One of the stranger footnotes of Gangrel’s WWE run involves Madison Square Garden, a mouthful of fake blood and a ringside guest he never noticed. According to Gangrel, the whole thing was a setup, and Vince McMahon built it.
Telling the story on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Gangrel said the booking itself was the first clue, though he did not read it that way at the time. He placed it around 1999 or 2000, and said neither he nor Kane was scheduled for the Garden that night.
“Kane nor I were scheduled to be in the Garden. For whatever reason we weren’t on that loop, and out of nowhere they said, hey, you’ve been added on to the Garden,” Gangrel said. “Oh cool, that’s a great payday. The Garden’s magic. It’s always good.”
He was in and out in a few minutes, working a short segment with Kane. What he noticed on the way to the ring was that the front row did not look right.
“I see somebody sitting there, and I go, that person doesn’t belong there. But I got the shades on, and there’s the red lights, so it’s kind of hard to tell,” Gangrel said.
The crowd noise did the rest.
“I go to go up the ramp, and people like, whoa, and I’m like, oh, they’re really digging me in the Garden. So my ego’s going,” Gangrel said. “I go to drink the blood, and you could really hear the crowd go, oh, louder than I’ve ever done before. And you’re like, I don’t even do this on a pay-per-view. This is awesome.”
So he gave them more.
“I chug down extra zesty mint. I take every last drop down as deep as I could take it, and when I go to spray it, I just hear the crowd roaring,” Gangrel said. “So I just let out with one, and I let it out up, and I let it out long.”
The reason the Garden was reacting, he said, was that Donald Trump was seated at ringside with a companion Gangrel could not identify, and fans reaching for Trump had pushed him toward the barricade.
“The fans were trying to touch him, so he was pulling away and moving closer to the barricade. So he was going more into the spray zone, like the Gallagher zone,” Gangrel said, adding that WWE’s own magazine ran a photo of the moment with a caption reading “Duck Donald Duck.”
Backstage, he still had no idea.
“I’m coming back and the tech guys are high fiving me. I’m like, yeah, that was great. I’m over. I couldn’t figure out how did I become so over and popular,” Gangrel said. “They went, you sprayed all over Donald Trump. I go, who? I’m like, Donald Trump, the rich guy? I go, oh no.”
Then came the message.
“I see Stephanie later. She goes, my dad’s not happy with you. I go, what’d I do? She goes, you spit all over his friend, and he wants to meet with you at TV tomorrow,” Gangrel said. “I’m like, I didn’t know he was there, man. I was just spraying my blood. I’m innocent.”
The meeting got pushed a day, which only made it worse.
“She’s like, oh, he’s too busy today, he’s not gonna be able to see you. You have to see him tomorrow. So it’s another night of like, I’m gonna get fired over this. You don’t sleep or anything,” Gangrel said. “You’re going in to see the principal. You think you’re going in to get fired.”
When he finally got in the room, McMahon was laughing.
“I walk in, and he goes, wasn’t that great?” Gangrel said.
Gangrel said it turned out to be a rib with two layers, and that he had been flown in specifically to be the one holding the goblet.
“It was a double rib. He knew that he was coming, so he put his seats there, booked me on the show, flew me in, knowing I’m a drone of an idiot. That no matter what, I’m gonna spray that blood, because that’s just what I do. I just do what I’m told,” Gangrel said. “And then it was a double rib on me for spitting, thinking I’m gonna get fired for it.”
He said WWE had even planned for the cleanup before it happened.
“She had this mink, or a certain type of sweater, cashmere or something. So when she came in, they had already sized that up, and they already had a runner with a backup one,” Gangrel said. “So it was mapped out. Everything was mapped out.”
His verdict on McMahon’s sense of humor was favorable.
“They say he’s not a funny guy, but he was funny,” Gangrel said. “That was a good rib.”
