Former WWE announcer and current golf announcer Jonathan Coachman recently hosted another of his ‘Ask Coach Anything Live‘ podcasts in which he got to talking about the time he was punished by WWE for not going over to Afghanistan.
He said, “I’m still a little pissed about it to be honest with you. Here’s what happened. In 2004 or 2005, the years are blurry, but that’s when we were doing our shows in Afghanistan. It was supposed to be if you didn’t want to go, you didn’t have to. It was supposed to be completely up to you because we were going into a war zone, and they couldn’t make you do it. That’s what was told to us.”
Continuing on, Coach said he has reserves about going because his first kid was on the way. He said, “I had never said no to Vince once in my career, not for anything, so they thought I was joking. To travel to Afghanistan, you have to put your name on a list with the Pentagon and the Military to get clearance. I showed up to the building the day that we were supposed to leave in Charleston, SC. They came out and asked for my bags. I said, ‘I told you I wasn’t going. They said, ‘We thought you were kidding.’ I said, ‘I’m not kidding about that.’ I thought it was cool.”
Jonathan could immediately notice a change in behavior towards him after the incident. He said “There’s always been a culture of, I don’t want to use the word hazing because I didn’t get hazed. That wasn’t this. Punishment perhaps? But when the show was over, one of the referees, I can’t remember who it was, Undertaker was ending the show, and he (the referee) came over and said, ‘You have to go hit The Undertaker from behind.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘That’s just what they’re telling me.’ So basically as punishment for not going to Afghanistan, I got beat up by The Undertaker. Then they hit Batista’s music. He came down and he finished the job.”
Coach ended by saying “The one thing about Vince that I have taken that’s positive is he has this incredible ability to forget what just happened the week before. You can be in a knockdown, drag out, screaming fight with him, which a lot of people have done, and you think, ‘Oh my goodness. My job’s on the line. They’re not going to keep me. They’re going to fire me’, whatever the case might be. You see him the next week and he’s like, ‘Hey pal. How you doing?’ That’s kind of how he is.”
Thanks to Fightful for providing transcriptions.
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