But what surprised me the most was after that horrible experience, Lionel was back at another concert just one week later. I didn’t understand how he could do that.
“I have to . . . this is my job and I love music,” he said with a heavy accent. “And if I don’t come to work tonight I miss out on seeing Fozzy. The terrorists would then take something else from me, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
I praised him for standing up for what he believed it, and he reciprocated.
“It means everything to your fans in Paris that you played tonight, even for the ones who didn’t come. Thank you for making us happy in this terrible time.”
All I can say is,“Merci d’être la Lionel! C’est un honneur de jouer pour vous et les gens merveilleux de Paris.”
Google it.
(Thanks to Kevin Owens for the translation!)
CHAPTER 15
THE
TED
IRVINE
PRINCIPLE
YOU GOTTA
SELL YOURSELF
Hunger, I want it so bad I can taste it.
It drives me mad to see it wasted . . .
—KICK AXE, “HUNGER”
(Kick Axe, Spencer Proffer)
When I first started thinking about getting into the wrestling business, my dad gave me a piece of crucial advice: “You have to sell yourself. When you’re starting out, nobody is going to pick up the phone and call you. You have to be the one to call them.”
I can affirm all these years later that he was absolutely right. You gotta sell yourself, maaan!
I’m not sure if this was his mindset when he was breaking into the NHL, or just what he came to believe after his pro hockey career was over, but the bottom line (because Stone Ted said so) was that his message was driven into my head early in my career, and I’ve heeded that advice ever since.
That’s why after only a few months in the business (despite my obvious inexperience), I started making highlight videos of my matches using the best high spots I could cull from grainy, jumpy VHS recordings. Then I wrote up a resume listing the meager three companies I’d worked for, along with my college degree info. For a reference, I included the name of the manager at the IGA grocery store where I had worked my last real job, as I’m sure my skills as a meat slicer were just what Vince McMahon was looking for. (Maybe I was hoping to get that coveted Donny Deli gimmick?)
I sent that tape and resume to every promoter I had an address for, including guys in New Zealand, Australia, and Greenland . . . some of whom (unbeknownst to me) hadn’t run shows since the ’70s. Even when I received no reply (and I ain’t talkin’ about the Beatles), or got the packages sent back RETURN TO SENDER (and I ain’t talkin’ about Elvis), at least I was trying to get something rolling and not just sitting on my ass waiting for the phone to ring.
I wasn’t ignored completely, as I did get a letter back from the Texas-based Global Wrestling Federation. When I ecstatically opened the envelope, I found what was basically a wrestling version of a “Dear John” letter from booker Bill Eadie. But there was a silver lining, because even though he wasn’t interested in bringing me in, he was very complimentary of my tape and told me I had potential (I’ve still never met Mr. Eadie, but I’d like to thank him for taking the time to write that letter). His words were as powerful to me as “Klaatu, Verata, Necto” were to Ash Williams, because they gave me a modicum of confidence that my plan to get booked could work. I had taken a chance and put myself out there and had moved a step forward in return.
But I know from experience that it’s not always easy to sell yourself. It takes a lot of chutzpah to pick up the phone and tell somebody how valuable you are to their business or project, but it has to be done—even if they don’t respond. You have to keep hammering on that door no matter how exhausting or embarrassing it may be.
You could change the lesson in this chapter to “Stay Determined” or “If You Want Something Done, Do It Yourself,” because both of those are basically saying the same thing. If you believe your plan is right, then stick with it. That’s an ideal that I use on a micro level as well as a macro level. I employ it all the time to get my ideas across when putting together a match or writing a song. Once I get what I believe is a good idea in my head, I have no problem pushing it on whomever the hapless soul is who attempts to oppose me.
Just ask The Big Show.
Back in 2009, we were the best tag team in the business (the WWE called us “Jerishow,” but I didn’t like the name and never used it on TV once), and on certain nights when I referred to myself as the “Best in the World” I really meant it. I had a great sense of who my character was and how I wanted my matches to go, and even though in theory being part of a successful tag team means you should compromise, I didn’t really do that. Whenever Show had an invariably inferior idea, I would listen, nod my head, and calmly praise him. Then I would explain why my idea was better and wouldn’t take no for answer (see chapter 5) until he agreed to do it my way. He always agreed, usually by throwing up his hands and stomping out of the room, mumbling, “Fine, I’m just a big stupid giant . . . what do I know?”
He still has no problem reminding me how my pit-bull tenacity mentally exhausted him until he finally had to tap out and agree to do it my way. That was a smart move, because my way usually was the right way.
That’s half the battle when it comes to selling yourself . . . you have to commit (chapter 11) to whatever you are selling. People have to believe that what you are proposing is a must-see nobrainer and they can’t live their lives without it or you.
I once read that when John Travolta was still doing auditions, he went into the room with the mindset that he had gotten the part already. He just had to convince the casting directors that he was the only man for the job and hiring anybody else was a foolhardy (Matt and Jeff’s slow cousin) decision.
I’m sure it’s a lot easier for John Travolta in 2017 to think that way than it was for 1976 John Travolta, while walking into Brian De Palma’s office to read for the part of Billy Nolan in Carrie. But like young John, I believe you gotta have that confidence, no matter how early on you may be in your career, because you can’t afford not to sell yourself at all times.
As of this writing, I’m in my seventeenth year in the WWE and even after all that time, I still discuss every segment I’m in with Vince, because if I don’t and something goes awry, I’ll get in trouble.
Case in point. In 2013 I did a Highlight Reel with The Miz, Wade Barrett, and Brad Maddox that was a shipwreck from the get-go. It was poorly written, filled with bad comedy that got no reaction from the live audience, and a weird clip from Barrett’s new movie awkwardly sandwiched in the middle for no apparent reason. There was zero chemistry between the four of us, Maddox forgot his lines, and I made it worse with some bad improv. The whole thing came across forced and ended flat, and the only good thing about it was that it led to a triple-threat match between me, Miz, and Barrett, which ended up good.
But when I got to the back afterwards, I was furious to find out that Vince had told announcer Michael Cole to call the Highlight Reel, and I quote, “the worst segment in Raw history.” That pissed me off big time, and after I blew up on poor Cole for merely repeating what our boss had told him to say, I confronted Vince. He made it clear to me that he thought the segment was rotten, and when I told him that it was doomed from the start because of the awkward concept and the poor writing, he got mad.
“Well, dammit, Chris, if you ever get something handed to you that you think sucks, you need to come discuss it with me so we can change it and make it better!”
He was absolutely right and that’s what I’ve done ever since.
When I was starting my program with Dean Ambrose in 2016, I had a myriad of ideas about how to make the storyline more exciting. So at a Raw in St. Louis, I went into Vince’s office to sell those ideas—and myself—to him, the first of which dealt with a potted plant.
That’s right, I said a potte
d plant.
Earlier that year, I had done a Highlight Reel with Ambrose and Roman Reigns and as we were writing the segment, we were laughing about the decline in quality of the Highlight Reel’s production values over the years.
Back in its glory days in the mid-2000s, the Reel set included a large carpet painted with a silhouette of the classic Jericho pose in an eye-catching array of psychedelic colors and an obscenely expensive Jeritron 5000 hanging from the ceiling, all bookended by a matching pair of Salvador Dali–looking set pieces that gave the whole set the exact neoclassical bohemian vibe I was looking for.
By 2016, it had been reduced to a plain black carpet, a dilapidated Jeritron on a rickety stand, and a pair of bar stools straight out of Moe’s Tavern. As a result, Ambrose joked that he should bring a potted plant to the ring to spruce the place up a bit. It was a subtle detail that thousands of fans picked up on and commented about on Twitter, even leading to someone (it wasn’t me) creating the twitter account of @JerichosPottedPlant.
Over the next few months on every Highlight Reel, I made sure to include a potted plant as part of the set, because in the back of my mind I envisioned eventually smashing it over somebody’s head. I even pitched the idea of breaking it over AJ Styles’s face before WrestleMania, which would force him to wear an eyepatch for the big match. Vince didn’t like that idea, but when I suggested shattering it over Ambrose’s noggin (oh, the irony) he approved it wholeheartedly.
So I laid out a plan where Ambrose would beat me in our first encounter at the Payback PPV, then I would break the plant over his head the next night, leading to a hospital stay that would cause him to miss Smackdown. (Miffed Author’s note: One thing I hated was when the writers named the weed “Mitch the Potted Plant.” It took away from the seriousness of the beatdown and made the fans think it was cute to make memes and post tweets about how I murdered the perennial, rather than focus on the fact that I had put Ambrose in the hospital.)
I also pitched another idea I’d been sitting on for years. Ever since I debuted my light-up jacket at the beginning of 2012, it had become a Jericho trademark—a late-career reinvention that made me stand out and had become an iconic part of my character. In the five years I’d been wearing the jackets (there are four in total), nobody had ever touched, threatened, or messed with them in any way. That’s why I thought it was high time that somebody did.
However, I didn’t really want to destroy a garment that I’d paid five figures of my own hard-earned cash for. Fortunately, after wearing it for years on TV, I noticed there were always fans in the crowd wearing their own light-up jackets. Some of them were homemade and cheap looking, but others were actually pretty good. I did some digging and found out that a company out of India was making replica “Chris Jericho Celebrity Light-Up Jackets” and selling them for the low, low price of four hundred bucks, much cheaper than the ten thousand dollars I’d paid for the original.
They looked so much like the real deal that during a tour of Australia when my jacket was barely lighting up and finally died completely, I almost sent one of our security guys out to borrow one of the replicas from a Jerichoholic in the crowd. Then I nixed the idea. I mean, Paul Stanley would never ask a fan to lend him a replica KISS costume to wear onstage, would he? So instead, I had my opponent Bray Wyatt go to the ring and cut a promo threatening to beat up a fan in the front row. My music interrupted him, and I ran in to save the day and clean house with no jacket required (and I ain’t talkin’ about Phil Collins).
I loved the concept of somebody destroying the jacket, so I ordered one of the replicas for four hundred bucks and kept it in my closet waiting for the right time to use it. When I started the program with Ambrose, I knew that with his quirkiness and lunatic fringe gimmick, he would be the perfect guy to destroy it. I proposed the idea to Vince as a way for Dean extract his revenge for me smashing the pot over his head, and after smartly selling the concept—and once again myself—the boss signed off on that too.
One of the writers then came up with the idea of me putting Ambrose in a straight-jacket as revenge for him destroying my property, and since I was on a roll I pitched that as well. Another homerun!
Then came the big one.
When Ambrose and head writer Dave Kapoor and I were trying to figure out what kind of gimmick match we could have as the blow-off to the feud at the Extreme Rules PPV, we didn’t really have much. A straight-jacket match seemed lame, a paddy wagon match would be boring, and cage matches and ladder matches seemed too played out. We were planning on a self-explanatory Extreme Rules match, but that was given to AJ Styles and Roman Reigns instead, so we were left holding the bag. We put our heads together and came up with the idea of the first-ever Asylum match, a cage match with various weaponry hanging off the sides. We loved the idea of involving the variety of plunder that we could use to whack each other with at any time.
I knew that Vince was a sucker for the “first ever” tagline and with that in mind, I began my spiel. When I mentioned that the cage would have multiple weapons involved, Vince mumbled, “I should’ve known a normal cage match wouldn’t be enough for you two.” I ignored his comment and kept right on pitching.
I went through the basic rules and the design (painting the cage black was Ambrose’s idea) and then hit him with my closing line, that it would be the “FIRST EVER” Asylum match. Vince smiled knowingly and approved it on the spot. We shook hands and I poured myself a coffee, because as Alec Baldwin says, coffee is for closers only.
We discussed our thoughts on what kinds of weapons would be used (I wanted a chainsaw that Dean would cut the top rope in half and choke me with, but Vince declined). Then I brought up the possibility of thumbtacks. Vince laughed and said, “That’s not gonna happen.”
I didn’t figure he’d go for it, but I knew Dean wanted to try to get them approved because he had planned to use them in his street fight against Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 32 a few months earlier. However, Brock wasn’t too keen on the concept and the idea was quickly dropped. I, on the other hand, had no issue with using the tacks, since the plan was for me to beat Dean at the PPV and then challenge Roman Reigns for the title. Therefore, if the tacks were allowed, Ambrose was the one who would have to do the hibbity-dibbity in them, not me.
Over the next few weeks, the angle unfolded exactly as we had pitched, leading to some unforgettable moments (the destruction of my jacket was awesome, and instead of just wearing one of my other three light-up jackets to the ring, I switched over to the scarf). We were gearing up for the monumental Asylum blow-off match, when I got a text from Ambrose telling me that Vince had approved the tacks. I was totally surprised, but also excited because I knew it would lead to an unforgettable image when Dean took that tack bump.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Asylum. Vince had changed his mind (what a surprise) and decided to make the returning Seth Rollins the new challenger to Roman Reigns’s WWE Championship instead of me. As a result, the change was made for Ambrose to win the Asylum match, which made sense since it was “his” creation. But that meant that if anyone was going to take the tack bump . . . it had to be me.
But why would I, an established veteran with seemingly nothing left to prove, take that diabolical bump? Well, Constant Reader, pull up a chair under the learning tree (Dusty Rhodes™) and let me explain to you a little sumpin’ sumpin’ about wrestling psychology.
Vince hadn’t allowed a thumbtack bump in over a decade, which meant the majority of our fans had never seen such a barbaric spectacle before. And let’s be honest, the whole concept of falling onto a bed of sharp objects that pierce your skin and leave you bleeding like a human pincushion is pretty fuckin’ barbaric. Like feeding Christians to the lions—type stuff. Therefore, the concept of the tack bump had to be protected and sold like it was the absolute worst, most painful thing that could ever happen to a WWE superstar, and I’ll tell you why.
No matter how much of a wrestling fan you are, you’ll never really k
now how it feels to take a body slam or a suplex. You can guess how much pain you would be in, but you’ll never TRULY know for sure. Therefore, when you see your heroes take this type of punishment on TV, it’s never going to resonate with you in a realistic way.
However, EVERYBODY knows what it feels like to get stuck by a sharp object, whether it’s a shot at the doctors or a bee sting. And as we all know, it really hurts. No matter your age, rank, or serial number, everyone’s reaction to the prick of a needle is the same.
“I don’t wanna get that shot because it’s going to hurt when that needle goes into my skin!”
In the case of the tack bump, if you take the pain of a sole doctor’s needle and multiply it by fifty, I guarantee there isn’t one normal human being on the planet who would willingly allow themselves to be put in that situation.
However, pro wrestlers aren’t normal human beings, and I’m not a normal pro wrestler. All that the critics and fans said after the match was “Jericho has nothing to prove and at forty-five years old did not need to take that bump!” Well, guess what— they were all wrong because I did need to take that bump.
Because that is what was best for the match.
If Ambrose took the bump and then went on to beat me, the whole point (pun intended) of using the tacks would’ve been wasted. It would insinuate to the fans that the tacks really didn’t hurt and it was just another stunt in a show filled with dozens of them.
Uh-uh . . . not on my watch.
Much like a musician who plays what fits best for the song rather than showing off (think Phil Rudd in AC/DC), I knew that I would have to take the damn bump in the tacks and get pinned directly after, not because I wanted to but because it made the most sense for the story of the match.
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