The Best in the World

by Chris Jericho

  When I asked him about it, he totally thought we could pull it off (pun intended) and had the perfect prop for the job. He showed me an open-backed mask he had in his bag with crisscrossing straps that would be ideal for me to hook my fingers into. The day of the PPV, we got in the ring to try it out and I draped myself over the second rope as Oscar bounced off the ropes behind me to go for the 619. Just as he swung his legs around, I hooked my fingers in the open area at the back of his mask and pulled it off with perfect timing, moving out of the way of his rotation at the same time. He landed in front of me unmasked and we laughed at how easy it was. We had our finish. Now, as always, we just had to get Vince to approve it.

  Ricky Steamboat was the agent for our match, but when I told him what we wanted to do, I could sense that he either didn’t like the idea or didn’t understand it. He went to run it past Vince, but in my mind this was the finish and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I had learned years earlier that if I had any chance of getting the boss to approve an idea, I needed to pitch it to him myself. If he heard the passion and belief in my voice, he’d be more apt to trust my instincts and let us do it. But I didn’t want to disrespect Steamer and disrupt the chain of command, so I thought I’d see what Rick would come back with first.

  Sure enough, he returned and told us Vince had shot down the idea, saying we couldn’t do it. I couldn’t believe the boss didn’t like our genius finish and asked Ricky exactly what he’d said. He explained that Vince was concise in saying we couldn’t do it and to think of something else. There was nothing else, so I told Dragon I was going to go ask Vince myself.

  I marched into his office . . . again . . . and asked him why he didn’t like our finish. He said bluntly, “Because you can’t do it.”

  I wanted him to be more specific.

  “You mean we can’t do it because you don’t want us to do it, or because you don’t think it’s physically possible?”

  “I don’t see how it’s physically possible.”

  Aha! I knew it was physically possible because we’d just done it. I asked him to come with me to the ring immediately, before he got wrapped up with something else. He hemmed and hawed, mumbling how “this better be good,” or some other similar grumpy-old-man sentiment, before reluctantly following me into the arena. I grabbed Oscar and we got into the ring so I could I drape myself into position. He ran across the ring and swung his knees around toward my face. I waited until the exact right moment, slid my fingers into the webbing of the back of his mask, and slipped the damn thing right off his head.

  Vince had a look of true bewilderment like he’d just seen me make an elephant disappear.

  “Do that again,” he demanded, as if we’d used some sort of Criss Angel sleight of hand to hoax him.

  We performed the magic trick flawlessly a second time and Vince nodded his head approvingly with a big smile on his face. “Amazing; it’s a home run! There’s your finish, guys.”

  The mysterio of our finish solved, we went on to put together the rest of the match—and what a match it was. Working with Oscar reminded me of working with Ultimo Dragon or The Rock in that we didn’t have to go over much because we had so many spectacular moves we could do together almost intuitively.

  He set me up for a 619, but I shot up quickly from the second rope, met him in the middle, swung him onto my shoulders, and gave him a spinning fireman’s carry into a backbreaker. Then I sat him up on the top rope with his face to the crowd and tried to pull his mask off. He elbowed me off to the mat and followed up with a super Thesz press that knocked me off my feet. Then he came off the ropes with a flying body press, a kick to the head, and a frankensteiner, but I nailed him with a HUGE clothesline and grabbed a chair. I brought it into the ring, but before I could use it, he kicked it in my face, drop toeholded me onto it, and set it up as a platform to jump off. I caught him midair, just as he went to give me another frankensteiner, and turned him quickly into the Walls of Jericho. The crowd pleaded with him to escape as he reached desperately for the chair that was still set up behind my back. He finally grabbed it, squirming over onto his back, with me still holding his legs, and whacked me in the head with it. It was a killer spot and the crowd roared as I fell over onto the second rope, putting me into position for the dreaded 619. It was time for the finish and the fans were going loco as he hit the ropes and ran toward me at full speed, convinced he was going to nail me for the victory.

  It was time for the moment of truth. Even though we’d done the unmasking twice in a row in rehearsal, I was nervous. If I messed up, Vince would be pissed and Steamboat would get chewed out royally. Another of the boss’s favorite sayings was “Shit rolls downhill,” and whenever something went wrong in a match, it was rarely the wrestlers who got yelled at; it was the agent (or producer) of the segment. But it was too late to second-guess myself and when Rey swung through, I burrowed my fingers into the straps and robbed him of his mask for the third straight time.

  Oscar swung to his feet and covered his face with his hands as I rolled him up and scored the victory, still holding his flaccid mask. I was the Intercontinental Champion for the record-breaking ninth time, after one of the most surprising finishes ever. If any of you fearless readers claim to have called that ending before it happened, I will respectfully tell you that you’re full of frijoles.

  The next night, Rey demanded a rematch, which of course I refused, leading to his offering to put up his mask in exchange for one more chance at the title. But if I beat him again, he would be forced to unmask forever.

  At the next month’s PPV, the two of us put on another clinic of one-of-a-kind reversals and false finishes. When I tried for the spinning fireman’s carry, this time he DDT’d me out of it. He tried for the 619, but I caught his legs as he swung through and twisted him over into the Walls of Jericho. He escaped and finally connected with the 619, then springboarded onto my shoulders and swung down for one of his patented frankensteiners. But when he swung between my legs, I switched my grip and suddenly had him locked in the Walls a second time. He squirmed his way out of the hold, so I muscled him into the air, but he slid down my back and pulled me into a sunset flip. I rolled through onto my feet, grabbing his mask as I went and pulling it off yet again. I held it in the air like a trophy, unleashing a triumphant war cry, but unbeknownst to me, Oscar had been wearing a SECOND mask the whole time. It was a classic lucha libre trick that we’d done many times before in Mexico against different opponents, but never in the WWE. I turned around and, to my surprise, he dropkicked me to the second rope. One 619 and West Coast pop later, he had regained the Intercontinental Championship belt and I had another Feud Of The Year under mine.

  Gracias, WeeWeeto!

  —

  Our program lasted three consecutive PPVs, with a couple more contests on SmackDown, all of which were very good to excellent. One of our TV matches had a beat-the-clock scenario, where if Rey could beat me within a 7-minute 19-second time limit, he would advance in a title tournament. We were told to come as close to that time as possible but not to push our luck and cut it too close. So when Mysterio, referee Scotty Armstrong, and I went over the finish, I told Scotty, “Don’t tell anybody about this, but we’re going to beat the clock by one second.”

  Scotty was a little nervous, but the three of us had been around a long time and trusted each other wholly, so he agreed with a smile. Rey and I had another sensational match, but time was running out and our producer, Malenko, was screaming at us via Scotty’s earpiece “GO HOME!” The clock was ticking; 7 minutes 10 seconds, 7 minutes 11 seconds. Rey rolled me up at 7 minutes 13 seconds, and Scotty started his count and reached three as the clock hit 7 minutes 18 seconds . . . leaving us with one second remaining on the clock.

  When we got through the curtain, Dean was shaking his head in disbelief, claiming that we’d almost given him a coronary.

  “You motherfuckers, I can’t believe you c
razy bastards did that! Now don’t ever do it again!” he said with a shaky laugh.

  But I have to say I would be honored to do it again with Rey Mysterio anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

  Hosts with the Most . . . or Least

  The Mysterio feud was another big success for me both personally and critically. For the second year in a row I was voted Wrestler of the Year by the Wrestling Observer newsletter, a feat accomplished by only a handful of other performers in history, including Ric Flair and Kenta Kobashi. I’d also been named the Superstar of the Year at the 2008 WWE Slammy Awards, an accolade I mentioned on Raw, like, 365 times over the course of the next 365 days.

  Vince gave me the Slammy because he could count on me in any situation and knew, no matter who he put me in the ring with, wrestlers or non-wrestlers, I could make them look good.

  He wanted to increase the mainstream celebrity involvement within the WWE, so he came up with the idea of having a guest “host” on Raw every week. Much like Saturday Night Live, somebody from the outside world, whether it be an actor, musician, politician, or assorted other public figures, would appear every Monday night and act as the de facto general manager for the night. They’d make the matches, be involved in backstage bits, and sometimes even wrestle.

  Some of these stars were superfans who felt that working with the WWE was a massive honor and went the extra mile to make things great. Others could give two shits about the company and were there just to be on TV. Those latter types would put in minimal effort, and their segments would usually bomb, making for a bad show. At first the die-hard WWE audience mostly booed these hosts with the most . . . or least . . . for they weren’t kind to outsiders coming into our world. To remedy this, Vince put ME in with them almost every week to ensure I was the one who got booed, not the hosts, and to give their segments a fighting chance to be good. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I failed.

  There was only so much I could do if the host was uninterested (Bradley Cooper), uninformed (Jeremy Piven, referring to SummerSlam as SummerFest), or unexciting (Jewel and Ty Murray), but when people ask me who the worst hosts in Raw history were, five names come to mind.

  DENNIS MILLER (Honorable Mention): I consider Dennis to be one of the worst hosts, more on how he was received by the audience rather than anything to do with his actual performance. I thought he did a decent job hosting the 2009 Slammy Awards, but in typical Miller fashion, most of his cerebral, sophisticated material flew right over the heads of the live crowd in Corpus Christi and caused him to suck worse than Edward Cullen. He dug himself a massive hole when he called HHH The Show instead of The Game (to which Hunter replied, “Thanks, Dennis Milburn”) and then admitted that if he had known all along that all he had to do to get a reaction from the fans was say “Suck it,” things might’ve gone better.

  Before the show, I saw Vince and Dennis talking at length, and later on, Miller was wandering around the arena, hair tousled and eyes tired, so I asked him how he was doing.

  “I’m doing great,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I spent all day getting comedy advice from Vince McMahon. My life is complete.”

  Classic Vince. He would’ve told Wayne Gretzky how to score a goal.

  JON LOVITZ: After apparently turning down Kiss because they weren’t “relevant,” the WWE invited Lovitz to host. He hadn’t done anything relevant since The Wedding Singer back in ’98. His backstage bits were awkward and weird because Jon’s personality is awkward and weird. I warned John Morrison that I’d met Lovitz before, backstage at a Fozzy concert (another wacky story found in my botany book, Undisputed, available at a fine florist near you), and he had spent twenty minutes asking me what the ring ropes were made of. Morrison was convinced Jon couldn’t be that bad, but when I saw him a few hours later, he ran over and admitted, “He IS that bad! He cornered me for thirty minutes asking me what ring ropes are made of!” (It’s rope, BTW.)

  KYLE BUSCH & JOEY LAGANO: For some reason, these two NASCAR drivers were invited to host even though they had the personality of windshield wipers. They seemed to know nothing about the product and had even less interest in learning. When Lagano referred to Double H during a backstage rehearsal, I corrected him that it was Triple H.

  “Whatever” was his flippant reply.

  Their performance in front of the live crowd was even more whatever. I had no idea who these two clowns were and neither did eighty percent of the people in Buffalo, which wasn’t exactly NASCAR country. They delivered their lines like furniture salesmen from a local TV commercial (Come. To. Fast. Eddie’s. Furniture. And. Get. A. Great. Deal.) and their horribly timed insults fell flatter than Nicko McBrain’s nose. Also, like Ricky Bobby, they weren’t quite sure what to do with their hands and fidgeted constantly, like a pair of seven-year-olds in church. I did everything I could to make the segment good, but dammit, Jim, I’m an entertainer, not a miracle worker!

  AND THE “WORST GUEST HOST IN RAW HISTORY” AWARD GOES TO . . . AL SHARPTON!: Vince is a huge fan of Martin Luther King Jr, which is why you’ll always see an inspirational video package about the good doctor before Raw on every MLK day. Sharpton was a young protégé of King, and Vince was ecstatic to have him host the show. But it wasn’t without a price.

  Sharpton demanded to be flown in on the WWE’s private jet, showed up ninety minutes before showtime, and left fifteen minutes after Raw started. His role consisted of kicking off the show in-ring and two backstage pretapes, both of which he did in one take with as little effort as possible. As for the opening promo, he pulled a Brando, not bothering to read the script beforehand or have any idea the points he was supposed to get across.

  Once again, I drew the shortest straw (witch hunt riding through) and was designated the “general” of the segment, making sure everything went smoothly and that Al hit his cues. Vince handed me a script he’d personally written, full of lines complimenting Sharpton for his bravery and applauding his civil rights accomplishments, all underlined with a black Sharpie. Now, keep in mind I was the most hated heel in the company, who hadn’t said anything nice about anybody in over a year, but now I was supposed to kowtow to Al Sharpton and claim he was frooter than Arthur Fonzarelli himself? It didn’t make any sense to me, and I told Vince so.

  “Chris, this is your promo and you will not change a thing. Do you understand?” he said, staring at me intensely. I understood and went off to learn my verbiage exactly as it was written.

  What followed was one of the most boring segments I’ve ever been involved in. I said some stuff, Sharpton said some stuff, and the crowd in Albany, New York, said nothing. I don’t remember anything else other than it was the shits of the drizzling variety. Usually when I’m writing a book, if I can’t recall the exact details of the story I’m telling, I’ll look it up online and check it out. But I’m not gonna do that now because it’s not necessary. I sucked, Sharpton sucked, and the less said about this steaming pile of horseshit, the better. So let us never speak of it again, ya dig?

  —

  Fortunately, plenty of the guest hosts were excellent, going above and beyond what was expected in energy (Hugh Jackman), creativity (Seth Green), and comedy (William Shatner, who sang various entrance themes in his deadpan, hamazing style. “He’s just . . . a . . . sexy . . . boy.” Please Google this now; it’s hilarious.)

  But when people ask me who the best hosts in Raw history were, four names come to mind.

  SHAQUILLE O’NEAL: Judging from Shaq’s backstage demeanor, I wasn’t expecting much out of him at all. He nonchalantly sat in his private dressing room, surrounded by his entourage, and played with his phone the whole time we were going over the plan for that night in Washington, DC. Big Show and I were the unified tag-team champions and I was taking every opportunity possible to hide behind my giant partner. Shaq was going to kick off the show, but halfway through his opening speech, I was going to come out and antagonize him. He seemed OK with
it but totally uninterested and practically blew us off, but when showtime arrived, Shaq delivered a three-pointer (#basketballanalogyfail).

  A few minutes into his opening promo, I marched to the ring and stared at him face-to-face . . . face to chin . . . face to collarbone. Actually, it was more like face to nipple, as Shaq was a good foot taller than me. But I’m Chris Jericho, and I didn’t care.

  I stared him down for a good forty-five seconds before telling him forcefully, “When I heard the most dominant player in NBA history was guest hosting Raw, I automatically assumed it was Kobe Bryant.” Now, I don’t know much about basketball, but even I knew that one was a zinger, as did the crowd, who “oohed” in astonishment at my audacity. I continued on, “Everyone knows the most powerful duo in sports isn’t Shaq and LeBron James, its Chris Jericho and the Big Show.”

  Shaq interrupted me authoritatively and said, “Hold on . . . CHRISTINA.”

  I had no idea the big man was going to say that, and I could barely keep a straight face as the fans erupted accordingly to the insult. Then at the apex of their cheers, Shaq leaned down and planted a big wet kiss on my forehead.

  I also had no idea he was going to kiss me. But he did it with such perfect comedic timing that it brought the house down. Every fan in that arena, no matter how fickle they usually were with the celebrity guests, became a Shaq fan at that moment. Then he cut off his own gigantic pop by asking me quickly what I was doing out there. His kiss ad lib was too good a moment to waste, so I didn’t immediately respond and just kept looking at him with the most over-the-top astonished expression. I slowly lifted my hand to my forehead and wiped his spittle away, milking it for all it was worth. As I expected, the crowd came back, buzzing like Aldrin at the ridiculousness they’d just witnessed. Then I corrected Shaq, slowly and deliberately. “It’s Chris . . . NOT Christina.”

  Of course the crowd took the bait and chanted, “CHRISTINA, CHRISTINA,” like a pack of horny teenagers at a taping of The Voice. I laid into Shaq about how I was the “best in the world at what I do” (at what I have no idea) and was sick of being disrespected by everybody in the WWE, especially the guest hosts. Shaq pushed me around a little until the Big Show finally came out to save me. Show and Shaq had a tension-filled staredown, and even though nothing ever came of it (I think at one point they were supposed to have a match at Mania), it still ended up being a historic WWE moment.