The ribs are ready! Come get ’em!

Since it’s April 1st, and we’re a fool for yummy ribs, we are back with another fine course for your reading pleasure. One tale dates back to sleepaway camp, and another involves, ahem, adult toys, so we’ve removed names to protect the, er, innocent. Dig in!

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG

Women’s wrestling star Kimber Lee drifted back to her younger days for a sneaky rib.

“I used to go to camp and things, and the girls and boys would always fight,” she began. “Something that I did to the boys was, while they were sleeping [was] to hang ALL of their clothing — not some of it, all of it — from the drop ceiling, and that’s what they woke up to,” she said. But did they find out who did it? “They knew it was me. I wanted them to know it was me.”

GETTING BACK AT OWEN HART

Jim Korderas was not much of a ribber, but in his book, The Three Count, he does tell some stories about getting ribbed, including one time by Owen Hart — who was a notorious ribber. Taking a chance of retaliation, Korderas played a fun rib on the former Blue Blazer at the Howard Johnson’s hotel out by the Toronto airport, where the wrestlers usually stayed when in town.

“They had the 24-hour restaurant, so after a show at Maple Leaf Gardens, Owen ordered some food and went up to his room, and was having it delivered. But he came down to the restaurant to order it. … The person behind the desk said he’d call up when it was ready and he would send the food up. Because he had gotten me a week or two before that, I went into the lobby and used the house phone. I called up Owen’s room and I did the accent — which I won’t do for you here, because I don’t want to be labelled a racist — so I did the accent and said I wouldn’t be able to deliver the food to his room, because the guy who does the deliveries to the rooms just quit. He was trying to be polite, but at the same time, you could tell he was frustrated. To make a long story short, after about five minutes on the phone convincing he has to come down and pick up his own food, I talked to the guy that he had talked to and managed to get the tray of food, and I waited in the lobby until he came off the elevator and handed it to him.”

Hart’s reaction? “You got me.”

“I was waiting for retaliation after that, but thank God he didn’t.”

BEWARE THE BOX

To understand Chris Sabin’s rib played again and again by the X-Division gang, it’s important to understand that the X-‘ers had their own dressing room in the old TNA locker room, somewhat away from the rest of the talent.

“The top guys had their own offices on the inside of the building, the next level had the nice trailer next to us, and the X-Division had the crappy trailer,” said Sabin. “It was more or less a storage area — they kept all sorts of stuff in there, like crutches, jackets, any kind of item that the show would need for a set. Petey Williams, myself, Alex Shelley, Sonjay Dutt, and Jay Lethal all played a prank one time where we had a corrugated card box, the size that you could fit a washer-dryer inside of it. We set it up right on the inside of the door. Petey got inside the box wearing this famous Santa suit that would go around the X-Division locker room. And anytime someone would come in, Petey would pop out and scare people. We got Abyss really good one time.”

PUTTING DANGER BOY IN FURTHER DANGER

Two of the greatest names to come out of Ontario over the past 20 years are “Textbook” or “Cyborg” Tyson Dux and “Danger Boy” Derek Wylde. Naturally, there was a rivalry there between two great talents. But according to Dux, they were frequent sparring partners when it came to practical jokes too.

“We’re mean to each other. It’s not like a normal rib, where you just hide their boots or something. We hit each other and do terrible things to each other. One time at a show, it just kept escalating and escalating. At one point, he was throwing food at me, and then I was throwing food at him. Then he hit me really hard and I threw him over the food table. This is for Border City Wrestling, one of the most premiere Ontario shows, where you don’t mess around, and we were messing around. Anyway, he goes out, he has the first match and it’s a four-way, and he wants to impress Scott D’Amore,” Dux began.

“Do you remember the stuff called Hot Stuff? It’s like a vapor rub, smells like Vick’s, and we used to put it on ourselves because it would bring the blood to the surface. It smelled like vapor rub — it was hot and intense. Just before he goes out there — he’s the last guy — I’m like, ‘Hey, Dane, be safe and have a good match. Oh by the way …’ I sprayed the Hot Stuff, about six inches away from his face, in his eyeballs. It says on the bottle, don’t put near your eyes, your nose, your mouth. Well, he got it directly in his face. It’s like mace. So he went out there completely blind and did 10 minutes of this car-crash cruiserweight match. Greatest rib I ever played. Greatest thing ever. Probably the worst — I could have killed him. But it’s still my favourite.”

BEWARE THE GRAPPLER

In his autobiography, The Grappler Len Denton doesn’t get into ribs too much. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t participate.

“We’re probably going to have to do a sequel, because I did do some ribbing! I got so bad at ribbing that I had to quit. I got ribbed when I was younger in it, and I just carried it over,” said Denton. “I remember one time, I went to Ted DiBiase, who had a match coming up that night, and went, ‘Here’s what they want.’ He said, ‘You’re ribbing.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not ribbing!’ ‘Yeah, you are.’ He thought I was joking! We had to go in front of the boss, that’s how bad I was ribbing. He wouldn’t believe me when I’d give him the finish for what we were doing in the match. I had to quit because it was hurting me, they wouldn’t believe a word I’d say.”

Denton was more than happy to share his favourite rib.

“I used to do this one all the time. I’d get green guys in the ring and we’d have a battle royal. I’d get the one guy over and give him a talk, ‘Look, I really think you’re a heck of a talent. You look good and you’ve been training hard.’ I’d squeeze his muscles, ‘Man, you’re looking great’ and pour it on. ‘You’re going to be a superstar one day in pro wrestling.’ This is something I had done to me many times. I’d go, ‘Listen, in the battle royal tonight, just hang with me, brother. I’ll show you what to do. So listen to everything I tell you.’ Now, there’s 15 to 20 guys in a battle royal. He’s in there, and I’m looking at him across the ring. Here he comes, he’s off, and I go, ‘Give me a headlock.’ I shoot him off and back him into the ropes. I weave my way back through the people, back to him. ‘Two tackles, slam and an arm drag.’ I shoot him off, and he’s weaving his way through all these 15 people. I’m leaning over in the corner watching the idiot. He hits the ropes on the other side and can’t come back. I look at him, ‘What a mark! You actually think you can do a highspot with 20 people in the ring?’ Now he knows he’s been taken, so he just puts his head down.”

The veteran Louie Tillet taught Denton another one that he used or saw used more than once.

Again, the mark is a newcomer to the business.

You ask, “Hey, how strong’s your neck? Maybe we’ll change the finish up a little bit.”

“Everyone of them will say, ‘I’ve got a strong neck,'” said Denton. “So you reach over, both hands behind your head. You say, ‘Pull back as hard as you can.’ You let them go and they bang their head against the back wall, and just about knock themselves out. I’ve had that one done too, on a cement wall too!”

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

Paul London has been ribbed big time, including a trip with WWE overseas where the bar tab was billed to his room. The culprit was Bubby Dudley. “So when we checked out, I had a $400 tab. That was a really sh—- rib,” he said, launching into an unplanned rib that is not for the faint of heart.

“A funny rib, which wasn’t fully intentional, happened when we were at WrestleMania in Chicago,” began London. “We were at the House of Blues and the food was being comped. So I went to town on the food. I must have eaten four or five plates of sweet potato fries. So we were drinking, maybe a little smoking, and we were up in the hotel room later on — a really nice hotel room in Chicago. One of my best friends is Rene Dupree, so we were hanging out in his room. And I start getting sick like a mofo. I ran into his bathroom and instead of throwing up in his toilet, I threw up in his bathtub. I clogged his bathtub. The entire bottom of the bathtub was lined orange because of these sweet potato fries. He actually had to move rooms. And then he got fined for damaging his room.”

THE TRAVELLING SEX TOY

Finally, we’ll end off with an anonymous story from a legit star in one of the secondary tier of wrestling promotions in North America. He waffled about telling the story, but acquiesced once we agreed to leave names out to protect the “innocent.”

“I was in a company at one point where there was another guy within the company, with some standing within the company, who worked within the sex toy industry. So a lot of the ribs had to do with sex toys being left in different guys’ bags. You’d want to hide it, and wherever it ended up last would be the guy who took it home, because he didn’t know it was in his bag. Sometimes that could lead to trouble. Somebody could go home and their wife could find it. Or everyone has different sexual preferences and whatnot. It got pretty bad, but I don’t think I can say more than what it is.”

— as told to Greg Oliver and Bob Kapur

RELATED LINK

• Ribs and practical jokes archive