Also by Chris Jericho and
Peter Thomas Fornatale:
A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex
This book is dedicated to Sweet Loretta Modern.
It’s also dedicated to all of the Jerichoholics who have stood
behind me through all of the trials
and tribulations over the last twenty years.
If I were wearing a hat, I would tip it to all of you.
CJ
Foreword
Wow, what an honor to write the foreword to Chris Jericho’s new book! To be asked by Chris himself, no less. Yes, it’s an honor—the same way it’s an honor for an old, broken-down ballplayer to attend the game where his long-standing record is shattered. Yes, that’s me, the old ballplayer, hobbling out onto the field, waving to the fans, doing my best to look happy when the thing that was most important to me, the thing that kept me going when the going got rough, the very thing that defined who I was and how I felt about myself has been stripped away from me.
You see, back some time ago, in another decade, in fact (I believe the year was 1999), I wrote a little something called Have a Nice Day, which shocked the world by being not only commercially successful but surprisingly readable as well. Possessing an underlying warmth to complement the sophomoric humor and wince-inducing stories, my book was like the literary equivalent to the early-’90s Lex Luger; it was indeed the “Total Package.” It was also responsible for letting loose a flood of other wrestling books— some good, some bad, others downright ugly. But I was always confident that when that flood eventually subsided, there would be one book standing tall, refusing to be swept away with the rest of the wrestling refuse. Then Jericho had to send me his first book.
I must say, I really enjoyed an early, incomplete manuscript of A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex — at first. I found myself rooting for Chris as he forged his way through the rough-and-tumble Canadian independent wrestling scene and feeling his pain as he attempted to clear hurdles both physical and psychological in wrestling meccas around the world—Mexico; Germany; Japan; Pikeville, Kentucky. But somewhere around Kentucky and Tennessee, in the middle of Bruiser Bedlam, Corny, Ricky, and Robert, I sat bolt upright in bed, my genuine enjoyment and hearty out-loud laughter turned to sheer terror in a heartbeat. “Oh no,” I vividly remember thinking. “What if this book is better than mine?”
The wrestling world is full of unique characters, all of them with unique tales worth telling. Anyone who has spent any time on the road is sure to have a number of stories likely to fall under the “truth is stranger than fiction” category, and given the proper time and dedication to the craft of writing, many wrestlers might be capable of turning their true-life tales into first-rate tomes. Which meant my book would be safely ensconced at that number one spot in readers’ hearts and minds pretty much forever. Quite simply, no pro wrestler was going to dedicate enough time and energy to producing a book that could ever do the subject true justice. Most wrestlers were going to tell their story to a hired hand for a given period of time and hope for the best. Sometimes the results were very good—and sometimes they weren’t. Most of them just lacked that certain something, that authenticity that rings true only when a wrestler has spent hundreds of hours in solitude—thinking, being, and willing the words onto the written page. Yes, my spot was indeed safe—until Jericho came around.
All right, all right, Bret Hart’s book is another notable exception, and is a tremendous read. But I think I identified with Chris’s book more, with his ability to take both himself and his subject seriously while simultaneously giving a nod and a wink to the utter absurdity of so much that was going on around him. I identified so much that I spent many hours on the phone with Chris, giving him tips, offering advice—an adjective here, a little more emphasis there. Kind of like an all-star pitcher teaching a formidable opponent how to identify the spin on his curveball—so he can more easily crush it when next they meet.
And now Chris Jericho has written another book. Not only has he learned all the tricks of the trade, but he’ll be directing his powerful prose and award-winning wit at subjects that A Lion’s Tale left untouched: his incredible run in the WWE, his band Fozzy, the joys of fatherhood, and his memorable tenure on that Duets reality show. Along the way, he’ll shed light and share perspectives on top WWE stars, and, best of all, will chart a memorable course into the mind of Vince McMahon.
Chris will remind readers on more than one occasion that a certain best-selling author/hardcore legend never defeated him in the ring. For that reason alone, I will never admit defeat on the literary battlefield, will never wave the white flag of surrender in the Foley-Jericho war of words. But if a reader happens to laugh a little louder at his words than mine, or finds that his pages turn a little faster and keep them awake a little longer, I’ll try not to protest too much. Because I know Chris Jericho is going to crush this thing. Have fun, enjoy the book, feel free to laugh out loud. I’ll be over here, waving, pretending to be happy, as I think back to the good old days of 1999.
Mick Foley
Bonus Foreword
I was talking about the new book while on a WWE tour of Puerto Rico in September of 2010, when Zack Ryder inquired why I hadn’t asked him to write the foreword. When I replied that (a) I had already received a great one from Mick Foley and (b) Zack hadn’t offered, he vowed that he would write one anyway and post it on Twitter for all the world to see.
Funny thing is, when he did, I really liked it, so I decided to include it in this book, unbeknownst to him.
WWWYKI.
CJ
When Chris asked that I write the foreword for his new book, I was thrilled. I could write about all the classic matches Chris has had or about all of the championships that he has won, but you’re going to read about that in this book. I’m going to make this foreword a little more personal.
Like yours truly, Chris is a bro from Long Island. Maybe that’s why I instantly became a Jerichoholic in the mid-1990s when he entered my living room via a television screen. I’ll never forget searching for weeks for his WCW action figure; he was the hardest one to find in the set. When I was in ninth grade, I celebrated my birthday at the WWE’s New York restaurant. Who did I pick to be on my cake? You guessed it: Y2J!
When I first started wrestling, I didn’t shave my forearms because Chris didn’t either. (Now I have to shave them because my lady likes me nice and smooth.) Speaking of body hair, Chris Naired my back once after a show. He confessed that it was one of the greatest moments of his career. In closing, whether you like him or not, Chris Jericho is the best in the world at what he does.
Woo Woo Woo. You Know It!
Zack Ryder
Contents
Also by Chris Jericho and Peter Thomas Fornatale
Foreword
Bonus Foreword
Introduction
1. Petulant Pansy
2. Prematurely Ejaculating Nightsticks
3. Schizo Deluxe
4. Will Work for Food
5. Green as Grass
6. Looking California and Feeling Minnesota
7. Too Esoteric for Our Demographic
8. Heeeeere’s Belding!
9. Moongoose and the Diceman
10. Vince Loves Apes
11. Be Froot
12. WTF
13. Love at Full Volume
14. Banned on Broadway
15. No More Beards
16. Twists and Turns
17. Canadian Jesus
18. MC Hammered
19. Never Trust the Loch Ness Monster
20. Rock and Roll Is a Dangerous Game
21. The Undisputed Champion of the World
22. Peanut Butter and Chong
23. Whiskey Gargling
24. A Healthy Scratch
25. Jelly of the Month Club
26. Wacky Roll-Up Guy
27. Stealing the Show
28. The Big Fight
29. A Brutal Shade of Jaundice
30. AO Jericho
31. Tonight Fozzy Gay
32. Rage Raspberry
33. Steel Enema
34. Hell of a Hand
35. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business
36. Buffet Nazi
37. Dinkus
38. Sweet Loretta Modern
39. CSI: Sheboygan
40. The Baby-Faced Assassin
41. Yes, and …
42. Clams Casino
43. Hill Street Blues
44. Miracle Babies
45. The Howard Hughes of Rock and Roll
46. Benoit
47. The Paul Is Dead of Wrestling
Acknowledgments
Bonus Acknowledgments
Copyright
Introduction
The two dark shapes stared menacingly at me from the shadows of my closet.
I stared back at them the way a recovering amnesiac might look at himself in the mirror. I vaguely recognized what I was seeing but couldn’t quite put a finger on it.
I knew I had seen them before; at one point they were my closest friends. I had been through wars, suffered my greatest losses, and enjoyed my biggest successes with them by my side.
But I hadn’t seen them in over two years and wasn’t quite sure what to say.
From the looks of them, they had seen better days. They were covered in dust, their once shiny exteriors reduced to a lackluster hue. Their eyeholes were coated thinly with rust just like I was, which was the reason I had traveled to the wilds of the back of my closet to rescue them.
I was going back to war and needed my closest companions by my side. I couldn’t trust any others to do the job they could do. They were the best in the business at what they did, and I couldn’t return without them.
I reached up and slowly grabbed my black patent leather wrestling boots off the shelf.
As I packed them in my bag, along with a pair of knee pads and some workout clothes, I wondered what it would be like to lace them up again. I would find out soon enough, as I was flying out later that day to Lance Storm’s wrestling school in Calgary to get reacquainted with another old friend of mine—the ring.
I had been preparing for my return to the WWE for three months and it didn’t seem like it had been two years since I’d been gone. It didn’t seem like eight years since I’d debuted there either. It felt like only yesterday that I was standing in the Gorilla position at the All-state Arena in Chicago, as the clock ticked down to zero …
CHAPTER 1
Petulant Pansy
When I stepped out into the bright arena light from the darkness of the Gorilla position, I had only two things on my mind: Judy Garland and my promo segment.
I now knew how Dorothy felt when she escaped out of the black-and-white monotony of Kansas into the garish colorful wonderland of Oz. I could relate because I was also escaping, from the bland world of WCW into the glimmering land of opportunity that was the WWE.
As soon as I breached the curtain and interrupted The Rock mid-promo, the crowd response was unbelievable. jericho signs were everywhere and people were jumping up and down with huge smiles on their faces, ecstatic that it was me that was the big surprise at the end of the countdown and not the return of the Gobbledy Gooker.
It seemed that half of the arena had been sent personal invitations from Vince McMahon himself alerting them to the fact that Jericho was appearing tonight. I hadn’t really known what to expect from the crowd, but the moment I heard their reaction I knew that I had made the right decision in leaving WCW. Due to the buildup of my debut, I was already a bigger star in WWE after thirty seconds than I had been in WCW after three years.
I had been planning this moment for months and knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had seen Michael Jackson in concert in 1993 in Mexico City and had never forgotten the monumental entrance he made. He propelled up from underneath the stage and froze with his back to the crowd and his arms in a crucifix position for what seemed for hours as the crowd went nuts with anticipation. He didn’t rush the moment or move a muscle. He just stood as stiff as a statue and took his sweet time before turning around and revealing himself. I wanted to do the same thing for my debut. So I stood with my back to the crowd in a Jesus Christ pose and let the crowd rumble. Even though the Titantron read jericho in ten-foot-high letters, it wasn’t until I spun around and people saw my face that they really exploded.
I turned with a Paul Stanley pout on my face, although a shit-eating grin might have been more apropos. I surveyed the crowd, lifted the mic to my mouth, and bellowed, “Welcome to Raw Is Jericho!” a takeoff on the Monday Night Jericho catchphrase that I had used in WCW.
The Rock was less than thrilled that this petulant pansy had interrupted him mid-speech. Unfazed, I launched into a five-minute soliloquy about how the WWE had become boring and stagnant and how both the company and the fans were in desperate need of a savior, someone who would take the company into the new millennium. Someone like me. I proclaimed myself to be the party host, the man who would inspire the entire world to chant, “Go Jericho Go!” whenever they saw me.
At this point The Rock cut me off and asked, “What is your name again?”
“My name is—”
“It doesn’t matter what your name is!”
The fans in the arena, who didn’t know who I was or what I was doing, erupted with glee that I had been shut up. The Rock continued his verbal assault by addressing my Y2J moniker.
“You talk about your Y2J plan, well, The Rock has a little plan of his own, the K-Y Jelly plan, which means The Rock is gonna lube his size 13 boot real good, turn that sumbitch sideways, and stick it straight up your candy ass !”
As a heel, my job was to sell his oral beatdown, and that I did. The problem was, I sold it like a scalded dog (Jim Ross™) and got this look on my face like I was about to cry. It was a trick I picked up in WCW, but I was soon to discover that the type of heel I was used to playing didn’t fly in the brave new world of the WWE.
As a result, in the course of a couple of minutes within my first promo, I went from a confident, cocky Y2Jack the Lad to a whining, huffy crybaby. I was trying to go all out to be the bad guy, but in doing so I turned myself into a comedy figure— the type of heel that can’t be taken too seriously. Even though it was a great entrance and a classic WWE moment, watching it now makes me cringe because I would never act that way anymore. But in 1999 I didn’t know any better. Instead of keeping any badass credibility, I became a cowardly cartoon. It should have taken a lot more than one insult to turn me into a sniveling baby.
The worst part came at the end of the promo when The Rock unleashed his patented “If you smel-l-l-l-l-l what The Rock is cooking!” For some reason, I contorted my face into a sulky Popeye-like grimace, as if I’d just found Bluto snorting spinach off of Olive Oyl’s naked ass.
It was the wrong card to play on my first night in the WWE. My cowardly heel routine made it hard for the audience to believe that I was a credible opponent for a megastar like The Rock, even though that was the initial plan. Because of my Popeye puss, that train was derailed before it left the station.
However, there were a few other reasons why I didn’t get into a program with The Rock right from the get-go. For one thing, I was coming from WCW, which, being enemy territory, automatically put me under a giant microscope. Another problem was that matches in the WWE were constructed in a totally different way than they were in WCW, a way that was completely foreign to me. In WCW, we pretty much did whatever we wanted in the ring, but in the WWE the style was much more serious
and structured. In WCW, I was able to keep my head above water by acting as ridiculous as I could and performing whatever comedy bits I could think of to get noticed. But now that my head was above water and the spotlight was on me, I still kept doing what I did best, and that wasn’t my role anymore. It wasn’t what Vince wanted from me, even though nobody ever really told me what it was that he did want. On top of all that, I had this huge buildup coming into the company that left me with a target on my back bigger than Val Venis’s penis. I found out very quickly that it didn’t matter what I had accomplished or what my reputation was outside of the WWE walls, I had to prove myself all over again from scratch. And I’d failed round one with my goofy reactions to Rocky’s words.
I spent weeks writing my debut promo, and afterwards I kept writing my promos unassisted, only going over them briefly with head writer Vince Russo before each show. I decided it would be a good idea to go into full-on creep mode and insult the other superstars in the WWE, accusing them of being boring and only half as talented as me. I was never really given a specific directive to insult people, but I knew that my character thought the company was boring and stagnant, and I was there to shake things up. Russo listened to my ideas and told me, “Great, go with it.”
After each promo I didn’t get any feedback from Russo (or anybody else), so I figured that meant everything was good. I was intimidated by the aura of Vince McMahon and I never asked him what he thought I should do, even though in retrospect that would have been a good idea. Wrestling is like a giant high school clique, and if you’re the new guy who comes in looking different and acting different, you’re going to get blasted for it—mostly behind your back. With zero allies in my new company, I had nobody to stand up for me when my back was turned. Even worse, because I didn’t really ask Vince or any of the boys for advice, I came across as an arrogant prick who thought he knew it all. Unbeknownst to me, I was stockpiling massive amounts of nuclear heat in the process.
Undisputed: How to Become World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps Page 1