Coach:
Vince McMahon once had me arrested.
It was September of 2000, when I was still relatively new to the company. The week before the NFL season started, Jerry Brisco asked me to run the football pool for everyone who traveled to TVs. The following Saturday, the day before the season kicked off, we were in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Jerry caught me as we were heading into the production meeting. "Hey, Coach, you all ready?" he asked. I told him I had everything covered.
Throughout the day I was handing out the sheets for the pool and getting everybody set, it was like ten dollars to play, or something like that. This wasn't a major gambling ring.
About four-thirty that afternoon, our head of security at the time walked into the pretape room, which is where I hang out on the road, and told me he needed to speak to me out in the hallway. When I walked out there I could see he had a couple of troopers with him. I had no idea why they needed to talk to me because I knew I hadn't done anything wrong.
"We have a little problem here, Coach"
"Oh really, what's up"
"These two men have a warrant for your arrest for illegal gambling in the state of North Carolina."
It didn't even dawn on me that the "illegal gambling" Bob was referring to could be the football sheets I handed out to everyone. "I haven't done anything. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Well, we got a report that you were selling football tickets around the arena and you gave one to an undercover cop who works with these gentlemen."
My mind started racing to think if I had given anything to anyone I didn't know. Even if I had, it was just a friendly football pool, everybody does it. As I'm standing there trying to remember everyone I gave one to, they hand me an arrest warrant.
One of the troopers then said to me, "We know you have a show tonight so we'll get you down to the precinct and back as quick as we can. Unfortunately, this is a major offense in the state of North Carolina."
The other trooper grabbed my arm and started walking with me. I couldn't believe this was happening. How was I supposed to know that picking football games with a couple of your friends was considered a major crime in North Carolina? Was I the only one who didn't study the laws of every state we traveled to?
Now we were at one end of the building and everyone -- catering , all the boys, the television production people, seamstresses, you name it -- they were at the other end of this one long hallway, so I knew we were going to walk past everyone to get to the big door at the back of the building.
We start down the hall and get near Vince's office. Bob told the officer in front that we had to stop and tell Vince because I'm going to be gone for a couple of hours. We knock, walk inside, and see Vince, Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, Kevin Dunn, and Jerry, who are talking about the show.
Vince stops what he's doing when he hears us and asks Bob what's going on.
"We have a little problem here. The cops arrested Coach for illegal gambling."
Calm, but as serious as he can be, Vince looks at me and asks, "What did you do?" Now I don't want to name names and sell Jerry down the river, so I just answered vaguely.
"I was asked to run a football pool for fun and apparently one of their undercover officers somehow got a copy of the sheet."
Vince walked toward me when I finished, got about four inches from my face and just went off. "A football pool? A football pool? Are you kidding me? This is the kind of shyt we do not need!" I remember every other word was the f-bomb. It was the evil Mr. McMahon you see on TV multiplied by ten.
He's spitting and yelling right in my face, and to be honest, I was terrified.
He took a deep, dramatic breath and started up again. "I don't think I need to tell you the repercussions of this if it gets in the newspaper, on TV, or the Internet. If it shows up on one of those three outlets, I think you know what'll happen!"
The first thing in my head is figuring out how I'm going to tell my father I got fired running a football pool.
The cop holding my arm spoke for the first time since we got in the office. "Excuse me, Mr. McMahon. This type of offense is usually a fifteen-hundred dollar bond; will you be helping him with it?"
Right away he's like, "He's on his own!"
"Will you be helping him with legal representation?"
"No, he's on his own!"
I'm standing there, my heart's racing. I knew I only had thirty dollars in my wallet, and I don't know if I can use a credit card to post bail or what. By this time, Triple H, Stephanie, and Kevin have all left.
Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. It was the most terrifying experience of my life. The cops told Vince the state law required that they cuff me. Bob asked if they could at least put a towel over my hands so the cuffs wouldn't show.
Before the cop could say one way or the other, Vince answered for him. "You know, I like that idea," and he immediately started walking away from me. He went over to his bag and pulled out these dirty gym shorts and whipped them at me. They landed on my head. "Use those!"
I'm standing there, handcuffed, with a pair of Vince's dirty shorts on my head, too terrified to care. The cop took them off my head and placed them over the cuffs, then led me out of the door. And who's standing right there? Undertaker.
He looked at me and shook his head in disgust. I was humiliated. Now there's one cop in front of me, one behind me, and Vince and Brisco are about ten feet behind him. I could see the cop car outside was like thirty feet from the door, and in a spot where about three hundred fans could see me. They escorted me out there, opened the car door, and locked me in.
As they're pulling the belt on me, Vince is pacing around outside the car still screaming to no one in particular;I can't believe this! A football pool! He was so pissed to be bothered with this mess.
One of the security guards wanted to follow us to the station to make sure I got back as quick as possible. By this time, it's about five-fifteen and we were scheduled to start taping Smackdown! in a little while. We pulled out the lot and got out to the street when the radio turns up with the other cop who stayed back at the building. This cop explained that our security guy couldn't get out, and asked if we could go back to pick him up. The cop driving is exasperated. Now, I've been instructed not to say anything, but this guy wouldn't stop talking to me as we make our way back to the building. I'm not responding to him, just pretending he wasn't there.
By the time we got back down there Vince was standing in front of everyone in the entire company who was on the road and they're all laughing their asses off. They had pulled this rib off so well.
When we got back down to the entrance and the cop who was driving the car let me out, Vince instructed him to wait a few minutes before taking the cuffs off because he thought I'd be so mad I'd start fighting somebody.
I was still cuffed but able to drop-kick his shorts at him. When I finally had the cuffs removed, I was so shaken up that I had to go to a corner of the building to calm down. I was literally trembling because I thought it was the end of my career. I was so emotional over the whole thing that I felt like I might cry and didn't really want anyone to see me break down.
To this day, Vince still calls it the greatest rib in the history of the company.
All of this just sounds like lines and quotes you constantly hear from the Vince McMahon impressions from The Lapsed Fan...
