A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex

by Chris Jericho

  But even though this was going to be the biggest show of my career, I had to make a major sacrifice to be a part of it. My grandfather had been very sick with cancer for months and passed away the week before the show. When I found out that he’d died, I had two choices. I could go to his funeral or I could stay in Japan and wrestle in the J Cup. My decision was made even harder, as my mother couldn’t go to her own father’s service because she couldn’t travel long distances in her condition.

  I decided to stay in Japan and do the show. Career-wise I really had no choice and I might not have gotten to where I am if I hadn’t wrestled the J Cup. But I have to live with missing my grandpa’s funeral and it’s one of the two major regrets of my life. It still bothers me to this day.

  December 13, 1995, was the day of the second Super J Cup and the packed house was abuzz as only a sold-out Japanese crowd can be. The fans were known for being on the silent side, but when something special was happening all those stereotypes flew out the window.

  My first match was against Hanzo Nakijima and I beat him with the Lionsault. Hanzo was the appetizer and the main course was my second-round match against Wild Pegasus himself, Chris Benoit. Dragón had told me of his plan to book the two of us against each other and it was a dream match for me and the magazines.

  The journalists called Benoit and Jericho the Calgary Kids, referring to the similar styles that all wrestlers from Calgary seem to have. The fans were excited at the prospect of seeing the two of us square off for the first time ever.

  I was still intimidated by Chris, but I was looking forward to impressing him with all of my great ideas. I’d thought of a plethora of reversals and false finishes, but when I told Benoit my plans, he seemed noncommittal. He explained that he liked to have a few basic ideas for a match, but other than that just preferred to “go out there and do it.” So we went over a few things, put together a finishing sequence, and that was it.

  My music played and I was a ticking time bomb ready to explode, wearing my yellow and black Stryper tights and a black sequined disco jacket that was given to me by a sponsor. Not exactly the epitome of tough, but at least I looked sassy.

  When Benoit’s music, “Jump” by Van Halen, blared through the speakers, the New Japan partisan crowd went nuts for the defending champion as he walked to the ring, nary a facial expression to be found. When he entered the ring we immediately stood face-to-face, our noses pressed uncomfortably together.

  Wild Pegasus vs. Lion Hart. Benoit vs. Jericho.

  This was the man I’d patterned my career after. This was the man I’d depended on for advice. This was the man whose brother I’d almost been. This was the man I was going to beat the shit out of.

  The match began and I gave Benoit one of my trademark hard slaps to the face.

  “Come on motherfucker!” I yelled, causing the silent crowd to react with a massive OOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!

  Saying the word fuck always caused the fans to react in amazement, as if it was the most unheard of and rebellious statement you could ever make. It was a trick that I used nightly.

  When I cockily smirked at Benoit, he slapped me in the face right back. If you’ve ever heard the expression “he slapped the taste out of my mouth,” you understand what happened. Except that he slapped the sight, hearing, touch and smell out of me as well. I was momentarily as knocked out as Onita was in the same ring and the same arena, a year and a half earlier.

  After the match I said to Benoit, “That slap was pretty crazy.”

  “Well, I don’t really throw a lot of slaps, so I’m not really good at it.”

  My stinging jaw thought he was very good at it.

  But I was only dazed for a few seconds and the slap was like getting doused with a bucket of water. The Shit Was On!

  We took each other to the max, maneuvering in and out of European-style holds, exhibiting high-flying lucha libre moves, and beating the hell out of each other Dungeon style. After a brilliant string of false finishes that included an awesome power bomb attempt by Benoit reversed into a Frankensteiner, Chris pinned me with a piledriver off the second rope.

  But we’d lived up to the expectation and put on the match of the night. Gong gave us Best Bout honors and me a trophy for Best Fighting Sprit.

  Dragón booked the rest of the tournament perfectly. Gedo beat Benoit and then Liger beat Gedo in the final. New Japan won, which I’m sure was a political concession for allowing WAR to use Liger’s idea of the J Cup in the first place. But having Gedo in the final cemented him as a top junior heavyweight and gave Dragón a new top-level opponent.

  Dragón also made another smart move by booking an exhibition match featuring the Japanese debut of Rey Misterio Jr., the guy Art Barr had introduced me to in Mexico a few years earlier. Since then, Rey had developed a reputation as the best high-flyer in the world.

  Benoit had never seen him wrestle in person either, so we sat down in front of a backstage monitor to check him out. His match that night against Psicosis was one of the most amazing displays of athleticism that I’ve ever seen in my life. I think there were probably fifteen or twenty instances where Benoit and I looked at each other and incredulously remarked, “Holy shit. Did you see that?” or “That’s impossible!”

  Rey was a real-life superhero like Jackie Chan. When Dragón first brought him into the locker room, the president of WAR complained about his size, thinking that having such a small man in the WAR ring would be an embarrassment to the company. As soon as the match was over, the same guy asked Dragón when Rey could be booked again.

  All of the participants in the J Cup were required to watch the final match from the ringside area, symbolizing how important the last match was. A few minutes before we went to the ring, I decided to try some of the GHB that I had acquired a few days earlier. GHB was a bodybuilding supplement that was created to help you get cut while you slept. But if you took it and stayed awake, it would help you get cut period.

  It had the flavor of salty paint thinner and was pretty much the worst thing I’d ever tasted in my life. But it did its job quickly and I was buzzed by the time I walked through the curtain of the sold-out Sumo Hall toward the ring. I anchored myself to the turnbuckle post across from Benoit and the arena started to spin. Chris was laughing his ass off across from me.

  After Liger won, we got into the ring for the final ceremony. I had a befuddled grin on my face; half from appreciating the experience, half from appreciating the GHB. The next week I finally made the cover of Gong Magazine with my hair askew and sporting a drug-induced Cheshire Cat grin. Another goal accomplished!

  The celebration continued in the dressing room. It was a Japanese tradition for all the members to hold a beer into the air and yell “Kanpai!” After repeating the gesture a dozen times for all the photographers, I was starting to feel sick so I sat in the corner. I bent over to put my head between my legs and watched as the sweat dripped off my head onto the floor.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  A pool of sweat gathered and I opened my mouth to puke all over the floor of the sacred arena. With my stomach settling, I took a lurching breath and threw up a second time. I felt a little better, so I lifted my head and stared right into the face of Benoit. He was laughing uncontrollably (come to think of it, Chris always seemed to find it hilarious to watch me throw up) while standing next to a New Japan official he’d brought over to show off my vomiting skills.

  “Look at this, Kawana,” Benoit said, pointing at me with tears streaming down his face. “This guy’s got no class.”

  I was sure that any chance I had of ever working for New Japan had just been barfed out the window.

  CHAPTER 39

  KENNY AND DOLLY

  I flew back to Calgary the next day with the four-foot-tall Gong trophy stuffed into the overhead bin. A few days later, Chris called to tell me he was coming to Calgary to wrestle a show in honor of Stu Hart’s eightieth birthday. I hadn’t been invited to work the show, as I was strangely never booked on any of t
he Hart Brothers’ sporadic local events.

  I picked Chris up in a car that had no heater in the minus-thirty-degree weather and offered him lodging on the floor of my apartment. I was a hell of a host. So the mighty Chris Benoit spent the night shivering on my carpet, covered by an afghan that my grandma had knit for me.

  We went to the show and I met Bret Hart for the first time. He was as friendly to me as his brother Owen was on the plane to LAX and it was nice to know that at least two of the Hart brothers knew who I was. Bret asked me where I had worked and when I mentioned Mexico, a light flashed in his eye.

  “I’m looking for a fancy pin to use as a finish on a PPV in a few days and I can’t think of anything original. I know in Mexico they do a lot of interesting roll-ups. You have any ideas?”

  Bret was facing Davey Boy Smith at the In Your House PPV a few days later. He didn’t want to beat Davey with his finish, as that was too decisive an ending and they were in the middle of their angle. The WWF world champion was looking for a cool pinning move and he’d asked lil old Lion Heart for ideas!

  Immediately I thought of Negro Casas’s finishing move, the Magistral. Negro would hook his opponent’s arm, roll over his back, and trap him in a pin. I told Bret I might have one for him and asked the 1-2-3 Kid if he would play guinea pig. Bret watched in silence as I did it a few times on the dressing room floor and finally nodded in agreement.

  I gave a little cheer a few days later when I watched the PPV and saw Bret actually use my (Negro’s) move. I’d still never been contacted by anyone to work for the WWF but at least I could say that I’d taught the world champion his new finishing PPV move.

  The irony of the situation made me realize that, after all these years, I was finally ready to become a WWF superstar.

  I stole the Magsitral back to win the tournament for the newly created WAR tag team championships with my partner, Gedo. Our first title defense was against the New Japan team of Liger and a young boy named Takaiwa, who they had big plans for. I’d never heard of him and when reporters asked me to comment on our opponents, I told them so. “Liger is a legend and I’ve been looking forward to beating his ass for years,” I said in true heel fashion. “But I’ve never even heard of this Takaiwa. He’s too green to even be in the ring with me.” I was just amusing myself, never expecting the quote to see the light of day.

  But the reporters took my quote seriously and inadvertently created my first wrestling angle from it. My words were printed in all the magazines and started a minor controversy. Takaiwa got right to the point with his rebuttal. “I’m going to show him who I am.”

  Liger had worked in the States many times and I’m sure he knew I was just talking shit to create more interest in the match. But I don’t think Takaiwa realized it.

  By the time the match took place, I’d created my own angle by accident. The fans in Korakuen Hall had brought signs and anti–Lion Heart banners hung from the balcony. One of them featured a perfect drawing of me, colored green. Another said “Team No Respect, Know Takaiwa.” Clever.

  I met Takaiwa for the first time in the dressing room before the match and while he was cordial, I could tell that he wasn’t my biggest fan. But he was a pro and when we got into the ring, the crowd was electric. We were in the main event in Korakuen in an interpromotional match for the titles and it was a big deal. Gedo and I played our heel characters to the max, much to the displeasure of the fans. We gave our opponents the finger, farted in their general direction, and played our title belts like guitars years before Hulk Hogan ever did. This over-the-top heel was the precursor to the Y2J character that I created years later.

  When Takaiwa and I finally faced off, it was time for him to show me who he was. We locked up and when I told him to give me a big tackle, I sold it by bumping through the ropes onto the floor.

  OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!!!

  Gedo joined me outside the ring and we gave each other a big hug to a chorus of boos. Smoky Mountain Wrestling had arrived in Japan and business was good. The basic principles of wrestling remain the same no matter where in the world you are. People like to see good guys facing bad guys with something at stake. In this case it wasn’t just the titles at stake, but Takaiwa’s personal pride as well.

  He got a measure of revenge when he hit me with his Death Valley Driver before he was finally pinned by Gedo. It was a great finish, because even though he lost the match, he showed me who he was and was raised to another level in the fans’ eyes in the process.

  Mission accomplished.

  A few months later I had what was at that point the defining match of my career, when I defended the WAR International Junior Heavyweight title against Dragón at the WAR 3rd Anniversary show in Ryogoku.

  Dragón and I had worked together so many times that the fans were totally familiar with both of our repertoires. That meant we could play with their emotions by switching things up. This surprised the people and gave them something different from what they were used to seeing.

  They would think, “Jericho’s going to do the Lionsault now,” and when I jumped over Dragón to do it, he tripped me and went for a Magistral. Then I countered that with another reversal of my own.

  Earlier in the day I’d gone to a Denny’s (yes, they have Denny’s in Japan) and came up with a number of ideas and concepts that I thought would work for the match. Unbeknownst to me Dragón had done the same thing and when we got together to discuss the match we were loaded with ideas.

  The match was a culmination of the greatest hits of two performers who’d worked together dozens of times, like Kenny and Dolly. But we also came up with a bunch of new ideas including a top rope power slam and a reversal off of Dragón’s spinning top rope Cancun Tornado Splash. The match was tremendous and became my calling card. When I needed to send a tape of my work to anyone, whether it was ECW, WWF, or WCW, I would just send that match. It was the perfect sample of who Chris Jericho was as a performer and what he could do in the ring, plus it took place in front of a sold-out raucous crowd in a prestigious Japanese arena.

  I retained the title and beat one of Japan’s biggest stars at WAR’s biggest show of the year. My credibility and name value were at an all-time high and when the match was over, we received a standing ovation from the 11,000 fans in attendance, one of whom was Mick Foley.

  Mick was working in Japan for another company and had come to our show on a night off with Masa the superfan. I met him for the first time afterward and he seemed impressed.

  “That was a great match. You guys stole the show.”

  Mick offered to help me out if I ever needed anything back in the States and said he’d put a word in for me with Paul E. Dangerously, the boss of Extreme Championship Wrestling—ECW—based out of Philadelphia. I’d been thinking about trying to get work in ECW for a while. The company had built part of its reputation on hard work and great matches and I thought that my hybrid Japanese/Mexican/Calgary style would fit in perfectly. Plus my career templates Chris Benoit and Eddy Guerrero were already working there. Most importantly, even though I had a great spot and a respected position within WAR, it was time for me to try to break into the big leagues again.

  And this time I was ready.

  So I mailed Mick a tape of the Ultimo Dragón match trusting that he would personally deliver it to Paul E. as he had promised.

  He did and not too long afterward, I got a call.

  PART EIGHT PHILADELPHIA

  CHAPTER 40

  PRETTY BOYS WERE CRUCIFIED

  Even though it hadn’t taken long for Paul E. to call me after Mick gave him my tape, I’d been trying to get ahold of the guy for almost a year.

  ECW had come into prominence as the premier independent American company and was famous for introducing the hardcore style of wrestling invented in Puerto Rico (and copied by FMW) into the U.S. It was also the first American company to shine the spotlight on wrestlers that were deemed “too small” by the big leagues. Before ECW, nobody ever gave guys like Benoit, Juventu
d Guerrera, Eddy Guerrero, Dean Malenko, or Rey Mysterio Jr. a chance, but Paul E. knew that their combination of technique and high-flying would help break the company to the masses. ECW was providing an outlet for guys with hybrid styles like mine and if I could make an impression there it would help finally break me in the States.

  I first called Paul E. in November of 1994. He didn’t call me back so I continued to try every couple of weeks. Usually I only got as far as his answering machine until one time someone actually answered.

  “Can I speak to Paul please? It’s Chris Jericho.”

  “No, he’s not here. This is his roommate Dave. I’ll have him call you back.”

  Strangely, roommate Dave’s voice sounded exactly like the distinctive voice of Paul E. and I’d heard him enough times on TV to know that I’d just spoken with him. I kept calling and a few weeks later he answered again, this time admitting his true identity.

  “Hey, Chris, how are you doing?” he said nonchalantly. “I’ve got Jimmy Snuka on the other line. Let me call you right back.” Denied again.

  The runaround went on similar to the Ric Flair fiasco but the difference was Paul had never told me to call him. But my friends in ECW had.

  Perry Saturn of the Eliminators kept telling me that Paul claimed to be interested in using me. “Paul is the worst at returning calls. But keep calling him, he’ll eventually call you back.” I figured if I bugged him long enough, he’d bring me in just to shut me up.

  Finally after six months of unanswered phone calls, I was at home in Okotoks on a Saturday when Benoit called me at lunchtime. “Paul E. wants to you to come in to work against me.”

  My heart skipped a beat and I flipped out. “No way? Absolutely! When?”