During a Q&A with Hannibal TV, former WWE star Chris Masters talked about Vince McMahon’s behavior during a plane flight
“All I remember about that flight was everybody got hammered on those. Those were some of the wildest stuff that I encountered in the wrestling business was the trip over to the Middle East for the Tribute to the Troops shows because it was the only time I’ve seen Vince [McMahon] like really let his hair down and get buck wild man, like seriously. Like drinking and instigating fights. A lot of that was on Vince. I think Vince was trying — you never know with Vince. Vince was trying to peer pressure CM Punk into having a drink and I wouldn’t really know what to do either if I was CM Punk because part of me, maybe Vince is testing him to see if he could get CM Punk to break his will and then that’ll make Vince lose respect for him or whatever, you know what I’m saying but, and then eventually so CM Punk wouldn’t drink and then eventually it turned into — it went from CM Punk drinking to now, ‘Hey, if you’re such a shooter CM Punk, how about you take on –’ I think it was first, Shelton Benjamin and then after that, it was Carlito because Carli would, not shoot flirt but kind of mess with Maria [Kanellis-Bennett] and flirt with her and I’m pretty sure CM Punk and Maria were together again at the time or were together at that point so I think kind of the boys really instigated that because we knew that CM was kinda annoyed with Carlito trying to mess with him and trying to kind of, I guess — again, work flirt with Maria, not shoot flirt with her but I don’t even remember what happened. I mean I think Shelton — Carli, nothing happened with Carli and CM but I think Shelton and CM actually grappled a little bit but I mean, that’s no competition for Shelton and Shelton [is a] top-level wrestler in the world as everybody knows so, but it was wild.”
Masters also reflected on dealing with JBL:
“Oh yeah, big time and coincidentally we’re talking about the Tribute To The Troops shows so my first year going there, we went to Afghanistan and they put us into different groups. Like whoever they decide is going in the group goes and then the whole group is separated into like three or four different groups, so in my group I had Mick Foley, Trish Stratus, Carlito, JBL and there might be somebody — oh, Fit Finlay was with us and man, JBL just tortured me the whole trip. I mean he really, you know, just bullied me and trash talked me and really was just all up in my head and yeah it was difficult, it was difficult because again, at this point, I’m 20-years old at this point and I’m getting angry with him and I wanna do something but I’m also like, ‘When is the right point to do something? This is a veteran.’ He’s been with the company I think at that point for like a decade, and when is it a point where I need to do something and would that be frowned upon or would that be respected and when is that point? And you know, I never obviously did anything. He just — really what it comes down to with a lot of those guys that you’re talking about, like you would talk about Bob [Holly] and JBL, if you were a young guy coming up in that time, they would mind f*ck you. They would work the deep mind f*ck and they would try to get you second-guessing yourself and to lose your confidence and you know, a lot of it to them was just — I don’t know if it was even necessarily even that they were trying to screw you over. They thought it was their job to test you and make sure that you got the right goods or you got thick enough skin but, who knows? Maybe it was because they just wanted to f*ck guys over. I don’t know, I can’t tell you that, you know what I mean?”
(quotes courtesy of PostWrestling.com)
