Tales from WWE’s WRESTLERS COURT
The Undertakers stature among his peers made him the perfect person to serve as the judge of Wrestlers Court — the very real collection of talent that meets when WWE employees needed to hash out differences on the road. It is commonly well-known that The Undertaker was one of the most respected wrestlers in the back. The concept of Wrestlers Court was first started by Dutch Mantel (aka Zeb Colter in WWE), years ago, as a way for the boys to settle their differences backstage. He brought in the concept soon after the murder of Bruiser Brody as Mantel happened to be in the arena when the stabbing took place, not wanting another backstage altercation to ever escalate to that level again.
Author: Braeden Farrell / Editor: JP Zarka
Wrestlers Court maintains order behind the scenes and acts as a check and balance system to show that no one is above the law.
Undertaker was usually the judge, though JBL and Triple H sat in at the helm on a number of occasions, too. There were prosecuting attorneys as well as defense attorneys who backed up the accused. Punishments were usually on the lighter side of things (the guilty party usually settling ordeals through gifting bottles of Jack Daniels, cases of beer, or food), although some unpopular figures backstage have been on the receiving end of much harsher justice in wrestlers court.
Whether it was someone having their words taken the wrong way, supposedly sharing matzo ball soup with a writer’s mother, accidentally spilling chicken crumbs on someone else’s bags, or something as simple as someone taking the term “diva” a bit too literally, as you’ll soon see, almost everyone had their day in court!
MATT STRIKER in Wrestlers Court for a Misinterpreted Comment That Turned the Entire Locker Room against Him
Matt Striker was a misunderstood individual when he arrived on the scene in WWE. Striker has gone on record saying that he isn’t great socially, especially when talking to people he doesn’t know well, and that he was a bit of a loner in WWE. This rubbed a lot of the locker room the wrong way, and as a result, he was perceived as cocky and obnoxious.
Striker made a statement which, in the eyes of the locker room, put Smackdown in a negative light when in comparison to RAW. This, along with the general feeling of the locker room being against him, landed him in Wrestlers Court.
Matters reached their peak in a hotel lobby one night. JBL was intoxicated, bugging Matt Striker to come down from his room to “talk” in the lobby.
In an RF Video shoot interview, Striker spoke about why he may have had heat with the boys and recounts what happened once he met JBL in the lobby.
“I suck socially, I have nothing to talk about. I didn’t want to sit around and commiserate with all the people there. Johnny Parisi and I were kind of cool with one another and I knew a few of the guys from the indies in WWE but I was really always kinda by myself and I think people took that to be that I was cocky. It wasn’t, it was just because I was so damn fucking weird… And then Tommy Dreamer and Edge became my friends and I became quasi-normal.
Some things I said were misinterpreted… The original plan was for me to be on both RAW and Smackdown during the time of the brand split and to do commentary for both shows and to be this wise ass heel-ish, teacher-y kind of guy and I had gone from RAW to Smackdown and I made the comment that it was kind of like going from college to high school. I didn’t mean it based on the maturity, I meant it based on how relaxed it was…
In college [RAW,] y’know: ‘Oh, oh I gotta study and I gotta go to study all night and I can’t hang out.’
In high school [Smackdown], it’s like: ‘Hey man, let’s smoke a joint, throw the thing around, and then we’ll go to Mrs. Jones class and ditch eighth period.’
That’s what I meant, but this was during a time in a climate where a lot of the veterans were adamant about letting the younger guys understand what the business was about, and it was misunderstood and mistaken. That next day I got to TV, no one would talk to me. People turned away. I was like ‘What the fuck’s going on?’
Some of the guys said, ‘Hey, I heard you said that this is like high school.’
Well, once that train got going, perception became reality.”
Matt Striker goes on further, and talks about someone at the center of the situation, Chris Benoit:
“Chris Benoit in Reno, Nevada… Everyone was down at the bar and he was very close to me, reading me the riot act in front of everyone, I mean, fucking screaming at me and I’m just standing there going, ‘Holy shit.’ There was a gift shop that stayed open and Chris went to the gift shop and he said, ‘Come with me.’
It was just me and him. I’m thinking, ‘Fuck, Chris Benoit – he’s gonna eat my face!’ But then all of a sudden he closed the door and he said, ‘Listen, I’ve got to make an example out of you. Since I think it’s great that you left teaching to come here, it shows passion for this business but I need to make an example out of you for all of them, so when we’re in front of everybody I’m gonna lay into you, but I promise you, I’m going to help you.’
I thought, ‘Okay, tough love. I get it.’
What most people saw was Chris being hard on me. What they didn’t see was that he would call and text me all the time asking if I wanted to work out or that he would watch my matches but would only pull me aside when it was just him and I because I had to be the example.
And I’ll also never forget that Chris said to me, ‘Listen, I need to set an example, you have to earn your way into the locker room, that’s what we’re really trying to do here, okay? So for right now, you can’t change in the locker room.’
I would find janitors closets, I would find stairwells, and I actually kind of liked it because I’m a loner. I kind of like my own little space, you know? I can fart in peace and not have to worry about it. But I remember at one live event, I was changing in a janitors closet and I went back into my bag and my money was gone. I went to Chris and I say, ‘Hey, listen, I think the janitor did it, I don’t know…’ and Chris would say, ‘Oh fuck, you got your money stolen! I’ll give you the money, what else?’ and that showed you what kind of guy he was underneath all of that.
As for the JBL confrontation, this is what Striker had to say:
“We were in Europe and I was dating a diva at the time. She was the only diva I ever dated, and we were up in the room sleeping and my phone rang. It was one of the Basham’s… It was almost like a, ‘(whispering) Don’t go downstairs. JBL’s drinking and he’s looking for you – don’t come downstairs.’
[phone rings again]
Basham: ‘JBL wants you downstairs’
Striker: ‘You just told me not to go downstairs!’
Basham: ‘Yeah, I know…’
And I’m laying there and I’m laying there and the girl is laying there next to me and she’s like, ‘What are you going to do?’ It’s like ‘You know what? I’ve gotten my ass kicked plenty in my life. Fuck it, let me go downstairs.’
I went downstairs and JBL was sitting there holding wrestlers court, drinking, and all of his minions were around him and I kind of just calmly sat down. I said, ‘I heard you wanted to talk to me.’
Before he [JBL] started saying anything, the girl that I was dating came walking in. I’m thinking, ‘You’re gonna get me fucking killed here!’ And she said in front of everybody, ‘If you’re gonna go through this, I’m gonna go through this with you!’
I thought that was awesome. And Bradshaw was drinking and he was going on and on…
The big thing was [JBL would say], ‘Are you a piece of shit?’
Striker: ‘No, I’m not.’
JBL: ‘Oh, so I’m a liar then?’
Striker: ‘Ah, no you’re not.’
JBL: ‘Oh, then you’re a piece of shit.’
Striker: ‘No, I’m not.’
JBL: ‘Oh, so I’m a liar then?’
And it went on and on and on and I just kept giving the same answer and then finally he says something like, ‘Oh, you think you’re big or whatever because you’re dating some piece of ass diva?’
And I was like, ‘John, with all due respect, this has nothing to do with her.’
JBL responded, ‘Well, yeah, I’ll kick your ass right now!’ And he says that and I thought to myself, ‘Okay, here’s what I came down for, this is the lumps, beat me up, I’ll go back up to my room and everything will be fine.’ So I didn’t realize he didn’t get up (JBL remained seated), but I did. So it looked like I was the one that was itching to fight! And in my head, it’s, ‘You’re six foot nine and the toughest Texan in town… Of course, you should kick my ass… but if I get one fucking lucky punch or you slip and fall, I am the king of the world!’ and he didn’t get up. I don’t know if it was cause he was too drunk, I don’t know if it was because he didn’t want to hurt me because it’s not a fight, you know what I mean? He’d kill me. But he didn’t get up. And right there it was like that moment where everyone was looking around like I was standing to fight and he wasn’t. And he just sat back and said, ‘You’re not fucking worth it.'”
Matt Striker stood up to JBL in wrestlers court, and from then on, things went smoother for him.
The Entire Divas Roster Find Themselves in Wrestlers Court for “Making Things Embarrassing for the Business”
![The Divas face-off against the Divas Search contestants in a dodgeball competition for SummerSlam 2004 [Photo: WWE Network]](https://prowrestlingstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Summerslam2004_DivasDodgeball-1024x578.jpg)
The Divas face-off against the Divas Search Contestants in a dodgeball match at SummerSlam 2004 [Photo: WWE Network]
In one of the oddest Wrestlers Court cases, the entire Divas roster teamed up in a dodgeball match against rookie Diva Search Contestants at SummerSlam 2004 and The Divas lost convincingly. The dodgeball match was thought to have been a shoot by the men backstage, and needless to say, they weren’t happy about how the women fared.
The perception was that the women on the roster lost to models with zero wrestling experience or much athletic background and that it was embarrassing for the business.
This was one of the very rare occasions where The Undertaker was not the judge, Triple H was instead, which may be an indication of how silly this case really was. Ivory was there in defense for the women.
Recent Hall of Famer Ivory had this to say about the experience in Wrestlers Court on Kayfabe Commentaries:
“So we had a wrestlers court. The divas got brought to court on the charges that they lost legitimately in dodgeball on a pay-per-view against the new divas, the bikini girls (Diva search contestants). So the wrestlers thought that this was just horrible and a real admonishment to women as athletes and they made a big deal out of it.
So Molly Holly came to me and she said, ‘We need a defense attorney, will you be our attorney?’ and I said, ‘Sure, yeah, I’d love to. What’s the deal, what’s the charge, what’s happening?’ So they filled me in and they had an actual defense they were wanting me to pitch. So the funny thing though was that Triple H decided he was going to be the judge… And of course, that’s always Undertaker’s role. So that right there set a precedence of it being like Judge Judy, you know, this is a TV version of wrestlers court, plus what a stupid trumped-up charge. It was just silly. It was kind of like, I don’t know why the cameras weren’t in there. I wish they were though because it was one of the highlights of my career!
Sean Morley [Val Venis] was the prosecuting attorney and I was the defense attorney for the divas, the real athletic divas, and Triple H was the court, the judge. So our argument was, ‘Because it’s wrestling, it was a work – we had to let them win!’ Of course, the guys weren’t having it, they weren’t going to accept that. So we got kind of a bum deal. I did a very dramatic, super performance [as defense attorney]. I ripped my jacket off at one point and I got to shut [Jonathan] Coachman down, it was awesome. Coachman said something and I said, ‘Why are you even in wrestlers court? You’re not a wrestler! You don’t even belong here’. Good hub in the room, lots of laughter.
So the only way that they tried to shut me down was Triple H kept saying, ‘Ivory, that’s enough, Ivory, that’s enough, you talk too much, you talk too much,’ but it was all good stuff. They didn’t want to hear it. Just like women in a man’s show, once the divas start rising to the top, the Wendi Richter’s, you know, any kind of an element of women’s wrestling comes and gets higher ratings, it just disappears. The same thing happened with Right To Censor… gone. So, the same thing with my defense attorney-ism, it was, ‘Shut it down, shut it down, it’s too hot, it’s too right!'”
Ivory proceeded to say, “The prosecutors had the bimbo divas up there, you know, to answer questions and they didn’t even know what a squared circle was… We gave them questions about wrestling. They had no idea what was going on. So I think we would have won, but the guys had it for a ruse, they didn’t want us to win. So then came the time to bribe the judge. Normally, the [accused] would bring in a case of beer or something for the judge and that always worked to lighten the sentence, right? Well, what I did was I packaged up a gift certificate to the Red Roof Inn and we offered that to Triple H as everybody knows Triple H always stayed and had been staying for years at the TV hotels which is a nice hotel and he would never ever use a gift certificate to the Red Roof Inn… So I presented it to him in a really humble way and the whole room just like fell out, they were just totally digging it. It was really good.
The best part was shutting Coachman down, though.”
We wish there were cameras in there, too!
How Edge, Christian, and Former-WWE Writer Brian Gewirtz Landed Themselves in Wrestlers Court for “Kissing Ass with the Writers”
Edge and Christian had formed a friendship with the former-WWE writer, Brian Gewirtz. As you could imagine, talent having this kind of relationship with a writer was generally not accepted backstage. However, it didn’t spiral into a big problem until Bob Holly witnessed Edge gifting Brian Gewirtz a Flash action figure he received at a signing from a fan. Gewirtz was a huge fan of The Flash, so this was looked upon as an act to get more TV time.
There was also a rumor circulating that Edge and Christian had gone over to Brian’s mother’s house along with Brian where they all had a nice dinner together. The locker room wasn’t happy about this and, Bob Holly made a scene out of it. As a result, the boys were called to Wrestlers Court. It was the writer, Brian Gewirtz, who had the majority of the heat in this one.
Edge, Christian, and Gewirtz all revealed interesting details about this incident on a recent episode of Edge & Christian’s Pod of Awesomeness podcast:
Edge: “I got a Flash figure and I give it to Brian because I assumed because he wore the t-shirts that he was a Flash fan. I was like, ‘I got this, I don’t want it. I like Flash, but I’m a Thor guy and a Daredevil guy.’ So I give it to Brian. Bob Holly saw it and the next thing you know we’re going to wrestlers court! (laughs)”
Brian: “Yes you gave me a Flash figure. That’s indisputable. The big rumor, though, was that, when we were in Nassau, Long Island, where I grew up, my mother invited the two of you to my childhood home (and we had) matzo ball soup.”
Christian: “There was some sort of rumor that we were invited to your parent’s place and we went there and had a big feast.”
Brian: “Which would have been delightful, but that didn’t happen. But that raised the ire of a lot of people. You guys were completely prepared for it, that’s the thing.”
Christian: “Well, we received an anonymous tip from, I don’t want to say his name here because I don’t want to incriminate him. We’ll call him ‘Burt Angel.’ We received a call from him in between towns. He’s like, ‘You guys didn’t get this call from me. You’re going to Wrestlers Court tomorrow.’ We’re like, ‘For what?’ ‘Uh, for kissing ass with the writers.’ We’re like, ‘Okay…’ ‘I just wanted to let you know, but you didn’t get this call. I’ve got to go,’ then he hung up (laughs). “
Brian: “Let’s just set the stage. Wrestlers Court is a time-honored tradition of self-policing within the locker room with the entire roster there. Not only the roster, but all the agents and referees, pretty much everybody, and I wasn’t told that. I was told, ‘It’s a rite of passage, you get pizza and beer.’ I literally brought a box of pizza and a six-pack of beer, because I thought it would be like a tribunal or something. Like, ‘Ah, there will be like five people, we’ll discuss the misunderstanding, everyone will enjoy some pizza and beer, and then we’ll be on our way.’ No. So I burst in the door and there’s like over a hundred people there.”
Christian: “So we got tipped off and we discussed it on the drive, what we would do, and then we decided we were going to flip it back on them. It was a little risky, but we decided we were going to go this way. So we decided on making a book because a lot of the talent were getting book deals at this time. I think Chyna’s, at the time, was about to come out. We had got to the building early, we took a book, just a whatever book and we took it to Richie (Posner), who used to do the props and the magic. We didn’t tell him what was going on, but we just said, ‘Hey, we need this book and we need the cover to be our picture and we need it to say: “Edge and Christian: How To Kiss Ass, Our Road To The Top.’”
Edge: “Complete with a picture of us with total shit-eating grins.”
Christian: “We’d also come up with this speech were we were going to talk about how we had been kind of pegged as ass kissers, and we weren’t going to hide from it, and we presented the book. We said, ‘There’s a lot of ass kissers on this roster, so we’ll take the fall for all of them.’ We just kind of owned up to all of it, and at the end, we said, ‘A lot of the talent have been getting book deals. We probably should just tell you now so you’re not surprised when you find out, but because of the stuff we’ve been doing, we’ve received a book deal.’
“You could just see, silence in the room, you could hear a pin drop, and just peoples’ faces turning beet red. They were mad, like, ‘These guys have been here for, like, a year and they get a book already?’ and we pulled the book out, we read the title, and the whole room burst out in laughter. Bob Holly had tears in his eyes, he was laughing so hard. Steve Blackman was laughing. Triple H came up to us and goes, ‘Guys, that’s the best defense I’ve ever seen in my life.’”
Brian: “Oh yeah. You two were such a delight. So wonderful, but if you recall, the three of us were up there together. You two worked it like gangbusters. Remember that Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are playing to the big house and Bugs does his routine and gets a standing ovation and roses? Then Daffy does his schtick and it’s like crickets, silence. That, I think, is an appropriate approximation of our day in Wrestlers Court. You’re using prop comedy, you’re using funny anecdotes.
JBL, as the prosecutor, says, ‘Well, Mr. Ger-witz, here…’ and I say, ‘Excuse me, my name is Gewirtz, so if we’re going to get this sham of a trial underway, the least you could do is get my name right,’ thinking, ‘It’s tongue-in-cheek. They’ll like that I stood up to John,’ and nothing. In fact, even more anger. People needed to be, like, restrained. Everybody was, you know, putting over Adam and Jay. ‘You boys learned your lesson, you little scallywags,’ and I’m like, ‘I learned my lesson, too.’ ‘No. No, you didn’t!’ Just so much, so much anger.
That spiraled out of control rather quickly, I remember Stone Cold walked out about halfway through. He had seen enough. Pat (Patterson) came in when Stone Cold was leaving and didn’t really understand that there was tension between me and the other people. So he was like, ‘That little shit, he changed the finish of the matches.’”
Edge: “Which just like ramped it up on top of what was already happening. I think that was one of, if not the last Wrestlers Courts because what we did showed how to turn it on its head. How to turn a really ridiculous, asinine, infantile thing on its head is just to, you know, go with it.”
Brian: “Yes, there was a distinct ‘How to’ and ‘How not to’ handle Wrestlers Court…”
Christian: “…And both were shown that day.”
The anonymous ‘Burt Angel’ is the true hero of that story. Who knows how Edge and Christian would’ve fared in wrestlers court without the preparation on their side…
Related: Pro Wrestling Stories from the Road: The Good, the Bad and the Bizarre!
How The Miz Got Kicked out of the WWE Locker Room for Accidentally Spilling Chicken Crumbs on Chris Benoit’s Bags
The career that The Miz has had is remarkable, especially when you think about the start of his career in WWE and all the hazing and bullying he experienced. The Miz already had a name for himself when debuting in WWE from his time on the MTV reality show, ‘The Real World.’ Veterans of the locker room despised him strongly for where he came from.
Locker rooms shared backstage are usually crammed with not a lot of space. Early in his career, The Miz had made the mistake of eating fried chicken, and in the process, got some crumbs on Chris Benoit’s bag. The Miz thought this was a light-hearted mistake that no one minded until he found himself being yelled at like he had never been before. The Miz was ordered to Wrestlers Court where he was told he would be banned from using the live event locker rooms, but could still use the TV locker rooms. Then, later on, he was told that he was banned from all locker rooms. This punishment lasted six months.
Talking to Chris Jericho on the Talk is Jericho podcast, The Miz explained the situation he found himself in:
“Yeah, I did get kicked out of the locker room. It was a stupid thing by me. So I’m in the locker room, there’s nowhere to really go, you know, there’s nowhere to put your stuff down. You would think as a WWE superstar and in the biggest traveling company that we would have amazing, immaculate locker rooms… that couldn’t be further from the truth. All of the locker rooms are like cubby holes, so we all have to squeeze in there and it was one of those small locker rooms. I sat down and started eating some chicken. As I’m eating the chicken, someone [Benoit] goes, ‘Hey, you’re spilling chicken all over my bag!’
Now in my mind, I wasn’t spilling anything because I still was in that mode of I have to respect everyone, make sure you don’t get anything on anything. And then it kind of escalated to, ‘It got all over everyone’s bags!’ I thought everyone was joking, I thought it was a joke. So I walked out, I start watching my match back because that’s what you do when you’re brand new, you watch your match back, you try to figure out what you did wrong and how good you are, when all of a sudden I heard [Benoit’s aggressive screaming] and I got literally yelled at worse than I’ve ever been yelled at in my entire life. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ I mean, veins were popping out of his neck, he was so angry, I was like, ‘Oh man, I am sorry, I didn’t mean it.’ I was stuttering, I had no idea what to do. I just got up in the WWE. I tried to be as respectful as possible, and you know me, I’m a loudmouth and I like to talk, but when I first came up, I wasn’t a talker, but everyone assumed that I was the character that I was playing on the show [The Real World] and it was one of those bad situations and I got kicked out of the locker room as a result.
The next day, he [Benoit] goes, ‘Hey Miz, you’re not going to be kicked out of the locker room, but you just know what you did was terrible!’ I was like, ‘Okay. Yes, sir.’
The next day comes by and he was like, ‘You know what, you’re kicked out of the locker room. Get your stuff out of the locker room, but you’re only kicked out on live event days, not on TV days.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, great.’
So the next day I come to TV, I put my stuff in the locker room. [Benoit said] ‘Miz, let me talk to you. People have been talking, rumblings and that, and that everyone thinks you should be kicked out of the locker room for TV as well as live events.’
So I was kicked out of the locker room for like six months and it was terrible. It was awful. I would find ways like you know how Matt Striker got kicked out of the locker room and he would do it right in front of people? He would change right in front of people… Me, I said, ‘Screw that!’ No one’s gonna know that I’m kicked out of the locker room, I’m gonna hide and find out my own little locker room, my own little personal locker room. The problem is finding a bathroom backstage that isn’t in a locker room is very, very difficult. I remember one time I had to go out into the audience in order to go to the bathroom and I’m using the restroom and there’s a little kid going, ‘I think The Miz is in there!’ I’m like this is the lowest of the lows of my career right now.”
Humble beginnings for The Miz. Thankfully, a lot has changed since then.
Related: DANIEL BRYAN and THE MIZ: Too Good To Ignore
Muhammad Hassan in Wrestlers Court for a $2000 Bar Tab and Eddie Guerrero Incident
Perhaps the harshest of wrestlers court stories was saved for last. Muhammad Hassan had one of the shortest yet memorable tenures in WWE. In the space of seven months, he worked with guys like Hulk Hogan, John Cena, The Undertaker, Mick Foley, Batista, Jerry Lawler, and Sgt. Slaughter.
Coming onto the main roster as a young talent and getting all of these opportunities right away stemmed a lot of jealousy and anger amongst the locker room. Hassan was thrown into the deep end right off the bat, leaving him with very little opportunity to be accepted by his peers in the back.
Tensions came to a boil over in Japan when Kurt Angle encouraged Muhammad Hassan to address Eddie Guerrero about removing the camel clutch from his arsenal as it was Hassan’s finisher. Contrary to popular belief, Hassan said that Eddie was cool about it. They had a respectful conversation, but what Hassan didn’t know was that Eddie’s father created the move, and as a result, Eddie would keep using it. Hassan just didn’t know any better. He was still quite new to the business. Eddie hugged him after. It was when the rest of the locker room found out about it that an outpouring of heat was directed at Hassan for questioning Eddie. Wrestlers Court issued an infamous $2000 bar tab Hassan had to pay for the boys as punishment.
Hassan recently appeared on the Why It Ended With Robbie E podcast and talked about his troubling time in WWE:
“Obviously I would never disrespect Eddie Guerrero. Eddie Guerrero was one of the guys I looked up to because Eddie and Chris Benoit, at the time, were two guys small in stature that were at the top of the card because of their talent and because of their ability. You know, I don’t think Kurt meant anything by it at all, so I think Kurt was also a top guy who was at the time inexperienced in the professional wrestling universe who was just looking out for top card guys and I don’t think Kurt meant any harm. And Eddie definitely did not take it the way everybody else did… I think that was just kind of a torch that everybody else could grab and say, ‘Look, this kid is an awful human being!’ I don’t know if everybody felt that way at the time though as I had plenty of guys who had my back.
And the $2000 bar tab, I mean, that’s a great story but it is what it is. I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s paid a bar tab at the expense of the other WWE guys. Was I treated fairly? Would it be different these days? You know, according to a lot of people, it would’ve been, but at the time that’s what I had to deal with and I would never play the victim and say I was bullied. I had a lot of control over the situation and there are plenty of things that I could change and could’ve done differently looking back on it, but hindsight’s 20/20, those were the cards that I was dealt and I dealt with it at the time and that passed, too. That wasn’t the end of my career. It was months and months later when the Hassan character was taken off the television and at that time I was getting along with everybody just fine. So those were part of the growing pains of being in the WWE and being a top guy, being 24 years old and being very new to the business.”
Hassan continues his rare speaking appearance, “Even the wrestlers court, I always felt like it was unjust. I never felt like it was a serious… You know, these guys think that I was disrespecting Eddie Guerrero, but Eddie never took it that way. Eddie and I had spoken about it and we had hugged and Eddie was fantastic about it and I remember it was Sean Sapp who wrote that article a couple years ago who said that the story was Eddie exploded and went nuts… Absolutely not, he was fantastic. I just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ and he was awesome and he never once lost his temper. He never exploded. He talked to me, we sat down and we talked about the business and his father and ultimately he gave me a hug, and that was the end of it for me and Eddie. It was everybody else who, to be honest, might’ve just been bored on another trip to Japan that kind of took it and ran with it. And even then, I never took it that seriously and I don’t mean that in a disrespectful way, I just don’t think that the guys like The Undertaker and Triple H and Shawn ever really thought that I went up to Eddie and like slapped him in the face like that. But yeah, that is a story that just kind of took off and went to ten in a matter of a night. And also I should’ve known better because I bet half the guys in the locker room knew that Eddie’s father invented the move. It’s my move and I don’t even know who inverted it and again that just tells you my experience at the time. I was 24, I’ll be 38 next month, so I look back on that and I see a kid who definitely needed some guidance, who did not know what he was doing or what he was getting into.
And I wish I could say this now but at the time a $2000 bar tab really didn’t hurt me too much. I honestly felt like I needed some redemption. I’m not kidding, I felt horrible. I mean that’s Eddie’s father and here I am disrespecting a legend like Eddie Guerrero. There was definitely some restitution that needed to be paid… Whether $2000 was a fair amount is I guess questionable but I felt like I needed redemption from that because I feel like I gigantic ass for doing that.”
Muhammad Hassan, now a high school principal, endured a lot in his seven-month run with WWE with what appeared to be a brave face through it all. You have to give credit where credit is due!
Wrestlers Court still exists today!
Xavier Woods, while talking with the actors from Super Troopers 2 on an April 14th, 2018 edition of his YouTube channel UpUpDownDown, had this to say: “Wrestlers Court is like if somebody does something… like he steals my move, I can take him to Wrestlers Court. So we have the jury, we have everyone watching, we have the judge and I plead my case. I can either choose someone to represent me or I can represent myself. We plead our cases, then the jury figures everything out, the judge makes his case, and if you don’t want to do what needs to be done afterward, like let’s say he has to now be my driver for the next two weeks, stuff like that. If he doesn’t do that, then the bailiff… well let’s just say anything can happen!”
Gone are the days of having to buy copious amounts of alcohol or having to change in the hallway for half a year as a punishment. Now, having to be someone’s driver for two weeks is ample punishment. It’s great to see that things have tamed down a bit and that the culture of things has changed for the better in the back!
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