Dave Bautista said this week that he was still borrowing money and taking out payday loans while he was WWE’s World Heavyweight Champion, and that WWE covered airfare and nothing else. JBL, who was on those same tours, says every word of it holds up.
Presented with Bautista’s comments on Something to Wrestle, JBL did not hesitate.
“I agree with them. Look, it was tough back then,” JBL said. “Dave’s 100 percent right in what he wrote.”
He offered his own numbers to make the point.
“I remember the first year I was with WWE. I think I made 76 or $77,000. I worked every single live event and every pay-per-view, and that’s what I made,” JBL said. “I mean, it was 250, 300 nights a year on the road, and we were in a hotel every single night.”
The company’s contribution, he confirmed, stopped at getting you there.
“They didn’t pay for cars, didn’t pay for hotels, except for like big pay-per-views and things like that. Occasionally they had paid for your hotel at some big pay-per-views, but for the most part they didn’t. They just got you there,” JBL said.
Everything after that came out of the wrestlers’ pockets, which meant splitting costs however they could.
“Then you got your own rented car. We had four people to a car. Me and Dutch and Tom Prichard and Glenn Jacobs, Al Snow, those are the guys that would kind of rotate,” JBL said. “We’d have four people in a car, in a full size car. We’re not talking about a Cadillac. And we’d have three or four people to a hotel room at that time.”
The contrast with how fans saw them is what sticks with him.
“We were on TV. People thought we were these huge stars, and I guess a lot of us were, or some of us were, but we’re sitting there four people to a Red Roof room,” JBL said. “We’d split the bed, the box springs and the top, and make four beds out of it.”
The travel itself became its own grind.
“I’ve got I think right now something like 6.4 million miles on American Airlines. I got a million miler with Delta,” JBL said. “You just got where you’re sick of getting on planes. You’ve been to Detroit 50 times. Nothing against Detroit, nothing against Cleveland or Dallas or L.A. or anywhere else, but eventually it loses the appeal.”
He was clear he is not complaining about the choice, only describing what it cost.
“We knew what we were doing as far as where we wanted to be, but yeah, we struggled. It wasn’t glamorous. It was tough. It was work. It was really hard work,” JBL said.
Bautista’s comments came on the Live Fierce podcast, where he described using check cashing places for $300 loans week after week during his first years on the road, and said he did not start making real money until 2005.
