was eating her food that night, she suddenly became aware that something was terribly wrong with her food. Sunni had taken a few bites of food from her "to go" box while she was on the phone when she suddenly stuck her fork into the food...and what she came up with stunned her!!!!

Let's just say that whatever was in her food shouldn't have been in her food. Rumor had it that what was in her food was organic in nature and for the sake of embarrassing Sunni, I won't go into detail as to what it was. Let's just say that whatever was in her food was disgusting. Really disgusting. She had, apparently, been eating a few minutes before she noticed the problem due to being occupied with her phone conversation and it was clear that what was in her tin that night could not have gotten in there unless somebody had placed it there...on purpose.

Sunni, of course, was totally distraught over the entire incident and pitched such a bitch to the head of WWF Human Resources, that it was determined quickly that the best thing to do was to yank Sunni off the tour immediately. From a WWF standpoint, it was a proactive move to separate one of their employees from a hostile work environment and to lessen liability in case of a lawsuit which they feared would be expensive. Whether this is totally accurate or just what we heard has never been documented or revealed before. But, even in the world of strong wrestling ribs, this went far and above what can be called a 'rib' and was especially bad in that it happened to a female. This was more than a 'rib'. This was criminal and that fact was not lost by WWF legal.

So who did this? Who were the guilty party or parties? Nobody knew, nobody ever found out, nobody ever admitted guilt and nobody ever got blamed or accused but speculation ran rampant. We all knew that the culprits were a band of 5 but which one it was, we'll never know. It was a situation that happened that shouldn't have happened and WWF management wanted to sweep the entire incident under the rug.

The tour ended on a note of tenseness that had not been there on the start. The last few days of the tour were tense and the only thing that changed on the bus was that Chris Candido moved from the back of the bus to up front with all of us. Nobody talked about what happened except in low voices to each other. But it was a tour that I will always remember and one that had its high times and its low ones as well. I can't believe that we all did and saw so much during one 14 day period.

Thank you for reading The World According to Dutch. Til next time...if you can't dazzle me with brilliance..befuddle em with BS.

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