When somebody was looking in my locker, it was like going in my desk. Somebody happened to be looking in my locker when they shouldn’t have been.
The vibe in our locker room is real energetic and fun and real personable, I think from Day 1. That gets you through a lot of tough times, where in hard times, it might be common nature for guys to do their own thing and split up and become silent.
At the age of 16, when I had my first traning session with the first-team squad, I came into the cabin and there stood Ribery and he said: ‘Come here, sit down. Take the locker beside me.’
What I miss the most is the locker room, the dinners after the games. The preparation, the sense of going out there and be a team.
The hardest thing in the world is to write something critical about someone and then show up the next day in the locker room. I mean, that is not fun, and that takes an awful lot of guts. And I never enjoyed that.
For a while, I loved everything about it, every single aspect of what was supposed to be a job. The training – I loved to train. I loved the traveling. I dug being in the locker room. I didn’t mind icing and heat. I dug it. It was like, ‘Cool. I’d rather do this than anything.’
There were a lot of times I’d hide in my locker and jump out and surprise people. Whenever friends would come by, I’d open the locker and hit’ em.
I’m used to locker room banter, and I can have fun with that side of things.
You address the respect issue in a team-meeting environment. With respect to its application, it’s not just locker room. It’s practice field. It’s on and off the field. It’s on Sunday, and it’s on game days.
I’m comfortable in the locker room situation, so whatever.
Wherever Mantle went in the great metropolis – Danny’s Hideaway, the Latin Quarter, the ’21’ Club, the Stork Club, El Morocco, Toots Shor’s – his preferred drink was waiting when he walked through the door. Reporters waited at his locker for monosyllabic bons mots. Boys clustered by the players’ gate, hoping to touch him.
I knew a women’s Royal Rumble would happen eventually, but nobody was sure. We speculated about it in the locker room; we were all so excited.
I think in any situation, so much of effective leadership is when it comes from your own personality. And I feel very fortunate to be comfortable in the Colts locker room, where people can be who they are, and they don’t have to change it when they show up to work that day.
There were butterflies, otherwise, you’re not really ready to play. The locker room, I remember, was quiet and we were very focused on playing that game.
I’ve never dealt with really anything negative in the WWE as a whole, in the locker room, anything.
When you play sports, when you’re on a team with people from different walks of life, and you have to look after each other and count on each other, race and all that stuff goes out the window when you are in the locker room.
You go through all the training camps, all the blood and sweat and tears. I think you play for the guys in the locker room. We don’t play for anybody else.
There’d be days I was in the locker room with my dad doing media, and there’d be other days that I’d be with my mom in the press box and just kind of looking at stuff from that point of view. I’d see guys writing stories after the game and stuff like that. So it was cool to me to see both sides.
I think for far too long there was this perception, or I guess I would call it a misperception, that our locker rooms in the NFL are extremely homophobic, and that could not be further from the truth.
I always say there’s a couple things that I look at when I’m playing basketball. Do I enjoy going to the gym? Do I enjoy being in the locker room? When I get on the court do I still have that competitive fire to hate the person I’m playing against?
That’s kind of the beauty of WWE, is everyone’s got their own story, they all have their own path in getting here. It’s just a very diverse and unique locker room.
There’s a picture of the real Coach Gary Gaines in the book and he’s sitting in the locker room after a game, and he just looks so much like Billy Bob, that we went to him.
Frankly I’ve been in these situations where the locker room wasn’t good. That’s really the worst of times.
Before turning pro, I would never have just left my skates sitting in the locker room unattended.
In the locker room, and when I’m with my friends, we use racial slurs… What I do with my black friends is not up to white America to dictate to me what’s appropriate and inappropriate.
Matches are won and lost so many times in the locker room.
I walk into a health club locker room and feel an immediate impulse toward scrutiny, the kneejerk measuring of self against other: ‘That one has great thighs, this one’s gained weight, who’s thin, who’s fat, how do I compare?’
I think when you have a group of guys that care about the community, the city, care about each other, it just makes for a unique locker room.
I remember when I first walked into an American locker room, and no one had ever seen a 130-pound wrestler before. Those guys thought I was such a joke.
When you’ve been around a team that has been in the hunt for a Super Bowl and you’ve been in a locker room that’s held up the Vince Lombardi Trophy and you’ve had that experience, you’ve had that feeling, nothing comes close.
It’s just good to be back in the locker room.
Obviously if Gates turns out missing the first game because of this, that’s disappointing for everyone in this locker room because he is big part of our team and we don’t want to see that happen.
I am no prude, but when I watch comedy, I ask myself, ‘Who wrote this? A teenage boy in the locker room?’
There’s really not much friendship between the girls on tour. There’s so much rivalry and jealousy, so everyone just hangs out in their own camp. In the locker room and players’ lounge, you can feel the jealousy.
You cannot trust 25 guys in a locker room to have the same respect and training as I do with a weapon. That I do understand. I’ve carried a gun for 10 years. I’ve carried them in the locker room, and nobody really knows about it. I know how to handle myself.
Back in Oakland, we have a lot of food in the locker room, but on the road, it’s mostly just fruit. So we have to prepare differently. But really, once you get to the gym, everything on the road is pretty much the same.
I love to sew in the hotel room. I even sew in the locker room sometimes.
I am not one of these guys that looks to the locker room and points fingers. That has never been my MO.
I’m looking at the belt on the top of the bag across from me, and it still hasn’t fully hit me. There are multiple stages to all of this, but I know that every time I walk into a gym or go to a new locker room since I won the title, I’ve felt like the world champion.
I sort of seen a few iterations of NXT, but the one constant throughout is it’s a competitive locker room in a positive way.
There are a lot of guys in those SmackDown and Raw locker rooms that, given the opportunity, I’d love to have matches with, tell stories with, and do stuff with.
It’s the journey to get there. It’s that moment in that locker room when you’re with a group of people that have gotten it done. There’s nothing like it. If you could bottle that up and take that out in the world, you’d dominate.
That’s the big thing – having the other guys’ respect in the locker room. You can’t come in with no respect and try to own the place.
What we do at the end of every season – which is why it’s probably not the greatest idea to talk about things in the visitor’s locker room after the final game – we sit down and have real serious conversations with all of the senior people.
I don’t ever want to come in the locker room and have players in there pouting.
Just being in the locker room as a young person growing up was something I’ve always enjoyed, without ever having it forced upon me.
There’s great affection, tremendous loyalty, but anytime you open up the season, when you walk in the locker room, there is a circle, and my obligation to everyone in that locker room is the circle has to be as strong as possible to give us a chance to win.
All it takes is one guy to change a locker room. To change the complexity or nature of an atmosphere.
Some of my best childhood memories are of watching Terrell Davis with my dad. I used to hang out when I was, like, 4 and 5 years old and play Power Rangers in the locker room with him and Shannon Sharpe and Rod Smith. And I loved Terrell. He was awesome.
When people ask me what I miss most about the game, it’s being in the locker room and getting to know the guys. Back in those days, we had roommates. We had to talk basketball and that was a great way to understand the game itself and form those lasting relationships.
Players are smart. That locker room knows. So don’t hide anything.
As long as my players show respect – not for me, but for the locker room, their team-mates and the club – I will tear my heart out of my chest and let them play keepy-uppy with it.
When I was first in the locker room with The Undertaker and John Cena it was very strange. But it gets to a point that these are going to be guys you are working with you get over that pretty quickly. You can’t be star struck.
There are a lot of things about playing football that I miss. More than anything, I miss competing. I miss the camaraderie. I miss the locker room and the huddle and those kinds of things.
