A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex (33 page)

But my carefully constructed wings were brutally flimsy and the wind bent them askew during an outdoor photo shoot. They eventually blew right off my back, forcing me to chase them down like Rocky Balboa chasing the chicken in
Rocky 2
. When the wind died down momentarily, I hastily tied them back on and screamed, “Take the picture now!”

The comedy continued after the shoot, when I tried to practice my big ring entrance. After a few attempts, I found that it was impossible to get into the ring with the wings on. I couldn’t climb in between the ropes because they were too rickety and cumbersome. When I tried to jump straight over the top rope into the ring, the damn contraption just fell off my back.

My dreams of going back to Japan were falling apart along with my wings. I was ready to give up, when Ricky finally called me and said FMW wanted to bring me in as the Phoenix and give me a Porsche.

I was a little surprised with the offer and wondered how I was going to drive a Porsche from Japan to Canada. Unfortunately he was saying “push,” not “Porsche.” Even though a push was almost as good as a Porsche, it was a moot point because FMW was a day late and a keychain short.

The day prior I’d been offered a tour for the bigger and more prestigious Japanese company WAR. I’d started working in Mexico City at this point and had met Ultimo Dragón, a Japanese wrestler who’d made a huge name for himself in Mexico and with WAR in Japan. I hoped to get booked with the company for months, since Dragón was always looking for new opponents and with my Calgary/Mexico/European hybrid style, I knew we’d have great chemistry. Since we both worked for Paco Alonso, we’d teamed together frequently and Dragón was familiar with what I could do and thought I would fit the bill perfectly. Now I had my chance.

Dragón’s real name was Yoshihiro Asai and like me his dream as a kid was to be a wrestler, but he’d been turned down by New Japan because of his small stature. He refused to take no for an answer and moved to Mexico, where he became a star under the masked gimmick of Ultimo Dragón. The name translated in English was the Last Dragon, the idea being that he was the last student of Bruce Lee. I guess that would’ve made him about eight years old when he trained with Bruce. After making his mark in Mexico, he’d returned to Japan and found a home with WAR.

WAR wasn’t pronounced in the “What Is It Good For” kind of way, but rather “W...A...R,” an acronym for Wrestle and Romance. It was classic Japanglish in that it was just English enough to make no sense. I was confused as to whether I was supposed to bring the Wrestle or the Romance.

Wrestle and Romance was operated by Genichiro Tenryu, one of the top ten biggest names in Japanese wrestling history. Much like Tonga, he’d started as a sumo wrestler and then achieved huge success when he switched to wrestling. He had the best chops to the chest this side of Ric Flair and worked very stiff, which the fans loved and I learned to hate. One of the ways he was building his company was by focusing on his junior heavyweight division, which was second in quality only to New Japan’s crop of high-flyers.

The difference between working in FMW and WAR was similar to the difference between working in Monterrey and Mexico City. You could see the increase in professionalism instantly. The fine people at the newly christened Wrestle Association R (makes even less sense than Wrestle and Romance, don’t it?) provided me with a work visa and sent me a notarized contract for the king’s ransom of $1,400 a week. I was upgraded accommodation-wise from the Tokyo Green Hotel to the Hyatt Regency and upgraded opponent-wise from kickboxers and Pandas to real wrestlers.

Two of them were Jado and Gedo, who I’d met while they were making pennies working in Mexico. They’d followed Dragón’s path and gone to Mexico after being told they were too small for New Japan. They were also tremendous performers and were major contributors to the strengthening WAR junior division.

I got along well with them, because I could speak the legitimate language of Broken English. I learned Broken English by proxy because Jado and Gedo could speak decent English, but only understood certain words. For example, they didn’t know what a store was, but they knew what a shop was.

So if I said, “Would you guys like to spend the afternoon looking through the record store?” they wouldn’t get it. However, if I said “Maybe you me go CD shop?” they would nod in agreement. Once I figured out what words they understood, I could speak to them for hours.

When touring Japan, the whole crew rode together on the team bus and all the hotels and travel was taken care of. This was the opposite of wrestling in the States, where everyone was responsible for their own arrangements.

Everyone from Tenryu to the ring crew traveled together and there was no tolerance for lateness. I learned that rule very quickly when I showed up at ten one morning for a 10
A.M
. departure. Dragón took me aside and sternly told me that my tardiness (I don’t feel tardy) had to stop. A 10
A.M
. departure meant I was supposed to be there at 9:45. Japanese time was different from Mexican time, where a 10
A.M
. departure meant 10:45 or 11. Call me kooky but where I come from a 10
A.M
. departure means 10
A.M
.

But when in Tokyo...

My first match for WAR was in Korakuen Hall, one of the most famous wrestling venues in the world. Korakuen was a 2,200-seat theater on the grounds of the Big Egg Tokyo Dome (classic Japanglish) but it was
the
place for wrestling in Tokyo. A match at Korakuen could make or break you because it was the media epicenter of the Japanese wrestling business. All the photographers and writers showed up in full force and their magazine reviews of the matches and performers carried serious weight throughout the country much like they did in Mexico.

I heard so much about Korakuen from Lenny. He’d even left me a message written in black marker on the wall of the backstage area saying, “Congratulations, you finally made it, Clise!” It was like finding an Easter egg, so I got a black marker of my own and left a reply. He replied to that and so on and so on until messages on the backstage wall became a tradition before every Korakuen match. It was old-school texting.

Sadly, another Jericho tradition continued when I had another stinker of a debut match. I worked against Rio Lord of the Jungle, a male stripper turned wrestler who later worked in WCW as the Ultimate Warrior rip-off, the Renegade. He was massive and green, which was a tough combination to overcome. We opened the show and when I beat him clean with the Japanese debut of the Lionsault, it was the only good part of the match.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression...

I did an interview with
Gong Magazine
afterward where I was asked how it felt to beat the Load of the Jungle. Because of the difference in the Japanese pronounciation of the R sound, Lord became Load. I think if I was a Lord, when in Japan I’d change my name to Boss or Supervisor. I’m sure the Warload and Load Steven Regal would agree.

Despite my load-of-shit match, I liked the WAR style. It was the hard-hitting, no-nonsense, technical type of match that I’d become a fan of from watching Stampede and New Japan. The matches were athletic competitions between two warriors, with a winner, a loser, and no bullshit.

My first tour for WAR was only four shows, but I had a great second match with a junior heavyweight named Masao Orihara, which cemented my spot in the company. The match after that was another stinker with a Korean wrestler named Kim Duk, who had worked in the WWF as Tiger Chung Lee. Tiger walked down the aisle with a confused look on his face while holding a spear for no apparent reason. Was he planning on skewering river trout on his way to the ring?

After meeting him I wanted to skewer myself because he was quite annoying. He’d had bit parts in a few movies, but talking to him you’d think he was Johnny Depp. Our bus had a TV and VCR and he made sure to bring his movies with him so we could watch
Red Heat, The Golden Child,
and
Blind Fury
over and over again.

“Why don’t you put on
Red Heat
? Arnold Schwarzenegger told me he really liked working with me.”

“Let’s watch
The Golden Child.
Eddie Murphy thought I was very funny.”

“Let’s check out
Blind Fury.
Rutger Hauer thought I was a talented actor and wants to work with me again.”

Despite having to put up with Inside the Actors Studio Featuring Kim Duk, working for Tenryu was a tremendous experience. He’d worked in the States for a few years, so he understood what we needed as foreigners to be comfortable in a strange land. He spoke good English and had a great sense of humor. While I got in trouble for speaking to Onita, I would’ve gotten in trouble if I
didn’t
speak to Tenryu. Whether we were singing “Summer Lovin’” on a karaoke machine on the bus or smashing plates over drunken fans’ heads at parties, Tenryu was as cool as a boss could be.

On my first day of work, he introduced himself and thanked me for coming. Later on in the tour when I sneezed, he asked with concern, “Are you sick?” When I said no, he replied deadpan, “Oh, I thought for sure you were sick. Sick of watching Kim Duk’s movies...”

(Curious Author’s Note: I heard rumors that Tenryu had pearls implanted in his wiener, which was a Yakuza technique used to increase sexual pleasure. I never had the balls to ask him if it was true.)

The last match of the tour was a big show at Ryogoku, an 11,000-seat arena known as the Sumo Hall. Ryogoku was where all of the important sumo matches had been held for hundreds of years.

The Hall was a unique traditional Japanese venue; besides the chairs set up on the floor section there were no actual seats in the arena. There were only sections cordoned off by steel rails that held four people per section. The fans would sit cross-legged on the floor of their area and watch the show.

All of Tenryu’s big shows were held at Ryogoku and the draw to this one was a battle between WAR and New Japan. I was pitted against Super Strong Machine, a New Japan wrestler who’d worked for Stampede Wrestling as Sonny Two Rivers. I was nervous and Super Strong Machine kicked the shit out of me, but you know my mantra by now...I was taking him with me. I kicked him square in the face and set him up for my new patented move of jumping straight up onto the top rope and drop-kicking him off the apron. Just as I took off running, the referee wandered right in front of me and I totally blew the spot.

I’d been Mal Mason-ed!

But the match still got a couple pages of coverage in the magazines, which was always a watermark of whether something was good or not. There was a great shot of Machine dumping me on my head and another of me caving in the side of his face with a spin kick. When all else fails, just beat the shit out of each other I always say.

CHAPTER 34

YASKY

A
few tours later, right after I was asked to be a regular for WAR, I broke my arm in SMW. After using my amazing mental powers to heal myself, I was booked to return to Japan. Even though I wasn’t completely healed, I’d already been forced to miss one tour because of my arm and there was no way I was going to miss another one.

While I had to endure the long flight from L.A. to Tokyo in a middle seat of the smoking section, I was happy to get the upgrade for the Calgary–L.A. leg of the trip. I was even happier when I boarded the plane and sat down next to Owen Hart.

Owen was the guy that had made me want to be a wrestler in the first place and I’d drawn pictures of the two of us as tag team champions. Our paths had crossed a few times and while he was always friendly, I’d never had the chance to have a true one-on-one conversation with him. He told me that he was on his way to a WWF pay-per-view that day in L.A. and his brother Bret had given him shit for not leaving the night before.

“An extra night with my family at home is worth the possibility of missing the PPV,” he explained. It turned out that we had a lot in common and we started sharing stories about working in Mexico and Germany.

Three and a half hours later we were suddenly in L.A. I apologized for talking his ear off, but he said, “No man, it was great getting to know you a little bit.” I walked off the plane grinning ear to ear because he was even nicer than I’d expected him to be. Now I just had to figure out a way to become Owen’s tag team partner.

My first match back from my broken arm was in Tokyo against my old buddy Vampiro, who was so saccharine friendly to my face that I felt like I was choking on cotton candy. I was past the point in my career where I worried about wins and losses, but I have to admit that I was ticked off when Tenryu asked me to put him over. It was a matter of principle I guess.

I was wearing a soft cast on my still healing arm since I’d rushed the recovery but the doctor told me I’d be okay to wrestle as long as I avoided taking a blow directly on the break. So I asked Vamp to do me a favor and stay away from my metal plate.

He agreed and did this annoying bow that he’d starting doing, thinking he was ingratiating himself with the Japanese. Instead he just looked like he had a nervous twitch. He should’ve just played X for his ring music, since it had worked so well for me in FMW.

Vamp considered himself something of a martial arts expert at this point and wore Muay Thai shorts in the ring to prove it. He based the majority of his offense around a variety of kicks that he had no idea how to do properly. He made that apparent when his first move of the match was to kick me directly in my bad arm. The pain spread like panic and he said, “Whoops, I was aiming for your ribs.”