[Cheering]
[narrator] After a sellout European tour,
the World Wrestling Federation's top stars and
management boarded a private 757 jet in London
to return home.
Every seat on the plane was a first class seat.
It cost us a lot of money, but it made it more
convenient for the talent to travel.
What was supposed to be a triumphant flight in
decadence, descended into a nightmare at 30,000 feet.
The party starts when you get on them flights and
you just start drinking.
But, that night, it was, it was too much.
When you have an open bar...
and you're sitting there for 7 hours,
of course, these things are gonna happen.
Naked men with robes.
Guys passing out, drinking, busting each other open.
Cutting pony tails off. Sounds like hell to me.
Like, I just knew, okay, the boys are being boys and
I'm not going back there at all.
I remember thinking, like, is somebody
gonna say that this has gone too far?
The talent was just crazy.
I mean, they were great guys,
don't get me wrong.
They acted like asses...
children.
The midair collision between intoxicated wrestlers and
a flight crew determined to prevent an all-out disaster
would erupt into one of wrestling's most
infamous scandals.
I think people have no idea what really goes on sometimes,
especially back then in pro wrestling.
And this is just like a capsule of what
pro wrestling was like in that era.
It was just a normal occurrence for
a crazy bunch of wrestlers on a plane.
It seems like a crazy story to probably everyone who is
watching this, outside of professional wrestlers.
If I never talked about that fucking Plane Ride From Hell
again in my life, I would be very happy.
♪
[Cheering]
The deal is finalized with WCW.
However, the contract reads, "Shane McMahon".
Oh, my god!
By the early 2000s,
the WWF is riding a wave of unprecedented success,
with a roster of breakout stars
and sellout crowds across the world.
Business was going really well for the WWE.
Selling tickets, Pay Per View buy rates...
everybody was making money.
Madison Square Garden is sold out!
The crowds were there.
Every night, you're selling out.
Everywhere you go - Europe, in the States,
Canada, and everything.
I mean, our show was booming.
During this surge in popularity,
CEO, Vince McMahon, acquires his competitors,
WCW and ECW, consolidating the industry's biggest players
into an undisputed monopoly of the wrestling world.
I, Vince McMahon, bought my competition.
The bubble had burst in wrestling.
There was literally the WWE, nothing else.
If you want to make a full-time living in
professional wrestling, it was the only place to be.
My name is Tommy Dreamer, and I'm known as the
Innovator of Violence.
It was a much different time.
There was holdovers from ECW and WCW.
And we're all just trying to find our way in the WWE.
- [Match bell ringing] - [indistinct commentary]
...Dreamer, a former ECW guy!
You gotta wonder how long he'd been planning
this ECW assault on the WWF.
I'm Jim Ross, and I was the
Vice President of Talent Relations.
My job, in a nutshell, was the overall management
of the talents that appeared on television.
The WWF's roster exploded in size and stature
by securing talent from their former rivals,
while also welcoming back returning legends.
What? There's the Nature Boy!
We're partners!
Flair and McMahon are partners! Yeah!
Ric Flair is a legend.
So many of our younger guys grew up watching him.
Idolizing him, and trying to take things from
Ric's game and add to theirs.
So, yeah, having Ric in the locker room
was a positive thing.
I loved my job.
I loved helping build that talent roster.
Because I think that having those talents was a
great reason, perhaps we can say the only reason,
that the business went crazy and blew up.
Everything was getting better.
Millions upon millions of dollars.
Thanks to the men and the women that came
to work for us on that team.
As the momentum in the States grew,
so did the momentum in the UK grow.
In May 2002, the company travels to Europe for a
4-day tour concluding with a sold out
Pay Per View event in London.
It's probably one of the best crowds when we go
overseas so, we're always amped up,
we're always looking forward to it.
And to be honest, the pay's pretty good when
we go overseas 'cause the crowds are so big, so...
yeah, I'd say the morale was high and we were,
we were stoked to have some good times.
My name is PJ Polaco and you may know me as the
hardcore icon Justin Credible.
Some of the big names on that trip were certainly
Stone Cold Steve Austin.
The Undertaker was on the flight.
Scott Hall, Kevin Nash...
Brock Lesner was on the flight.
Ric Flair was on the flight, and many others,
so it was stacked.
It's a long flight, and we thought that by chartering a
customized jet that we were being
as talent friendly as we could.
Unfortunately, it, it didn't...
it didn't work out well.
♪
My name is Heidi Doyle, and in 2002,
I was a flight attendant on the European charter for the WWE.
I worked for a company called Sports Jet.
It was a private airline that flew many of the
different sports teams out of the Phoenix area,
the Phoenix Suns and the Phoenix Coyotes.
We also flew the Utah Jazz and the Mariners.
A normal commercial Boeing 757 would have 190 seats.
And our flight had 50 leather seats.
Bigger carpet than I've ever had in my own house.
There's couches and lounge areas.
It's just not a very bad way to travel.
It costs a lot to do it privately,
but you also get many benefits.
You get to order your own food,
you know what you're gonna eat.
You know you're all gonna be comfortable.
You know that you don't have to deal with anybody
of the general public on the air plane.
You're just amongst the group that's your people.
It's just nice to know that
we're not going to offend anyone.
Like, sometimes when the boys are on flights,
and they're a bit obnoxious, it's kind of like you go,
like, oh, gosh, are we gonna...?
Sorry.
Hi, I'm Terry Runnels, and I was a passenger
on The Plane Ride from Hell.
[Indistinct commentary] a woman carrying a cigar!
I remember sitting in the first class section.
I think Jim Ross was up there.
Linda and Vince.
The front had a lounge area, so it was kind of like
your first class of the first class,
I guess, of the airplane.
Generally, the coaches and the managers sat up there.
And in this case,
Vince McMahon and his wife, they were up there.
And then the wrestlers were in the back.
So, I was in the back with the majority of the wrestlers.
My responsibility in the very back was getting them
their drinks, getting the meals out to them.
They were hungry, they wanted to try all the
different meals that were on the airplane.
Ric Flair had talked to all of us a lot.
He was very chatty and, he was kind of like
the captain of the team, I would say.
He had that kind of feel, and he was very,
very nice and personable to us.
He was a little flirt, flirty, I think.
99% of the time we had men.
That's who we were working with.
You just had to be aware of getting too comfortable,
I think, 'cause that can always just create a
situation that different people can have different
thoughts of the level of comfortableness.
But on the flight to Europe, there's no problems.
♪
After an uneventful 8-hour flight across the Atlantic,
the charter arrives at its first stop on the tour,
Cologne, Germany.
[Cheering]
[Chanting] Rob Van Dam!
[Cheering]
My name is Rob. Van. Dam.
WWE Hall of Famer.
And the whole damn show.
It's cool to see how you affect these other cultures,
you know, and other countries.
[indistinct commentary]
They had some diehard fans, let me tell you what.
The Germans were very into the WWE and it was very,
yeah, it was an intense, enlightening experience,
the match was.
Our flight attendants, they were with us almost every day.
Some came to the show, some were partying
at the hotels with the wrestlers, at the bars.
In the 80s and 90s, these flight attendants,
they kind of would party with you,
hang out with you in the back, drink with you.
Hello, I'm Michael Chioda.
Worked for the World Wrestling Entertainment
for 35 years.
WWF referee, Mike Chioda!
Yeah, you used to go out, meet up with some
flight attendants down at the bar.
They might be staying at the same hotel,
or you'd go to their hotel, a 5-minute cab ride.
We went downstairs and had drinks when the wrestlers
came back from the first match in Germany.
We chatted a little bit with them that first night.
It was my first trip back to work after having a baby and
I was so enjoying my time, resting in my room.
And getting to order room service and not have to
wake up when, at all hours of the night.
But I only went to the one match in Germany.
You literally would wrestler in Germany,
and the next day you wake up,
you're in Scotland.
It's, you wake up the next day,
you're in London.
By the time we got to London,
usually everybody's really stoked.
I remember it being a Saturday night because
that's when the Pay Per View aired,
traditionally, over there.
And, it was WWE's Pay Per View Insurrection.
The city of London is on fire!
This is Insurrection!
It was a packed house.
European crowds love us.
All the tickets for this event sold out in 21 minutes!
I remember the show being solid.
The talent seemed to be happy with their performances.
And, they were even more happy to get
back on the plane and go home.
Well, I'd been away from my daughter for the first time and,
it was... I was more than excited to go see her, yeah, yeah.
The excitement to return home is quickly deflated
as the passengers are delivered troubling news.
Everyone took their seats and we taxied out onto the tarmac.
And we got advised that
we were on a weather hold from Connecticut.
When we were told that there was a weather delay,
I bet we probably all thought 20 minutes,
40 minutes, an hour tops.
Well...
we were delayed for 7 hours
before the plane takes off.
So, we sat on the tarmac for a little while.
Commercial airlines, you would all be familiar with
the small, little mini bottles that you serve.
We had just normal bottles.
And, the liquor cart ran out of alcohol.
And, another liquor cart was ordered,
at their request. And that was also drank.
So, that liquor cart ran out.
And then a third one was ordered.
I've never, ever done it ever before,
and never again.
Never, and we went through three, yeah.
Imagine your varsity football team,
they just won a game, except they can't
get out of the parking lot.
And, there's cases and cases of beer.
That's what it's like. A bunch of high school guys.
To say it's high school is really like giving it too much.
It's more like 5th grade.
Even though it was their plane,
in a sense, we serve the drinks still.
But that became not the case.
They started to serve themselves the drinks and
they didn't want our help.
I was very concerned about
the carts being replenished on the ground.
If they were to try to cut us off,
we would have gotten to that booze.
Somebody would have.
Flair probably could have thrown a couple thousand dollars
at 'em and said, "Here, take this,
we're gonna get the, we're gonna get that liquor."
We would 'a got the liquor, absolutely.
I think the release that they're finally going home
was cause for celebration.
They only got a small window now to really
let their hair down and become... stupid.
And that's what a lot of 'em chose to do.
♪
After spending several grueling hours grounded on
the tarmac and indulging in an unlimited supply of alcohol,
the passengers aboard WWF's private charter
are relieved as the jet is finally cleared for takeoff.
I don't remember how long we'd been up in the air
before it was very, very evident that
we had a lot of drunk people.
Oh, shoot, the boys, they could get drunk in one hour.
When you're doing GHB or pills or anything like that,
Percocets or Vicodins and stuff that were around,
you can do a lot of damage, period, in one hour.
But it was always booze and pills in the WWE.
And because we had doctor's prescriptions,
and as long as you had a doctor's prescription,
it was okay.
Of course, it wasn't because,
you know, we'd have doctors write us whatever we wanted.
Halcions, GHB. Placidyl?
No, the placidyls, I think, were in the early 90s.
But I know there was some GHB and Halcions on the flight.
Halcions were things that we took sometimes
just to go to sleep for a long period of time.
And, sometimes you use 'em for a rib, too.
Way back in the day it used to be called H Bombing,
and it was Halcions.
And I seen so many guys dropping these H bombs
in drinks in order to get the mark to pass out.
They shave his head, you know,
whatever they do.
Girls, local girls, you know,
were put out so the boys could have their way with them,
while they're out. I mean, this was...
[Sighing]
It was kind of normal
in some of the places that I've been.
Never leave your drink exposed
because the boys think seeing somebody
froth at the mouth and
slur their speech, they can't stand up,
manage their own faculties, is funny.
The story was out that Michael got H bombs.
Michael Hayes worked in creative at that point in time.
I don't know if he was officially an agent,
a coach, producer.
They've gone through several names,
they all do the same thing.
With the Halcion in his body,
and I don't know what else could have been in there,
he was not himself.
And he made bad decisions.
Bradshaw had gotten split open the night of the Pay Per View.
Oh, yes, he is busted open!
As Bradshaw is sleeping, Michael Hayes just
knocked him in his head and reopened the wound.
So now, JBL is bleeding all over his shirt.
So, JBL slapped him and knocked him out.
He knocked out Michael Hayes.
We're like, "Holy shit!"
Then I hear, like, chanting for X-Pac.
X-Pac was one of the sweetest guys in the world.
He really is.
Jay Strongbow used to call him The Trailer Hitch 'cause
he was always following the big load of Hall and Nash.
...I would love to get my hands on Austin.
Yeah, yeah.
But he wanted to be accepted so badly,
and perceived as a main event guy.
Michael Hayes, had been burying me in the booking
meetings and he's got that fucking pony tail, that mullet.
So, as he's out cold, I grabbed that fucking tail
and I lifted up and I just went, whack!
I remember the big pop.
And it was like him holding up the title,
but he had the ponytail.
[Laughing]
Back in the day, you were not allowed to sleep
on those flights.
You would end up with a shaved eye brow.
You always had to have one eye open,
so to speak, when you're on a plane full of the boys.
I had my hat on, my sunglasses.
Even though it was night time,
you had to wear all that stuff because you didn't
know who was coming by with shaving cream.
If somebody went to lift your shades up,
you had a chance of waking up.
Or take your hat off, you have a chance of
waking up and kicking out real quick.
♪
The roster is especially on guard for any potential hijinks,
finding themselves in the presence of one of
the industry's most legendary pranksters.
What else would you expect from Mr. Perfect?
Curt, boy, he knows how to rib.
He was one of the best rib-ers in the business.
Ribs started happening once Curt
came back into the company.
Curt would always play with Brock.
Brock was sitting in his chair and, Curt Hennig...
"Sh!" Put shaving cream on his head.
He went, "splat", and splat it on his head.
Boosh!
Next thing I know, Brock is chasing Curt,
like a full sprint, you know, like...
Wham, wham! Brock went right behind him.
And then Brock just swoops him up.
So now you have Brock Lesnar, who's 6 "4.
And he's picking up Curt Hennig,
who's about 6"4.
They went into one row.
Like, a bunch of the guys had to move.
So, they would go from one side of the fuselage,
and then into the other, and overhead bins got broken,
and tables got broken, and arm rests got broken up.
Things started to break, yeah,
'cause they're just so big.
Like, I do remember one of the seats,
like, the middle of the seat came completely off.
And as a safety professional,
there's not a damn thing I can do to stop these two men.
Like, there's not a damn thing I can do to get them
to hear my voice.
One of the wrestlers had commandeered our PA.
So, in the middle of the fight going on,
we have someone yelling at the airplane,
"We're gonna die, we're all gonna die."
So, here comes one of the pilots to the back of the airplane,
trying to get these two men to stop
slamming each other against the fuselage.
And they wouldn't even listen to him.
One of our illustrious agents said,
"You need to come back here."
So, I go back there and they're play fighting.
They just started play fighting in the
emergency exit row.
Brock picks Curt up, and then they hit the emergency door.
This was a big boom.
Everyone jumped up, and we're like, "Stop, stop!"
It was their own teammates that finally got it to stop
'cause they were scared.
I'm not a mechanical engineer.
I don't know what all it takes to pop that security door,
but I didn't want to find out at 30,000 feet
above the air.
You have all these people, "Ah,
could you imagine what happens if that door opened?"
If you, you think about it, it's physically impossible
to open that door.
They would have no idea of knowing the door couldn't
pop out, but they were throwing each other
against the fuselage. And if that fuselage breaks,
the airplane can depressurize.
Now you're doing an emergency landing,
and where are you gonna land if you're over the Atlantic?
The weight and the size that they are, of wrestlers,
I mean, they can go through a wall in a house.
Why couldn't they go through a wall on an airplane?
Because just the, the banging,
you know was, you know, Brock is so big.
He was just a thick, solid, big bear is right, man.
He was a solid boy, young.
This is scary!
He was getting a big push.
Brock Lesnar is an animal.
Brock was very new to the business,
and he exposed himself to me
at the Insurrection Pay Per View.
Like a real dick.
I remember that night, I was doing interviews.
Trish and Jackie in the tag team match.
I was backstage. And I hear my name called.
And, Brock was in this room, Dustin was in the room -
my ex-husband at the time.
And, Brock did the whole thing. I, I...
no sold it, went to my dressing room and
Dustin came, he's like, "Don't sell it."
I'm like, "I'm not selling it. I didn't sell it. Not gonna."
In other words, let it lie, leave it alone.
♪
I had complaints about Brock Lesnar's behaviour on the plane.
And, but I don't recall any advances or reported
advances from Brock to, to Terri Runnels.
Could it have happened?
Of course, it could have happened.
It could have happened.
I did my job to the best of my ability
to look out for the talent.
I can't follow everybody around
to see if they're acting like an adult.
That should not be my job.
It really shouldn't.
♪
After the terrifying brawl at 30,000 feet,
the passengers try to settle in as the WWF roster is
due to perform on live television the following day.
We've got TVs tomorrow, you know,
it's like, let's get some rest now.
I'm leaning against the window, you know, sleeping.
All of a sudden, I hear this very familiar voice.
And, Dustin,
my ex-husband, starts singing a
David Allan Coe song called "Pledging My Love".
Forever my darling, my love will be true.
Always and forever, I'll love only you.
I immediately am like [gasping] mortified.
Everyone that's just drifted off to sleep is now
woken up by, yeah, it's bad.
I was about to get up and go back there and tell him to stop.
But Paul E. was across the aisle,
and he looked at me, he's like...
"Don't sell it, don't sell it."
So, I left it alone.
Don't sell it.
Because that's just the smartest way to deal
with our business. Just don't sell it.
If Dustin could sing,
it would've made it a little bit easier.
But he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
I did not like his behaviour.
I generally felt for the guy,
in the sense, he was obviously hurting, you know.
That pain was real.
I don't like to see anyone hurting like that.
However, he still should have given me my microphone back.
It got uncomfortable, it got uncomfortable.
Like, you know, JR had to stop that.
You know, he literally went up to Dustin and said...
Sit your ass down.
Go to sleep.
You know, give us all a break.
Eventually he passed out and that's how we got our PA back.
He fell asleep and I got the microphone from him.
If I was a flight attendant, to be on that flight that night
would have been probably one of the worst
experiences of my career.
Some young ladies just trying to do their job and
just trying to, to get home, you know,
I could imagine it being very disheartening for them,
and scary in some ways, I'm sure.
Hours into the flight,
the mid-air chaos shows no signs of slowing down.
There was another situation that occurred with Ric Flair,
for me, that was very uncomfortable.
Sometimes as a joke, Ric Flair would put on
his robe and not wear anything else and,
walk that aisle like Ric Flair and then open it up and, woo!
That's the big high spot, everyone'd see Ric
coming out naked in his robe.
And so, he did it on the airplane for everybody and,
that's what the guys want to see,
that's what makes 'em laugh.
He could move his hips and twirl it.
And so, his well-endowed penis...
spins around like a helicopter.
So, hey, he's the Nature Boy for a reason.
He's got a hammer on him.
He's the life of the party.
And, if you know him, you know where
to exit the party and go to your own safe place.
Or, you don't know the rules and
you find yourself in deep water.
And that may have happened.
And I was in the galley.
The galley is where our little kitchen area on an airplane.
Ric Flair was naked in a cape only,
and then he decided to come back to the galley to get a Coke.
And then he wouldn't leave the galley.
He had me back against the back door.
And I couldn't, I could'nt move.
I couldn't get away from him.
I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't move.
He was spinning around his penis and
he wanted me to touch it, and...
he, he took my hand and, and put it on him.
Ric Flair is not going to try to impose by force
any sexual stuff onto anybody.
He's just flaunting style and in profile,
and doing like the Ric Flair stuff where
everybody's going to laugh about it.
But, obviously, someone took offense to it.
I remember him crowding the flight attendant, like,
in the aisle way back there by the bathroom
where it's like real skinny and you can't fit two people
through there and stuff.
I remember him like crowding her and,
you know, trying to make her touch him and stuff.
[Heidi] And he kept me back there for,
I don't know how long.
But it felt like a really long time.
It wasn't short, like, it was minutes.
And I asked him to please stop and he didn't, he wouldn't.
♪
I don't remember somebody really helping me except for
one, I believe Gold, Gold Dust?
Who had the mike.
I do believe he, he told Ric Flair that
he should leave me alone, eventually.
He should, he should leave alone.
And maybe that's why I didn't get as angry about
the mike as I maybe I should have, you know.
I think he did try to help me and
he was the only one that did, yeah.
♪
Scott's issues have been well documented.
He's documented 'em.
He had issues with substance abuse.
We were not doing him any favours putting him
back on the road so he could resume his routines.
And we didn't do him justice,
but we didn't know how bad it was.
And, and for those who think we should have known,
well, we didn't.
You don't know until you see it,
you interact with it.
We were quite close to landing.
And I came to Scott Hall who had just woken up.
I'd offered him breakfast, and...
He grabbed my shirt and pulled me down and
my shirt buttons got ripped.
And he had told me what he was gonna do to me.
[Whispering] Yeah.
He said a number of things, but what I do remember is,
as my shirt ripped, he told me he was gonna lick me.
And then he proceeded to try do that, which...
[Sighing] I don't want to say scary 'cause that might
sound too dramatic, but it was a moment of great...
violation, discomfort, to have a person put their
hands on you without you wanting them to do that and
to not let go when you ask them to.
And to create a, a level of fear,
when you're there to do a job and you're doing your job,
and now you have to be afraid that you're gonna get hurt.
It didn't feel to me that he was gonna let go any time soon.
And then he passed out.
And I was able to, you know, dislodge him from me.
I think that Curt H-Bombed me.
Because I've been taking pills and drinking for a lot
of years at that point, and I was out.
After that happened with Scott Hall,
I never left the galley.
I didn't serve anyone.
And they got angry at me for that.
They wanted more food and drinks,
and I was done.
I didn't come out of the galley again.
♪
After spending a total of 14 nightmarish hours
on the plane, the weary passengers and crew
finally touch down on American soil.
When they landed and I heard the door open...
yeah, it was a very, very excellent feeling to
not be over the Atlantic anymore.
It was a long flight. It was a very long flight.
The plane was trashed.
Blankets, pillows, drinks, cups, food stepped on.
And a normal flight, they're passing by
three or four times with trash bags and this and that.
Well, this wasn't a normal flight so,
I think Scott was passed out.
I think they were actually worried he was dead, you know.
So, they were all stressed, like,
they got a dead person on this flight now.
And like, oh, boy, don't worry, he'll kick out.
[Laughing] You know, it's like...
he'll kick out.
He wouldn't wake up.
So, I'm picking him up and I had to get him a wheelchair
and literally take him through customs myself.
I put the sunglasses on him, laid him there,
and he's just kind of, you know.
I had to get his passport, had to say that
he had some kind of condition.
And there I am wheeling Razor through,
you know, customs. And there's Jim Ross.
He had the black hat on,
and just looking at me with disgust.
And I'm like, I'm, I'm here.
I'm wheeling him. I didn't do anything.
Once we landed, Michael Hayes woke up and
his ponytail was missing.
And Michael Hayes was pissed off about it.
He was hell-bent to find out who did it.
"You know who did it, you know who did it."
And, would have fought the entire plane if he could've.
He was really angry, he was really angry.
♪
And when we landed, we started to pick up the
airplane and there was vomit,
and there was blood.
There was syringes found in seatback pockets
in other places. And I'm going,
"Oh, no, we're not cleaning this airplane.
We're gonna get off right now."
And my superior was saying,
"No, you need to clean the airplane."
Me just walking off the airplane, you know.
If that happened on Delta or American or whatever,
when we got back to the States,
the FBI would have been waiting on us.
There should have been more repercussions, for sure.
There should have been some.
I don't know, they did have repercussions,
I learned later, but...
They were only I think 'cause they knew they had
to do something, you know, 'cause it didn't look
real good for Vince McMahon's organization, I don't think.
For better or for worse, I'm taking ownership.
But it was a, it was a black eye.
Good thing about a black eye, you heal.
♪
Shortly after landing, Vince McMahon and Jim Ross
urgently meet to discuss repercussions for the
flight's most egregious acts.
I just couldn't believe everything was getting
out of control with Vince on the flight,
you know, but it did. It got out of control.
I don't know.
I don't know what Vince was doing this whole time.
[Laughing] I wonder what.
Vince was well aware of it, but it was my job to handle.
That's why I'm still embarrassed about it
to this very day. It was my job to handle.
Vince McMahon makes the decisions,
but Jim Ross is the one who has to execute them.
Jim Ross is the guy who has to fire you as well.
Jim Ross is the guy who has to tell you,
"Hey, you're messing up."
He's the guy who has to fine you.
That's that position.
It wasn't a tough decision on my part to cut some guys
from the roster because
it's what Vince McMahon told me to do.
And the guy that writes the cheques has the last say.
I was troubled by Curt's firing.
I just thought he had a bad night with the boys.
He had a reputation of being kind of a practical joker.
And, Vince had enough of it.
And you kind of figure maybe, okay,
Curt got fired, but then he's gonna come back
and circle his way around at some point,
which he would have, I'm sure.
But, he passed away not too far after that.
And Razor, I think it was just his drug addiction that
kind of maybe just his career kind of slipped away there.
We let Scott go
within hours after he got back to the, to the States.
I was told to cut him, now.
And so, I called him at home and, you know,
I just said, "I think we made a mistake.
You're not ready to get back on the road.
Until you're better suited to handle your demons,
we need to put you back in your comfort zone,"
which meant at home, primarily.
Dustin Rhodes is one of my favourite people in the world.
We go back a long way.
I don't know if it was just the rebound of his divorce
with Terri, what it was, but he was in a,
a tough place. But, no excuse.
So, you know, he was dipping his snuff and
using a seatback cushion as a spittoon.
I had two options: fine him
and I would get his attention, or fire him.
Which I thought was extreme and did not need to happen.
That was my call.
He learned from his mistakes.
He was immature.
He had substance abuse issues.
And, sometimes he controlled 'em and sometimes he didn't.
But the bottom line is, is that...
we have to stop in our society letting others'
transgressions go without punishment.
[Sighing]
Good question.
Ah...
I guess...
lack of a better term, he was a made man.
And he was such a high level made man that...
he got a pass.
Was it the right thing to do?
I don't know.
You're listening to it, folks, you decide.
He got a pass.
As the WWF deals with the fallout from the flight,
Heidi is forced to consider her next steps.
I remember walking off the airplane on the tarmac.
Then we went to a hotel that was quite nearby and talking
about how horrible, like, and the girls from the front
saying they didn't know that it was that,
you know, that it was that bad.
And then I just went to my hotel room and
I took a shower and I cried.
I called Sports Jet.
They said that it was unfortunate that that
had occurred on the airplane.
They preferred that we kept it to ourself,
the story, because we work with professional athletes
and things happen on airplanes.
And they let us know it was expected that we would...
respect the privacy of our clients.
So, then you have to figure out how you tell
your husband, "How was your trip?"
"Well, it wasn't excellent."
What do you tell your husband?
It can even create...
situations where they say, "Well,
why did that happen to you?
What did you do to make them do that to you?"
And I would say that might be the worst question
you could ever ask somebody who's been hurt because
you already feel a sense of, what did I do?
Did I smile?
Was I too nice to him or did I...?
And, then you feel almost like you've done
something wrong, when I hadn't.
But I know another girl, there was another girl
on the flight that was very upset about things that
were similar, things that had occurred to her.
She went to a lawyer and then she contacted me and
said I should do that as well.
If I filed a lawsuit for every time something
like that happened to me, dear god,
I would be in court for...
all my adult life.
My sense of it was that the company wanted to
address this matter,
take it off our books...
do the right thing by those that had complaints,
and then move on.
There was an agreement that was reached and,
and you know, they offered us a settlement.
My husband just didn't want the story told to the public,
maybe just to protect our daughter,
or himself, us, I don't know.
So, he was very, very supportive of the settlement.
It's sad that money has to be that compensation,
like, I think definitely truth, and honesty,
and change is more powerful.
But money is, money is what ends up on the table,
I think, and then it also buys your silence,
which then can add to another layer of the guilt
of a victim, like it can...
it can be a cycle that's not good, yeah.
Perpetually bad.
If that's how she felt, maybe she should have
not taken a payout and went to the fullest extent of the law...
to then truly put this heinous person in jail.
My opinion.
People have their own opinions of what happened.
What, what the damage was.
Though no one should really have an opinion when it
didn't happen to them, but they do.
They say, you know, "Well, it wasn't that bad.
You're okay, aren't you?"
And now you have to live with it,
a pain or a memory of something that you didn't
bring about and that takes some work, yeah.
♪
After the exhausting European tour,
wrestlers and management report for a live taping of
Monday Night Raw, a mere 24 hours after the plane
touched down in Connecticut.
We had TV that day, on Monday.
And, of course, the talent's,
"Hey, JR. Hey, JR." "What?"
"Did you see what they did to Hayes' ponytail?"
"No, what?"
Michael Hayes' ponytail was put into a sandwich bag.
It was taped to the locker room door
at Raw on Monday, until I saw it.
And I took it down, threw it away.
Exposure of these scandalous events would mark a
turning point for the WWF, propelling it to reign in
the public antics of its performers.
In a symbolic twist of fate, the aftermath of the
infamous Plane Ride from Hell coincided on the
same day the company was legally forced to
rebrand its identity.
Can you imagine that, JR?
We're getting the 'F' out.
Young talents coming in the business after that era
had heard all the stories, saw the remnants,
saw guys that had made millions of dollars not have
two quarters to rub together.
And, I think they learned from their predecessors.
[Cheering]
Nice job.
It's a different culture. It's a different era.
I think that's the upshot, and maybe good news,
that incidents like the Plane Ride from Hell
smartened some of these younger kids up.
"I want to be in the wrestling business.
I've always idolized this guy,
but I do know I'm not gonna pattern my,
some of my career after this guy."
Make good choices that way.
[Laughing]
I think that there's definitely a sense of
the cliché, never meet your heroes.
The people who have watched for generations and got them
through their lives, I don't think that they all need to
see Ric Flair doing the helicopter with his penis.
Like, I don't...
I don't really think it's good for everybody to know
this about their heroes, you know.
Some of these guys are freaks.
I feel this is trying to portray someone
as a sexual predator, and it's not.
It's a joke, it's a gag.
And, today, 1000% inappropriate.
My hairstyle is inappropriate right now.
I am somehow offending someone right now
with my double ponytail.
How dare I have two ponytails.
And my answer is, I'm 50 years old.
I'm happy I have hair.
But, if you're asking me, I've hung out with Ric Flair.
I've never seen him try to force his will against anybody.
I don't feel that his intent was to rape me.
But, what he did was wrong.
It was wrong and, he goes to sleep that night and thinks
he made it back from his wrestling trip in Europe and
maybe he has a headache 'cause he had
too many cocktails on the airplane.
And yet, that night I didn't go to sleep.
My trip to work, my...
my trip to get money to support my daughter becomes
a memory that is mine forever to live with.
Like, I get to live with that fact I had to see a
naked man and get my face licked by a man that I was
there to make sure he got from point A to point B, safe.
And they went to sleep and thought they made it
home safe and sound and, so goes on the world, you know.
I was uncomfortable coming to talk about this 'cause
you see some stories told and then people get
ridiculed or they, everything picked apart as
what they did wrong when they're just
telling their story.
But, if one person that listens to this says,
"Oh, my gosh, I might have acted like that towards
somebody and I didn't even realize I did it," or,
if one person hears it that had something happen to them,
that they didn't like and they didn't feel they could
speak about it 'cause they'd get in trouble or
they were made to feel that they created the situation
and might have made it happen, like,
if it can change it for one person,
I'd sit and have this conversation 25 times again.
The truth, the truth can be scary,
and the truth can be ugly and messy,
but at the end of the day, the truth,
it's the thing that makes us better,
in the end, you know.
♪