The Best in the World

by Chris Jericho

  One day after an acupuncture session, I posted a picture on Twitter (@iamjericho) of my back pierced with a dozen needles, and got a call twenty minutes later from an unknown number. I had just sat down for lunch at Burger 21 in Tampa (best in the world at what they do) and when I checked the voice mail afterward, it was Page.

  “Bro, I saw your picture and you need to call me now.”

  I hadn’t spoken to DDP in years, but I had been following his new career as a yoga guru. I figured he was going to try and get me to start doing his program, but I had no interest. Yoga is for hippies, women, and effeminate tough guys, I thought to myself. Then a sharp razor blade of pain sliced through my leg, making me wince, and I reconsidered my mindset.

  I called DDP a few minutes later.

  I explained the problems I was having and he knew exactly what I was going through. He’d herniated not just one but two discs in the mid-’90s and was told by doctors he would never wrestle again. He too decided he wasn’t going to accept that diagnosis and designed his own yoga program to help with the pain. A few months later he was totally cured and went on to win the WCW world title three times. He sold me on his program hard, and at the end of the conversation, I reluctantly agreed to give it a try. He promised to send me his DVDs with the caveat that I would actually follow through and do the program. That wasn’t a problem; I had no other choice.

  The first couple of sessions were awful, as I could barely bend over without yelping in pain. I’d prided myself during my career on never warming up before a match and my horrible current flexibility reflected that. I couldn’t touch my toes and had zero balance, and trying to execute the various poses was causing me excruciating agony.

  Since Page had created his own style of yoga, he’d renamed the classic poses to fit his wrestling background (the Showstopper, the Road Warrior, the Cobra) and created some poses of his own, including the Hulk Up and the patented Diamond Cutter. I felt like a total mark when I first did the Diamond Cutter pose while yelling “BANG!” in an empty room since Page used to incessantly push his catchphrase back in WCW ad nauseam. If Benoit and Eddy could see me now, they’d be laughing their asses off and calling me an FOP (Friend of Page), the dreaded nickname for Page’s disciples back in the day.

  Over the next few weeks, the poses got easier as my flexibility improved, and I started to see a difference. The pain was still there, but the volume had been turned down. It got increasingly better, and after three months of daily (sometimes twice daily) sessions, I was pain free. It was a miracle and I ain’t talking about Smokey Robinson (or his lemons).

  The curious thing was, not only was I free of pain from the herniation, I was pain free period. Before my back injury, I used to climb out of bed feeling a hundred years old, knees tight, back sore, and neck stiff, but now I bounded out of bed like a kid at six o’clock on a Christmas morning. The only time I felt any pain was when I got lazy and didn’t do any yoga for a few days.

  Nowadays I don’t lift weights or go to the gym very often, it’s all DDP Yoga, push-ups, and boxing training. The best thing about DDP Yoga is I can do it anywhere—outside the tour bus, in the dressing room, or in my hotel. Gone are the days of having to schlep around town looking for a gym; now I carry the gym on my computer.

  Page’s program not only saved my career but my quality of life as well, and for that I am eternally grateful. I highly recommend it to anybody experiencing any kind of pain, no matter how big or small. If you are having issues, go to www.ddpyoga.com now for more info and tell him CJ sent ya.

  So thank you, DDP. I’m proud to be an FOP and am happy to have FELT . . . THE . . . BANG!

  Doing DDP yoga in my Miami hotel room a few days before Mania 28.

  —

  After DWTS and DDP yoga, I’d lost a lot of weight, which was something I’d been concentrating on doing ever since I stepped on a scale after Ash’s seventh birthday party on September 24, 2010. I’d spent the day eating chicken fingers and drinking beer and that evening I weighed 230 pounds.

  I was about to turn (lordy lordy, look who’s) forty and was getting middle-age chunky, so I decided right then and there that Homey don’t play that. I haven’t drunk a beer since, and that (along with dancing and the yoga) helped me drop almost eighteen pounds. But with no more beer and no more brown alcohol allowed for Fat Jericho, I had to find something else to drink when it was time to rock the party.

  That’s when I invented the Yeah Boy!

  For my fortieth birthday, I chartered a plane and flew my all-time favorite party pals and their wives to Turks and Caicos for a week of drunk in the sun. In order to be invited, you had to be obsessed with music and love to drink, which eliminated some of my closest friends but left me with just the cream of the party crop.

  I assembled quite the rogue’s gallery of rockers, including wise Chad, his brother, my cousin and nicest guy in the world, Todd (what’s the good word!), Crazy Eyes Speewee, Rybo, Ajax, and Lenny Olson aka Dr. Luther (and the best man at my wedding). It was in the midst of the nonstop party that I discovered I liked the taste of straight vodka with ice and no pollutants. I was sick of drinking cocktails where the sugar in the mix made you bloated and got you hungover, so I had the genius idea of drinking the vodka with ice only.

  That’s when the official cocktail of Chris Jericho was born: Grey Goose and ice aka the Yeah Boy! (as coined by Fozzy’s Paulie D). While it might sound harsh at first (my father-in-law, Ronnie Lockhart, calls it a true alcoholic’s drink and he may be right), the good news is, you will never get a hangover from drinking one.

  Ever.

  Now, while you might end up tired the next day, you can say good-bye to the pounding head and puking. Think about it: The remedy for avoiding a hangover is to drink water to hydrate yourself throughout the night, right? So by using only ice as my mix, I’m already a step ahead.

  So, fearless readers, if you follow Dr. Jericho’s prescription, you will never get another hangover again! (Or at least that’s what I tell myself.)

  Yeah Boy!

  After quite a few Yeah Boy!s, I was stoked to pick up this hot chick on the beach in Turks & Caicos. Yes, that is a hot chick and not Rybo.

  The Billy Crystal of Heavy Metal

  I was at Raw in Columbus when I got a call from Josh Bernstein from Revolver magazine, the biggest heavy metal publication in America and the creators of the Golden Gods, the first-ever heavy metal awards show.

  He wanted to know if I’d like to be a presenter of one of the awards at the ceremony, but in typical Jericho fashion, I told him I’d rather host it instead. After a few back-and-forth calls, I was hired to be the cohost along with Andrew W.K.

  I flew to L.A. for the press conference at the Rainbow on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, along with Lemmy, Dave Mustaine, my bro Zakk Wylde, Chuck Billy, Rob Halford, and Vinnie Paul. It was quite the array of legends and a good indication of the star power that was going to be in attendance at the show.

  The second annual Golden Gods Awards was a huge success, kicking off with an opening vignette of W.K. and me riding down the Sunset Strip on Rob Halford’s Harley and pulling upright onto the stage of the Nokia Theater. None more metal.

  The crowd who filled the Nokia were there to have a good time but were also wild and unruly. I had no problems shutting up the hecklers as I’d had plenty of practice dealing with loudmouths on a microphone. But poor Andrew W.K. wasn’t as verbally equipped and looked like he wanted to disappear when they started chanting, “Camel Toe! Camel Toe!” at him and his dirty off-white jeans. I was the opposite. When they booed Lars Ulrich during a video he sent in congratulating the show, I told them all to shut the hell up and reminded them if he was actually there they’d be lining up to blow him in adulation.

  Lars did show up the following year, and I did too after being named the sole host of the show. Josh and the Revolver head honchos said I was welcom
e to host the show for as long as he was in charge.

  I was now the Billy Crystal of heavy metal.

  I looked forward to doing the show since it was like hard rock summer camp, a place where, once a year, everybody saw all of their friends and some familiar faces (Bumpershine).

  Ozzy walked past me backstage giggling, “Who the fuck are you, man?” and then literally had no idea who the fuck I was an hour later when I introduced him to present an award. He walked out onstage, and when I opened my arms to give him a big hug, he shambled right past me without a glance. It was the ultimate burn.

  I brushed it off and went backstage, where I saw Gene Simmons. I’d never met him before, so I went and introduced myself.

  “Hey, Gene. I’m Chris Jericho, the host of the show.”

  “Ahh, aren’t you a handsome man,” he said, smiling lasciviously. “I would fuck you if I saw you in prison.”

  “Not if I saw you first,” I replied, not missing a beat.

  Gene nodded his head with a silent touché.

  I introduced Ronnie James Dio (I didn’t spill red wine on him this time) in what turned out to be his last-ever public appearance before he died. Then, a year later, I brought out his widow, Wendy, for a touching tribute to her husband. She was accompanied by Ronnie’s best friend, Geezer Butler, which left me a little gobsmacked. I’d been a Geezer fan for years but had never met him.

  “I know you,” he said in his lazy Birmingham accent. “I’ve been watching you on Dancing with the Stars. . . . I even voted for you.” Yes! Anyone who thought my appearance on DWTS wasn’t metal could now suck it forever because THE Geezer Butler voted for me!

  My time on DWTS was more metallically validated when Alice Cooper walked onstage and told everyone to vote for me.

  “Chris is doing more to bring metal to the mainstream than anybody here right now. A vote for him is a vote for heavy metal!”

  Alice was right and the fact that I was on DWTS the same week Zakk Wylde appeared on American Idol (playing with my buddy James Durbin, a gig I helped set up) was one of the signs of the metalocalypse.

  Zakk is my brother and we always have a blast together, and he saved the day one year, when Alice pulled out of the opening segment just minutes before the start of the show. Josh and I had written a skit where I would come onstage and thank myself for doing such a great job as host every year. I’d slowly build my speech and get the crowd sick of my bravado, then at the right moment Alice would come out, whip me with his riding crop, and chase me away.

  For some reason, Alice decided he didn’t want to do the skit and pulled out thirty minutes before showtime. Josh was freaking out, but I calmed him down and sent him to find Zakk.

  Wylde and I are a couple of idiots with the same sense of humor and I knew we could figure out something quickly. After a few minutes of brainstorming, I walked onstage and delivered the same speech I’d planned with Alice, except it was Zakk who came out and interrupted me. Obviously, Zakk doesn’t have a riding crop (maybe he could’ve used his beard?), so I had him cut me off by calling me a douche.

  “Hi, Zakk, what are you—”

  “Douche.”

  “Wait you can’t—”

  “Douche!”

  “Hold on, Zakk, you—”

  “Douche! Douche! Douche!”

  It was an interesting idea to have the host be the butt of the joke, as I was the guy who had to gain the audience’s trust and control the ebb and flow of the show, but it worked. It showed the crowd that I had no problem taking the piss out of myself, and that gave me a better connection with those who didn’t know me and thought I was just a wrestler guy.

  Zakk waits behind me to call me a douche at the Golden Gods Awards. I love the look on his face: It’s obvious he can hardly wait to give me a verbal Black Label beatdown and a sloppy kiss.

  I also had the experience to improv and go with the flow when things unexpectedly changed, no matter what was thrown at me. Case in point, I had just come off stage after introducing Deftones, when Josh ran over in a flurry.

  “Joe Perry is coming and wants to be on the show.”

  Wow, OK. If the legendary guitar player from Aerosmith wants to be on the show, then we better find something for him to do. I had an idea.

  We had twenty minutes to figure out what we were going to do before Deftones were done and I was due back onstage. So Josh and I hustled down to the underground parking garage, and by the time Joe Perry showed up, we had only had about seven minutes to put something together.

  Joe got out of his limo and stared off into space like he could give two shits about the whole thing. I’d never met him before, so I figured that was just his personality. Either that or he was stoned. Maybe both.

  Josh was being diplomatic and cordial, as he should’ve been, considering he was in charge. But I had a show to run and only a few minutes to get things figured out, so I had no time for formalities.

  “Hey, Joe,” I said to one of the most famous guitar players in rock history, “here’s what I’d like you to do, as it’s kind of been a running joke on the show. I’m going to go onstage and talk about myself and when you’re ready, walk out to the mic and call me a douche. Can you do that?”

  Joe stared at me calmly and took a drag from his cigarette.

  “Yeah, I can call you a douche.”

  Not exactly the first thing you want a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to say to you, but I didn’t have time to think of anything else. I hit the stage, just as Deftones singer Chino Moreno (and a dead ringer for Batista) walked off, and started into the same spiel I used earlier about how great I was. The crowd grew restless until finally Joe Perry glided onstage. They erupted as he sauntered over to the podium, reached into his pocket . . . and lit up a joint. He leaned into the mic and I got a lungful of secondhand THC as I waited for him to call me a douche.

  He surveyed the crowd and glanced over at me, preparing to deliver his line.

  “Jericho,” he said, and I smiled in anticipation of how the audience was going to erupt when he put me in my place. “You . . . need to save the Australian Aborigines! Go to worldpeace.org to find out how you can help.”

  What the hell was he talking about? That wasn’t in the script.

  “Oh, and by the way, Jericho . . . you’re a motherfucking DOUCHE.”

  The crowd loved it and so did Joe as he took another drag of his spliff and wandered off the stage with a smirk. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since.

  —

  It wasn’t an easy task to be the master of ceremonies of the GGs, but the job got even harder when I pulled double duty and played the show one year when Fozzy was invited to kick off the festivities. We decided to open with a medley of songs by the greatest metal bands of all time (Sabbath, Priest, Ozzy, Metallica, Maiden, Pantera, and Dio), and then segue into our own tune “God Pounds His Nails” from Chasing the Grail.

  To start things off with a bang, we were going to pull our old “smash the boom box with a baseball bat” routine that we’d done at the Astoria in London years earlier. The show would start with a spotlight shining on a stool with a boom box on it. A roadie would walk onstage and press PLAY, and Justin Bieber’s “Baby” would blast through the speakers. The crowd would of course boo the shit out of it, until I came out onstage with a bat over my shoulder and smashed the hell out of the tape player as the band hit an open chord in time with my blows.

  We were ready to go as the lights went out and the crowd buzzed, except we’d forgotten to find a roadie to press PLAY on the boom box. Dave Grohl had just showed up backstage to hang out, so I grabbed him by the arm and asked him to do the honors.

  He was totally froot with it and wandered onstage to a massive cheer. When he hit the button and assaulted the room full of metalheads with the soothing sounds of “Baby, Baby,” they revolted and practically started
throwing rotten tomatoes at him. He waved his arms in protest, laughing, “I didn’t know! I didn’t know!”

  Afterward he chased me around the dressing room, throwing grapes at me and yelling, “You bastard, you set me up!” He calmed down and worked the room (which included Alice and Slash), telling us how he had recently gone to the hospital convinced he was having a heart attack, only to find out he had just drunk too much coffee. Ahhh, the life of a rock ’n’ roll madman.

  Dave Grohl and I do our best heavy metal faces at the Golden Gods after discussing the merits and mad sex appeal of Justin Bieber.

  It was good to see Slash again, after first meeting him during a cover shoot for Revolver a year earlier. It had been an awkward first meeting, as it was difficult to have a conversation in between the rock poses and faces we were making for the camera.

  A few months later, I went backstage after his gig in Toronto to say hi to him and his drummer Brent Fitz, who I went to high school with in Winnipeg. Fitz wasn’t my favorite person back in those days because his band, Seventh Heaven, was always better than my band, Scimitar. They got the better gigs and the better girls and I’d been jealous of him for that. Then in the early ’90s he’d left Winnipeg to follow his dreams the same way I had and he’d achieved his goals by getting gigs with Vince Neil, Alice Cooper, and now Slash.

  We became great friends, and a few years earlier we’d even put together our own all-Canadian tribute band called Coverboy. The idea was we played only songs by Canadian bands like Streetheart, Aldo Nova, Tragically Hip, Kick Axe, and of course Loverboy. It was a great concept and had so much buzz that our first gig was on top of the CN Tower in Toronto at a party for the 2007 Grey Cup. We had a great show and we were in the hotel lobby afterward when Paul Dean, the original guitar player from Loverboy, got on the elevator with us. Brent knew him vaguely and told him about our band.