Once again there was a reward for making it through the round, and even though it wasn’t quite as prestigious as being on The Tonight Show, it was pretty damn close. By surviving week 5, I earned the right to be a guest on Ellen.
Ellen’s producers had the same policy as Leno’s: I had to still be in the running for DWTS champion if they were going to have Cheryl and me on as guests. Since we had advanced, we were booked. Ellen’s vibe was a lot different from Jay’s, and I was told straight off that if she didn’t like me she would end the segment when she felt like it, no matter how short it was.
I arrived at the studio and got on the elevator, when a voice shouted, “Hold the door!” I hit the open button and on walked Tom Cruise and his bodyguard (who looked, as my dad would say, “like a cigarette machine with a head on it”). Cruise’s hair was immaculate, his features perfect, and he was shorter than I expected, but his presence was overwhelming. It’s awkward enough to stand next to a stranger within the close confines of an elevator car, but try doing it with one of the most famous people in the world. Tom stared straight ahead and I wondered what would happen if I struck up a conversation.
“Hi,” I said. It was all I could think of.
Tom glanced my way for a nanosecond and slightly nodded, but I could tell by his reaction and his body language that he had no interest in talking to me. We arrived at our floor and Tom glided off with his sycophants, as I coughed from the secondhand Scientology that filled the air.
Thirty minutes later, I was announced as Ellen’s next guest and I could tell from her lackadaisical intro that she didn’t really know who I was and couldn’t care less about me. I was proven right when her first few comments were so cold they would’ve made Mick Jagger’s hand freeze. I knew I had to warm her up and soon, or she would cut off my segment like John Wayne Bobbitt’s cock, and that would be that. I felt strangely comfortable with her, though, as I’d watched Finding Nemo with my kids so many times, I knew her character Dory’s lines by heart.
“You know, Ellen, I feel like I know you already because I’ve seen Finding Nemo so many times with my kids. As a matter of fact it’s nice to finally hear you say something other than ‘P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney, Australia.’”
That got a nice laugh and broke the ice between us. From that moment on, Ellen was friendly, charming, and funny. We had a great interview and after a good seven minutes, she asked me if I would stay until the next segment and play a game. I agreed and she led me over to play Twister Hoopla, which was basically standing Twister, except you played with a partner and had to use each other’s body parts to hold up various hoops. I was excited about playing but not about being put against my old Downfall rival Mario Lopez.
I’d seen Mario around over the years and we’d done a few shows together, but for whatever reason, he always rubbed me the wrong way.
“Hello, Lopez,” I said with a sneer.
“Hello, Jericho,” he said with false sincerity.
I didn’t care what I had to do; there was NO WAY I was letting AC Slater beat me in anything. I could tell by the look in his eye that he felt the same way, but we maintained our fake smiles as Ellen picked two housewives from the audience to be our partners.
Twister Hoopla started out easy enough as Ellen spun two wheels with different body parts drawn on them, one for me and one for my partner, Jane. It landed on ELBOW and SHOULDER, so I had to pick up a ring off the ground and hold it to her shoulder with my elbow. Lopez and his partner had to hold up their ring with his knee on her hip. Ellen continued spinning the wheel for a few minutes until all four of us were straining our bodies desperately, trying not to let any of the rings fall.
While most of your garden-variety Ellen guests like Hugh Jackman or Dr. Oz would’ve given up with a good-natured laugh at this point, Lopez and I were locked in a duel to the death and we were taking the real housewives of studio county along with us. Not that they minded, as the prospect of a sixty-inch HD color TV (are there any black-and-white ones?) was much too enticing to give up on.
For ten minutes, the four of us contorted our bodies into positions that would’ve made the cast of Cirque du Soleil puke, our muscles straining and tendons stretching to the limits as Ellen called out directions. I had just stuck the point of my chin against Jane’s thigh, the red ring dangling precariously between us, when my eyes locked with Lopez.
“You know you can’t win,” I mouthed.
“You’ll never beat me,” Lopez whispered.
“Shut up and concentrate! I want my color TV,” Jane threatened.
Realizing that the game could go on for the duration of the show if she let it, Ellen called it off and ruled it a tie. I was a little annoyed because I knew I could’ve beaten Lopez with a few more minutes, but thanked her for ending it early the next day when I was so sore I could barely get out of bed. I’ve fallen off fifteen-foot-high steel cages, lost my front teeth to a stainless steel ladder, and done five hundred hack squats with Chris Benoit, but I’ve never felt my muscles in as much pain as they were that next day.
Twister Hoopla is hard-core! Twister Hoopla is hard-core! Twister Hoopla is hard-core!
—
I was having a great run on DWTS and felt I was getting better with every performance. But as Cheryl and I were rehearsing our tango to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” (the evil song I’d picked for Guilty Pleasures week) I couldn’t quite grasp the choreography for some reason. I kept forgetting the moves and was the proverbial two steps behind the whole time. I was doing more rehearsal that week than I had for any other, but I just wasn’t getting it. Neither was Hines Ward, apparently, as I found him sitting morosely by himself in the corner one afternoon. His dance was the same Viennese Waltz I’d done the week before, and he was having similar issues with dizziness. So I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out the Sea-Bands.
“You’ve got to try these, man. They’ll take care of everything,” I said. He put them on warily, thanking me for my help.
Team Chericho continued practicing diligently throughout the week, but when we had to do our wides on Friday, I kept screwing up and it took a few tries to get something semi-decent. I was sure the producers formulated their initial opinions of our dances from the wides, but since we still had three days of practice left, I thought I’d be OK come showtime.
Then, two days later, disaster struck during the full-band dress rehearsal when I screwed up some steps and stopped halfway through. Cheryl looked like she’d just seen Fred Astaire’s ghost as the air seemed to get sucked out of the studio.
“You can’t stop!” she said with dismay.
Well, I just did . . . and I didn’t see the big deal. If I was rehearsing a song with Fozzy and messed it up, I’d stop and we’d do it again. That’s why it’s called REHEARSAL, right? But seeing everyone’s reaction when I stopped, combined with the lack of info about the next week’s dance, suggested that we might be the ones going home that week. Even though I had surprised the producers with my performances and personality, I felt like my time was up with the judges, and no matter how well I danced, they’d already made up their minds.
My thoughts were validated when I watched my predance video package and it had the classic DWTS foreboding these guys are in trouble tone to it. It was funny because, out of the nonstop fifty hours we had rehearsed that week (I took a half-day break to see Metallica at The Big Four festival in nearby Indio, California), there was only one three-minute stretch early on where I’d gotten mad at my progress, yelling, “I can’t do this!” in frustration. Of course the video package was based entirely on that one outburst (they even ran it in slow motion), giving people the impression that I didn’t know what I was doing that week.
I’m a big show player and as soon as the red light went on and we went live, I delivered my best tango performance of the week. But I wasn’t completely happy with it, nor was I completely happy w
ith the finishing move of the routine. I spun Cheryl around by her arms and pitched her across the floor like a curling rock, but I felt a small pop and a flash of pain in my back as I did it.
The pain of a bruised ego soon followed when in a low-blow statement, Bruno told me in his Santino Marella accent that I looked like a “lump of granite” during my dance. Len disagreed and gave me another 8, but it was obvious that I’d gone from last week’s Golden Child to this week’s Shit Baby. When our final score of 21 ended up being that week’s lowest, I knew our fate was sealed, especially when I was once again one of the final two in the elimination circle. However, this time there was no reprieve and I was given the axe.
I was sad to be eliminated but it was almost a relief, as I’d been away from home for seven weeks and was looking forward to being a daddy again. The amount of press coverage I’d gotten over the previous two months was incredible and I ended up as one of the media darlings of the season. I got a ton of “you got robbed” comments from journalists, fans and friends, which is always better than hearing “you were dog shit and it’s about time you got kicked off.” In reality I think I was good enough to last another week or two at the most, but there was no way I was as good a dancer as Ralph, Kirstie, or the eventual winner, Hines . . . who might not have even made it past week 6 if it hadn’t been for my Sea-Bands (I should get an endorsement for this). You owe me one, Ward!
I still walked away a winner as I got to learn a little about the incredible art form of dancing, and took a chance and succeeded at something completely out of my wheelhouse (Bret Hart even said I had “big brass balls” for doing the show).
I used to think dancing was stupid and just for effeminate tough guys, but I came out of that experience thinking just the opposite: Dancing is one of the hardest but most rewarding things I’ve ever done. Plus, working with Cheryl Burke was simply amazing, and she made things easier and fun. We spent so much time together over those ten weeks and became close friends and I miss hanging out with her. For the record, I still think she’s the best dancer on the show to this day.
Overall, Stacy was right; doing DWTS was one of the best experiences of my career and I’m proud of myself and very thankful that I did it.
PS: Here’s some trivia for you: “Don’t Stop Believin’” is the evil song that eliminated me from Dancing with the Stars, my bro James Durbin from American Idol, and Tony Soprano from The Sopranos. Piss off, Neal Schon!
Yeah Boy!
Right after my elimination (even though my back was in some serious pain), I did the Jimmy Kimmel show to discuss my ousting, then hit the town to drown my sorrows with The Miz (who witnessed my elimination live in the studio) and my old friend Paul Gargano. We got totally loadski and stayed up all night getting our ya-yas out, which was the perfect way to blow off steam and wind up my DWTS experience. But when I went back to my apartment at five A.M., there was a car waiting to take me to my appearance on Good Morning America, a mandatory chore for eliminated contestants that I had totally forgotten about.
This was not good, for I was a complete mess . . . as in the slurred- speech-can’t-talk-might-puke-at-any-minute type of mess. I showed up at the studio wearing the exact same clothes I’d worn on Kimmel the night before and slumped down next to Cheryl. She was getting mic’d up for our live interview via satellite with George Stephanopoulos in New York City. We’d spent enough time together over the past two and a half months (we’d even done a few joint book signings when our books came out at the same time and Undisputed made it all the way to number nine on the New York Times bestseller list) that she knew exactly what state I was in. Even though she was sitting right beside me, I took out my phone and clumsily texted her.
“I’m loaded. Not sure I can talk right now, so you might have to handle this for me.”
She nodded and we went live. But once again, I’m a big show player and as soon as the red light came on, I snapped into charming Jericho mode and took over the segment. It was like when I used to come home drunk as a teenager and had to trick my mom into thinking I was sober. If I could fool Sweet Loretta Modern into thinking I wasn’t hammered, tricking ten million viewers was going to be a piece of cake. I made jokes, graciously talked about my elimination, and said that I bowed out of the competition on purpose because I’d been invited to the royal wedding in England that weekend. I left ’em laughing, and the ABC publicist said I was the best eliminated guest yet. Even Gargano said he couldn’t tell I was bombed—and he’d been right beside me drinking all night.
I went back to my apartment to crash and when I woke up, I checked my e-mails for the day’s DWTS schedule. I was surprised that I hadn’t gotten anything. Then I remembered I’d been eliminated, and it was a weird feeling having to adjust to life after DWTS. I had serious dance withdrawal and paced around my apartment like a junkie, looking for things to do. I’d been training seven hours a day, seven days a week for ten weeks, and now that that had been taken away, there was a huge void for me both mentally and physically.
Not that I could do a lot physically, as my back was really bad. It was getting hard to pick something up off the floor, get into my car, go to the gym, sleep, or even sneeze without feeling sharp pains, and I was starting to get worried.
A few weeks later, Cheryl and I got back together to run through our routine for the season finale, but things had changed. We both wanted to do well, but the intensity was gone now that there was nothing at stake. We practiced for hours instead of days and put together a loose routine of my “greatest hits” from previous dances. The knee walk, the big jump off the stage, and pitching Cheryl down the floor like a curling rock all made the cut.
We’d been paired with Sugar Ray Leonard in a mock boxing vs. wrestling dance-off, complete with ring intros from Michael Buffer. I’d met Buffer a few times when Eric Bischoff had paid him big money to introduce the main events at WCW PPVs in the ’90s, but he’d never announced any of my matches. After all this time to finally hear his famous voice booming out my name was pretty damn froot, even if it was just for a dance recital and not a match.
Our routine went well (even though my back screamed when I pitched Cheryl down the floor) and it was a change to just have fun with a dance and not worry about getting judged. Plus, all I really cared about was getting a chance to do the Bruno imitation I’d been practicing ever since he’d low-blowed me with his final comments. I had it all planned out and asked host Tom Bergeron on the downlow to inquire during the post-dance interview what I’d been up to.
After our performance Tom asked me the question and I said I’d been working on a Bruno imitation and wondered if the audience wanted to see it. Of course they did, so I went into a wild and wacky frantic tirade in perfect over-the-top Bruno-ese, jumping up on the table and kicking my legs flamboyantly.
“Bruuuuuno the daaaaancing judge. Flailingggg his armssss aboutttt and holding his worrrrrrrrrrds for no apparent reasonnnnnnnnn!!”
My imitation tore the house down and Carrie-Ann Inaba gave me my first and only 10 of the competition. Afterward, a producer pulled me aside and sternly said that even though my imitation was hilarious, he was a little annoyed that I hadn’t gotten it approved beforehand and that it had gone on too long. Oh well, it’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission, right?
Cheryl and I pose on the first day of rehearsal, thinking of all the 10s we are going to get over the upcoming weeks. While we didn’t get any 10s for dancing, I did eventually get one for my Bruno (who’s photo bumbing us) imitation.
The second Cheryl spin had aggravated my back injury even further, and after the DWTS finale, it got progressively worse. I felt a constant slicing in my calf as if there were a tiny imp sawing on me with a hacksaw 24/7. I’d wake up every few hours in terrible pain, unable to get out of bed. I was in a bad way and couldn’t take it any longer, so I went for an MRI, which discovered a herniated disc. The doctor said there were a
few things I could try to alleviate the agony, but most likely I needed surgery to fuse my spine, and that my wrestling career was now in jeopardy.
It was ricockulous to think that I’d wrestled for over twenty years with hardly any injuries, but a couple months of dancing was enough to bring the hammer down on my career for good. I’m sure the two decades of constant punishment had loosened the lid of my peanut butter jar and dancing was just the final twist, but either way, I had to make some decisions. My first decision was there was no way I was getting back surgery. HBK had a similar procedure and had eventually returned to wrestling, but it had taken him five years to do so. I didn’t want to wait five years, plus I felt that at almost forty if I had surgery, I might not be able to come back. I was going to have to find another way to cure my problem. There had to be something I could do that, combined with my iron will (aka stubbornness), would make the pain go away.
I weighed my options and a few weeks later went for the first of three epidurals (the same painkilling shots Jess got while giving birth), which worked for a few days, until the agony was unwelcomed back like Kotter. I started going for acupuncture a few times a week, which helped a little, but I was losing the war as the pain was affecting me both physically and emotionally now.
I was cranky and easily irritated and snapping at Jess and the kids constantly because I never knew when the sawing would start. I was about to resign myself to surgery, when Diamond Dallas Page stepped in.
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