[Volare]

CP:

I'm from Westville, OK, a town of about 1,000 people whose only claim to fame is being the birthplace of Jim Ross, also known as Good Ol' JR. It's a very rare thing for him to actually come back to town, and when he does, he's usually visiting family and keeps his visit private. However, the year after I graduated from high school, the school superintendent got in touch with his family and asked if he would come speak to the students. Because of the size of our school auditorium, and it being a K-12 school, every assembly is basically conducted twice, once for elementary and then again for high school. I was working as a substitute at the time, so I was at the assembly for the elementary students.

JR comes out to huge cheers from the crowd, of course, and starts his canned "believe in yourself" speech. Our school didn't exactly have the best AV equipment, and during the speech, the audio started to cut out. He immediately began cursing, loudly enough that everyone could hear (the students are seated so that the youngest are up front), about how the "goddamn school" and it's "piece of shit" equipment were "wasting my goddamn time," pretending to do it under his breath. They got the mic working and he spoke for about another minute or so before leaving the stage, and we could still hear him backstage, telling the administration the one assembly was enough and that "I'm getting the hell out of here right now."

Randy:

From 1998-2001 I worked part-time at the Value City Arena in Columbus while I was in school at Ohio State. This was slightly before the city built Nationwide Arena in downtown Columbus, so all the big shows/concerts/events came to the campus arena. During this time nothing was bigger than the WWE and Monday Night Raw in the eyes of many college students. Raw came to Columbus 1-2 years per year while I worked at the arena. Of course, when Raw was in town, every single part-time worker wanted to be on the schedule all day long to see the wrestlers come in.

On one occasion, at the height of the Attitude Era, I had an unforgettable experience/interaction with The Great One, The Rock. I was lucky enough to work "security" at the arena, which wasn't really security at all. I, and my co-workers, basically sat in an office and buzzed people into the arena via the locked backstage door. We openly made fun of every other part-time worker who had to carry or push massive things around while we sat in an office and made hourly rounds of the building (which mostly consisted of staring at girls during events).

As wrestlers started to pour into the arena to prepare for Raw that night we had to keep buzzing them into the locked door one-by-one. It was completely monotonous, but we got to see everyone come in (Austin, 'Taker, Trish Stratus, Lita, etc.). At one point I had my back turned to the glass as someone came in. I heard them angrily trying to open the locked door so I quickly turned around to let them in. It was The Rock. When I turned around I completely froze and just stared at him. I was, and still am, a huge Rock fan. Seeing me just stare at him he says, totally in character, "Open the damn door and let the Rock in the building you jabroni." I must have hit the button 27 times in 5 seconds trying to let him in. He just stared at me and other people in the office the entire time and, even after entering the building, stared at us until he was out of sight.

Five minutes later I heard someone pounding on the office door (which was also locked) and it's The Rock. I really thought I was going to throw-up. When I opened the door he was just starting at us. He stood there for a few seconds...then completely broke character and started laughing. I was a little confused and still didn't know whether he was going to punch me or not. Turns out he was just screwing with us; he was by far the nicest celebrity I ever met while at that job. He talked to all of us for about 20 minutes, asked us what our majors were, etc., etc. He even told us who was cool to ask for autographs and who to not even make eye contact with (anyone with the last name of McMahon).

Walt:

When I was younger, about 12-13 years old, I was blessed to have a father who knew a guy who knew veteran referee Mike Chioda. Mike blessed us with press box tickets for the (then) WWF event in Philadelphia. My brother, my friend and I spent the entire show asking various wrestlers for autographs, which they begrudgingly signed.

Later in the afternoon, I went to the bar in the press box to ask Savio Vega (my 16th favorite superstar at the time) to sign my WWF the Magazine. He put down his ice cream cone to take the pen and magazine from my hands. After signing some chicken scratch, he turned back to finish his coveted custard, only to find that the bro next to him (not a wrestler) devouring it. Savio, already annoyed about signing an autograph, replied, "Hey man, that's MY ice cream." The bro, who didn't seem to know (or care) who THE Savio Vega was fired back, "Oh...SORRY," saying so with as much, if not more, attitude than he received. He then turned away and continued to finish off Savio Vega's ice cream.

Savio left the press box shortly thereafter.

Tim:

I've worked in radio for about 12 years now and have had several interactions with wrestlers during meet and greets. Usually they're shockingly nice guys who are perfectly happy to sign and take pictures. One meet and greet has stuck with me for more than a decade now though.

Back when WCW was still on top of the world they brought a show through our town and actually taped a few matches for their "Thunder" show, so we had some pretty big names show up. The meet and greet we did had three wrestlers: Juventud Guerrera (right before he became The Rock's favorite punch line), Konan, and Rey Mysterio, Jr. All three walk in and ask me where they sit. The first thing I noticed is how quite they were. Then I noticed they all had a perma-smile going. And really, really red eyes. I quickly figured out they were stoned as stoned can be. No big deal, all they had to do was sign some autographs.

When we did our meet and greets, we would bring in food from a local chicken place, so the room has several tables with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, etc. on them. As soon as the trio saw the food, they literally started to drool. Konan very sheepishly asked me "Hey, is that food for everyone? Like, can we have some too?" I told them "yeah of course you can" so they got in line with everyone else and came back with two plates full of food each.

I have to give them credit though, when they hit the ring about half an hour later they were spot on.

Chris:

We went to go and see Rowdy Roddy Piper at a book signing. The entire time my friend was talking about how he was going to try and get Roddy to give him a chop to the chest. When the time came he asked Roddy, who said that he wouldn't do it. He did however offer up the consolation prize of being put in a sleeper hold. So he goes to put my friend in a sleeper hold, and this was no show sleeper hold, he legitimately started choking him for a couple of seconds. After it was done, he checked to see if my friend was OK, to which my friend said that he "was seeing stars." Roddy then told him "See, you don't have to do drugs anymore. Next time you wanna get high I'll just put you in a sleeper hold." Seriously one of the most awesome moments ever.