A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex

by Chris Jericho

  My newfound skills made me the liaison between the office and the other gaijin. Whenever a message needed to be passed along, I’d be responsible for explaining it to everyone in English or Spanish (Dragón helped book a few luchadores from Mexico on every tour). I got a nice raise as a result of my new communication officer duties.

  I’d become Lt. Uhura without the stockings and beehive.

  Now that I could read the language, it showed the Japanese that I had respect for their country and its people and I don’t have to tell you what respect and honor means there.

  When I really wanted to impress somebody, I’d sign my autograph in Japanese. When I drew the slashes and lines that spelled out Lion Heart, you would’ve guessed from the cries of amazement and moans of pleasure that I’d just penetrated them with a Steely Dan. Even though I’d barely displayed the skills of a ten-year-old, the Japanese people were very impressed.

  While wrestling fans in general are some of the most loyal and dedicated fans in the world, I think the fans in Japan may be the best. They treated wrestlers with respect and a little fear; the way you might treat a friendly animal in the forest. You want to touch it, but you know it may bite you at any time.

  Fans cautiously approached me to sign autographs on these special 8x10 whiteboards they all had. They gave me a plethora of intricately crafted presents, such as clocks with my face on them, kewpie dolls made to look like me (my son plays with them now), banners, hand-drawn and hand-painted pictures, sculptures, CDs of my favorite bands, and Japanese candy. A girl even gave me her baby once.

  Actually a guy did bring his baby up to my room during my first tour of FMW. I don’t know how he found out my exact room, but he knocked on the door and asked to buy my pants for ten bucks.

  When I passed, he asked to take a picture of me with his infant son. I did and when I returned the next year he showed up again. He made a point of getting a picture of me with his son every time I came to Japan.

  In 2005, I was in Japan and I got a knock at the door of my hotel in Tokyo. It was the guy and his now teenage son. They’d brought a photo album that included pictures of me and his kid from almost every year of his life. It was both cool and creepy. I have no idea why he decided to document his child’s life with pictures of me. If I would’ve known I could’ve at least put on a growth chart costume.

  I also have no idea why beer was sold out of vending machines on the street or why all the taxi drivers wore white gloves. Japan is a strange country. When it came to making sense of things in Japan, Lenny and I coined the term yasky.

  Y ask Y.

  A fan named Masa introduced himself to me one day and offered to clear up as much of the confusion as possible. Masa was the most dedicated wrestling fan I’ve ever met, so much so that he learned English SO HE COULD SPEAK TO WRESTLERS.

  That’s commitment. I love Jet Li, but I wouldn’t learn Chinese just to be able to speak to the dude.

  There were a lot of Japanese fans who considered hanging out with wrestlers to be a status symbol. They were known as sponsors and would pay for dinner, bestow lavish gifts, and give away hundreds of dollars in cash to the boys.

  Right from the start, Masa made it very clear that he was a fan, nothing more. He said that he sponsored us by buying tickets to the hundreds of wrestling shows that he attended each year. He also made it very clear that he was there to help us with anything we might need. I took him up on his offer and we became good friends—he even attended my wedding. He had a giant photo album with pictures of almost every gaijin who ever toured Japan. If you’re a wrestler who’s been to Japan and your picture isn’t in Masa’s book, then you don’t mean shit.

  CHAPTER 35

  THE WHITE URKEL

  WAR’s roster was a mixture of younger guys on their way up, like me, and legendary veterans at the tail end of their careers, like Bob Backlund.

  Backlund had been the WWF champion in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but was now a nutcase. He wore a three-piece suit and a bow tie at all times even though we were in the middle of a horribly humid Japanese summer. One morning with the bus thermometer at 105 degrees, Backlund came on and beelined over to Tenryu, who was in shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Mr. Tenryu, I’m sorry that I’m a little bit disheveled today but it’s a little warm this morning. I apologize for my appearance.” He had the top button of his dress shirt undone and his jacket over his shoulder. He was still wearing the vest.

  During the long bus rides Bob never slept or relaxed because he was always reading or talking to somebody...or to himself.

  He was in the midst of reading a thick book, when John Kronus of the Eliminators tag team asked him what he was doing.

  “Just reading a book about Winston Churchill, one of the paramount orators of our time,” he replied to the simpleminded Kronus. “But then again, John, you probably don’t know what a ‘paramount orator’ is.”

  “I don’t even know what a ‘Winston Churchill’ is,” John replied as Backlund looked away in disgust.

  Bob looked like a maniacal Richie Cunningham and sounded like the white Urkel. I was sitting on the bus when I heard a mechanical voice behind me say, “Lugubrious: a melancholy state of mind.”

  I turned around to see Demon Opie shoving a hand-sized computer into my face.

  “Look what I’ve got, Christopher,” he said with a voice that resembled SpongeBob on Quaaludes.

  “It’s a talking dictionary. It gives you the definition of almost every word in the English language,” he explained proudly.

  This is what years of taking bumps does to you, kids.

  “Exacerbate: to increase the severity of something,” the computer voice continued.

  “Despondent: to feel bad.”

  “Nomenclature: a name.”

  At this point Bob looked like he was about to ejaculate: to eject bodily fluids.

  Bob also had a rule that a fan could have his autograph only if they could name all the presidents in United States history—in chronological order. I guess he wanted to educate the youth of Japan, one autograph at a time. When one teenage fan finally rattled them off, Bob was so impressed he signed two autographs.

  The only time I ever saw Bob loosen up was when Dick Murdoch joined the tour. Despite my initial opinion of Murdoch in SMW, I was really happy to see him again. When Dickie was around you didn’t need to find a party, because Captain Redneck WAS the party. That evening he peer-pressured Backlund into drinking a ridiculous amount of beer, turning him into a raving drunk.

  I was veritably aghast at the magnitude of bock he imbibed.

  The tour led us back to the Hakata Star Lane and that night Murdoch was facing one of the WAR young boys.

  “Mr. Murdoch, would you mind if maybe we did this high spot?” the young boy asked. Then he described an intricate well thought out series of moves that was guaranteed to get a reaction. Dirty Dick just kept nodding, “Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I got it. Okay. Okay. Sounds great kid.”

  As the rookie walked away pleased with his gumption, Murdoch looked at me straight-faced and said, “Ain’t no way in hell I’m doing any of that bullshit out there.”

  Dick couldn’t speak much Japanese but he didn’t have to. He was in his late fifties but the crowd loved him and ate out of the palm of his hand. Like Negro Casas in Mexico, Dick knew what they liked and how to get them to react the way he wanted. I watched in awe and learned yet another lesson.

  In wrestling, instinct means more than being able to speak the same language.

  Now the antithesis to Dick Murdoch was Mil Mascaras. He arrived in WAR with the same giant ego and piss-poor attitude that he’d shown me in Mexico.

  But the loyal Japanese fans loved him because of his success as a pioneering high-flyer in the 1970s. Now that he was in his seventies, he was a nightmare to work with. I drew the short straw when Tenryu told me he was bringing Mil in and wanted me to work with him every night.

  “It’s not going to be fun for you I know, but you
’re a good worker and maybe you can get a decent match out of him.”

  I couldn’t.

  But I worked my ass off every night trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. I was especially ticked off after our match on the second to last night of the tour when Mil cornered me. “Nobody cares about you. They just care about me. Nobody paid to see you, they paid to see me. So no more of your moves tomorrow night because nobody wants to see them.” Then he arrogantly walked away.

  Too many blows to the head had left me with a memory problem and the next night I couldn’t remember if he’d told me to give him none of my moves or ALL of my moves. Just to be on the safe side, I gave him every damn move I could think of.

  He didn’t say a thing to me after the match and I’ve never spoken to him since.

  During my career, I developed a reputation for being able to make guys look better than they really were. That skill came from working with guys like Mil Mascaras. I learned if you make your opponent look better, it makes you look better. If you can become a ring general, you will always have a job within the wrestling business. Unfortunately it’s likely you will always do the job as well.

  Being a ring general is no easy task and a lot of guys get offended when a younger guy with less experience is better at piecing together a match than they are. Thankfully that wasn’t the case when I had my first match against my old friend Tonga (aka King Haku) in WAR.

  Tonga had been working for Tenryu for years and was the top gaijin in WAR. He had no problem listening to my ideas, which was a good thing as he outweighed me by 100 pounds and was one of the most feared men in the business. It’s a strange feeling to be in the ring with someone you know could kill and eat you in a heartbeat. Wrestling him was like trying hold down an angry Doberman with a blanket. But Tonga went above and beyond to make me look great, not because we were friends, but because he was a professional. He understood that the better I looked, the better he looked and the better the match would be. He did such a good job of making his smaller, little known opponent look good that the fans started to believe that I could beat him.

  Getting that reaction wasn’t easy because in Japan, Size Matters. The fans equate girth and mass with power and fighting spirit, which is why sumo wrestlers are regarded as true warriors even with their Michelin Man physiques. Tonga looked like he could pick his teeth with me and he made sure to tell me before the match, “You have to hit me hard or no one will believe it.”

  He didn’t have to say it twice.

  I worked stiff and made sure to lay it in when I kicked him in the head and punched him in the face. I’d just invented a move where I would jump on the second rope inside the ring and moonsault out over the top rope to the floor and Tonga was the perfect target. He caught me like I was a good-lookin’ softball.

  We built the match until the fans were ooohhhing every false finish, stomping their feet on the floor, and cheering everything we did. When he finally gave me his power bomb finish, he told me to kick out at 2. I waited until 2.9 and then lifted my shoulder to the crowd’s amazement.

  They began to excitedly chant, “Harto-Harto-Harto,” due to the fighting spirit I’d shown by spitting in the face of the monster. Fighting spirit, the courage and fire you show in any fight, is the number one quality you need to have for the Japanese fans to respect you as a warrior. When the fans believe that you have that fighting spirit, they’ll respect you forever.

  So by kicking out of Haku’s big move, the fans respected me.

  Tonga beat me soon after, but instead of being disappointed they cheered me even harder. It didn’t matter that I’d lost. I’d attained more honor and respect by losing and putting up a tremendous fight than if I’d pulled off a fluke win.

  The influential Gong Magazine recognized our effort and voted the match the Best Bout of the night. I was able to read about it with my own eyes. That match was an important one for me because it was rare for two foreigners to get a Best Bout mention in one of the magazines. It was also the catalyst for my biggest push to date.

  CHAPTER 36

  THE LOVELY LADS

  Tenryu decided to create a heel faction within his company that would threaten to tear WAR apart from within. When Tenryu thought of this idea, the nWo was still a stain in Eric Bischoff’s undies. Hiromichi Fuyuki was the second biggest name in WAR and was ready to become the top heel in the company. He recruited Jado and Gedo and the evil Fuyuki-Gun (Foo-You-Kee-Goon) was born.

  I was in the locker room one night when I heard ambulance sirens pulling up to the arena, which is never a good thing. I found out that Jado had injured his shoulder and would be out for two months. Suddenly Fuyuki-Gun needed a new member and that’s when Lion Do was born.

  I don’t know if the name was a spin-off of Jado and Gedo or if it meant something else—Fuyuki never told me even though he laughed out loud every time he said it. But becoming Lion Do helped me to become a star in Japan.

  We became pure heels in a society that truly got mad at us for our actions. The fans nicknamed us Team No Respect, which was the worst thing to be accused of in Japan. We didn’t give a shit about anything in or out of the ring. This was exemplified by the T-shirts that Jado and Gedo sold at the merch stand that said, FUCK YOU...WE ARE JADO AND GEDO!! Definitely the best Japanglish T-shirt to ever hit the market.

  Fuyuki was a genius at putting matches together and taught me a lot about developing my heel personality, I stole my patented “Cocky Pin” (putting one foot on my opponent while posing) from Fuyuki. He thought outside the box and came up with ideas like spraying our opponents with fire extinguishers, dousing them from behind with buckets of ice water, or unhooking the top rope to choke our enemies with.

  My confidence level soared through the roof from working with some of the top names in Japan in the main events every night. So much of being successful in wrestling is having the confidence in knowing that your company believes in you. It gives you the inspiration to take chances during the matches and transcend into a superstar.

  It was a great feeling when Tenryu shook my hand after the match one night and pressed 50,000 yen in my hand at the same time saying, “Thanks you” (not a typo). I would’ve jumped through fire for the guy because I knew he believed in me.

  I became an honorary Japanese as a result of my membership in Fuyuki-Gun. Sometimes I traveled on the Japanese bus and I was the only gaijin to receive one of the black and yellow (Stryper colors!) WAR uniforms that all of the Japanese wrestlers wore. I also had to sit in silence while a half dozen guys put together a match in Japanese before stopping to ask me in English, “What you want do right here?” I had no idea what part of the match they were talking about or what would fit in that spot, so I had to guess and hope that my hip toss idea was a good one. Sometimes, they would all stop talking, look at me and burst out laughing. It’s never funny being the butt of the joke, but it’s even worse when you’re the butt that can’t understand a damn thing.

  On the nights I wasn’t working with Fuyuki-Gun, I was usually booked to work with Ultimo Dragón, the man responsible for my job with WAR. I think that my rivalry with Dragón was one of the best of my career.

  Our styles complemented each other perfectly and it got to the point where we could read each other’s minds during a match. One of us would say, “Spot number 2,” and we’d go through an intricate set of moves without thinking. I can honestly say that we never had a bad match. This was evident when WAR positioned us some nights in the main event, an almost unthinkable deed since the heavyweights usually worked on top.

  Like in any other form of entertainment, the bigger a name you became, the better quality of girls were attained. In Japan the groupies (sometimes known as rats) would find out where the crew was staying and simply call the room. If one was in the mood to indulge, one could just invite a girl to his room like sexual room service. The only drag was that you never knew what they were going to look like until they showed up at the door. But that’s why peepholes were in
vented, young grasshoppers.

  I got a call one evening and a female voice asked, “This is Fumi. Can I come see you?”

  Curiosity killed the JeriCat and I concurred. When I looked through the peephole, I thought, “Ooh, I don’t think so.”

  I didn’t answer the door, but Fumi was very persistent and kept on knocking. I still didn’t answer and a battle of wills ensued. I wasn’t gonna open the door and she wasn’t leaving until I did. So I put on my Walkman (old-school), took a Halcion, and went to sleep.

  I woke up the next morning to find a letter slipped under my door.

  Lion Do,

  I am not a rat!! [Then why was she pounding on my door?] I never want to see you again [I’d never seen her before]. I no like you anyway. You are Mr. Bighead. You could never win in Japan again. [Was she cursing me?] I never sex with you. You are gay boy!

  Fumi

  PS—Call me please!

  The comedy never ends...

  I got another raise in pay and in responsibility, when I was asked to be the foreign liaison for WAR. My duties included helping to book other foreigners that I felt could contribute to the company’s growing success.

  The first guys I thought of were my friends in Calgary. Lance was an awesome worker at this point and a no-brainer. Bret Como was brought over to be Ultimo Dragón’s evil doppelganger, Ultimate Dragon. Big Titan was a big name from FMW and I was able to convince him to jump to WAR. Then there was Dr. Luther himself. Lenny had been looking to work for a more prominent company and his solid style was a good fit for WAR.