A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex

by Chris Jericho

  He was working in ECW after leaving WCW, where Pillman had convinced everyone in WCW that he’d gone crazy, to the point of conning WCW boss Eric Bischoff into firing him and legally letting him out of his contract. But he still kept showing up in the crowd at WCW events, causing disturbances on live TV and leading the fans and everyone in the company to think he’d lost his marbles. But it wasn’t just for the shows—he was playing crazy all the time.

  He’d shown up in ECW to continue the elaborate work and perfect his loony act. He was also doing an excellent job of convincing everyone that he’d lost it. He’d shown up at the Arena that day with his pants falling down from not having a belt. He went around to everyone in the dressing room asking them if they had an extra belt (who doesn’t?) and ended up settling on a piece of twine.

  Then out in the ring, the Sandman hit a jobber with his trademark kendo stick, knocking the guy loopy. The guy was obviously going to be fine, but that didn’t stop Pillman from running around the dressing room, jumping up and down and screaming like a crack-addicted monkey in his gravelly voice, “Call 911! Call 911! For the love of Christ somebody please call 911!”

  He was completely overreacting as if the guy had been beheaded. But he wouldn’t stop and was making everyone in the room very uncomfortable, when right in the middle of his tirade with nobody looking, he gave me a wink.

  I thought, “That guy is a genius. He’s working everybody.”

  I was a big fan of Pillman’s work, but I’d only met him for the first time that evening and I was confused as to why he chose to let me in on his elaborate ruse. Why did he trust me not to blow the whistle?

  I’m sure it was because of our Calgary connection. He’d started in Stampede and still had great respect for the territory and all it had taught him. He also was a fan of wrestling and kept close tabs on what was going on within the business worldwide. Maybe he’d heard something about me and my history or how I’d gotten into the business the same way he had. Being trained in the Dungeon was like being part of a fraternity, so in a way we were frat brothers.

  It was the only time we crossed paths in ECW, but we spent a lot of time together that weekend and he gave me some brilliant advice.

  “If you really want to make it in wrestling, you have to do something that’s never been done before.”

  I took Brian’s advice to heart and followed it throughout the rest of my career. The success of all my future work was always based upon that rule.

  Brian was doing the crazy gimmick to build interest for his return to the big leagues. He wanted to end up in the WWF, but had an idea he’d been pitching to WCW in case he returned there. Pillman wanted to form a younger version of the Four Horsemen to feud with Ric Flair’s legendary team. His idea was to call the team the Horsemen of the Apocalypse or the Generation X Horsemen. While the original team held up four fingers to signify the Four Horsemen, this team would cross their forearms and give a double four finger sign in the form of an X. Pillman’s idea was to have Benoit and Eddy in the group and asked me if I’d be interested in being the fourth member.

  Was I interested? Gee, let me check my calendar...

  To get the chance to work with those guys would have been the biggest opportunity of my career. But Pillman ended up signing with the WWF and the idea never materialized. However, I never forgot his advice and it influenced my career greatly. Thanks Brian.

  Pillman wasn’t the only influential person that I crossed paths with in ECW, as my first weekend in the company was Mick Foley’s last. He was going to the WWF and his second to last match in ECW was against me, the guy who he’d been instrumental in getting into the company in the first place. Our first ever match was a good one and I’d like to add that I won that hard-fought contest.

  I would also like to add that Mick Foley has been a three-time world champion and a New York Times bestselling author, but the one thing he hasn’t done is beat Lion Heart Chris Jericho in a wrestling match.

  Not that I’m keeping track or anything.

  CHAPTER 42

  THE GOLDEN TICKET

  While my match with Mick was one of my ECW highlight moments, my absolute hands-down favorite moment didn’t even involve me. When I first started in the company, Kiss was in the middle of their huge reunion tour. The Blue Meanie was in a tag team with his partner, Stevie Richards, and their gimmick was to parody other wrestlers. One night in the Arena they came to the ring with two other guys dressed as Kiss and began lip-synching and strutting around to “Rock and Roll All Nite.”

  The crowd went bonkers for the Kiss tribute and everyone was having a great time watching these idiots make fools of themselves.

  Just as the revelry reached its peak, “Enter Sandman” by Metallica cut Kiss off like road rage and the Sandman made his way to the ring drinking a can of beer. He took his kendo stick and caned the shit out of the Starchild and the Catman, spit beer into the face of the Space Ace, and kicked the Demon right in his Deuce.

  It was hilarious and it made the Sandman my favorite wrestler...for one night only.

  After the Arena shows, Paul E. put us up at a run-down Travellodge in the middle of a Philly crack neighborhood and all the fans knew exactly where we stayed. There were hundreds of fans in the bar and the lobby of the hotel after the show partying all night long. They weren’t the annoying type of fans, but respectful and knowledgeable so it was cool to get to know them a little. Hanging with the fans also helped pass the time while we were waiting until 5 A.M. for Paul E. to tape the promos for the TV show.

  He applied the same last-minute fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants routine for most aspects of the promotion. I’d see him scribbling matches on a napkin for a show that was already in progress. All of the wrestlers would be dressed and on call to go on whenever he called our names.

  Once as the first match of the show was already taking place, he said, “Chris, you’re on in the third match against Mikey Whipwreck.”

  “Paul, Mikey’s wrestling in the ring right now.”

  “How ’bout Too Cold Scorpio? Is he out there? If not, you guys are on third,” Paul replied without blinking an eye.

  I used my ongoing WAR tours to develop a foolproof way to impress the girls. I simply called them from Japan and just like Frank Costanza stopping short, it was my best move. It worked every time.

  “How are you doing? I’m just hanging out in Tokyo and I thought of you.” You could practically hear the helpless female melting on the other end of the line.

  I used my best move on the lovely Kimona and it dazzled her so much, I started dating her. She became my ECW girlfriend, which was a better bonus than the twenty-five bucks Paul was giving me.

  She made me a proud boyfriend indeed at the Arena one night when she saved the show after the ring broke.

  Somehow during one of the matches, the ring just fell apart. There was a long delay while the crew tried to figure out how to repair it and the sold-out crowd was getting restless. Paul could sense a mutiny in the air so he told Kimona (who shockingly was a stripper) to go onto the balcony above the ring and perform a striptease. It took some convincing, but Paul poured a keg full of Kool-Aid over her and she finally agreed.

  The lovely Kimona proceeded to calm the unruly mob with one of the sexiest erotic dances I’ve ever seen. I was watching her performance with Terry Gordy, who was one of the best big-man wrestlers of all time until a drug overdose left him with permanent brain damage. He stood next to me watching Kimona’s display of artistic expression with a huge wad of tobacco in his mouth and said, “I ain’t never seen nothing like this at no wrestling match.”

  Neither had I, but Paul made sure to give everyone the opportunity to see it by peddling the tape on the ECW TV show for the next five years.

  A friend of mine in Los Angeles called me the next day to ask me about Kimona’s famous dance. During the conversation, he mentioned an upcoming wrestling show that piqued my interest. Antonio Inoki, the boss of New Japan, was promoting the World Peace
Festival, which featured wrestlers from Japan, Mexico, and the United States. WCW had a working relationship with New Japan and was planning to send some wrestlers from the company, including Benoit. I had a gut feeling that it would be in my best interest to be on that show, so I made a few calls to some of the local L.A. promoters I’d worked for and weaseled my way onto the card.

  I was hoping to use the show as a tryout for New Japan, but it ended up leading me into an entirely different direction.

  I met up with Chris at a party held the night before the festival and he insisted on introducing me to Eric Bischoff. Chris and I had worn suits to the party and even though we stood out like sore thumbs among the other guys, I was dressed for success when I met Eric.

  Benoit had passed my Dragón match tape around the WCW higher-ups and Eric had seen it. Two sentences into our conversation, he cut me off and said, “Benoit has been recommending you like crazy and that’s enough for me. Do you want to come work for me in WCW?”

  And that was it.

  After years of toiling away in foreign countries, high school gyms, bowling alleys, and bingo halls, I’d finally been given the golden ticket to work in the United States.

  “Here’s my number, call my secretary. We’ll arrange a meeting and make a deal.”

  I couldn’t believe how quickly it had transpired. Granted, Bischoff was signing anybody with potential to prevent them from going to the WWF. He was in the middle of a nasty wrestling war and he wanted to lock up as much talent as he could.

  I’m not saying that Eric didn’t know who I was, but I don’t think he’d seen any of my work besides the Dragon match. I know damn well that he didn’t see my work at the Peace Festival, because he left before the show started. I thought that it was strange that he didn’t stick around to check out his new prospect, but in hindsight it was a typical WCW move.

  A few days later I called Paul E. to tell him about Eric’s offer and, to my surprise, he already knew. At that point, Paul had a huge influence on the business and had spies everywhere who told him everything. I think he still appreciated my honesty in telling him myself.

  “Bischoff made me an offer to go to WCW, but I don’t know if I really want to go.”

  “Well don’t go then,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I didn’t have to explain the reasons why I couldn’t say no and he knew I was gone. But to my surprise, he explained that before I left he wanted me to win the ECW television championship.

  It took a lot of trust for Paul to want that, as I had no contract with him. I could’ve won the belt and thrown it in the garbage can on live WCW TV. But he trusted me and I took that very seriously. We agreed it was best for business to keep the WCW deal a secret until my last night with ECW. We couldn’t have done that now with the influence of the Internet, but back in those medieval times secrets could still be kept secret.

  The plan was for me to win the title at the ECW Arena from Pitbull #2. The day I was supposed to leave Paul called and left a FedEx tracking number on my answering machine, explaining that my plane ticket had been FedExed to the airport and I had to pick it up.

  Why would a FedEx be at the airport? Why wouldn’t they just deliver it to my house?

  I drove to the FedEx outlet at the airport, but when I gave them the number, they told me that it was a digit short, nine numbers instead of ten.

  The night before the match I was still waiting for my plane ticket. Even though Paul was notorious for leaving flight arrangements to the last minute, this was getting ricockulous.

  I was stir-crazy in my apartment waiting, so I left for a beer. When I came back a few hours later there was still no word from Paul. I called him every hour to no avail, until I finally said, “I’ve been calling you all night with no response. I don’t care about your stupid belt and I’m not coming to your stupid show. Later.”

  I hung up and literally thirty seconds later, Paul called me back.

  He was as friendly as can be and said cheerily, “Hey, what are you doing? I’ve been hanging out with a bunch of strippers and I just got home. I called you a few hours ago and left a message on your tape. There’s a ticket waiting for you at the airport.”

  I had an answering machine with no messages on it and a caller ID with no calls on it, which proved two things:

  1. I was a loser with no friends.

  2. Paul E. was telling another bald-faced lie.

  Jim Cornette once said that Paul E. would rather climb a tree and lie than stay on the ground and tell the truth. I was starting to agree, although this was probably Paul’s revenge for me deciding to jump to WCW. I wanted to tell him him to go to hell, but he was one of those guys who was impossible to stay mad at. Besides, I was still excited that I was about to win my first American championship.

  The match for the title was one of the best of my career and ended with me reversing Pitbull #2’s top rope power bomb into a Frankensteiner for the victory. The move came out of nowhere and the crowd exploded out of their chairs when I won. It was a gas to watch the tape back and see their various euphoric reactions to my victory. On the eve of my exit, I had become a big part of the family.

  After my victory, I jumped into the crowd and celebrated with the fans, even trading my belt for Hat Guy’s Panama lid. I was the ECW TV champion at twenty-five years old and it was a great moment in Jeric-History.

  I continued the celebration by hosting a victory party in my room until the wee hours at the Travellodge and woke up late for my flight. When I called the airline to get on the next one, they told me, “You should be able to fly standby on the next flight. Don’t you worry and we’re very sorry about your brother-in-law.”

  “My brother-in-law?”

  “Yes, Mr. Irvine. We were so sorry to hear about the passing of your brother-in-law.” I had neither a brother-in-law nor a sister.

  Something was rotten in the state of Pennsylvania but I rolled with it, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I keep forgetting. I still can’t believe it.”

  What I really couldn’t believe was Paul E. had flown me in on a bereavement fare and hadn’t told me.

  The next weekend, I confronted him.

  “Hey, the next time you’re going to fly me on a bereavement fare, can you at least tell me so I don’t blow my own cover and get arrested for fraud?”

  Once again, Paul didn’t bat an eye as he pulled a doctor’s note pad out of his bag and said, “Did they hassle you? If they do, just give them this.”

  Then he took a pen and wrote in his illegible chicken scratch:

  To Whom It May Concern,

  Thank you so much for your compassion during this horrible time. You have been so understanding and the Irvine family thanks you.

  Sincerely,

  Dr. Horowitz

  Now he was adding medical fraud to his list of felonies.

  I lost the title one month later in a four-way elimination match against Pitbull #2, Too Cold Scorpio, and Shane Douglas. Paul surprised the fans again by having the champion (yours rockingly) be the first guy eliminated.

  It was another memorable night highlighted by my first ECW brawl through the crowd. The fans were famous for bringing their own weapons for the wrestlers to hit each other with and there was quite a selection. Nintendo consoles, cheese graters, muffin pans, pencil sharpeners, and even a fishing net. What kind of evil violence could I dish out with a fishing net? Was I expected to capture my opponent like a huge butterfly and put him into a giant jelly jar with holes cut into its massive lid?

  My next weekend in ECW was my last and Paul had one last laugh when he booked bereavement fares for me and a Calgary wrestler named Johnny Smith. This time another brother-in-law had choked on a grape or something.

  Just a tip, kids: Don’t ever think of marrying one of my sisters.

  Johnny and I drove to the airport trying to figure out how we could have the same brother-in-law if we weren’t related. We surmised that we would have to be married to sisters whose brother had died.

  Afte
r my last match in ECW against Too Cold Scorpio, the crowd in the Arena started chanting “Please don’t go.” I’d been spared the “You sold out,” chants because I think people were genuinely saddened at my departure. I know I was.

  I had a tear in my eye as I grabbed the mike and cut an emotional promo praising the Arena, ECW, and all its fans. It was a genuinely bittersweet moment. If I could’ve stayed there forever and made good money in the process, I would’ve seriously considered it.

  When I walked back through the curtain, Paul was standing there looking like he’d just lost his best friend. He gave me a hug like it was the end of an era...which it was.

  I called Paul for advice many times afterward and he was always there for me—even though it took him forever to call me back.

  A lot of people associate me with ECW and consider me an ECW guy. In reality, I only wrestled twenty-two matches for the company over the course of six months. But my connection to ECW isn’t solely based on the amount of time I spent there, but rather on the attitude that I exuded while I was with the company.

  I was tailor-made for the fighting spirit that the company was built on and I had the true respect for the wrestling business that everybody in ECW shared. There was nobody in the company that had been drafted from another sport or was in the business to make a quick buck or to become famous. We were all there because we loved wrestling and believed in the company and in ourselves. That’s why it’s difficult to explain or to understand what ECW was all about unless you were actually there.

  I’m proud to say I fought in ECW and serving my tour of duty there helped take me to the big time.

  Unfortunately making it to the big leagues of WCW almost killed my love for the wrestling business, in the same way that working in the minor leagues of ECW had intensified it.