Undisputed: How to Become World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps

by Chris Jericho

  Another rule I had was that during the radio interviews I refused to talk about wrestling. If someone asked I’d just say, “I don’t know anything about American pro wrestling. But I’ll tell you all you need to know about Japanese sumo wrestling.” It was like when Will Ferrell went on Conan O’Brien as Robert Goulet, just not as funny or as welcome. I was pissing people off and burning more bridges than Francis Ford Coppola during the making of Apocalypse Now.

  The last stop on the radio tour was The Opie and Anthony Show, hosted by two no-nonsense shock jocks who did not want to play along. They became quite upset that they couldn’t get me to admit that I was Chris Jericho.

  “Come on! Just tell us you’re Chris Jericho! Come on!”

  “No, no, no. I’m Moongoose McQueen.”

  “Okay, Moonjuice or whatever it is you’re calling yourself. This is not funny.”

  I wouldn’t budge.

  “All right, Moosejuice. What’s Lita like? Have you seen her in the shower?”

  “Yeah, we’ve seen Lita Ford in the shower plenty of times. She’s pretty hot.”

  We’d do anything we could do to redirect the conversation back to Fozzy. They finally threw up their hands and gave up, frustrated that they had wasted their time on such a stupid concept. They were about to ask us to leave when the whole appearance was rescued by an unlikely savior: Andrew Dice Clay.

  Dice was guest-hosting the show and seemed very confused by what he was witnessing. He had no idea who Fozzy was, who Chris Jericho was, and I’m not quite sure he knew who Opie or Anthony were for that matter. He sat there with a dumbfounded look on his face as I kept saying, “We’ve been in Japan for twenty years and now we’re back to reclaim what’s ours. I’m Moongoose McQueen! Enough about this Jericho guy already.”

  Opie said confrontationally, “Listen, no one cares about Fozzy. We had you in here because we care about the WWE and Chris Jericho.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t know what the WWE is. I’m the singer of Fozzy.”

  Dice finally piped in. “Listen,” he said, “who is this guy? Is he a wrestluh or is he a singuh?”

  I said, “Dice, I’m a singer.”

  “Well, get off his case then … he’s a singuh.”

  Suddenly, in one fell cigarette puff, it was now Moongoose and the Diceman vs. Opie and Anthony.

  Dice got really into what I was saying and became my hype man. When I mentioned that if you look at our songs chronologically, you could see they were recorded before the other bands released their versions, Dice backed me up by saying, “Listen, he must have a pretty good band if they do all those dance moves. You a good dancuh?”

  “Dice, I’m the best dancer,” I replied, not exactly sure what he was talking about. It took me a few minutes to realize he had confused the word “chronologically” with the word “choreography.”

  “I like his aviatuh shades. I like his leopardskin vest. He’s talkin’ about all the dance moves he can do. I like this guy, give this guy some respect! As a mattuh of fact, I think we should do a show together. You do some of yuh dancin’ and singin’ and I’ll tell some jokes! Hey-ohh, it’ll be huge!”

  I’m still not sure if Dice was in character, really confused, or really stoned. Maybe all of the above. But it didn’t matter, because the two of us took a shit segment and turned it into comedy gold. Any way you slice it ( Asylum ), the combination of Dice and Goose kicked O and A’s ass that day and left them in shock.

  However I’m still waiting for Dice’s call so we can book that show of ours.

  The next stop on the promo tour was Toronto, where the band was garnering some interest. The first show we did was a sports talk show called Off the Record. It was a panel discussion show, and joining me was an up-and-coming singer named Pink. Once again I stayed completely in character and committed to being a total asshole. She was really nice until I started barraging her with insults.

  She had a mild resemblance to Annie Lennox, which prompted me to comment, “Your songs are good, but I liked you better when you were in the Eurythmics.”

  Pink looked at me, more confused than angry at this point.

  “I dig ‘Would I Lie to You.’ But the rest of your stuff is lame.”

  “Why is your name Pink if you have blonde hair? Shouldn’t you be called Blonde?”

  That pissed her off. “Who are you? You think you’re some kind of singer?”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  She thought I was a total asshole, and she wasn’t the only one. I had been on the show before as Jericho and the show’s staff was wondering what the hell was wrong with me. To be honest, I don’t know the answer either. But I was determined to play this character even though I was dragging my good name through the mud. But what was I accomplishing? Not only was I confusing people, but by acting like a dick, I was driving them away from the band as well.

  When I showed up for my next interview on The Mike Bullard Show, I was surprised to see the other guest was none other than Pinkie Lennox herself. I sat in the green room in total silence, as she stared daggers out of her eyes, making it a very tense situation. So what? I was still a rock star.

  This appearance was different from the others, because the host, Mike Bullard, decided to play along with the gag.

  “I remember seeing Fozzy at Massey Hall in 1982. What a great show! I’m so excited to have you on here tonight!”

  There was a smattering of applause as the audience tried to figure out why Chris Jericho was onstage dressed in a leopardskin vest and giant aviator shades, pretending not to be Chris Jericho. The gag was already wearing thin, evidenced by the sales figures for the first week of Fozzy ’s release. They were lower than Hornswoggle’s ballbag.

  After Jonny had given us whiplash with his delusions of Metallica grandeur, I was expecting to sell 50,000 copies on the first day. But we didn’t even chart in the Billboard Top 200.

  The problem was that Megaforce was banking on the idea that wrestling fans would flock to Fozzy and buy the CD in droves. I mean, can you blame them? At the time, there were eight million people watching WWE programming every week, and I’ll bet that leopardskin vest they figured that even if only 1 percent of those fans bought the record, we’d sell 80,000 copies in a week.

  Unfortunately, only.0005 percent of those fans bought the record, and we sold 4,225.

  It was a valuable lesson for everybody involved to learn that there’s no guarantee that wrestling fans will buy something just because a wrestler is involved.

  After the first week’s sales figures came in, we could see the difference in Megaforce’s attitude almost immediately. Instead of treating us like the next Metallica, they were treating us like the next Odin. Plans for the release of the Fozzy documentary on DVD were canceled, as were plans for release of the record in Europe. Talks of endorsements and appearances on The Tonight Show, Rockline, and Saturday Night Live (where we had the idea of using a choir of guest guitar players like Zakk Wylde, Slash, and Eddie Van Halen to back us ) were all kiboshed.

  The gravy train had run off the rails and we were nothing more than a cover band again.

  Allllll aboard … hahahahaha.

  CHAPTER 10

  Vince Loves Apes

  WrestleMania X8 was looming and it was decided that I would work with my old friend from WCW, William Regal. Regal was a good worker and a tremendous character actor. He had one of best personas in the company and knew how to garner serious heat no matter what position he was in. Because his character was such a snob, it was easy to make him the butt of a joke, which is why our angle began with me going tee-tee in his tea-tea.

  Yeah, you read that right. I pissed in his Earl Grey.

  Allow me to explain. Regal was the evil commissioner and was deriving great pleasure from screwing with me. One night in Madison Square Garden, he put me into a handicap match against him and his Japanese minion Tajiri, daring me to find a partner of my own.

  “Who would ever want to partner with you?” he said co
ndescendingly. “The Phantom of the Opera?” Then he and Tajiri started laughing maniacally and it was totally preposterous.

  Later in the night I stormed into his office looking for justice and found his cup of tea instead.

  So I turned my back to the camera and pantomimed pulling out my Piccadilly. Then I took a squirt bottle (pun intended) out of my pocket and squeezed it into the cup, which on TV sounded like I was leaking in his Lipton. When Regal came back into his office and took a sip of the tea, he made comedic history with some of the most ridiculous facial expressions ever made. It made the urine-drinking cop’s face in Dumb and Dumber seem as funny as a Daniel Day Lewis movie.

  The angle continued as I constantly outsmarted Regal with my immense babyface cunning. When a Legends Battle Royal was booked for WrestleMania, featuring such household names as Typhoon, Duke “the Dumpster” Droese, and Doink the Clown, Regal was doing an interview and was interrupted and attacked by Doink, who ended up being me in disguise.

  I had just applied the intricate clown makeup and was waiting to do my run-in when Shawn Michaels walked past me, gave a double take, and walked back.

  Shawn was one of my all-time favorites, and (along with Owen Hart and Ricky Steamboat) was my main inspiration to get into the wrestling business. I came to the WWE with the hope of working with him even though he was only with the company part-time at that point and still battling the demons that were holding him back in his life.

  Shawn got in my clown face and gave me a Larry David– esque suspicious stare, and I noticed he was pretty wasted.

  “What’s going on, Chris?” he said, his eyelids drooping and his speech slurring. “Are you doing the Doink gimmick now?”

  “No, I’m just doing it for tonight. I’m ambushing Regal.”

  “So you’re gonna be Doink now?”

  “No, no. I’m just doing it for one night as a way to surprise Regal.”

  “But why do you have to be Doink?” he asked again, slowly swaying back and forth.

  “But I’m not Doink, Shawn. It’s just for tonight.”

  “But why would they make you Doink?”

  I felt like Abbott and Costello, except instead of Who’s on First, the routine was Who’s on Drugs, and it wasn’t me.

  “I’m not Doink. It’s just an angle for tonight.”

  Shawn shook his head and waltzed away. “I don’t like it, they should never have made you Doink.”

  He passed out in Vince’s office later that night and was fired. Shawn eventually cleaned himself up and came back to the WWE better than ever a few years later. When he did, I finally got the chance to work with him and had one of the best matches of my career.

  Wait for it, guys … wait for it.

  Regal and I opened the show at WrestleMania X-Seven. The match wasn’t bad, but I think it could’ve been so much more. My biggest problem with it was the lack of time we were given. Mania took place in the Houston Astrodome, and the walkway to the ring was so long that by the time we got out there we had about seven minutes for the entire match. We did our best but it was rushed and we were off on certain spots. Even though I won, in my mind I was 0– 2 in my Mania performances.

  Later on at the after-show party, Vince complimented me on the match and told me how much he liked it, but I wasn’t buying it. I was feeling pretty down on myself and knew I could do better.

  Once again, the feud with Stephanie came to the rescue and was taking on a life of its own. The fans were eating it up because there was this great chemistry between the bitchy, spoiled billion-dollar princess and the sharp-tongued rock star who couldn’t be outwitted. That was the unique quality about the Y2J character that helped me connect with the fans—I would say things that nobody else could. It didn’t make a difference who I was talking to: another wrestler, the boss, or even the boss’s daughter.

  (Chauvinistic Author’s Note: Isn’t it ironic—like a free ride when you’ve already paid—that one female almost killed my career while another one wholly revitalized it?)

  I tore poor Steph apart with my insults, and watching my verbal attacks on her is like watching an episode of All in the Family — I said things to her that could never be repeated on TV in this day and age.

  My entire Stephanie routine was based around the idea that she was a total slut who slept with every man, woman, and hermaphrodite that she came across—who then presumably returned the favor by coming across her.

  When it was Stephanie’s twenty-fifth birthday I asked her, “How old are you, Steph? Thirty-five, thirty-six? Or is that just how many guys you’ve been with since last week?”

  HHH stood up for his wife, saying, “You can’t yell at Stephanie like that, she’s a delicate little flower!”

  “Stephanie lost her flower a long time ago.”

  When Stephanie and her lackey Rhyno were in the ring, I explicated what I was going to do at the next PPV. “At SummerSlam, I’m going to take care of that smelly, greasy, nasty animal—and I’m gonna get you too, Rhyno!”

  Or:

  “Standing in the ring you’ve got the Man-Beast and the Hose-Beast! I’m dealing with the Gore and the Whore.”

  Well, you get the idea.

  It got over huge as the fans delighted in my abuse of the billion-dollar princess, all the while chanting along with my “filthy, dirty, disgusting, brutal, bottom-feeding, trash-bag ho” catchphrase. It was a strange sight, seeing five-year-old kids shouting out “ trash-bag ho” at the top of their lungs, but then again I never claimed to be a role model for America’s children.

  Whenever I went over any of these barbs broadcasting his daughter’s supposed promiscuousness with Vince, he would listen with a pensive look on his face and say, “Just make sure after you deliver the insult you take a pause so people can react.”

  That Vince … ever the businessman.

  And ever the fan of apes.

  Apes, you say? Well, allow me to elucidate.

  Brian called me one evening to go over the standard insult promo on Stephanie that I’d be delivering on Raw that Monday. It was business as usual and I didn’t think about it again, until he called the next day and said, “We have an issue. We have to figure out a way to add apes into this promo.”

  What was he talking about? “Vince loves apes. We’re doing a tie-in with the Planet of the Apes

  remake and he wants them on the show. He said, ‘If anyone can make it work it’s Jericho. He’ll figure out what to do with them.’ ”

  Vince’s statement was a compliment and a curse. I had developed a rep as a guy who could make anything work, whether it was wearing a referee jersey with he hate me written on the back to promote the XFL or guiding a half-insane Bob Backlund (sans talking dictionary) through a live promo. Now Brian and I had to figure out a way to guide a couple of apes through a segment promoting both their new movie and SummerSlam. It was a verbal Rubik’s Cube.

  Not to be deterred, Brian and I put our heads together and came up with a pretty damn good idea.

  The show started and Stephanie came to the ring talking about SummerSlam, until she was promptly interrupted by your noble novelist.

  “Stephanie, to you SummerSlam is a quickie on a hot August night. You’ve slept with everybody in this company from the boys in the back, to the cameraman, to the ring crew, to the merchandise sellers, to the lighting guy, to the popcorn vendor in the fifteenth row—congratulations, Lou, you finally did it!”

  I spewed the insults out like a Jay-Z rhyme and the fans were going crizzle for my shizzle.

  I continued by picking up on a rant she had been on about how her brother Shane always won while she always lost.

  “Don’t worry, Stephanie, Shane may come out on top, but you always end up on the bottom … and on your knees … on the coffee table … on the kitchen counter.”

  The crowd licked it up like Vinnie Vincent as I concluded: “Stephanie, since you’ve slept with everybody on this entire planet, maybe it’s time for you to broaden your horizons and sleep
with something from another planet—the Planet of the Apes, for example.”

  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the worst segue ever.

  The apes came ambling down the ramp, with their simian arms and legs swinging to and fro absurdly. They came bearing gifts that included a cake in a box, although at this point a dick in a box would’ve been better. The bit ended when I adhered to the time-honored tradition in wrestling where anytime a cake is brought into the ring it must end up with someone’s face being smashed into it. In this case it was Stephanie’s mug that ended up in the icing, leaving her humiliated as the apes lurched around with joy. When I came through the curtain Vince gave me a standing ovation as if I had just delivered a five-star classic at Wrestlemania.

  An audience of one indeed.

  My ape performance once again put me on Vince’s good side and suddenly he wanted to use me in every situation. I was sitting in the dressing room in GM Place in Vancouver after my match, cooling down and contemplating a shower. Kid Rock was about to play on Raw and I was looking forward to checking him out, as we hadn’t seen each other since our all-nighter in Cancun years earlier (story in A Lion’s Tale, available online now). Back then we were still climbing the ladder to success, and now only a short three years later both of us had made it to the big time.

  So I was chillin’ like a villain on Thanksgivin’ (shameless rapper pandering) when Road Dogg ran into the dressing room at full speed.

  “Vince wants you in the Gorilla position right now!”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve got to introduce Kid Rock!”

  “What? Why?”

  “ ’Cause I was supposed to do it but I’m a heel and Vince just decided he wants you to do it instead! He’s on in two minutes! You have to go now!”