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

by Chris Jericho

  I thought he was just stoned, but when I followed his finger, he was right. There were a dozen people, entire families, sitting in the thick branches of the tall trees, watching the show with a bird’s-eye view of the festivities.

  After the show I was introduced to Mr. India, a literal giant of a man with a massive movie-theater-sized chest and arms as big as an elephant’s trunk. Through a translator, he told me he was a big fan and was hoping to become a wrestler someday. He was over seven feet tall and I figured he could pretty much do whatever he wanted in wrestling and he did. The guy’s name was Dalip Singh, better known as future WWE World Champion the Great Khali.

  The next night I was teaming with Christian in an actual arena in Mumbai, and during my prematch promo the fans started chanting, “Asshole.” Taking it all in stride, I said, “I’m not the asshole, you’re the assholes! I hate this place!”

  The next day, one of our reps gave me a copy of Today, New Delhi’s paper, and told me to look at the front page. I read the news today oh boy, and the headline said, “Rotten WWE Show Turns into Sick Joke.” Underneath, the sub-caption read, “India is a very very bad place and all Indians are assholes.” Signed: WWE Tag Team Champion, Chris Jericho.

  The story inside was even worse, explaining how the evil confidence men of the WWE had tried to pass off their shoddy product as a real fight when it was obvious that it was show business. I couldn’t believe how the reporter had twisted my words to back his theory that we were heinous con artists who had come to India to rip off the paying customers and insult them in the process. The way this guy was talking, I thought I was reading a review of a Toots Mondt show from 1942.

  The last show in Bangalore was another parking lot classic where I amused myself by wearing Hurricane’s cape and a Halloween mask while brandishing a mudflap for a run in on Kane. But the joke was on me as Kane thought I was an unruly fan and was about to tear my masked head off, until I screamed in a terrified girly-man squeak, “It’s me, Glen! It’s me!” Realizing that the idiot wearing the Scream mask was really his little buddy Jericho, he guffawed (funny word) and let me go.

  During the course of the tour, Lance Storm, Tommy Dreamer, Al Snow, and Booker T all got sick to varying degrees. When we got back to the States, Regal was feeling weak and ended up being diagnosed with some form of heart parasite, which still affects him to this day. I definitely made the right call with my peanut butter and oatmeal.

  We flew back from India straight into Charleston, South Carolina, for Raw. When I arrived, Brian told me that Vince had challenged him to make him laugh with that week’s show, and Brian had obliged. The show was based around Booker T and Goldust stealing Christian’s and my clothes out of the locker room, forcing us to spend the rest of the night nakedly searching for our threads.

  The story would conclude with us (sporting towels around our waists) onstage in front of the live crowd confronting Booker, who would be in the ring with our stolen bags. As we argued, Goldust would come up from behind and pull the towels off. It all sounded fine and el dandy, except for one thing: Vince wanted us to really be naked underneath our towels.

  Yep, I said it. Naked.

  I thought Brian was ribbing, but when he assured me he wasn’t, I told him, “There’s no fucking way I’m standing naked in front of the crowd, and I don’t give a shit what Vince says. You can tell him I said that.”

  Five minutes later I was summoned to the Emperor’s palace.

  “You cool with everything tonight, pal?” Vince asked when I stormed in.

  “Sure … everything except being naked in front of the crowd. There’s no way I’m going to do that! I’m a wrestler, not a Chippendales dancer.” (If you saw my Zellweger, you would agree.)

  “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “Seriously, Vince? There’s going to be kids … little girls … in the audience looking at my horn flapping around. I could get arrested!”

  “But we have to make it look real. What do you suggest we do?”

  I proposed we wear flesh-colored underwear and pixelate our units, and that’s what we did. I’m still not sure if Vince was ribbing me about being naked, but if he was I’m sure he had a good laugh at my reaction!

  (Surprisingly, Christian didn’t seem to have a problem with being onstage exposing his Reso.)

  On top of wanting us to perform the Full Monty, Vince also wanted Booker to discover women’s underwear in our gym bags when he went through them. Apparently, he thought it would be funny for his tag team champions to be a pair of nude transvestites. I once again protested and the problem was alleviated when Brian came up with the idea of putting a jar of Ass Cream in our bags instead. Neither one of us were sure exactly what Ass Cream was, but it made us laugh so we went with it.

  With all of the controversy settled, Booker, Goldust, Christian, and I put together the match and we were all set to go. I was warming up twenty minutes before the show when Booker was wheeled past me on a stretcher. I did a double take and ran over to ask what was wrong. He could barely answer, but the paramedic told me he was being taken to the hospital for extreme dehydration (they pumped five bags of fluids into his body once he got there).

  So at the last minute Booker and Goldust were replaced by the Dudley Boyz. We sat down to put together the twenty-minute opening match that was starting in ten minutes. I was stressed out from the pressure, and as everyone was going over ideas I frantically shouted, “Okay, everybody calm down! We can do this, guys, let’s just focus. Come on!!” I looked around the room at the peaceful faces around me.

  “We are calm, man. Now shut up and let’s get this done,” Bubba said stoically.

  We had a good match, and afterward as Christian and I were taking showers, the Dudleys stole our bags and we spent the rest of the show looking for them. There was some ridiculous comedy involved, my favorite bit coming when I asked a ref if he’d seen our bags. He told me he didn’t have time to talk because he was going to the ring for a match.

  “You want a match? My face and your ass,” I said angrily.

  We finally found Bubba and Devon in the ring throwing our clothes into the crowd.

  “What’s this?” Bubba said as he pulled a jumbo-sized jar out of my bag. “Ass Cream? What is Ass Cream and what exactly do you do with it, might I ask?”

  Christian and I were mortified over Bubba’s discovery, and as we yelled at him to stop messing with our stuff, Spike Dudley came up behind us and whipped off our towels. We looked at each other and ran around in circles like Keystone Kops, as the digital blurring covered our flesh-colored dong thongs. As I ran off the stage I saw two kids about five feet away laughing heartily at the two buffoons.

  I imagine they would’ve reacted a little bit differently if our exposed Jackie Rogers Jr.s had been flopping in their faces …

  Christian and I made a great tag team as we had similar work styles and personalities, along with great comedic chemistry. We teamed all the way up to WrestleMania XX until a bet we made with each other to see who could win the hearts of Trish and Lita ended up tearing us apart. The price of the bet? One Canadian loonie.

  We were a regular Randolph and Mortimer.

  Our first pairing as a team was for the tag team titles in a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match in Las Vegas against the Dudleys, Jeff Hardy and RVD, and Kane and Hurricane. TLC matches are difficult and very dangerous and all of us ended up with some serious bumps and bruises afterwards. Bubba was the worst off though, as after I gave him a bulldog off the top of the ladder he was knocked unconcious and got a concussion to boot. He was lying there looking at me, but it was obvious that there was nobody home. It was his turn to climb the ladder and he was still giving me the thousand-yard stare, so I whispered that he had to get up.

  “What do I do?” he asked groggily.

  “Climb the ladder!” I hissed.

  “How do I do that?” he inquired, as if I had just told him to pull Excalibur out of the stone.

  “Just put one foot on
the bottom rung and lift the other foot to the next rung. Then just keep doing it!”

  Keep in mind that 10,000 people were watching in the arena and millions more were viewing at home, not a one of them realizing I was literally giving Bubba step-by-step directions on how to step up a ladder.

  Kane ended up winning the match, but quite frankly in a TLC match everybody loses in one way or another. Bubba was still completely on dream street afterwards, so much so that he was looking for his mother who had passed away the year before. It was heartbreaking to have to tell him she wasn’t there and see the look on his face as he insisted that she was supposed to meet him after the show.

  Vince came into the trainer’s room to personally thank all of us for the great performance, and I don’t mind saying that we deserved it. The match was voted the best in Raw history at the Raw ten-year anniversary awards show. I accepted the Slammy on behalf of the other seven guys and ended up keeping it. It’s in my office right now, so if any of you other guys are reading this and want your turn with it, just let me know.

  Since Shawn Michaels returned at SummerSlam and won the title at the Elimination Chamber he was a changed man. I’d only met him a few times before and he was always in some state of confusion, à la the Doink debate I’d had with him in Cleveland. With what I’d seen of him, combined with the horrible reputation he’d earned from his behavior in the ’90s, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when he came back to the WWE.

  But I needn’t have worried. He had accepted Christ and his whole attitude had changed. He was happy to be back, and although a little tentative, he was excited to get back in the ring. This was sweet chin music to my ears. As I’ve mentioned, Shawn was among my biggest inspirations to get into the business, and I was hoping he and I would get the opportunity to work together at some point.

  Little did I know he would end up being one of the greatest opponents in my career.

  Our first meeting was almost a throwaway segment. I would confront him about being a relic from the past, he would superkick me, and that would be the end of it. But there was a certain electricity when Shawn and I stood nose to nose in the ring and everyone from the fans to the boys to Vince himself felt it.

  When Shawn and I walked back through the curtain, Vince approached us and said, “We’ve got money here.”

  I agreed, and since it was December, I immediately began thinking WrestleMania. But when I approached Shawn about it, he was hesitant.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be around that long,” he said, and I really think he meant it. He was a little gun-shy about returning to the ring fulltime, as he’d just been out five years with a back injury. But the more he thought about it and the more we talked, he decided that he was ready to return to WrestleMania and he wanted to return against me.

  I was gob-smacked by his decision. When I first started wrestling, I was essentially a Shawn Michaels clone. I had similar tights, similar canary yellow hair, and did the same highspots as him. But things had changed—I wasn’t a clone anymore. It was pro vs. pro and I was looking forward to seeing if I could live up to the standards of a Shawn Michaels big event match.

  They didn’t call him Mr. WrestleMania for nothing.

  We did a three-month storyline that began when Shawn was the first entrant into the Royal Rumble and I was to be the second. Except my lackey Christian (yeah, Jay, I said it) came out to my music dressed as me instead and struck my signature pose. As Shawn was paying attention to the stage, I snuck out from under the ring and threw him over the top rope, eliminating him. Later in the match he came back out and returned the favor, and we were off to the races.

  Our angle was based around the classic kung-fu movie plot, where the student feels he’s better than the teacher and now wants to destroy him. We illustrated how much Shawn had influenced my early career by showing side-by-side photos of the two of us, with me copying Shawn’s hair and tights. Then we showed a great split-screen video of Shawn doing a highspot in a match from 1991 on one side and me ripping it off move for move in a match from 1992 on the other.

  The angle pretty much wrote itself, and by the time Mania came around we were ready to go. We were fifth on the card, and even though it was the first time we ever worked with each other, we had instant chemistry.

  We went twenty-seven minutes and it was the best of Jericho vs. the best of Michaels. We constructed an amazing match (with most of my ideas coming a week earlier while shopping for Speedo undertights at Dick’s Sporting Goods) filled with so many twists and turns that the crowd in Seattle was on the edge of their seats the whole time. False finish after false finish unfolded until finally Shawn rolled me up with a move I’d seen Owen Hart use fifteen years earlier. Afterwards, the crowd gave us a standing ovation. In the middle of the applause, we shook hands and embraced in a classic WrestleMania moment—until I kneed him in the plums. He collapsed and looked up at me with his puppy-dog eyes, asking, “How could you?”

  How could I? Well, I wasn’t going to let a great match stop me from being a complete dick, now was I?

  The general consensus was that our match stole the show which was a huge compliment. Only eighteen other matches in the history of the business could make that claim, and to do so was the goal of every single performer who’d ever been on a Mania. Personally winning the Undisputed Championship was an amazing moment, but stealing the show at WrestleMania XIX topped it. In a lot of ways it was the greatest night of my career.

  I thank Shawn for that, but I also take pride in the fact that he thanks me for the match as well. After WrestleMania, HBK was back, and I had helped him get there.

  (Quick Author’s Aside: When we walked backstage afterwards, we were told that our match had gone too long. Shawn wiped the sweat off his face and said with a smirk, “When you have a match as good as that, you can go as long as you want.” Yup, HBK was definitely back.)

  CHAPTER 28

  The Big Fight

  Goldberg was coming to the WWE.

  The announcement jackhammered through my stomach the moment I heard it. Rocky had befriended him and had brokered the deal between Vince and Bill to bring him in. Goldberg had been a huge star in WCW and was the prototype of what Vince liked in his superstars: tall, muscular, handsome, and looked like he could tear you apart. Problem was, I don’t think Goldberg really wanted to come to the WWE, but Rocky lobbied and convinced him until Bill finally relented.

  I wasn’t too keen on him coming to the WWE either, since the last time I’d worked with him in WCW was a complete disaster. But I had no choice and decided to make the best of it. On his first day, he came up behind me and slapped me on the back as hard as he could.

  “Hey Chris!” he said loudly and sarcastically, like he was Biff and I was McFly. I could tell he was still miffed about how things had gone with us in WCW. I was willing to let the past stay there, but I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to let this guy throw his weight around in the WWE the way he did in WCW.

  Coincidentally, a few minutes later Vince asked me for a strange favor.

  “We’ve got Bill Goldberg coming in and I want you to welcome him and help him out as much as you can.”

  I don’t know if Vince knew about my past with Goldberg—he’d never asked me to help anybody else before. But I told him I’d be happy to do what I could to help him adjust to his new environment. And I intended to do just that.

  Until Milwaukee.

  It was Goldfinch’s first Raw, and I worked with HHH vs. Shawn and Booker T. After the match I was pulled aside and informed that Goldsmith had spent the entire match barking to Nash about how I didn’t know how to sell properly and how I hadn’t wanted to do business with him in WCW.

  This pissed me off, because I never had a problem selling for him or anybody else for that matter. I’ve always done business, and it was business I was trying to do when I wanted to put Bill over properly in WCW. But it was obvious that he still had a chip on his shoulder when it came to me. It made me mad that
he had only been with the company for a little over a week and he was already up to his old tricks. It was time to put a stop to it right now.

  I marched straight into the dressing room and saw Nash sitting in the corner like a giant praying mantis acting like he owned the place, while Billy Boy sat across from him with a self-indulgent smile on his face. Throwing caution to the wind, I stood in front of him and stared directly into his eyes.

  “I heard you were saying some stuff about me during my match. I don’t know if you realize it, but things have changed. This isn’t WCW. If you have something to say to me, say it to my face.”

  Goldbug gave a shaky laugh and said, “I didn’t say anything about you.”

  “Bullshit. I know you did.”

  Something snapped in the Bergermeister and he jumped to his feet. “Oh yeah? What about all that stuff you were saying about me on the Internet?”

  Internet? Internet?? You’ve got to be kidding me! I didn’t spend enough time on the Internet to check out Club Jenna properly, let alone talk shit about Bill Fucking Goldeye.

  “What are you talking about?”

  A vein in his neck popped out like a worm as he shouted back, “Mike Tenay told me that you said stuff about me on the Internet!”

  I looked at him in disbelief and said, “Listen, Bill. It’s simple. I could be your best friend in this company or your worst enemy. We’re probably going to be working with each other at some point, and I could either make you look like a million bucks or make you look like shit, and you wouldn’t know the difference! We’re all here to make money and do business together, so just fucking relax!”

  “You never wanted to do the job for me in WCW! You’re a prima donna!”