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Authors: Dave Batista
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were very encouraging to me. They thought I had a good look and suggested that I might be interested in wrestling.
This was at the height of the competition between World Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Federation, the so-called Monday Night Wars which pitted WWE’s Raw against WCW’s Nitro. Wrestling boomed incredibly in the 1980s and 1990s. The first WrestleMania s were cultural phenomena, bigger than anything the sport had ever seen. They were as big as the Super Bowl and twice as fancy. The competition from WCW in the late nineties made pro wrestling even bigger. The two companies went head to head for a while, and it seemed like everyone in the country was into wrestling. These were the days of D-Generation X, the New World Order, Hulk Hogan’s monster turn to “cool” bad-ass heel. Wrestling wasn’t just big, it was titanic.
A lot of bodybuilders looked at it as something they wanted to do. Most of them, I have to say, thought it would be easy.
For some reason, WCW decided to hold open tryouts around that time. They were advertised on TV. It kind of sparked my interest, and when I got back to Virginia, I decided to take a shot.
I still really didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with myself. I thought I looked the part, people had told me I could do it, and so I said, “Hey, I can be a professional wrestler.” I really had no fucking clue what I was in for.
I’M A DYING COCKROACH
The tryouts were held at the Power Plant, which was WCW’s training facility at the time in Atlanta. I went down with a buddy of mine, Lance Treadway. Lance was just about the same size as me; I was about 340, Lance was about 320. We completely dwarfed every other guy trying out in the class. I thought we had pro wrestler written all over us.
But the lead trainer didn’t.
They called him Sarge. He’d wrestled in the mid 1990s as Buddy Lee Parker and I believe his real name was Dwayne Bruce. I think he was five six. Maybe. He was a little midget. He really was. He looked like a little fire hydrant, a jacked-up fire hydrant with stubby legs.
We got out there and he jumped right in our faces and started running us into the ground. He started with free squats, which are your very basic squats with no weights. He was relentless. He put a bucket under our ass, and he made sure our butts touched the bucket every time we squatted.
Now, you have to understand, we’re big guys, and after a while, those squats were literally killing us. We couldn’t breathe and our legs were water. The guys behind us, they were 170 pounds, 180 pounds, and they were doing half squats and laughing at us.
Sarge worked us to the point where my buddy’s nose just exploded. He started bleeding all over the place.
Me, I began puking on the floor. But I did keep going.
Sarge just kept running us into the fucking ground, with these squats and other calisthenics. I was doing them right in my puke. Then he told us to lie on our backs.
Except that wasn’t good enough.
“Scream ‘I’m a dying cockroach,’” he told me. “Scream ‘I’m a dying cockroach.’”
Doing that—yelling anything—takes what little breath you have away. But I did it.
We were starting to get really pissed now. Lance was really mad. I think he bumped some guy who got a little too close to him. It wasn’t a gentle bump, either.
Sarge kept dumping on us. I think he had the biggest Napoleon complex of all time. He was determined to run us into the ground and prove that he was better.
Finally, when we were completely exhausted but somehow still alive, he came up to us.
“Forget it,” he told us. “You guys are out of here. You’re done. You’ll never be professional wrestlers. You guys don’t have the fucking heart. Get out of my class.”
So we left.
HEARTBROKEN
It makes you think.
I had this guy who never amounted to anything tell me I would never be a professional wrestler, that I didn’t have what it takes. And a few years later, I was
This was at the height of the competition between World Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Federation, the so-called Monday Night Wars which pitted WWE’s Raw against WCW’s Nitro. Wrestling boomed incredibly in the 1980s and 1990s. The first WrestleMania s were cultural phenomena, bigger than anything the sport had ever seen. They were as big as the Super Bowl and twice as fancy. The competition from WCW in the late nineties made pro wrestling even bigger. The two companies went head to head for a while, and it seemed like everyone in the country was into wrestling. These were the days of D-Generation X, the New World Order, Hulk Hogan’s monster turn to “cool” bad-ass heel. Wrestling wasn’t just big, it was titanic.
A lot of bodybuilders looked at it as something they wanted to do. Most of them, I have to say, thought it would be easy.
For some reason, WCW decided to hold open tryouts around that time. They were advertised on TV. It kind of sparked my interest, and when I got back to Virginia, I decided to take a shot.
I still really didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with myself. I thought I looked the part, people had told me I could do it, and so I said, “Hey, I can be a professional wrestler.” I really had no fucking clue what I was in for.
I’M A DYING COCKROACH
The tryouts were held at the Power Plant, which was WCW’s training facility at the time in Atlanta. I went down with a buddy of mine, Lance Treadway. Lance was just about the same size as me; I was about 340, Lance was about 320. We completely dwarfed every other guy trying out in the class. I thought we had pro wrestler written all over us.
But the lead trainer didn’t.
They called him Sarge. He’d wrestled in the mid 1990s as Buddy Lee Parker and I believe his real name was Dwayne Bruce. I think he was five six. Maybe. He was a little midget. He really was. He looked like a little fire hydrant, a jacked-up fire hydrant with stubby legs.
We got out there and he jumped right in our faces and started running us into the ground. He started with free squats, which are your very basic squats with no weights. He was relentless. He put a bucket under our ass, and he made sure our butts touched the bucket every time we squatted.
Now, you have to understand, we’re big guys, and after a while, those squats were literally killing us. We couldn’t breathe and our legs were water. The guys behind us, they were 170 pounds, 180 pounds, and they were doing half squats and laughing at us.
Sarge worked us to the point where my buddy’s nose just exploded. He started bleeding all over the place.
Me, I began puking on the floor. But I did keep going.
Sarge just kept running us into the fucking ground, with these squats and other calisthenics. I was doing them right in my puke. Then he told us to lie on our backs.
Except that wasn’t good enough.
“Scream ‘I’m a dying cockroach,’” he told me. “Scream ‘I’m a dying cockroach.’”
Doing that—yelling anything—takes what little breath you have away. But I did it.
We were starting to get really pissed now. Lance was really mad. I think he bumped some guy who got a little too close to him. It wasn’t a gentle bump, either.
Sarge kept dumping on us. I think he had the biggest Napoleon complex of all time. He was determined to run us into the ground and prove that he was better.
Finally, when we were completely exhausted but somehow still alive, he came up to us.
“Forget it,” he told us. “You guys are out of here. You’re done. You’ll never be professional wrestlers. You guys don’t have the fucking heart. Get out of my class.”
So we left.
HEARTBROKEN
It makes you think.
I had this guy who never amounted to anything tell me I would never be a professional wrestler, that I didn’t have what it takes. And a few years later, I was
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