The Best in the World

by Chris Jericho

  I told him I wasn’t interesting in “taping a film” and asked him to rethink his decision. A few hours later he called me again, and this time it was a different Vince on the line.

  “If you want something from me, then I’m going to want something from you,” he said in a gruff Clint Eastwood voice. “I’ll let you do the show, but I want you to commit to a new contract.”

  We’d been going back and forth over the last few months about what I felt were some low payoffs and I wanted some sort of restitution. I suggested stock options or a signing bonus for my next contract and he was hesitant because he’d never done anything like that before. I refused to negotiate a new deal or come back to the WWE until he made things financially right.

  I reminded him I still wanted updated compensation for the past year. To his credit, Vince promised to go back through my payoffs to see what he could do (a few weeks later, I got a hefty six-figure check in the mail), plus he gave me his blessing to do Downfall. In return I agreed to come back to the WWE for another run.

  Downfall only lasted six episodes and was panned by the critics, but they all agreed the one positive was my performance as host, and doing the show opened a lot of doors. It also opened another door between Vince and me, as I believe he respected the fact I didn’t back down from him, even though he didn’t agree with me at first. Conversely, I realized not keeping him in the loop and not telling him I was up for the job was the wrong thing to do. It was very disrespectful to him and I’m sorry for that. But the whole situation brought us closer as business associates and friends.

  —

  I’ve said many times that I believe Vince is a genius, and a perfect example is when he orchestrated the NXT invasion of Raw. He felt that since the NXT show had ended, the “rookies” would flounder without a specific role, so he decided to have all seven of them unite and annihilate John Cena on Raw. It was an incredible scene watching this pack of no-names become big stars in ten minutes by completely destroying Cena, the ring announcer, the timekeeper, and tearing apart and dismantling the ring for the first time ever on live TV. People had never seen anything like it before and the crowd in Miami was furious when Barrett stood center ring and announced that The Nexus were taking over the WWE.

  It was mass chaos as they swarmed the superstars like a school of piranhas, using their vulgar displays of power to leave them laying time after time. The WWE fell on black days as The Nexus knuckleheads marched through the company with their vicious onslaught.

  But who could stop them? Who could end their radical reign of terror? Chris Jericho, that’s who.

  To combat the evil invaders, Cena put together a group of freedom fighters that included R-Truth, Khali, John Morrison, and the returning Bret Hart. He approached Edge and me to help him even though we were bad guys, as Vince had pulled the plug on Edge’s babyface run a few months earlier and turned him back heel. Cena approached us multiple times to join his Team WWE and help him defend the honor of his beloved company, but we kept refusing. After all, why would the two most dastardly villians on the planet want to help John Cena?

  The stalemate came to a head on the last Raw before SummerSlam 2010 in Sacramento during a match between Cena and Bret Hart vs. Edge and me, with the Nexus members stationed ringside as lumberjacks. Eventually, they jumped in the ring to beat down the good guys as Edge and I powdered out to avoid the mugging. Truth and Morrison hit the ring to even the odds but were quickly overtaken by the numbers game. We continued watching Team Good Guy getting the shit kicked out of them as the crowd begged and pleaded for us to help. After teasing them by turning our backs, we eventually reconsidered and charged the ring, to a massive roar.

  The two factions lined up like the Greasers vs. the Socs, staring each other down, waiting for the other to make the first move. The crowd was losing their shit to the point that the hard camera filming the action was literally shaking. If you were watching Raw at home that night and saw the picture on your TV moving wildly back and forth, it’s because the Sacramento fans were stomping their feet so hard, it threw the tripod off balance.

  We decided that the Nexus guys would wait to take action until I gave the cue, as some of them were green and I didn’t want anybody jumping the gun. I stalled as long as I could, until the crowd reached their zenith, and then threw the sign. We charged at each other, converging in a sports entertainment wall of death, throwing hands and feet like ninjas until eventually the baddies bailed to fight another day. Team WWE stood tall in the aftermath, working the crowd like the white-meat babyfaces that we were.

  I have to admit it was fun to be on the other side of the fence for the first time in years, and having the crowd chant “Y2J” again. It was amazing how much goodwill I’d built up with the audience over the last decade, in that I could be the biggest piece of shit for so long and yet with one act of valor be instantly back in their good graces. I think that’s because you guys feel that no matter what, I always do my best to give you your money’s worth. And I do!

  The angle culminated at SummerSlam in Los Angeles with a seven-on-seven elimination match between Team WWE and Team Nexus. But I wasn’t sure if I’d even be able to participate because on the day of the show, I could barely walk. If I put pressure on my left foot in any way, it felt like I was getting stabbed in the bottom of my arches. I wondered if I had a fracture or a bone spur and texted Doc Amann to tell him I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to work the show. He told me it could be a bone spur or a torn tendon and he’d check it out when I got to the Staples Center.

  I have a reputation for never being hurt and for me to even consider not working the main event of the PPV, I knew something was seriously wrong. I was scared as I limped into Doc’s office in great pain, using my luggage as a crutch and gingerly climbing onto his table. I took off my shoes and socks and explained the agony I was in.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s a bone spur, Doc. Maybe a torn muscle. It’s the worst pain I’ve ever—”

  “OK,” Doc said. “I found the problem.”

  How could he diagnose the problem that quickly? Was it so serious that he was able to figure it out instantly? That was not a good sign! This was awful. I was going to need surgery and I was going to be out for . . .

  Doc held up the tiny splinter he’d removed from the bottom of my foot with a pair of tweezers in about two seconds.

  Never mind.

  My mortal injury healed, I went into Vince’s office, where the guys were putting together the match and where a returning Daniel Bryan had been hidden. He’d been fired after the initial Nexus invasion for choking ring announcer Justin Roberts (nice white teeth) with his own tie but had been forgiven and rehired and was now the secret seventh member of Team WWE.

  The match was going to come down to Justin Gabriel and Barrett vs. a solitary Cena. John was insistent that Barrett pull back the mats and give him a DDT on the concrete floor as a false finish. After kicking out, he was going to pin Gabriel, then make Barrett tap out with his STF submission. Edge and I disagreed with John’s logic and thought the DDT on the cement floor was unnecessary, especially since he was going to be winning by submission a short time later which we also disagreed with. (The Nexus was white-hot at the time and we thought it was way better to have Barrett win, but Vince wanted Cena going over and that was that.) But at the very least we knew it would be better to save the cement floor DDT for another day and have John barely squeak out the victory after being beaten down the whole match. John disagreed and felt the DDT was the way to go. So we reluctantly agreed to do his finish.

  The angle had been built up so well that the crowd was primed and into it from the start. Each elimination was met with the desired reaction, including mine, where I was pinned by Heath Slater for the second time (this time at my request), who then went on to pin Edge shortly after. To remind people that we weren’t officially good guys, Edge and I then attacked Cena and put the boots to
him after our ousting.

  Soon after, Barrett threw John to the floor, removed the padding, and DDT’d him on the concrete. The fans ooohhhed accordingly, then popped when he kicked out, but not as big as they should have. It was almost as if they knew that kicking out after being dropped on your head on cement wasn’t believable. They had been taken out of the fantasy world we’d created, the same way they would’ve if they’d seen a boom mic in the middle of the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings. John eventually won the match, but the reaction wasn’t as good as it could’ve been after all the time we’d spent developing the story line.

  Later in the dressing room, Cena approached me and admitted he’d made the wrong decision by doing the match his way.

  “Don’t forget, John, as good as you are, Edge and I have been in this business for forty years combined, so if we have an opinion about a finish, you should considering listening to us.”

  John nodded his head in agreement and then we shook hands, congratulating each other on a job well done. And I believe it was a job well done as I really enjoyed the Nexus angle. As a matter of fact, when I combined it with the recent HBK and Mysterio angles, I felt I’d produced a pretty damn good body of work over the last three years.

  I used to tell people when I left the WWE in 2005 that if I didn’t go back to wrestling, I’d have no regrets. But looking back, I realize that wasn’t true. There was a lot more I wanted to prove and accomplish in my wrestling career at the time and I felt I’d improved by leaps and bounds since then. Now between the classic storylines and matches I’d been involved in during the last three years, and the additional three world title reigns, I finally felt I’d accomplished everything I wanted to do in pro wrestling.

  Now that my contract was nearing its end, I was planning on taking a few months off to tour with Fozzy and then come back to the WWE a few months later. But something came up that changed those plans.

  It was time for me to dance.

  The Dancing Beast

  The first time I was asked to do Dancing with the Stars was right before my WrestleMania 26 match against Edge. I was kind of surprised that they’d asked me, then found out that my old party buddy Stacy Keibler had mentioned my name to the producers and was pushing for me to get on the show. I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to do it, but upon Stacy’s insistence that it was one of the best experiences of her life, I figured it would be worth at least taking the meeting. (In Hollywood you don’t “have” meetings, you “take” them.)

  The producers insisted that I’d be great on the show and that they would do whatever it took to get me prepared, including flying my dance partner in to practice in whatever cities my shows were in. But I’d never danced before in my life, and knowing how much work I already had each week with the WWE (as well as how crazy WrestleMania time was), there was no way I could handle the responsibility of learning a whole new craft. I respectfully declined and the producers told me I was welcome on DWTS anytime.

  I passed a second time after they asked me again while I was in Ireland on tour with Fozzy at the beginning of September 2010. It kind of pissed me off that they’d waited until the last minute to ask as their season started in just a few weeks. It was like they thought I was just sitting around on the couch eating bon-bons with nothing else going on. But I still wasn’t convinced I wanted to be on the show because if I was going to take on something as massive as DWTS, it would have to be my one and only priority. They’d have to give me more than two weeks’ notice for me to get ready.

  They took my words to heart and called me back ten days later to ask if I’d join the cast of the February 2011 season. They’d loved my personality in Downfall (DWTS was on ABC as well) and thought I’d be perfect for the show, and wouldn’t take no for an answer this time.

  I had to decide if I wanted to do this, for there were no more excuses why I couldn’t make it work. I also felt that if I didn’t accept their offer this time, they might never ask again, so I decided it was now or never. I had been reluctant before because I didn’t know anything about the art of dancing, but after a quick chat with Stacy, she assured me I would do great and love the experience, so I made up my mind.

  It was time for Dancing Is Jericho.

  I called Vince out of courtesy to tell him I wouldn’t be back in the WWE in January as planned, because I didn’t want another Downfall situation messing up our relationship. Plus, if I was going to do this, I wanted his blessing. He gave it to me and felt it was a great opportunity for both me and the WWE, a complete 180 from his Downfall mind-set.

  Now that I had a clear schedule and a clear head, it was time to do what I’d always done when I set my mind on something . . . kick ass and own it.

  The first thing I decided to do was take private dance lessons of my own in Tampa. There was no way I was going to go onto one of the biggest shows on television with zero knowledge of what I was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t easy, but after forty hours of training, I had a basic understanding of the dances I was about to be performing.

  I was required to sign a confidentiality agreement and warned not to tell a soul I was going to be on the show. Then after a few weeks of radio silence, I flew to L.A. for the big cast reveal that was taking place after an episode of The Bachelor. When I arrived at the ABC studios I was whisked away in secrecy like the Manchurian Candidate. I got out of the town car to walk inside and two beefy bruisers in black suits and sunglasses held up a red curtain to shield me from the paparazzi hiding in the bushes, desperately trying to get an early shot of the highly anticipated new cast.

  Once safely inside the fortress, I was led into the green room to meet the rest of the cast, some of whom I recognized (Kirstie Alley, Sugar Ray Leonard, Ralph Macchio), some I didn’t (Mike Catherwood, Lil Romeo, Hines Ward), and went through the awkward process of trying to get to know all of them in five minutes. We were given a quick briefing on how the reveal would go and minutes later, I was onstage in front of a live studio audience being introduced as a cast member on the twelfth season of Dancing with the Stars.

  Just being announced as a contestant on the show elevated me to a different level of notoriety instantly. As huge and loyal as the American WWE fanbase was, with about five million people watching Raw weekly, DWTS had close to twenty-five million viewers each episode and their fans were just as insatiable. They wanted to know every detail about the new cast, who our partners were going to be, what our personalities were like, and how we’d ended up on the show. I was besieged by reporters from every Hollywood gossip show and magazine, from Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, and Access Hollywood to People, Star, and US Weekly. DWTS was the crown jewel of network television, and the Hollywood cognoscenti lapped up every drop of its glitz and glamour accordingly.

  Even though I had name value from the WWE and Fozzy, in the eyes of the Hollywood entertainment press, I was still a niche celebrity. Kirstie, Ralph, and ditzy playmate Kendra Wilkinson were the A-listers in their minds and were focused on the most. Initially, I believe they considered me the muscle-head wrestler who would probably trip over his own feet and be eliminated in the first week. But I knew differently and made it my goal to change their perceptions of what WWE superstars and rock ’n’ roll singers were, for good.

  I was ecstatic when I found out I had been partnered with Cheryl Burke, the professional dancer on the show I was most familiar with. I remembered watching her during Stacy’s season and thinking she was the best, so being paired with her gave me a feeling that I could do well.

  She came to Tampa for three weeks before the season premiere to train with me, and I liked her from the start. She was a great teacher in that she didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear, she told me the truth, and the truth hurt a lot of the time. The first day we met, she put on some music and asked me to “just dance,” to feel the rhythm of the music and do whatever felt natural. I lurched back and forth like Elaine Benes, grooving
to the beat with my eyes closed. When I opened them, Cheryl looked repulsed.

  “Ugh . . . we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  She was right and work we did, for six hours a day, seven days a week, until I slowly started to get better. But dancing was one of the hardest things I’d ever done in my life. Learning how to hold my lines (a dancing term for keeping my arms and angles straight) and to move my feet in time with the beat was hard as shit and frustrating. With the constant repetition and difficult physical exertion, it reminded me of when I first started training to wrestle.

  But I did have a few advantages from my other careers that helped me pick things up quicker. I was used to remembering choreography and distributing my weight gracefully from wrestling. I knew how to stay on top of the beat and how to follow the syncopation of the music from singing. Plus, my most potent weapon was knowing how to entertain a live audience and how to work the camera for those watching at home. When it came to that, I was a trained professional and wasn’t going to freeze up while performing in front of a thousand people in a studio audience cheering (or booing) me.

  But as the show came closer, I started to feel something I hadn’t in a long time: raw nerves. I’d main-evented WrestleMania as the World Champion and played with Fozzy in front of 25,000 people, but now I was about to do something I’d never done before in front of millions of people while getting critiqued by a panel of experts. What if they said I was awful? That I could take, but what if I was voted off in the first round like I’d been on Celebrity Duets? (Read about that train wreck in my vocal instructional manual, Undisputed, available in music stores everywhere.) That would be unbearable and I vowed that no matter what, I would NOT get voted off first again. My ego couldn’t handle it.

  For the next three weeks, Cheryl literally put me through my paces as we worked on our first week’s dance, the cha-cha, set to “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash (Joe Strummer was rolling in his grave knowing that his song was being used on Dancing with the Frickin’ Stars) as a camera crew filmed our every move. We broke down the ninety-second dance into sections, meticulously practicing each one over and over again until it began to take shape. There were certain parts I did well (the quick footwork and spins) and other parts I didn’t (shaking my hips and landing a jump at the beginning), but with Cheryl’s guidance and tough-love style of coaching, I started to believe that I could actually pull it off.