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Tuesday, 04 January 2005 |
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In order to understand this story fully, you need to have a basic grasp of geography, if you dont know where some of the places that are mentioned in this story are, get a map and check them out, only then will you appreciate this story fully. This story did not happen way back in the dark ages of professional wrestling; it happened a few years ago. I was working on a month long tour of the UK. Well tour might not be the right word to use there as we just went from place to place and show to show. I suppose that the term tour is only appropriate to smaller promotions that run special tours these days. Talk to any professional wrestler that has ever been given a date sheet and they will tell you that they look at it with dread. Why dread? The first thing you do when you look at a date sheet is check how many long jobs you have for the month. Now by long jobs, I dont mean anything under 2 hours of travelling! They were looked at as local jobs. On my date sheet was one date that stood out like a sore thumb STORNAWAY. Now, for anyone who does not know where Stornaway is, it is a small island at the top west coast of Scotland and not easy to get too. Quickly I looked at the date before the Stornaway show and saw that it was an English job - Peterborough. Things were going from bad to worse. With the limited ferry service to Stornaway, I knew that it would be an overnight travel to get to the ferry in time. Still, good company makes these jobs go all the better. I wont go into details about the Peterborough show, but as soon as the show was finished, we started the long drive to Ullapool for the ferry. The drive from Peterborough to Ullapool took 8 hours and the only time we had to stop was for the toilet. We arrived in time to get in the ring van in the queue for the ferry. Whilst we were waiting in the waiting room, a guy in an official coat started going from car to car, van to van talking to the drivers. Sure enough he arrived at the waiting room and told us that the weather at sea was too bad for the ferry to set sail so they were just going to board us and get going as soon as they could. It was now 8am and the ferry was due to sail at 9am. I asked how long they thought it was going to be before we got underway. The guy just shrugged his shoulders and walked away to the next car. Anyone who has ever been to Ullapool will tell you that there is not much there. A caf?a couple of pubs and a newspaper shop are the best that they can offer you, and as we were on standby, we could not even drive anywhere else. We decided that we would go and get some breakfast and some sleep on the ferry. Hopefully it would not be too long before we set off. At 12pm, most of the team were spread on the seats and floor of the ferry fast asleep. We were still waiting for the all clear to get underway. Time was now starting to go against us. The crossing would take three hours and we still had to get the ring up when we got there! At 3pm, we asked if the ferry was going to go soon. The purser said that the latest weather report looked good and we should be setting off soon. The promoter phoned the hall and explained the predicament to them and said that we would be a bit late. Being an Island, they were obviously used to this sort of occurrence and said that it would be no problem. Everyone on the Island knew that the ferry was late and that we would also be late. At 5pm the captain made and announcement that the weather had cleared up enough for him to take a chance on leaving. We should have all known that when using the word chance things were not going to be good. But we had been on the road for 24 hours by this point and just wanted to get there. As we sailed out of the bay, everything was really smooth and we wondered what the problem had been. Sailing out of the bay at Ullapool is not like just pulling out of Dover harbour and being right in the sea, you had a good couple of miles sailing before you reached the main sea. 10 minutes into the North sea and we knew why the captain had not wanted to go earlier. The ferry was being tossed and pulled always and this was just the start of the journey. Now I have been on loads of roller coasters, but this was starting to beat them all, the ferry would rise and then fall with such speed that the floor would disappear from beneath you, much like being in turbulence in an aircraft. Myself and Danny Collins found this to be of great amusement, but there were plenty in our party and on the boat that were not enjoying it as much. We were all instructed to sit down and stay in our seats unless we really had to get out of them. The crew had closed all the curtains as they did not want us to see the ferry disappearing under the swell of the waves and being flooded as the wave crashed down on the boat. Every minute that we sailed, the journey was getting worse, the sounds of the waves hitting the ferry was really bad and more worrying than the constant rise and fall of the ferry. By this point I think every sick bag that the ferry carried had been used. There was kids screaming and vomit everywhere. Even some adults were crying. Sounds a bit dramatic, but it was bad. The purser came round trying to calm people down and one person asked why they did not turn round and go back. The purser just said that if we tried to turn, the ferry would be tipped over and we would capsize. That was the last straw, everyone now knew just how bad this was. My girlfriend who was on the trip with us got out her phone and phoned her mum as she was now convinced she was going to die this night. Funny enough, there were a few other bods doing the same thing. It must be that warped sense of humour that some wrestlers have as Danny Collins and myself were still trying to wind people up. We told the purser that we had to go outside for some fresh air which caused great alarm and a lot of swearing from the purser. We opened up the curtains at the front of the ferry so that the people could see the waves! I dont think the crew were enjoying our fun though as they were running around trying to clear up the sick that was now turning into projectile vomiting! I decided that I would try and venture up to the upstairs lounge and see how the rest of our team were doing. As I turned the corner of the stairs, I was greeted by a green Earthquake. The big man was not enjoying this trip one bit. The upstairs lounge stank of puke, the toilets were flooded with it. The normal crossing time of 3 hours was extended to 4 hours because of the bad weather and apart from the first 30 mins and the last 10 the crossing was hell! As we pulled into the ferry terminal at 9pm, we thought that no one would have stayed around that long and we had gone through all that for nothing. But as I said earlier, the people on the island were used to this and they knew that we would not be in until the ferry arrived. There was a queue waiting for us out side the town hall. It took us 20 mins to get the ring in and up and we started the show as quickly as we could. The people in Stornaway are great people, they helped us carry in the ring and understood what we had gone through to make sure that they got the show done. This is where you might think the story would end, but oh no! In a bid to save expenses, the promoter had only taken over the ring van and as we were getting the 4.30am ferry back, he had not booked any hotels for us. What he had not checked out was that we could not get back on the ferry until 3.30am and the ferry terminal did not open until 3am! What did we do, well being good pros, we did not complain, we all climbed into the ring van and had a good laugh about the journey over. Sounds spacious doesnt it, well 17 people in the back of a sprinter long wheel base van with the ring and merchandise in it is not very spacious, we were stuck in there like pilchards in a can. Eventually, the former WWE superstar Earthquake who had put up with as much as he could take got out of the van and went and stood in the phone box until it was time to get into the terminal. We all just laughed and got on with it. We got on the ferry and headed home. The ferry still stunk of sick, but we were all so tired we did not care. The sea had calmed down and the sailing back was smooth. But as I say, even if it had of been as rough as it was on the way out we were so tired that we would just have slept through it anyway. These are the lengths that true Professionals will go to to get the job done.
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