The Best in the World

by Chris Jericho

  But later that week I got a message that Vince wanted me to call him. That was never a good thing. If he wanted to talk to me about something good, he would’ve called me himself.

  Now that I knew I was in some sort of trouble, there was something that had been bothering me all week that I needed to investigate: Why had Flair bled so much from one punch? I’d been cut open from punches many times before, and most of the time they would quickly swell up and close on their own. It might leave a mouse or a welt, but whatever minor blood flow there was would usually stop fairly quickly. So it didn’t make sense to me that Ric bled enough to stain his shirt after only one punch.

  The other thing that was really irking me was the small cut in the middle of Flair’s forehead. It wasn’t the type of cut you’d get from a punch, which would be more of a lump with an uneven abrasion running through it. This one was straight and neat . . . like it had been done surgically. Like with a razor blade.

  Had Flair done this to himself without telling me?

  I called Doc Amann and asked him what he thought.

  “Chris, I’ve been working in the WWE long enough to know that cut wasn’t caused by a punch.”

  That was all I needed to hear. All evidence pointed to the fact that Flair had done this voluntarily without telling me. The crazy thing was I watched the segment a dozen times, and never once did I see his hand touch his forehead. But Flair was a wizard, and if he did do this to himself, he did it with such precision that it was impossible to pinpoint the exact moment when.

  Any way you slice it (no pun intended), I owed Vince a call and it was time to face the McMusic. He answered after the first ring, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that he wasn’t happy.

  “Chris, we need to discuss what happened last Monday and decide what the punishment is going to be. Ric was bleeding so bad that I almost pulled the plug on the segment and went to commercial early. You know how I feel about blood on the show, Chris! I’m going to have to fine you.”

  Are you effin’ kidding me? I was going to be fined again for somebody ELSE getting busted open (Mortman)? Talk about blood money!! I asked him why I was getting punished for hitting Flair with a stiff shot, something that happened every day in the line of duty.

  “Come on, Chris, that’s bullshit and you know it. Flair got busted open [Riker] and in the old ’rasslin’ tradition, you kept punching him in the head trying to get him to bleed more [well, Vince was right about that]. Dammit, Chris, do you know how many sponsors we might lose because of this? It was old-school shit and I don’t allow it anymore! And the worst thing is, you didn’t even stop in Gorilla to talk to me about it. Did you think if you just ignored it that it would go away?”

  I should’ve learned my lesson to call him after doing so saved my ass in the Batista incident, but I hadn’t and now the tide was turning completely against me. I went to my last resort.

  “Have you considered the fact that Ric might’ve done this to himself?”

  “Yes, I’ve considered it, and you know what? I don’t care. I can’t fire him because he’s not under contract (Flair had cut a deal to work up to Mania only), I can’t fine him ’cause he’ll probably just go home, and I can’t yell at him ’cause it will just make him upset. Whether you knew about it or not, you went along with it and tried to punch the cut open further. So you’re going to have to take the heat on this one.” Then he spouted out another classic Vince-ism. “Sometimes you have to eat shit and like it, Chris.”

  Oh, brother. Vince felt he had to set another example that to bleed on purpose was the ultimate sin in this new PG world and I was the sacrificial lamb. There was no way out this time, but what would my fine be? Would he bring out the big guns like he had with Dave and drop the hundred-thousand-dollar hammer on me? Or would he just Eugene Levy the laughable five-grand fine on me again?

  “I’m going to fine you fifteen thousand dollars, Chris. And this can’t happen again.”

  It hadn’t even happened once, as far as I was concerned! But I weighed the amount of the fine on the scales of justice inside my head and realized I had come out OK. Vince could’ve easily decided that, as a second-time offender, I had crossed over into Batista territory and slip me the big one. If I was playing “Fine or No Fine” and the banker offered me fifteen grand, I would’ve told Howie Mandel I was taking that briefcase right then and there.

  I hung up and resigned myself to the fact I had been fined a total of twenty thousand bucks for bleeding, even though I hadn’t lost a drop of my own blood. I guess I was eating a big mouthful of Vince’s shit, but like Bill Murray found out while chewing on a log at the bottom of the pool in Caddyshack, it didn’t taste too bad.

  As hated as I was after what I’d done to Flair and the legends, there were still a few fanatics who idolized me. Overall, I think this is a pretty damn good tattoo, but, hopefully, in a few years the owner won’t feel the same way I do about my Screech ink.

  Rourke’s Dorks

  The night before WrestleMania 25, the legends and I were scheduled to have a rehearsal to discuss what we wanted to do in the match. The layout was pretty simple: I would beat Snuka in a minute, Piper in two minutes, and then Steamboat in about five. Afterward I’d then beat up Flair and challenge Rourke, who would enter the ring and hit me with a knockout punch. Mickey’s spot was easy, but a rehearsal was necessary since it was his first time in the WWE. I was looking forward to finally meeting him after our Larry King confrontation and the subsequent weeks of buildup I’d done on Raw without him.

  I got to Reliant Stadium in Houston at midnight and walked out onto the massive set that had been constructed at one end of the field. I could see Rourke in the ring with his entourage and they appeared to be the size of ants, and I started walking the one hundred yards down the ramp, when I ran into a WWE publicist.

  “Hey, I just talked to Mickey and he’s mad at you,” she said. “He thinks you have a real problem with him.”

  That surprised me. “Well, did you tell him I don’t?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  Uh, yeah . . . I mean, what did she think the letters PR stood for in the first place? I was part of the Public and it was her job to Relate to Mickey that I was a good guy.

  As I got closer to the ring, I could see Rourke staring at me and noticed that his entourage looked less like Turtle and Drama and more like the Delta Force. Three shredded bodybuilders glared at me with their heavily tattoed arms crossed in front of them. . . . One was even wearing army fatigues, for Pete Fornatale’s sake! I knew my work was cut out for me as I climbed into the ring and greeted Mickey with a warm smile.

  “Hey, man, nice to finally meet you!” I said cheerily and gave him the kind of hug you see two dudes in da club do when they don’t really know each other. I could sense the last thing he wanted to do was embrace me and he couldn’t pull away fast enough.

  He was about the same height as I and looked like he’d been through the ringer a time or two, with the wear and tear on his face to show it. His hair was braided with blue and green extensions and held up in a topknot à la Jericho circa 1999. His face was oddly puffy, and with his dyed-black goatee, gold front tooth, and slight hint of BO, he reminded me of an older Jack Sparrow, you savvy?

  He also looked tough as shit and ready to snap, not the kind of guy I wanted on my bad side. Especially since I was supposed to be taking a punch from him the next day.

  We exchanged some small talk as Rourke’s Dorks kept staring at me, seemingly ready to pounce at any given moment. To make matters even worse, I recognized the one on the left as Frank Shamrock, and even though he was the shortest of the three, he was one of the toughest UFC fighters ever. What were these guys even doing here?

  I decided that the direct approach was in order. “Hey, man, I hear you’re a little pissed off at me for the Larry King thing, but I want you to know that I was just putting on a show,
ya dig?”

  Rourke’s face hardened as if he’d been waiting to get to the heart of the matter from the moment I got into the ring.

  “No, brother,” he said with his distinct New York accent. “You don’t say the things you said to me and not mean it. In my world, in the boxing world, when you say that shit, it’s because you’re looking for a fight.”

  Wow. That explained why he’d never replied after I’d sent the text through Flair. He was legitimately pissed with me.

  “No, it’s not like that, man. I was trying to get people interested in seeing us wrestle each other. I was just playing a character. Same thing you do when you do a movie.”

  Here I was explaining acting and the inner workings of pro wrestling to a man who had just won a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his portrayal of a pro wrestler. After a few more minutes, I was finally able to convince him that I’d had been playing a role on the King show. His face softened as he realized I was telling the truth.

  “So you’re telling me that even though I’m the one who got nominated for an Oscar, you outacted me?!” He burst out with a you son of a bitch laugh and gave me a bear hug for real this time. All the tension floated away and the entire vibe in the ring changed. He went on saying how he was so mad after the show that he’d called his agents and demanded them to allow him to fight me. They of course said no, so he had planned another form of revenge.

  He pointed to the bruisers standing beside him and said, “I flew these guys into Houston on my own dime to make sure everything went smoothly. If you tried anything funny, I told them to kick the shit out of you.”

  I was flattered but told him that maybe he had overestimated me a little.

  “Mickey, to be honest, you didn’t need to bring three guys. I’m sure just one of them would’ve sufficed.”

  All of us laughed except the guy wearing army fatigues, an Israeli bounty hunter who didn’t find any of this funny and continued to stare me down for the rest of the night.

  Vince made his way down to the ring, unaware of the confrontation Rourke and I had narrowly avoided and went through his ideas for the match. As a wrestler, I would listen to what Vince wanted, think about the logistics of it, run through it once or twice, and move along. But as an actor, Mickey was much more concerned with camera angles and minor movements. He wanted to rehearse his punch over and over again, discussing his motivation, his positioning, everything. There would be no improv for this guy.

  Then we discussed how he was going to hit me. I told him not worry about pulling the punch and just swing like he would in a boxing match. He shook his head and warned me, “I don’t know about that. I’m Golden Gloves, brother. If I hit you with this right hand, you’re going to feel it.” I convinced him that it was OK and told him he could hit me as hard as he wanted as long as it looked good. After being walloped in the forehead for real by the seven-foot-tall Big Show, I thought I could take a punch from a 160-pound actor. After about a half hour of going over the punch spot a dozen times, Mickey was happy and he left ringside with his posse in tow.

  I went over to Vince and told him what had almost happened.

  “You know, Rourke hired those guys to kick my ass if I tried to double-cross him.”

  Vince stared down the rampway at Rourke’s gang. “Are you kidding me? Those guys?!” He laughed. He motioned at Dean Malenko and Fit Finlay, who were talking at ringside. “You, me, Finlay, and Malenko would’ve beat the shit out of them. I mean look at that one guy. . . . He’s a midget!”

  The “midget” Vince was referring to was Shamrock, the multiple-time UFC champion. I smiled at Vince and said, “Well, if anything goes down, I’ll take Rourke and you take the midget.”

  “Damn right I will,” he murmured and swaggered out of the ring.

  —

  The next day when I showed up at the stadium, Mickey called me into his dressing room still raving over my performance on Larry King. He told me I had what it took to make it as an actor and gave me a list of method books he wanted me to read. It was pretty froot to get that kind of feedback from an Oscar-nominated thespian (even if the hint of BO remained), but the adulation didn’t end there. He told me over and over that we should do a movie together, said I could stay at his house whenever I was in Hollywood, sent me a giant autographed poster of The Wrestler, invited me to visit him on the set of Iron Man 2, and asked me to call him before my next audition so he could help me run through my lines.

  The footage of him “knocking me out” after the match (even though his feared right hand barely grazed the back of my head) made it onto all the Hollywood gossip shows, but I didn’t quite get the mainstream exposure I’d expected; the majority of the media never even mentioned me by name. It was always the host saying something as simple as “Mickey Rourke gets the knockout punch at WrestleMania!” while the footage ran of him KO’ing some unnamed fall guy. (But I’m Chris Jericho!) In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what my name is (The Rock TM), because the angle was a success and that was all I cared about.

  Plus, I made a friend out of the deal as Mickey and I exchanged numbers and kept in touch for months afterward, until we eventually lost contact.

  So, Mickey, if you’re reading this, gimme a call and we’ll do lunch, babe.

  —

  While the angle had been built up great, the match itself went even better than I could’ve expected. It started off fairly slow since Snuka couldn’t move much and Piper did the best he could. I beat them both quickly, but business was about to pick up (Jim Ross TM) when Steamboat got in the ring. Our styles meshed together perfectly and he was the big surprise of the show, even though it wasn’t much of a shock to see him steal it away from the rest of us. He was one of the absolute best performers in the history of the business, and it was a blast to work with him, both on a professional and a personal level. Steamboat was the second of my three major pro wrestling heroes that I got to work with (the first being HBK and the third being Owen Hart, who passed away before I had the chance to grapple with him), and it was a childhood dream come true to be in the ring with him at WrestleMania.

  It wasn’t like Ricky’s performance was good just for “an old-timer.” He exceeded everyone’s expectations with his fluid, acrobatic style and it seemed like he hadn’t lost a step in the ten years since he’d last wrestled. The crowd was going wild for him, erupting into a gigantic 70,000-strong chant of “You Still Got It!” as he nailed all of his signature moves: the double chop, the high armdrags, and, of course, the majestic crossbody from the top rope, which provided the biggest false finish of the match. But it wasn’t enough to beat me, so the fans groaned in disappointment when I kicked out at 2.9 and hit him with a quick Codebreaker for my third win of the night.

  Even though Ricky lost, the crowd was buzzing over his performance, and Vince was so impressed that he booked him as a wrestler/coach for months afterward to work with the young guys at live events.

  We wrestled each other another half dozen times, including single matches at the next PPV and in Tokyo, Honolulu, and Greenville, South Carolina, which is where we had the best match of them all.

  I was scheduled to win, but South Carolina was one of Ricky’s old NWA stomping crowds and the crowd was going bonkers when he came to the ring. (This was also the night the guy charged the ring from twenty rows out.) Eventually, Ricky hit me with the high crossbody and the fans were certain he was going to beat me, but just like at Mania, I kicked out in the nick of time and hit him with the Codebreaker for the planned finish. But as I covered him, I told him, “Kick out, you got it? No matter what, KICK OUT.” Then I whispered sternly to referee (and fellow Stryper/Evil Dead fan) Charles Robinson, “Ricky is going to kick out. Do NOT count to three!”

  Ricky waited until the last microsecond and kicked out of my pin. Charles motioned that I had only scored a two-count, and I went berserk. I had the crowd freaking out and right wh
ere I wanted them, so I kicked the rope and got in Charles’s face as I came up with the new finish in my head. I wanted to pick Steamboat up for a body slam and have him roll me up for the pin, the exact finish of his famous WrestleMania 3 match vs. Randy Savage, which is one of my all-time favorites.

  But my mind had gone completely blank and I couldn’t remember the term roll up. I was flipping through my mental moves Rolodex, but the harder I thought, the less I remembered. The crowd was exactly where I wanted them and I didn’t have much time to waste, so I grabbed Steamboat by the hair and said under my breath, “WrestleMania 3 finish.” Of course The Dragon knew exactly what I meant and rolled me up tightly.

  Charles counted to three and the crowd erupted, ecstatic that their hero had vanquished the evil Jericho in their hometown. When I got to the back, Arn Anderson (who was running the show) was laughing.

  “Dammit, Jericho, you dumb motherfucker!” he said, clapping me on the back. “Even when we want to give you a win, you still won’t take it! I wish you were around when I was working . . . I coulda got a victory too!”

  I joined in with Arn’s laughter because he was right. But it was all worth it when Ricky came back through the curtain and shook my hand.

  “Chris, I just want to tell you that it’s a joy to work with you and it’s so damn easy. Thank you for helping me get back in the groove. I’ll wrestle you anytime.” He gave me a hug and walked away.

  I stood there in that hallway with an ear-to-ear grin for a long time. Having one of my childhood heroes thank me for helping him get back in the groove and telling me I was a joy to work with?

  Yeah, I’d have to say that even though I lost the match, I still won pretty damn big that night.

  Santino Gump

  I was happy with my performance at Mania and proud that all of our hard work had culminated in an entertaining twenty minutes that the fans enjoyed. Now it was time to relax . . . for twenty-four hours. You see, we always say that WrestleMania is the Super Bowl of the WWE, and it is. But the big difference between our crown jewel and the NFL’s is that when the Super Bowl is finished, their players get to take some time to relax and go to Disneyland or whatever. But when WrestleMania is finished, we all get to go back to work the next day.