Suddenly, a pillar of fire shot up directly in front of him and he dropped character immediately and dodged to his left like a bug in a zapper . . . straight into the path of another flame. The second column engulfed him briefly and he hopped forward, right into yet another burst. This time his long leather trench coat caught on fire and he batted it out quickly, as he took off into a dead sprint.
When he finally got to the Chamber, it was obvious he’d gone from Deadman to Burning Man. The skin on his chest was a bright pink and his coat had melted, the ends shriveling up like a burnt black plastic Solo cup, and was still smoking as he peeled it off. Doc Amann hurried over to see how badly he’d been burned, but after a few minutes of conversation, Taker convinced him he could still do the match.
As any of you who have burned even the end of your fingertip can attest, it hurts like hell. Now imagine how much pain Taker was in with his entire upper body turning as red as a little Corvette, his skin stretched taut and shiny like it was going to split wide-open. He was the last man scheduled to enter the Chamber, so he had to wait in his pod for twenty minutes with nothing to do but pour bottles of water over his head and think about how much agony he was in.
We went through the match until finally it was his turn to enter the ring. I’d been watching him the entire time pacing the tiny pod like a caged beast waiting to be set free. Finally his door opened and we fed his comeback, but I could tell he was hurting big-time and I was concerned about even touching him. At one point I bumped him down, and when I went for the cover, I noticed the exposed skin on his chest had now blistered and was bubbling up in the more severe areas.
“Are you OK, man? Do we need to change anything?” I whispered pointedly in his ear.
“No, kid, let’s stay with what we’ve got.”
I could feel the heat radiating off his body and could smell his burnt hair. This dude was a tough motherfucker.
We continued on for another few minutes, until I eventually put him in the Walls of Jericho. The fans were going crazy in support of their hero, but all I could think of was how bad it must hurt Take to have his burnt flesh pressed down onto the canvas. Finally he made it to the ropes, then chokeslammed me and signaled for his Last Ride powerbomb finisher. At this point HBK came out from under the ring and superkicked him in the face. I warily covered him, knowing that Michaels would have no problem kicking me in the face as well. But he didn’t, and I got the three-count to become the World Champion for the sixth time.
I rushed to the back in a hail of boos and headed straight to the trainer’s room, where Taker and Vince were already sitting solemnly in silence, although I could tell they were in the middle of a deep conversation.
Finally, Undertaker spoke up calmly, “I don’t want him to apologize, Vince. I don’t want any excuses. I just never want to see him again. Because if I do, I’ll kill him.”
I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was completely serious and Vince felt the same way, because that was the last time we ever saw the Pyro Guy. He was fired (pun intended) on the spot and escorted out of the building immediately.
I never found out why the pyro had been set off three times in a row directly in front of The Undertaker, but it was definitely a major fuckup and he was lucky to still be alive. But he paid a steep price with second-degree burns all over his upper body and spent a few days in the St. Louis burn unit and a few more months off the road to heal. He later told me that the only things that saved him from serious permanent injuries, or even death, were:
1) the big-brimmed hat he wore to the ring, which covered his hair and half his face;
2) the fact that he’d wet his hair before he went through the curtain;
3) the long leather overcoat.
Seeing that coat up close, I realized how much it had shielded him from the flames. It was in tatters and looked like it had shrunk three sizes. The leather was bubbled up and split from the lining in places, as if it had been put in an industrial paper shredder.
I called him later and told him he was so tough he should’ve been born in Winnipeg instead of Texas, and he laughed . . . painfully.
I already had nothing but respect for Mark Calaway, but my esteem for the man went to a whole new level that day. He’d almost been burned alive and still put me over for the world title. We also had a killer match due to our excellent chemistry, something we found out months earlier during our first singles match.
It had been in Sheffield, England, the day after my thirty-ninth birthday and I’d tied one on badly the night before, spending most of the day on a couch in a dark room in the bowels of the arena. I set my iPhone alarm to not sleep through the show and felt like I was going to puke at any moment.
A few hours later, Taker and I tore the house down in a match I consider to be one of the best of my career, and I even included it on my first WWE DVD. The fact that it took us over a decade to get a singles match together was like working in a coal mine for years and finding a rare diamond that you’d always heard about but never seen. He was so easy and fluid to work with—and knew exactly what his character was—that it was the proverbial night off to be in the ring with him.
It was fun to reverse out of each other’s trademark moves, like me spin kicking him in the face as he hit the ropes to deliver his patented corner clothesline or reversing his Hell’s Gate (The Gogoplata, which morphed into the PooPoo Platter) submission into the Walls, which he then reversed into the PooPoo Platter and got the win when I tapped out. When I came back into Gorilla, Taker was sitting in a chair with a towel around his neck and a big goofy grin on his face.
“That was awesome, man! Really fuckin’ great. Vince knows he has something with us.”
I was ecstatic that he’d enjoyed it so much and even more so when he gave me the biggest compliment possible.
“I would work with you anytime, Chris.”
That was all I needed to hear from one of the greatest performers of all time, even though we never wrestled with each other again.
Superior DNA
After beating Taker for the world title, it was time to focus on the much-awaited Jericho vs. Edge match we’d been planning for years. We didn’t have much of an angle at the start except the built-in story of the two former tag champions at war, but Vince fixed that quickly by adding a different dimension.
He called me into his office to discuss a promo I’d written about Edge, our successes and triumphs and Edge’s biggest failure, the injury that destroyed what could have been the greatest tag team of all time. I could tell by the look of repulsion and disbelief on Vince’s face that he wasn’t buying it.
“Come on, Chris, you can do better than this. This is generic bullshit! I want something with some meat on it. I want you to talk about DNA!”
Uhhhh, OK? I wasn’t sure what he meant by DNA. Did he want a definition? A biology lesson?
“I want you to talk about Edge and his faulty DNA. How he always gets hurt because of his weak DNA and you never get hurt because of your superior DNA!”
Vince is a big believer in the law of the jungle and how only the strong survive. He often made the analogy that even the mightiest of lions when injured would be hunted and killed by the rest of the pack, so I went back to the drawing board to try and give him what he wanted.
I looked up the definition of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and built it from there. I wrote a pretty unique promo about how DNA was the building blocks of a man’s constitution and, much like height, looks, or intelligence, you were either blessed with good DNA or you weren’t. Edge had been cursed and was injury-prone, while I never had to take one day off for an injury throughout my entire WWE career due to my superior DNA. I finished the promo with one of my all-time favorite lines.
“I don’t know what it’s like to make a triumphant return, Edge, because I’ve never been injured. I’m too busy winning titles.”
Awwww
w, snap! I love that quote because it was the perfect summary of our entire angle and, once again, Vince’s seemingly ridiculous idea ended up being a great way to promote our match.
—
WrestleMania was going to be held on March 28, 2010, in the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, with a quadruple main event of Vince vs. Bret Hart, Cena vs. Batista, Michaels vs. Undertaker II, and Jericho vs. Edge. It was slated to be one of the biggest Manias ever and a few weeks before the show, I was asked to fly on Vince’s private jet from Raw in Nashville to Phoenix for a press conference.
It was about a four-hour flight and Vince, Cena, Kofi Kingston, Laurinaitis, and I passed the time by playing cards, listening to AC/DC and The Rolling Stones (of course) and drinking straight Jack Daniel’s. After the confrontation with HBK in France, I no longer drank brown alcohol, as Jack and Jericho still didn’t get along. But I was hanging with the boss and there wasn’t anything else on the plane, so I indulged. Bad idea because after four hours of being on the same aircraft, Jack kicked Jericho’s ass. I was completely shitfaced (all of us were) when the plane landed, and I was in a nasty mood. Drunkicho was back and he was pissed . . . literally.
The plane pulled up on the tarmac and we stayed aboard for a few extra minutes to finish up our drinks. Kofi got up to leave, and Vince made some sort of a jokey comment along the lines of “Maybe you’ll get over one of these days.” I thought it was an unfair remark and caught up to Kofi on the runway.
“You have to go back on the plane and challenge him to a fight right now. If you don’t, he’ll know he can walk all over you whenever he wants. If you go challenge him, he’ll love it and respect you for it.”
I wasn’t ribbing Kofi. I legitimately meant what I said and wanted to see him stand up for himself. To his credit, he only thought about it for a few seconds before marching back up the steps of the jet. I followed closely behind.
“How’s your dad?” Vince asked me as I got to the top of the stairs. “Tell him to give me a call! I really like that guy and would love to chat with him again!” They’d met once.
Kofi piped up and said with some big-boy bass in his voice, “Vince, do you have a problem with me?”
Vince looked him in surprise as Kofi repeated the question.
“Maybe I do,” Vince replied. “Do you wanna do something about it?”
Kofi swallowed hard, knowing he’d gone too far to turn back now. “Do you want me to do something about it?”
“Do you want to do something about it?” Vince repeated as he looked seriously into Kofi’s eyes from his chair.
“Do YOU want me to do something about it?”
“Do YOU want to do something—” Vince double-legged Kofi mid-sentence. They scuffled and rolled around in the aisle for a few seconds, until Vince got up laughing.
“That’s the way to do it!” he belly laughed and got off the plane.
Kofi looked at me for justification and I gave him a big thumbs-up. I’m not sure if he gained Vince’s respect that night, but he sure gained mine.
We got taken to a beautiful hotel in Glendale. When I checked into my room, it was almost five A.M. We had to be downstairs in the lobby by eight thirty A.M., so there wasn’t much time to sleep. However, I had no intention of going to bed because I was staring at a lamp on the desk and it was bugging me.
The lamp stared back at me pompously and I decided I didn’t like its attitude.
I karate-chopped it to the floor along with its goofy twin brother and smiled as they broke into pieces. Then I glanced at the large painting of a mixed bouquet hanging on the wall beside the bed and decided I didn’t like the way it was mean-mugging me either. I grabbed it underneath its frame and ripped it off the wall, losing my grip in the process. It smashed onto the floor, and shards of glass splintered across the entire room. Satisfied with my handiwork, I lay down and promptly passed out. I woke up a few hours later, wondering when an evil invader had trashed my room.
The place was a mess, with broken glass and garbage all over the floor, bath towels flung askew amidst the twisted remains of the dearly departed Lamp Twins. I only had a few minutes to get ready for the press conference and even though my head was pounding and I felt bad about breaking the promise I’d made to myself after the HBK situation, I had to clean up my room first. I tried in vain to MacGruber the lamps back together, cleaned the glass up off the floor, and piled the big shards on top of the flat picture frame. I picked it up like a giant junkyard pizza and slowly walked to the door, figuring if I hid the picture in the staircase, nobody would notice it was missing (the giant rectangular outline on the wall wouldn’t make it too obvious). I nudged the door open with my foot and barged into the hallway, running right into a maintenance man, who asked what happened.
“Uhhh . . . the uhhh . . . picture must’ve been put up on the wall wrong, ’cause it fell off in the middle of the night. Scared the shit out of me too!”
The guy took the painting out of my hands, saying, “Don’t worry, Mr. Jericho, I’ll take care of it for you. Not a big deal.” He gave me a knowing wink and disappeared into the stairwell. The guy had a long braided beard and looked like a rocker, the type of guy I could see myself having a few cocktails with whilst we talked about metal. The type of guy that would have my back and help me get away with smashing a giant picture. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can always trust a bearded rocker and I knew we were gonna stick it to the man together in the name of rock ’n’ roll! I went back into my room, put on my suit, and got ready to razzle dazzle the fine people of Arizona.
A week later I was called into Johnny’s office and he was sitting in front of a stack of papers.
“What happened to your room in Phoenix?” he asked, and showed me photocopies of my trashed room. The lamps, the broken glass, the disengaged towel rack, and the smashed picture were all represented. That rat bastard bearded rocker had double-crossed me.
I admitted to Johnny that I’d drunk too much on the plane and took it out on my room. He said he understood and then presented me with a bill for seventeen hundred dollars, the cost of the damage I’d caused.
Destroying a hotel room was fun, but really expensive. Next time I’ll leave the room trashing to the Keith Moons of the world and stick with stealing a couple extra bars of soap.
—
Now that all the promotion was finished, WrestleMania 26 had arrived and it was time to make the donuts.
Edge and I were the seventh match on the show and I think it turned out pretty good, but not great. We put together an exciting match filled with a multitude of flashy reversals and counters, to take the fans on a real roller-coaster ride, and it worked to an extent. My problem with the match is the same one I have with a lot of my stadium matches: It’s hard to gauge the reactions of the audience when you’re in a venue of that size. The crowd noise tends to travel up and out of the open roof instead of hitting you full force in the center of the ring, so I couldn’t tell for sure if the spots were working.
But the finish, where I hit Edge with the title belt and followed up with a Codebreaker for the win, was damn good. I was a little surprised when Vince told me I was going over as I thought the idea was to build Edge into the face of SmackDown. That was still the overall plan, but Vince felt the fans would get behind him more if he had to chase the title longer. The match finish worked like a charm but paled in comparison to the real finish, where Edge got his revenge (and his WrestleMania moment) by spearing me off the announce table through the guardrail on the floor.
This was a Michael Hayes idea and it sounded better in theory than it did in reality. Hayes had a habit of suggesting highspots that sounded completely insane, things he never would’ve done during his “slammin’ and jammin’” Free Bird career. But if I could figure out a way to take the bump without cracking my head open, I was all for it. We met up the night before Mania to discu
ss the stunt with our prop guys. They decided the best way to do it would be to construct a breakaway guardrail wall with a three-inch rubber pad on the floor behind it to cushion my fall. The only thing I had to worry about was making it to that pad from the desk, which was easier said than done since I couldn’t see where I was landing.
After I pinned Edge, I dragged him over to the announce desk, but before I could finish him off (I’m not sure exactly what I was planning to do), he turned the tide and slammed me on the table. Then he hurried to the other side of the Spanish announce mesa, which was next to the one I was on, and led the jam-packed stadium in a “SPEAR” chant as I slowly got to my feet.
I stood up fully as he galloped across the first desk, leapt over to the second, and drove his shoulder into my stomach. We flew through the air and I put my hand behind my head at the last second to protect myself as we crashed through the guardrail.
Any reservations I had about the crowd not being into our match dissipated when we hit the barrier, because they lost their shit at that point. It was over before it even started and I didn’t feel a thing. As a matter of fact, my first thought when I landed was That was fun! I wanna do that again! Edge stood tall and unleashed a war cry as 65,000 fans joined him. I think I was one of them.
—
Two days later at SmackDown in Las Vegas, Vince called me into his office with Jack Swagger. Swagger was a hot new prospect who’d come up the amateur wrestling ranks and was enjoying his first big push in the WWE. In a dramatic turn of events, Vince had decided once again to not give Edge the title, but put it on Swagger instead. I’m not sure exactly why, but it didn’t matter because Vince had made up his mind. Since Swagger had won the Money in the Bank match at Mania, he was going to cash the briefcase in against me that night after Edge speared me.
Swagger was nervous as Vince told him the plan and asked him if he was ready for the challenge. Jack said all the right things and Vince nodded with approval, then wanted to know if I had anything else to add. I thought of my Japanese upbringing, the way respect was taught to me, and decided to give Swags a little tough love.
The Best in the World Page 26