The Fan

I was told that the WWE wrestlers were staying at the St David's Hotel in Cardiff Bay before their second night at the International Arena so decided I would go there in the hope of getting my Wrestlemania XX programme signed.

I arrived outside the building before 11am and waited for my first sighting. Within the first half hour I saw Lita emerge from the lobby only to walk back a minute or so later.

Then I caught a glimpse of Jonathan Coachman. He walked down the road from the hotel towards the shops. I had a gamble to make. I either had to wait in the hope I see someone else or go where The Coach was going and get his autograph.

I decided to pursue Coach!

He walked in to the Subway sandwich bar and I thought it would be rude of me to interupt him while he was ordering or eating his food so decided to wait until he left. I thought it would be best to walk past the window and have a look inside to make sure it was him. I slowly passed and looked in and it was him!

After a few more minutes he emerged from the shop and I had strategically placed myself a little bit up the road so he would have to walk past me. My plan seemed to backfire at one point when he decided to turn left at the crossing. He went out of my sight for a few seconds and I swore to myself for letting him get away! Then, possibly after realising he was on the wrong route, he was back on track and heading towards me.

'Excuse me, plase can I have your autograph?' I asked.
'Sure,' he repsonded.
I opened up my bag and pulled out the programme and turned to the pages with Wrestlemania history and to the page that had Wrestlemania from the year 2000 on it.
'Wrestlemania sixteen was your first Wrestlemania wasn't it?'
'Yeah it was,' he replied suprised that I had known that.
The commentator was so surprised that I knew something like that that he repeated himself again.
I thanked him for his time and said it was nice to meet him and we parted ways.

I then headed back to the hotel and was waiting for some more famous faces to leave the hotel. Lita, Victoria and another wrestler in a cap left the lobby and caught an open top bus for a tour of the city. I couldn't get their attention as they had a few members of security walk them to the bus. After the bus drove off I was approached by one of the security men who told me I had to leave so I walked away.

Only to return!

I waited a little bit out of his view hoping for another wrestler to walk down the road towards the shopping and eating facilities but no one came. After half an hour Pat Patterson, one of Vince McMahon's right hand men from the 1980's and 90's ran out of the hotel trying to catch the second sight seeing bus. I caught the drivers attention and told him that Patterson was trying to catch the bus. The bus stopped and Pat shouted 'thank you, thank you' to me and waved at me once he was sitting on his seat.

Then the security guard came along again and told me I had to get off the property and at this point I asked him which part of the road i was standing on that the hotel owned bearing in mind public buses were allowed to travel on it.

I decided that I wasn't going to get any more autographs so headed off home. It would have been nice to have met Shawn Michaels for a third time, the legendary Ric Flair, world champion John Cena or Triple H but it wasn't meant to be.

Not this time, anyway!