Trevor Murdoch was looking out for the business.
Before he was the top guy in the NWA, Trevor Murdoch was known for his time in WWE as one-half of the World Tag Team Champions alongside Lance Cade.
Speaking with NBC Sports Boston, Murdoch shared a story in which he and Cade were arrested in Ireland after getting into a fight with a fan who tried to attack Randy Orton.
“It was routine, or at least it was back then, to at the end of a European tour go down to the hotel bar and get sloppy drunk until it’s time to get on the airplane. Then you pass out on the airplane and you’re home. So we’re all down in the hotel lobby, I’m sitting, Lance is sitting across from me. I got Arn Anderson to the right of me and Randy Orton to the left of me. Randy’s the World Champion at the time. What no one knows is that three days before that, he had gotten hurt so bad that he couldn’t even bend over to tie his shoe, so they kind of put him in 6-Man Tags to kind of hide him and protect him so that nobody would know that he was injured. But we’re all talking and a fan comes up to us and asks Randy to sign a piece of paper for him. Randy grabs it, signs it for him, and gives it back. Then the guy asks Randy to sign something else. Randy says, ‘Hey man, I’m with my friends, I signed your paper, please leave us alone and let us go about our business.’ This fan just turned irate. Just instant bipolar disorder, I guess. Stars screaming at Randy, ‘We’re the reason you’re popular.’ Just being really aggressive with him. Randy stands up and starts looking around for security and yells to security, ‘Hey, this guy’s trying to grab my balls.’ So security runs over and takes him out and we go back to talking and having a good time.
About 20 minutes later, this guy comes back again and is as nice as can be and goes up to Randy, ‘Hey sir, can you please sign this for us?’ We all knew Randy was in a pressure cooker at the time, so we all took a deep breath and knew this could be bad. Randy goes, ‘Man, please just leave me alone. I’ve already signed what you needed. I just want some time with my friends.’ The fan just goes nuts again and yells. So Randy stands up again and tells security, ‘Hey, this guy grabbed my balls again. He got in there. Get him out of here. They take him out and swear to us that he is out of the hotel and we go back to having a good time.
The bar closes down and we have about two hours before we have to get on the bus to go back to the airport. So we’re walking out of the bar and Lance is walking in front of Randy and ten steps behind Randy is me. As we’re walking out of the bar, the guy that we got thrown out was hiding behind the hotel lobby desk and comes running around and was going to hit Randy from behind. Randy turned and saw him coming and yells, ‘Murdoch!’ I was inebriated really bad. I see him coming and just smoke him right in the face. Another guy comes at me and he goes to start taking his jacket off and he got that jacket around his elbows and there was my shot. Wham!
What I didn’t know what that the guy who bothered Randy all night was part of an Irish wedding reception and they were all down in the lobby. We were surrounded. Once I punched the second guy, I find myself in a half-moon of around 25 Irish men taking their jackets off. They were ready to kick my ass. About that time, Lance turns around and realizes we weren’t trailing behind him and sees that I’m in a pickle and he turns into a 290-pound bulldozer and starts taking off running and these poor bastards never see him coming because they had their backs turned to him. He just lowered his head and knocked about four guys onto their bellies, picked me up, and got me through the hole. I swear to God, it was like a movie. We’re running to the elevator and as the doors as closing, they’re running toward us. Lance and I sit back and take a deep breath. We thought it was done.
About 30 minutes later, Lance and I are both in my hotel room and we’re getting our stuff together and my phone rings. I pick up the phone and it’s Arn Anderson and he goes, ‘Uh, Trevor.’ I, like an idiot, try to pretend I’m sleeping, ‘What’s going on, buddy?’ He says, ‘You got that knucklehead Lance Cade with you?’ I knew the gig was up, so I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He goes, ‘You two mother fuckers get down here. You’re getting arrested.’ I go downstairs and the police and they have three paddywagons for us. What we don’t know is that the security guard that was supposed to be watching us, that was talking to a female, that should have prevented all of this, saw the first guy that I punched getting up and he saw him on all fours and took a ten step punt and punted this guy in the face and knocked him clean out. The problem for them was that the security guard was Black and there is still some racial issues over in Ireland. When they saw him do that, they got really aggressive with him and threw him into the paddywagon and he had been sitting in there the whole time while they were waiting for us.
Lance and I each get into a separate paddywagon and they drive us to the police station. They put the security guard in a jail cell, close the door, close the big door, and they take Lance and I into another room and start handing us coffee and taking pictures with us because they are fans. We didn’t know, we were trying to tell them, ‘Can we do what we need to do? We need to get on a plane. We’re leaving in an hour. Can we go?’ We finally get all the paperwork filled out thinking that we’re done with it, go back to the airport, get on the plane, come back. What we didn’t know was that they kept the security guard there for another three days putting him through a whole mess of stuff that he shouldn’t have had to deal with. Thankfully he got out and there was no other issues for him.
But we were World Tag Team Champions at the time. We flew back thinking we were about to get fired. Once Vince hears about this, we’re done. So we go to Raw the next day and we’re waiting for somebody to come talk to us and give us the ax. We’re like, ‘If they fire us for this, we’re taking the Tag belts home. This is horse shit. We were looking out for the champ.’ If that guy would have hit Randy from behind, and he’s already hurt… There’s cell phones. All it would have taken was a couple people to snap pictures. Like it wouldn’t have been good for business. We ended up getting aggravated because no one was talking to us. We tracked Vince down and we just laid it all out. This is what happened. This is why we did what we did. And this was the repercussions of it. He sat there for what felt like an eternity and goes, ‘You know what boys, it’s good for the fans to get their asses kicked every once and a while [Vince laughs]. Don’t worry about it, boys. I’ll have the lawyers take care of it. Go on.’ We walked away and Lance and I are looking at each other like, ‘What just happened?’ We went from preparing ourselves to talk to our wives about not having a job to ‘it’s good for the fans to get their asses kicked every once and a while [Vince laughs].’ That’s my Lance Cade story,” Murdoch said.
Murdoch is the current NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion and will defend the belt against Matt Cardona and Tyrus at NWA Hard Times 3 on November 12.
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