“We all know that ecology is very important to the world today. It’s very important to love the trees because trees are our friends,” I pontificated wisely.
“His mother likes bananas,” the translator translated.
The kids stared at me with faces as blank as the Vote For Pedro guy. The parents whispered to each other in the back of the room, probably asking one another, “What is this jack-off talking about?”
I continued: “Make sure that you don’t chop the trees down. Don’t use a lot of paper, and don’t use gas-guzzling cars when you’re old enough to drive.”
“He worked a match in exchange for a hot dog and an orange juice,” the translator continued.
I finished off with a Feliz Navidad, and smiled broadly. A cricket chirped. A tumbleweed blew by. A child picked his nose. I walked off the stage and signed autographs for a mob of six kids. When I got my 600 pesos, I smiled and said thanks to the people in charge. They said the Spanish equivalent of “Whatever” and walked away in silence. I counted the cash and decided if even one of those kids became a future car-pooler, my speech was not in vain.
Our next match was in a small town outside Monterrey called Matamoros. The arena in Matamoros was straight out of the movie Bloodsport: dark and dingy and surrounded by a fence of chicken wire that separated the fans from the ring. During the matches, the fans held on to the chicken wire and pushed it in and out like rabid wolverines. It was a real-life Scorpions video.
The ring was a boxing ring that had absolutely no give and was not made for bumping. My opponent, an American named Fabuloso Blondy, warned me that we wouldn’t be able to do much of anything during the match. I figured he was just being lazy and called a hip toss. He ran off the ropes saying “Fuck that,” and hip-tossed me instead. When I landed on what felt like concrete, I nearly pooped my pants. No shit. We did nothing but exchange holds after that. It wasn’t worth the money we were making to blow out our O rings in this dumpy town. Not to mention that we got ripped off by the promoter anyway.
After the match I was covered in dust and grime from the filthy ring and I wanted to clean up. I changed my mind when I saw that the shower was a garden hose stuck in the back of a toilet tank. A guy had sucked on the end until a lonely flow of water trickled out. I threw up in my mouth a little because even though the water wasn’t out of the actual bowl, where I come from toilet water is toilet water.
The biggest star in the country at the time was another Canadian named Vampiro Canadiense. Everywhere you looked you saw the image of the vampire wrestler with the Alice Cooper makeup and the long red and blue braided hair. At his peak he was the Mexican equivalent of Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin. He’d arrived in Mexico just as lucha libre had exploded with increased TV exposure and he had ridden the boom to superstardom. There were Vampiro dolls, T-shirts, comic books, chocolate bars, soap bars, singles bars, everything.
So when it was announced that he was coming to Monterrey to challenge the heavyweight champion, Black Magic, for the title, the city went wild with anticipation.
The Monumental sold out quickly, but on the day of the show Vampiro showed up at the airport on crutches. He had suffered some sort of injury and couldn’t work that night. Elizondo needed a suitable replacement and he picked me. It was ironic because when I first arrived in Monterrey, Elizondo had toyed with the idea of calling me Vampiro Americano to try to cash in on Vamp’s popularity. A few years later, he gave the name to a Dallas-based wrestler named John Layfield, who went on to become WWE champion JBL.
Black Magic was an American from Florida named Norman Smiley, who was thrilled to be working with another foreigner and was quite responsive to my ideas. I called most of the match even though he was more experienced than me. He ended up holding my tights to win the third fall, but even though he had beaten me, Magic gave me my first great match in Mexico. The fans went loco when I beat him in the first fall and as the match progressed they started to believe that this hot young upstart could win the title. The champ took me to a different level by allowing me to hang with him and I’m still grateful for that. He could’ve telephoned in his performance against the nobody and sandbagged me but Magic worked his ass off to make me look like a superstar.
When I walked back to the dressing room, Elizondo congratulated me by giving me my pay envelope containing $1,000. It was a Mexican tradition to receive a double payoff for a title match and I was shocked to have made that much money for one match. The next person to congratulate me was Vampiro, but he didn’t seem very sincere. Later on at the Cuatro Milpas, he took me aside to give me advice on how to survive in Mexico. He said that all of the Mexican wrestlers were jealous of me and that I couldn’t trust anyone.
“But you can trust me. I really want to help you make it here.” Then he told me if I wanted to make it big, I needed to start wearing a different outfit.
“I know this country and I know what the people want. If you wore a loincloth, you’d be huge.” Aside from the fact that if I wore a loincloth people would know I wasn’t that huge, his advice didn’t make any sense. If a loincloth was what was needed to make it big in Mexico, than why the fuck wasn’t he wearing one? A loincloth would destroy my credibility and make a fool out of me. Maybe that’s what he wanted. It seemed that he didn’t like the fact that I had rocked the Plaza that night with a great match. As big a star as he was, he was jealous that there was a new kid in town.
I walked over to Mike, who was getting the cold shoulder from Konnan and Love Machine, two other massively popular foreigners who’d worked that night for a rival company. Konnan had long braided cornrows and Love Machine (whose real name was Art Barr) held a cup of chewing tobacco spit in his hand that he—Phbbt—kept adding to constantly. They both grunted a cursory greeting and moved on, ignoring me.
Besides Mike and Magic, was every foreigner in this country a jerk?
At least the natives treated us well, especially the girls. Mike and I were experiencing different female representatives of the fine city on a nightly basis. One night we ended up at a Señor Frog’s on the night of the Monterrey Arm Wrestling Championship and, as local celebrities, we got front-row seats. After a grueling tournament a winner was crowned. He turned his attention to the two of us and started babbling in an aggressive manner.
One of the girls informed us that he was issuing an arm wrestling challenge. In the same way that every war in history has started, the girls batted their boobs and my machismo took over. I stepped forward and the patrons of the bar began chanting my name.
As the sounds of “León!” washed over me, I sat across from the champ and locked grips. This guy didn’t know about Scott Norton’s secret trick...but I did. I beat that bad boy in about thirty seconds and became the new Arm Wrestling Champion of Monterrey. I was doused in beer by the elated patrons like I’d just won the Stanley Cup. I was given a little tin trophy that said CAMPEÓN, which I gave to one of the girls the next morning.
Despite the available women that were seemingly on twenty-four-hour call, I was still a virgin. I guess I took Paul Stanley’s advice about leaving the women behind a little too literally. Don’t get me wrong: I’d had my dalliances, but because of my Christian beliefs I hadn’t done any full-fledged shagging. But when I met Raquel the temptation was just too much to resist. She was a Modelo girl, which was like a Budweiser girl, and her picture was on posters all over Mexico. She had the classic Latina body, built like J-Lo, with long black hair and a gorgeous face.
I met her at a party after the matches and you could cut the attraction with a knife. It was one of those times when you know it’s on from the very first glance. In one of the most awkward situations ever, I invited her back to my hotel where Mike was sleeping in the other bed. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the nervousness, maybe it was the fact that the lights were on and Mike was pretending to sleep only a few feet away, but my first sexual performance lasted all of twenty seconds. It was quite frankly THE worst sexual performance of all time and
a real waste because, like I said, Raquel was smoking hot. Here’s a few words of wisdom from Uncle J: If the girl you just had sex with for the first time is giggling and patting your shoulder, it’s not a good thing. Sorry Raquel—I gave it my best shot.
CHAPTER 16
THE GOAT BUS
Shortly after my short (in more ways than one) performance, Mike and I headed back to Calgary for Christmas break and I received a call at the Palkos’ from a toymaker I’d met in Monterrey. His company made all of the luchador action figures and he told me that Paco Alonso, the Vince McMahon of Mexico, was interested in hiring me. Mexico City was the big time and wrestling there was a major step up the food chain. I’d hoped to work there from the moment I arrived in Monterrey.
I flew to Mexico City to meet with Paco in his office in Arena México, the oldest wrestling arena in the world. He made me a great offer and told me I could work for him as long as I wanted.
He didn’t want to call me León d’Oro, as he already had a wrestler named Oro. So when he asked me if I had any other name ideas I pulled out the old standard Lion Heart. He liked it and liked the Spanish translation of Corazón de León even more. Why an English-speaking guy would have a Spanish name like Corazón de León, while a Spanish-speaking guy like Silver King had an English name made no sense, but who was I to judge?
Paco said he was going to book me on shows with veteran wrestler Hector Guerrero, so Hector could help me learn the ropes of surviving and getting by in Mexico. Hector was a member of Mexico’s most famous wrestling family, sired by Gory Guerrero, one of the greatest luchadores ever. I’d also heard a lot about Hector’s younger brother Eddy, who was making a worldwide name for himself, and along with Chris Benoit was one of the guys I hoped to pattern my career after. I looked forward to meeting and wrestling him.
Paco put me up at the Plaza Madrid, a high-end hotel in the middle of the city, and Hector made a point of introducing me to all of the other guys who were staying there, including my old chewing tobacco buddy Art Barr.
Art was much friendlier now that we were neighbors. He also almost got me fired on my first night, when he took me leather jacket shopping and caused me to be ninety minutes late for my Empressa Mexicana de Lucha Libre debut. I finally arrived at the Arena Coliseo and entered into the new world of the EMLL locker room.
The Coliseo had been owned by the Alonso family for decades and it looked it. The dirty, humid dressing room was on the second floor, lined with ceramic tiles that were as smudged and greasy as some of the guys walking on them. Some of the other luchadores were sitting around in the nude, smoking and drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. Two others were going over their match, while one of them sat naked on the toilet taking a dumpski.
The toilets had no toilet seats (you had to sit directly on the porcelain bowl) and the stalls that housed them had no doors. Instead of flushing the used toilet paper down the toilet, the tissue was dropped beside the bowl building a mountain of poopy paper. I walked around looking for a place to change while all of the guys had a “who the hell is this guy” expression on their face. Right then, I figured out another reason why Paco had placed me in Hector’s care: Being associated with him gave me credibility in the locker room. Hector was adamant about introducing me to every member of the roster from top to bottom. I shook the hand of every person in the locker room and to not do so would have been a cardinal wrestling sin. It’s a tradition that must be followed in every wrestling locker room at every level in every country.
As we discussed our match with our opponents Hector changed into his Lasser-Tron outfit, which made him look like a red and blue piñata. But his costume was nothing compared to the guy who was wearing what appeared to be a Tony the Tiger costume. He was sporting a complete head-to-toe furry bodysuit of orange and black tiger stripes and looked completely ricockulous. His name was Felino and, to his credit, he was very agreeable to all of my suggestions once Hector translated them. As a matter of fact, he was Grrrrrrrrreat.
We were in the semi-main event and for some reason my entrance music was “Everybody Dance Now” by C&C Music Factory. There were about 5,000 seats in the Coliseo arranged in tiers that went straight up like an upside-down wedding cake. The fans sat in sections according to their affiliations holding homemade signs that said, “Sección de Rudos” (Bad Guys Section) and “Sección de Técnicos” (Good Guys Section). The fans dueled each other with chants of “Arriba los rudos!” countered by “Arriba los técnicos!”
I worked mostly with Felino, who seemed to understand my style and worked hard for me during the match. He was a member of the Casas family, who were famous for being great luchadores, and I had the feeling that Paco had asked Felino to make me look good—which he did.
The match culminated with my huge swan dive over the top rope onto Felino. The crowd responded with a huge cheer and I think they were surprised that a pretty-boy gringo with long blond hair could actually wrestle the way I did.
The next day, a big picture of me doing the dive appeared in Afición and Ovaciones, newspapers in Mexico City that boasted millions of readers. Fans all over the country read the reporters’ opinions that my debut had been a success. When the lucha magazines filled with my pictures arrived on the stands later that week, I officially became a national star.
My schedule filled up instantly and a typical week saw me working in Guadalajara on Sunday, Naucalpan on Monday, Puebla on Tuesday, Acapulco on Wednesday, Cuernavaca on Thursday, and Mexico City on Friday and Saturday. There were so many shows across the country that I was working as many as ten matches a week, including four matches on Saturdays.
I was twenty-two years old and making three or four grand a week with no expenses. But I was working hard for my money.I had to travel to the shows by bus and while some of the lines offered first-class service, most of them didn’t. So I had to make the four-to six-hour trips on glorified school buses.
Even when all of the seats were filled it didn’t stop the bus driver from picking up other passengers. We’d be driving down the highway in the dark in the middle of nowhere and the driver would pull over on the dirt shoulder whenever any Tom, Dick, or Javier waved him down for a ride. People would get on the bus with dogs, cats, goats, chickens, and once even a parrot that wouldn’t stop squawking in Spanish. The seats and the aisles of the goat bus would be full of people chattering, animals barking, baying, clucking and I would be wondering what the hell I was doing.
“Vaya con Dios...SQUAWK...”
While I had learned decent Spanish from watching Spanish language TV shows (Sábado Gigante rules) and having various girls teach me, I still couldn’t pronounce Irvine in a way that people could understand. So the name on my bus ticket went from Chris Irbo to Chris Irbin to Chris Ririn, until I gave up and started calling myself José Sánchez. It saved a lot of hassle for both me and the ticket sellers.
In the meantime, I was learning the art of lucha libre and the man I learned the most from was Negro Casas. Negro was known as the Ric Flair of Mexico and one of the best wrestlers in Mexican history. He was from the same famous lucha family as Felino and was one of the smartest performers I’ve ever worked with. He was the perfect example of a guy who got over (wrestling vernacular for being popular with the fans) because he knew exactly what his audience wanted to see. He knew his people. He was so good that all the fans respected him and knew he was the best no matter what role he was playing. When he was a rudo (and he was the best rudo in the country) I had the feeling that people booed him just because they were supposed to and not because they really hated him. But he was the master of working a crowd and always had them in the palm of his hand. With a simple gesture or facial expression he could make them cheer or boo at the drop of a peso.
Negro taught me when to do a certain move and when not to. He taught me timing, how to use the crowd’s reactions as a blueprint for the match, and how not to get frazzled when things went wrong. “Nobody knows it’s a mistake unless you let them know,”
he said in his broken English.
He also taught me not to obsess about a match if it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. “Don’t worry when you have a bad match, tomorrow there will be another one. Are you going to worry about the match that’s in the past or are you going to do better tomorrow? Tomorrow, this match doesn’t mean anything.” His point was that you can’t change the past, you can only learn from your mistakes and make the future better. I still live my life (both in and out of the ring) by that philosophy.
CHAPTER 17
AN EMBARRASSING WAY TO DIE
A lot of American wrestling experts feel that luchadores aren’t actual wrestlers because of their unorthodox style. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the wrestlers in the EMLL were the best in the world. Aside from Negro, performers such as Dr. Wagner Jr., Emilio Charles Jr., and el Dandy were tremendous. The tag team of Los Cowboys, Texano and Silver King (aka Ramses from Nacho Libre), were two more of my favorites. They worked a stiff fast-moving, Japanese-Mexican hybrid style, which was different from what most of the other luchadores were doing.
The first time I worked with them they nailed me with every kick and punch and I thought they were fucking with me. After a few more matches against them, I realized that that’s just how they worked and they expected to be hit the same way in return. That made them different from the other luchadores, who worked pretty light, which is one of the criticisms that people within the business have of lucha libre. But the marquee names in the EMLL were top-level major-league performers and the more I worked with them the better I got.
I also got better at living in Mexico City. The hardest part was getting acclimated to the altitude and the pollution. The city was high above sea level and engulfed in smog for most of the year, which made breathing difficult. It sat in a valley and during certain times of year when there was no rain or wind, the smog would settle in like a fog, which caused me countless nosebleeds and irritation.
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