The Gathering Of The Juggalos is a annual event that all fans of ICP (Insane Clown Posse) come together for to see live music, special events and even wrestling.
Dutch Mantell, the former Zeb Colter in WWE, recently sat down with Wrestling Shoot Interviews to speak about his time at ‘The Gathering’, which he went to with Road Dogg to preform at the wrestling show under the JCW (Juggalo Championship Wrestling) banner. You can read Dutch’s experience below:
I went to a gathering one time and I don’t know what year it was […] it was in some little bitty, out of the way town in Kentucky, just right across the line from Tennessee. And I forgot, I saw the name the other day and I can’t remember now, but, what they would do when they hold a festival, a concert, is they go out and they find just farm land and they rent it from the farmer, it’s private property and they’ll rent 20 acres or whatever they wanna rent and they’ll go out there and they’ll put all their stages up, and then they have a way to get into it and that’s where they put their ticket booth and you can buy tickets in advance, of course, so, when I went there, it was a midnight wrestling show, after midnight, so I got there and I couldn’t find it. And I had, Road Dogg was with me, I forgot, oh, Doug Gilbert was with me, and were in this limo, some guy picked us up in a limo, a old limo, and we’re driving and we couldn’t find it, and I’m thinking “how in the [hell]”, there’s like 25,000 people there, I said “how in the hell can we ride around and not find 25,000 people?” Just can’t, so we finally found it somehow, went on there and it was like 2:30 in the morning when my match came up and I set a record that night. I had a match at 2:30, it was the earliest match I’ve ever had and the latest match I’ve ever had at the same time. So, we go out there and they would turn all the lights out for some reason and they would have spotlights, and the spotlights would hit the ring like every four seconds, five seconds, so you could just be wrestling around out there and, of course, the people, they were all messed up anyway, they couldn’t tell. I mean, they, everyone out there was high as a kite, either on some smoke or some heroine or some cocaine or whatever. That was the high, it’s like 15,000 people there and they were all high and the odd part was that the dressing rooms were all straight. All the wrestlers were straight and all the fans were high.
– Dutch Mantell via Wrestling Shoot Interviews
Dutch also went on to tell a story about Road Dogg trying and failing to get in the ring, resulting in him thinking he broke his ankle.
Road Dogg was late, but he got there right when his match got in the ring and they’re saying “get in the ring, get in the ring, you’re up now!”. He didn’t even put his stuff on, he went down to the ring, and I forgot, they got a step like this [small hand motion], that the rings sitting on, Road Dogg went out there and he was already really, he had done the chemicals on the way up, and he stepped up there on it and tried to step off of it, forgot it was there and almost [laughs], he almost broke his ankle. I remember him taking them out there and a minute later, they were carrying him back, he’s there like “Oh, god! Oh god, I broke my leg! I broke my leg!”, oh, he was hilarious, but he really wasn’t hurt bad but according to him, it did hurt, but that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
– Dutch Mantell via Wrestling Shoot Interviews
Who would’ve thought, ICP, Juggalos, Dutch Mantell and a hurt Road Dogg, what a combo. Dutch went on to talk about how he talked to a drug dealer at The Gathering and how Tila Tequila was boo’d off stage and got things thrown at her from the crowd.
You can see the interview below:
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