This Date in Rasslin History: The Plane Ride from Hell

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On May 5th, 2002, WWE finished its tour of Britain with the taping of the ‘Insurrextion’ pay-per-view in London.

"Vince at the time was chartering flights. We weren’t on commercial flights – we’d rent a whole plane. We had a 747 – all ours—meaning [not only] all the wrestlers the TV crew. So we have every cameraman, all the girls that make the costumes, tour managers, everybody – a full plane of WWE people.

Now with that comes – and I bet you Vince has not done it since – a full and open bar. And what I mean by that is a plane filled with alcoholic wrestlers at the end of a grueling tour. So think about it, it’s like the last day of school…"

"It was brewing. Everybody had their different little deals they were doing. Some people were doing GHB [Gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid], getting pilled-up – whatever, you know…

Curt Hennig and Brock Lesnar were close friends who traveled together, both hailing from Minnesota. But during the long flight, they got restless, leading to what started as a friendly amateur wrestling-style ‘take-down’ tussle after Curt insisted he was a better grappler than the younger Brock.

"They weren’t fighting…at first.

But they’re very competitive, so they’re just scraping along, like messing around – then something happened where it got serious. It didn’t come to blows – but you know the opening they have on planes – those openings are the emergency exit rows. Now Brock’s a wrestling shooter – and Curt’s a shooter kind’ a too – so they took it seriously. They didn’t want to give in to each other. [b]They went at it so hard [Lesnar shot in and drove Hennig so hard into the side] that they almost popped open the emergency exit – twenty-five, thirty thousand feet in the air…people [among them: Dave Finley, Triple H, and Paul Heyman] had to separate them."

"Then frickin’ Flair comes out in his robe…"

JUSTIN CREDIBLE:

"…nothing on underneath…"

SEAN WALTMAN:

"…frickin’ balls naked, struttin’ down the aisleway…"

CREDIBLE:

"Sixty-year-old man, junk flying everywhere. Going up to the stewardesses, ‘C’mon sweetheart! [flashes open robe] ‘WOOOOO!!!’"

‘Two flight attendants, Taralyn Cappellano and Heidi Doyle, would compile their allegations into a 2004 lawsuit. Chief among the chronicled misdeeds was [Flair’s] sexual aggression. He wore nothing but a jeweled cape, the flight attendants said, and ‘flashed his nakedness, spinning his penis around.’ He separately grabbed each woman’s hand and placed it on his crotch, and then ‘forcibly detained and restrained’ Doyle ‘from leaving the back of the galley of the airplane while he sexually assaulted her."

Flair would later insist there was no truth to these incidents, though the WWE eventually settled out of court with both women.

Also implicated in the lawsuit was Dustin Rhodes (a.k.a, Goldust), who, according to attendant Taralyn Cappellano, told her, ‘You and I are gonna frick.’

But it wasn’t until Rhodes managed to get control of the plane’s PA system to start singing an awkward, slurred serenade to his ex-wife Terri Runnels – who was also on the flight – that the then-President of talent relations Jim Ross enforced his authority to shut him down.

"You had Scott Hall too…out of his mind. Completely out of his mind, shimmying and shaking…"

In the harassment allegations, attendant Doyle claims Hall slobbered on her face before telling her he wanted to ‘lick her pussy.’ He told Cappellano to ‘Suck his dick.’ Then he passed out – so deeply, in fact, that people had to check his pulse to see if he was still alive.

CREDIBLE:

"I had to babysit Scott. I had to stay straight because everyone else was so fricked up!

[Later] when we got off the flight, I had to get a wheelchair and roll him through customs at JFK. He was non-responsive. I remember Jim Ross sitting in baggage claim with his briefcase just going like this [disdainful shake of the head]. That look of disgust. And I’m like… [shrugs]."

"[Michael] Hayes almost pissed on Linda McMahon.

"[Michael Hayes punches JBL in the head where he had been cut open at the PPV] …and opens his gash. So now, Bradshaw’s in a suit, nice clothes – busted wide open – bleeding like a pig over his suit.

"And the story goes that Bradshaw frickin’ clocked him and knocked him out…"

WALTMAN:

"So [Hayes is] out cold…and he’s got that frickin’ thing in a frickin’ ponytail…that mullet – you know, he was still rockin’ the mullet – and I said, ‘Somebody get me a pair of scissors!’

I remember Lawler over there just giggling. Everybody is like, ‘No, no, no – you’re not gonna do it…’

I grabbed those scissors like I was pulling a pair of taped brass knucks out of my tights, I over-exaggeratedly reach down the front of his jeans, and everybody’s looking, and they don’t think I’m gonna do it. I grab that frickin’ tail, and I lift it up, and I just went WHACK [chops it off] and the whole plane just erupted, like ‘YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHH!!!!’"

The fallout from the flight was, in some cases, swift.

After a period of being on the outs with the company, Dustin Rhodes was eventually dropped by WWE in late 2003. He eventually returned to the company in later years.

Not to return, however, was an all-time great and posthumous Hall of Famer, Curt Hennig. He was seemingly held solely accountable for the ‘aircraft door’ incident with Brock Lesnar and shortly after Hennig was released from his WWE contract. He died the next year.

As Hennig and Rhodes’ contracts were headed for the shredder, so too was Scott Hall’s. His release was announced too just days later (though his poor physical shape during the tour was also cited as a cause for his severance.)

He would sign shortly after with the then-debuting NWA:TNA promotion.

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