A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex

by Chris Jericho

  Asian people are fascinated with pandas and the Pandita gimmick was intended to exploit that obsession to the fullest. This clown’s ring costume was a full-body Panda suit; lovable cotton ball tail included. He would skip to the ring, handing out candy to the fans before jumping into the ring and holding his arms out as if to say, “I’m cute and lovable!” During the match, you would have to sell Pandita’s terrible-looking offense unless you could grab his tail. That would cause the lovable creature to run around in circles chasing it.

  It got worse and his crowd-pleasing big move belongs in the Shit Hall of Fame. Pandita would knock his opponent out of the ring and hit the opposite ropes like he was going to do a dive through the ropes onto the floor. Instead of flying through the ropes, he would jump up and land horizontally in a Playgirl pose with his legs spread open and his chin on his fist like a cute little panda bear. The crowd would go “OOOOOOHHHHH!” and I would wonder what the hell was going on. Guys would butcher each other with barbed-wire baseball bats and in the next match out came the Dom DeLuise of wrestling.

  FMW was a smaller company with a will-work-for-food mentality and a lot of the shows were held in outdoor parking lots with makeshift fences erected around them. There were no dressing rooms for us, which meant we had to change on the bus. It also meant that there were no bathrooms or showers and after the matches we’d have to endure a three-hour bus ride covered in dirt, sweat, and blood. It looked like the Spirit of ’76 when the crew checked into the hotel and more than once I saw the desk clerk run into the back room to hide from us.

  Even though we had separate hotel rooms, Lance and I spent so much time together that we started to get on each other’s nerves over the smallest of things.

  “You smack your lips when you eat.”

  “You walk funny.”

  “Your white boots are pissing me off.”

  The tension culminated in a dressing room scuffle in Aichi that led to us rolling around on the floor like a couple of eight-year-olds. But when it was time to make the donuts and get the job done, we always worked hard together in the ring. We’d been through so much since training in the bowling alley that we had become like brothers. Sometimes brothers gotta hug, sometimes brothers gotta fight.

  But everything came full circle for us when we arrived at the Hakata Star Lanes in Fukuoka...another bowling alley. We’d traveled thousands of miles around the world just to end up in the same combination bowling alley/wrestling venue that we’d started in, in Calgary.

  The main event at the Star Lane was a street fight battle royal. I must’ve missed the memo and I didn’t have anything that you could actually wear in a street fight. So while everybody else was wearing jeans, sleeveless T-shirts, weightlifting belts, and cowboy boots, I ended up wearing zebra-striped Zubaz gym shorts tied up with a shoelace and my floppy black wrestling boots from the Calgary cobbler, the most unintimidating street fight outfit in wrestling history. Throw in my canary blond fried hair and you know I was the epitome of TOUGH. It was no surprise that I was the first one thrown out of the ring.

  But it had been a good night and I was feeling cocky. So I decided to go and speak to Onita—something we were specifically told not to do.

  “How’s it going eh?”

  “Okay.”

  “I really wanted to say thanks for having us on the tour.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you having a good tour?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ve got cool ring music.”

  “Okay.”

  He was looking at me like I was nuts for breaking the no-talking-to-the-almighty rule. I thought I might have pissed him off with my faux pas, because Ito later told me never to speak to Onita directly again. Yet on the last show of the tour, he told us we were beating the top FMW tag team of Horace Boulder and the Gladiator (or as the Japanese called him, the Grajiator).

  I took it as a sign that they had enjoyed our work and were excited about Sudden Impact’s future. But when we went to get our payoffs for the tour, instead of receiving the princely sum of $800 a week that Fred’s homemade contract had promised, we were only paid $600 a week.

  It was bullshit and I was pissed. Granted we were rookies with no name value but we’d still worked our asses off and earned every penny we were promised. We’d impressed the other wrestlers in the company enough that the rookies were stealing our high-flying moves and claiming them as their own. We’d introduced top rope dives to the floor and Frankensteiners to the company and the different dimension we brought to FMW made it a more well-rounded company. Sudden Impact brought to the hardcore FMW what Eddy Guerrero and Chris Benoit brought to the hardcore ECW years later.

  When we asked Ito why we’d been shorted $200 a week, he told us the company would wire us the difference. I was still naive enough to think we would get it too. We never did; however, Onita was happy enough with my work to give me a bonus. An official FMW keychain.

  On the plane back to Canada I tried to comprehend the strangeness I’d encountered. I’d gone to Japan expecting rice paddies and ninjas, but instead I found corn pizza and porno magazines featuring schoolgirls peeing on the beach. The sexual decadence prevalent in the country was a direct contrast to the bowing and honorable behavior that was expected. The dichotomy summed up the whole country. Nothing really made sense.

  CHAPTER 32

  PRAY FOR BLOOD

  Even though I’d apparently pissed off Onita and we’d been stiffed on our pay, Ito informed us that the boss had really liked our work and was planning on bringing us back “five or six times” over the course of the next year. But it should’ve raised a red flag when the very next tour featured a tag team tournament and we weren’t invited. I still thought it was only a matter of time before we were brought back, but we waited month after month with no offer to return, while a conveyor belt of Fred’s Calgary wrestlers went over instead of us.

  I was bitter at the whole situation but when my friend Lenny St. Claire got his chance to go, I was happy for him. FMW told him to think up a gimmick a few days before he left for his tour, so he took the mask off a football helmet and screwed a strap onto the back of it. Then he had his costume-making mom construct a straitjacket that he wore over a pair of gas station coveralls and Dr. Luther, a raving lunatic based on Hannibal Lecter, was ready to terrorize.

  With his eerie look and total commitment to insanity, he was an instant sensation. He would burst out of the dressing room door throwing chairs and running directly into the crowd, who would in turn flee in widespread panic as if Godzilla himself had broken loose.

  The magazines picked up on him instantly and, after his first week, he was the subject of a six-page color spread in Baseball Magazine that proclaimed “Pray for Blood...Luther Is Here!” Dr. Luther became one of the most popular gimmicks in FMW history.

  Every time Lenny returned from a tour, I’d ask him how it had gone and then, inevitably, “Did anybody mention my name or when I’m coming back?” The answer was always the same: “Nobody mentioned anything.”

  I’d pretty much accepted that Sudden Impact had been a one-hit wonder, a wrestling version of Chumbawamba, until I finally got a call from Ricky Fuji almost one year later. He wanted to know if we could return for the FMW third anniversary show at the Yokohama baseball stadium.

  We were going to have the important task of kicking off the show. It’s a general rule in wrestling, if you’re not wrestling in the main event then the opener is the most important match of the evening. It’s your responsibility to get things started with a great match and set the tone for the rest of the night.

  But my excitement was shot down in flames when Lance refused to go. He was still pissed that Onita had stiffed us out of our money and lied to our faces about bringing us back. But neither of us had any steady work outside of the odd match in Alberta or Manitoba and I was itching to go back to Japan. Since New Japan wasn’t breaking down my door with offers, FMW was my only option.

  Lance had decided
earlier in the year that we should break up Sudden Impact and go our separate ways, but I was certain that I’d be able to talk him into a one-time reunion for such a big show. When he said no without hesitation, I was furious.

  I wasn’t going to let Lance or anyone else spoil my big return to Japan. So after a few days of holding off the calls from FMW, I called Ricky and told him that Lance had decided to retire from the business. Ricky was surprised, but I told him that I’d gotten a new partner and Sudden Impact would be honored to work the big show. Ricky gave me the details and everything was all set.

  Now I just had to find a partner.

  None of the local Calgary wrestlers could hold a candle to Lance’s work rate and since our team was based around flashy moves, replacing him wasn’t going to be easy. I finally found a guy I thought would do a decent job in Eric Freeze from Edmonton. He was taller and not as muscular as Lance but he was quite athletic. Even though he wasn’t as advanced in the ring as Lance, I thought he was solid enough to get by.

  He had a similar haircut to Lance and I thought from a distance people would be fooled and think it was him. It worked, as there are still tapes of that match floating around with Eric Freeze being listed as Lance Storm...a fact that does not please good ol’ LTS.

  I spent the next few weeks teaching Freeze the greatest hits of Sudden Impact. I explained to him that our patented double-team flying elbows and double leapfrogs were so original and unique that after waiting for over a year to see them, the fans were going to lose their minds. It was going to be bigger than the Police reunion.

  I kept strictly emphasizing to Freeze how important this match would be and how I was expecting full-page articles in the magazines, mobs of screaming Sudden Impact fans, and lineups of chicks just waiting for us. I taught myself how to say “I’m back!” in Japanese (Kaette-Kita-Zo!), so I could yell it when I entered the ring. I would be the biggest babyface gaijin of all time.

  Chris Jericho was going to be the shit!

  I had a problem tracking down Lance’s Sgt. Pepper jacket, because he’d sold it to a fan. But after locating it and paying the guy to rent the jacket that I’d created and designed, I got Lenny’s mom to make a matching pair of black tights with full silver sequins on the front. I completed the costume with a silver sequin choker, black-painted nails (nicked from Paul Stanley), and black eyeliner. I was dressed to kill and ready to make my mark in the Land of the Rising Jericho.

  But I had one more trick up my choker before the master plan was complete. My coup de grâce was to use an X song for Sudden Impact’s ring music. I knew that the fans would go wild when they realized that a couple of gaijins were down enough to enter the ring to a song by Japan’s biggest band!

  The only thing that stood in the way of my return was the complete indifference to it. The FMW office employees were cordial, but hardly ecstatic, and both the Japanese and foreign wrestlers seemed like they couldn’t have cared less. The true indication that nobody gave a damn about us came when we had to walk through the concourse of the stadium to go over the match with our opponents. During the five-minute walk through the crowded corridors, not one person gave us more than a cursory glance even though we were wearing full wrestling regalia—and these were wrestling fans that bought tickets to see the show!

  When we went over the match, the most important thing we were asked to do was break up the pin when their top young star Eiji Ezaki (who became the masked Hayabusa and ironically ended up paralyzed years later after landing on his head attempting a Lionsault) did a moonsault. The extended back flip from the top rope into a pin is one of the most overused moves in the business today, but in 1992 it was rare to see one performed. Freeze and I agreed to protect Ezaki’s big move and the four of us put together what I was convinced was going to be a classic match. There was no question that the fans and the media would have no choice but to take notice of me.

  X’s “Silent Jealousy” blasted out of the stadium speakers as Sudden Impact ran down the long stadium ramp to the ring. I climbed to the second rope and screamed, “KAETTE-KITA-ZO!” I might as well have said, “I’M A WANNABE AND TRYING WAY TOO HARD!”

  The match itself should’ve been canceled due to lack of interest. There was deathly silence as we robotically ran through a preplanned match that was devoid of any meaning or storytelling whatsoever.

  Finally, Ezaki set himself up and gave me the big moonsault. He hit it perfectly and the fans finally showed some life, reacting with amazement. Unfortunately, so did Freeze.

  He seemed so mesmerized by the image of himself on the stadium JumboTron, he didn’t make the save. He was so into watching the match that he forgot he was actually a part of it. At least somebody was enjoying it.

  We won the match, but the five-star classic I’d been hoping for was as nonexistent as Freeze’s moonsault save.

  Afterward when I was changing out of my gear in the dressing room, an old-timer named John Tolos asked if he could borrow my boots for his match. “I don’t have boots anymore. Why do I need boots? I’ll just borrow yours.” I guess that’s the difference between a greenhorn and a seasoned veteran. I’d had an entire new outfit made for the show and he didn’t even have fuckin’ wrestling boots. I’m sure he also made ten times more for his match than the $800 I made for mine.

  Onita was infatuated with having boxers and martial artists on his shows (remember, FMW stood for Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling). He’d paid big money to bring Leon Spinks, the former heavyweight boxing champion of the world, over for the show that night. The idea was for Leon to use his boxing skills against the wrestlers but when they told him to pull his punches so he wouldn’t kill anyone, Leon couldn’t grasp the concept.

  “You mean when I give a punch, it’s not a hard punch but the guy falls down anyway? That’s so funny,” he said in his slurred punch-drunk speech.

  Leon didn’t last long, as he was constantly smiling and laughing during his matches. If boxing is fixed, Spinks sure as hell didn’t know because he definitely didn’t understand the difference between real and show in the wrestling ring.

  After the match, Ricky Fuji took me to the most famous wrestling restaurant in the world, Ribera Steakhouse. It was discovered in the 1970s by Stan Hansen and had been a favorite wrestler hangout ever since.

  But the steak was only part of Ribera’s sizzle. After the meal, all the wrestlers were presented with official Ribera jackets. They were tacky satin and rayon striped numbers with “Ribera” stenciled across the front and back. They were brutally ugly, but any wrestler given one wore it loudly and proudly like a badge of honor. Ricky joked that Ribera was Japanese for “I’m a wrestler and I’ve been to Japan.”

  On the walls of the restaurant hung dozens of signed pictures from all the wrestlers who’d been there. Amazingly, whenever you went you’d find your picture on the wall. Ribera himself would check the tour lineups in the magazines to find out which gaijins would be in the country and for how long. He’d put up those wrestlers’ pictures and when the tours were finished, he’d put up photos of the next batch of foreigners. He was more of a worker than the wrestlers.

  CHAPTER 33

  WRESTLE AND ROMANCE

  I left Japan this time with no invitation to come back. It bothered me because I didn’t see many guys in FMW who could wrestle better than me. What I did see was a plethora of outlandish gimmicks: the Ninja Turtle, Pandita, Battle Ranger, Ultraman, his giant lobster nemesis Bartak, all of these larger-than-life characters. It was obvious that to be a big star in Japan I needed a gimmick that could match those.

  The first idea I had was the dastardly Master Sebastian (named after Sebastian Bach), who would be Dr. Luther’s manager. The Master would wear a long black leather trench coat and sport one of those Madonna ponytail hairpieces on the top of his head for no apparent reason.

  Then I thought I could be Dr. Luther’s brother Mr. Hannibal, a character FMW wanted to create to cash in on Luther’s immense popularity. Lenny tried to talk me out of
it saying I didn’t need to be a copy of him, but I was desperate. FMW turned me down flat for the gimmick anyway. Since I’d already wrestled in the company, the fans knew I wasn’t a homicidal maniac.

  Then I came up with the Parasite. I painted my face with Alice Cooper style makeup and carried around a can of WD-40. When the time was right, I’d hold a match up to the spray and create a blowtorch. What I was going to do with the torch, I have no idea. I never got that far.

  When Parasite baby bombed like the Enola Gay, I got my next gimmick idea from watching an Iron Maiden Powerslave concert video. When I saw singer Bruce Dickinson don an Egyptian bird mask, I decided to become the Phoenix.

  I designed the whole costume and started assembling it by first buying a bird mask at a costume store. I gave it full plumage by attaching a bouquet of multicolored feathers with a glue gun I found in the Palkos’ garage. The costume also called for a pair of Hawkman wings, so I bought some thin aluminum poles from a hardware store and soldered them together into a frame of bird wings. I sewed some black spandex over the frame and glued strips of sequins, fake costume jewelry, and rhinestones onto the material. I ran out of money before I could buy the leather straps necessary to attach the wings, so I tied thin strips of spandex to the frame instead. When I put the costume on, I was quite impressed. The wings were a little lopsided and the mask was a touch too small, but the ensemble looked pretty darn cool and there was no way I wouldn’t get a gig this time.

  But my carefully constructed wings were brutally flimsy and the wind bent them askew during an outdoor photo shoot. They eventually blew right off my back, forcing me to chase them down like Rocky Balboa chasing the chicken in Rocky 2. When the wind died down momentarily, I hastily tied them back on and screamed, “Take the picture now!”

  The comedy continued after the shoot, when I tried to practice my big ring entrance. After a few attempts, I found that it was impossible to get into the ring with the wings on. I couldn’t climb in between the ropes because they were too rickety and cumbersome. When I tried to jump straight over the top rope into the ring, the damn contraption just fell off my back.