Jonathan Coachman On Wrestling In 2005 WWE Royal Rumble, Talent Being Unhappy With Him Taking Their Spot

Jonathan Coachman recently participated in a Q&A session on AdFreeShows, and the former WWE announcer discussed a variety of topics, including being in the 2005 WWE Royal Rumble, talent being unhappy with him, and much more. Here’s what he had to say (via Fightful):

Jonathan Coachman on being in the 2005 Royal Rumble and some talent being unhappy with him taking their spot: “This is a story that I’ve never told before. I can’t remember the year, but I was in two Royal Rumbles, okay. How they go about the Royal Rumble is you go into a room and they have somebody who goes through the match and who’s going to be eliminated and win. I’ll never forget that Hardcore Holly, who might be one of the scariest human beings on planet Earth, was sitting right next to me and good or bad, we had struck up a friendship. He liked me and we got along, but I also knew that at any point that he could kill me, and might.

“So we’re sitting there, and again, there were some guys, let’s be honest, they didn’t like that I was taking a spot in the Royal Rumble. They felt like they had worked all year, as though it was a reward and when somebody like The Coach gets in the Royal Rumble, that’s taking my spot. I always said to the guys like that, ‘Then earn your spot better, because I’m more over as a heel than they were just working.’ I told people all the time, ‘If you can’t talk, you cannot get over.’ Period. End of story.”

On Hardcore Holly dropkicking him before the match and taking 34 chops in the Rumble: “So we’re sitting there, and so they go through like the first eight or ten guys, right. So they said, ‘If you’ve been eliminated, you can leave the room.’ Well at that point, Hardcore Holly in the Royal Rumble had been eliminated. I hadn’t even come in yet. So I turned to Hardcore and I said, ‘Yeah, Hardcore. Step.’ He gets up and he dropkicks me with his toe into the side of my thigh at full speed. I almost couldn’t go into the Royal Rumble that night. I could barely walk. It hurt that bad, I swear to God. I was able to get through it.

“Then that same night was when Jericho and Edge — Because when you’re in the Royal Rumble, you just got to kill time in between the other big spots that are going on. So they thought it’d be funny if they would just shred my chest with chop after chop, chop, chop. So I took, we counted on video that I took 34 chops in the Royal Rumble because I was in for about 37 minutes. When I got back to the shower, I was thinking, ‘Man, I made it through. I’m still walking. I feel good.’ Then the water hit my chest, and I’m telling you, I screamed as loud as you could possibly scream. It was literally like shreds of cheese on my chest. It hurts so, so badly.”