Thinking about it now, Vince had definitely taken a few Jericho molehills and blown them up into mountains in order to test me, to see how I’d react to his harsh words. But I survived his trial by fire by not flipping out, taking my verbal beatings like a man, and doing what he asked.
I was surfing the Web a few days later and was mortified (killer word) to see a post heralding how Vince McMahon had scolded Chris Jericho and said he wasn’t worth the paper his contract was printed on, was green as grass, the drizzling shits, et cetera. It basically gave a word-for-word description of my crucifixion. It was bad enough having to deal with Vince’s abuse without having to read about it online as well.
A few hours after the story went up online, I got a call from Russo.
“If the rumors I’m hearing are true, I want you to come back to WCW. You have an open door to work here whenever you want.”
It was nice to hear but not an option for me. I’d been running down a dream for nine years to work for the WWE, and even though it had been a rocky start, I was still the Intercontinental Champion. Plus I was under contract and couldn’t leave if I wanted to.
But even if I wasn’t legally obligated to stay, I still wouldn’t have left. As The Rock said, the cream always rises to the top, and I felt like I was Clapton, Baker, and Bruce rolled up into one. I knew I could make it in the WWE and do it in a way that Vince McMahon would appreciate.
Al Snow once told me that while we entertained millions of people weekly, there was only one person we had to impress and that was Vince himself. Even if the whole world loves you, if Vince doesn’t you’ll never truly make it in his company.
I had to change who I was as a performer, and I was ready for the challenge. After all, it wasn’t the first time I had to reinvent myself. I’d had my confidence shattered many times before in Japan, ECW, and WCW and gotten back up and succeeded every time. I was too driven and had come too far to give up now.
You can’t kill rock and roll and you can’t kill Chris Jericho either.
CHAPTER 6
Looking California and Feeling Minnesota
As bad as things were going, I was soon given a shocking reminder that the WWE was only a job and things could be a whole lot worse.
We were doing a TV taping at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island and I was warming up in the hallway when former NFL defensive end Darren Drozdov ran past me on his way to the ring for his match against D-Lo Brown.
“Slow down, man, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” I said as he almost bowled me over.
“Heads up, Canadian, I’m late,” he said with a laugh as he ran up the stairs into Gorilla.
A few minutes later I heard a huge cry of “Ohhhhhh” emanate from the dressing room, the kind you only hear when something has gone wrong. I hurried over to the monitor to see Droz lying motionless in the ring with the paramedics (and François) huddled around him.
He had been dropped on his head when he slipped out of an attempted Powerbomb from D-Lo Brown. His lack of movement reminded me instantly of my mom. It had been my biggest fear since her accident that something would happen to me during a match that would leave me a quadriplegic as well. Seeing Droz lying there scared the living shit out of me and I started praying.
“Please let him move, God, please let him move … an arm, a leg, anything.”
But the minutes ticked away and nothing changed.
The paramedics took about half an hour to get him onto the stretcher and out of the ring. It was a horrible feeling to see one of the brothers lying motionless in the middle of the arena.
It was an even worse feeling being thankful that it wasn’t me.
The show continued, and when it ended I drove to the hospital to see him. Vince was there and everybody was sitting around glumly not knowing what to say or to do. It was a horrible scene, but the person I felt the most sorry for was D-Lo. He sat in the corner with his head buried in his hands and tears streaming down his face. He was blaming himself for what happened, and even though it was a total accident, I felt for him and the fact that he’d have to live with the knowledge that Droz would never walk again.
Droz never blamed anyone for his injury, and as far as I know he is still on the WWE payroll to this day. Sometimes when we have a show in Philadelphia, he’ll show up in his pimped out wheelchair and is always friendly with a great attitude. He’s a big man and looks out of place in the confines of the little chair, but he always has a smile and a compliment for everyone.
But what happened to Droz serves as a reminder of how lucky I am that I’ve never been seriously injured in the ring.
It’s also a reminder how terrified I am of ending up in the same situation.
The guy in charge of tracking down talent (the fancy word used for wrestlers, the same way “fuel dispensing technician” is used for gas station attendants) to do various promos for the WWE is Steve Lombardi, a.k.a. the Brooklyn Brawler. I cut my teeth doing promos in WCW when nobody else showed up to do them and I understood how important it was to practice every chance I got. But the first couple times Lombardi asked me to do promos for the WWE, I blew him off. I became one of the guys who suddenly had more important things to do than work on my verbal skills, like Lex Luger in WCW.
Finally Lombardi cornered me and said, “I’m not asking you to do these because I want you to do them for me. You’re doing them for the company. When they ask me why you’re not doing them, it just makes you look like an asshole. If you continue to blow them off, it’s going to make you seem like you’re a prima donna and it could really hurt you.”
Once again, I wasn’t keeping my eyes on the ball when it came to the little things.
So I revived my WCW attitude and did as many pretapes, PSAs, local advertisements, and interviews for DVDs as I could. I tried to get my face on as much material as possible. It got to the point where I would do most of the material in one take. But if there was a take that I didn’t like, if I stumbled or mispronounced something, I would use a trick that Rick Rude taught me in WCW.
Swear.
“I’m the Ayatollah of Lock and Lollahh … Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Voilà! A guaranteed second chance.
I had just done a promo for WWE ice cream bars when I was approached in the hallway by a kid who looked like he was twelve years old.
“Hi, how are you doing, Chris? I’m a big fan of your work.”
I thanked the kid and started looking for security to help him find his parents. “How did you get backstage, buddy?”
“I work here now.”
Work here? Okay, maybe he was a hot dog vendor or somebody’s kid who was on the payroll as a gofer. I asked him in my most patronizing tone, “Really. So what do you do?”
“I’m the new writer for Raw. My name is Brian Gewirtz and I’m looking forward to working with you.”
The new era of the WWE had arrived.
No longer would I be responsible for writing all of my promos, as Vince had decided to utilize scriptwriters the same way that Hollywood TV shows did. From now on every one of my promos would be written and delivered to me. I had the option to make changes, but the days of writing everything down on a legal pad in my room and bringing it to the shows were gone. Brian was in charge now—and he looked like he wasn’t even old enough to drink a beer. But we had a lot in common and we got along right away. He understood my character and was a fan, so for the first time since Russo left I had an ally on the booking team.
I figured that after I beat Chyna for the title that my sentence with her was over and I’d move on to a feud with someone who had a dinky, but I was wrong. For some reason Vince liked the chemistry I had with Chyna and wanted to continue the story— and in doing so he came up with the all-time worst angle I was ever involved in.
He called us into his office, and as we sat in uncomfortable silence you could cut the aversion with a knife.
“The writers and I have been talking and we’ve decided that the two of you are going to be the
co-holders of the Intercontinental title. For the first time ever in the WWE we are going to have co-champions. You’ll both defend it and you will constantly debate with each other about who the champion really is. Quite frankly I think it will be an incredible dynamic.”
I sat there looking California and feeling Minnesota. I couldn’t believe that I’d have to share the title with her. I would’ve been happier just dropping it to her so I could wash my hands of the whole Chyna experience and move on to something (anything) else.
However I had once again been given my orders, and it was my job to make chicken shit into chicken salad.
But I had a feeling I was about to embark on Mission Impossible, and I ain’t talking about Tom Cruise.
So we became co-champions after I German suplexed (whatever happened to that move?) Chyna and both of our shoulders ended up on the mat. The ref counted to three on both of us, and instead of calling it a draw, he decided that we would become the co-holders of the Intercontinental Championship.
Dumbest.
Idea.
Ever.
Vince’s initial thought was that either of us could defend the title, but it usually ended up with me wrestling and her at ringside. At this point, I suddenly became a babyface. One week I was smashing thumbs with hammers and the next week I was slapping babies and kissing hands with Chyna in my corner rooting me on.
The turn started when the fans began cheering me against Chyna, but instead of building it up and making it mean something, the turn was never made official and the overall response was lukewarm at best.
I would be wrestling Gangrel, and when his valet Luna got involved, Chyna would hit Gangrel with the Pedigree behind the ref’s back. I would then hit the Lionsault and cover him and get the tainted win, which as a babyface was brutal. The fans were starting to get sick of us as well and wanted to see me get involved in something new. Thankfully, Vince knew that his experiment wasn’t working and decided to put it (and me) out of its misery. Somehow poor Bob Holly got dragged into it all and we had a three-way match for the title at the Royal Rumble in Madison Square Garden, with the winner becoming the undisputed IC Champ. After my anemic debut as a performer in MSG, I wanted to make my mark with my debut match in the Garden. I even flew my dad in for the show. It was his return to the building where he had won so many battles thirty years before, and I was excited to carry on the family tradition with a great match.
Unfortunately my family tradition ended up more like Family Guy.
When you work a match, the best way to do it is to call it on the fly. Have a set beginning, middle, and end and make up the rest as you go. But with Chyna you had to call the entire match beforehand.
Every duck, every dip, every dodge. Usually both guys have a general idea of what’s going on and if someone has a brain freeze the other guy can back you up. But you couldn’t count on that with her. Bob Holly, on the other hand, was a seasoned vet and a good worker. With a guy like him, you didn’t have to go over much. If I threw him off the ropes and bent over, it was obvious that I was going to give him a backdrop.
With Chyna it wasn’t that easy.
“I’m going to give you a backdrop.”
“What?”
“Backdrop.”
“Huh?”
“Backdrop!”
“Is it a backdrop?”
“Yeah, a backdrop.”
And so on and so forth. Three-way matches are never easy as it is, but surprisingly, this one was going pretty good until I threw Bob to the floor and turned back to Chyna. Suddenly I went blank and had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do next. Time stood still as we both looked at each other blankly in front of 18,000 people. If I were a Shakespearean actor in Stratford-upon-Avon, I would’ve yelled, “Line!” and some guy in the pit would tell me what to say. But I was a Shakespearean actor in Madison Square Garden and didn’t have that luxury. Finally, instead of yelling, “To be or not to be,” Bob came back into the ring and yelled, “Bulldog her, dumbass!” and I snapped back into the groove. If Holly hadn’t said anything, I’d probably still be there trying to figure out what the hell to do.
Finally I made Chyna tap out to the Salad Shooter and I was done with her forever—or was I?
Mercifully I moved into a program with Bob. I liked working with him because he was a hard-nosed guy and a skilled worker. I didn’t have to worry if I gave him a shiner or if I hit him too hard, because I knew he didn’t care and would give it back to me anyway. I had the same rules with him as I had with Benoit. Hit me as hard as you want—just don’t break my nose or knock out any teeth. That’s how we worked together, and we had some really good matches as a result.
Even though I still had heat with certain people in the locker room, I didn’t have heat with Bob, and he helped me turn the corner both work-wise and politically. The boys had heard about my struggles with Vince and DX, and I’d become a little bit of a dressing room hero as a result. I was building relationships on a grassroots level and beginning to make some friends who were pulling for me and appreciated what I could do in the ring. Bob had been around, he respected what I had done and where I had been, and, most important, he respected me.
And slowly but surely, the rest of the roster started to as well.
I was happy with the work I had done with Bob and thought I was out of the Chynese prison, until Vince once again called her and I into his office.
“We’re going to make you two partners!” he said with a big smile. “We’ve got two good-looking people here and the both of you together will be unstoppable!”
I felt like puking all over his powder blue sports coat, but Vince could sell yellow snow to an Eskimo, and by the time I left his office I thought it was the best idea ever—for about three minutes. Then I realized I’d been hosed again.
So now we’re supposed to be amigos and she’s going to be my valet? As a babyface, it was brutal to have her walk to the ring with me and share my spotlight. It was even worse that we weren’t the co-champions anymore and there was no reason for her to be with me.
Or was there?
Vince had issues with Chyna and her expanding ego and he had issues with me, so I wondered: did he put us together to see who would kill the other one first?
Luckily for me, the cavalry was about to arrive.
My best friends in the business followed my lead and jumped from WCW to the WWE. Chris Benoit, Eddy Guerrero, Dean Malenko, and Perry Saturn had been granted their release en masse from WCW and showed up on Raw in the biggest talent exodus in the history of the Monday Night Wars. I was surprised that WCW had been stupid enough to let them all go at once, but I wasn’t at all surprised that they had all left. Eddy had been calling me for months asking how it was working for the WWE, and Chris constantly told me that he wanted to leave. In WCW it felt like we were in prison, and while I was the first one to escape, they all longed to join me.
Dean told me that when I made my WWE debut he, Chris, and Eddy gathered around a TV backstage at Nitro to watch, and just as I walked out to confront The Rock, one of the producers made them change the channel. According to WCW logic I was now the enemy and they weren’t allowed to be friends with me anymore.
There was a huge buzz throughout the business when they appeared in the WWE, especially for Chris and Eddy. But in his first match in the company, Benoit, who had walked out of WCW as the World Champion, wrestled WWE Champion HHH and was pinned clean in about ten minutes. Once again, Vince didn’t care what anyone had accomplished outside his walls, you had to prove yourself all over again when you came to work for him.
It was his World (Wrestling Entertainment), and we were just living in it.
CHAPTER 7
Too Esoteric for Our Demographic
Rich Ward and I originally put Fozzy Osbourne together as a fun side project, consisting of a bunch of friends playing our favorite heavy metal songs. We only played two gigs together, but because Jericho from the WWE and Rich from Stuck Mojo (who had a signifi
cant underground following, selling three-quarters of a million records worldwide) had started a band, there was a buzz about us from the start.
After the two gigs caused such a stir, Mark Willis, the manager of Stuck Mojo, called me and asked, “Do you want to do more with Fozzy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there are record companies that want to sign you guys.”
“Sign what? We’re a cover band!”
Mark responded, “They know. They also know that you can’t really tour. But they still want to sign you.”
“Well, what have they heard from us that would make them want to sign us?”
He said, “Nothing. You guys have only done two gigs and I sure as hell wasn’t going to send them the video from those, because they were terrible.”
I’d never met Willis, but he sure was comfortable giving it to me straight. I liked him already.
“Obviously you hadn’t rehearsed or anything,” he continued. “But the point is the word is out about you guys, and they’ve heard nothing and seen nothing. They just know who’s in the band and they want to sign you.”
The talk of a record deal had come out of nowhere, but I was stoked since I had two dreams when I was a kid—to be a wrestler and to be a rock star. I’d been playing in bands since I was fourteen years old, a lot longer than I’d been wrestling, and it was surreal to see my other dream coming true.
It was strange that there was a label bidding war going on but we weighed the offers and decided on signing with Megaforce Records. Based out of New Jersey, Megaforce was the first label to sign Metallica and Anthrax to record deals. They were far from their glory days, but the fact that we were going to release an album with the same company that had given James Hetfield and Charlie Benante their starts was good enough for me.
We got a $75,000 advance from Megaforce, and that’s when I got a crash course in the music business. When you’re a kid, you think that when a band signs a record deal they’ll be huge rock stars instantly and be showered with cash. It was the same mindset I had when I first started watching Stampede Wrestling. I assumed that all of the wrestlers were rich and famous because they were on TV. I would watch an opening-match guy like Goldie Rogers and think to myself, “If I can just get to his level, I’ll make a hundred grand a year and have tons of chicks hanging around me.”
Undisputed: How to Become World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps Page 6