A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex (52 page)

He put together a new offer that with incentives could’ve ended up in the high six figures. But it was too little too late because on top of everything else, Eric had hurt my feelings. I felt damaged as a performer and as a person and it would’ve been difficult for me to go back to WCW smiling like nothing had happened.

I’d decided that $1 million (pinky finger on bottom lip) was the magic number that would make me think about staying. But they never offered it to me so I didn’t have to consider it.

When I confided to my friends that I was thinking of leaving, they told me to get out and never look back. My dad told me, “Sometimes the devil you don’t know is better than the one that you do.” While I’m still not sure exactly what that means, I appreciated the advice.

Even Brian Hildebrand, who was honored just to be working in the wrestling business, thought it would in my best interests to take my chances elsewhere. Brian’s cancer had returned and he was forced to take a leave of absence from WCW (which tore him apart), with the caveat that his job would be waiting for him no matter how long it took for him to get better.

Eric wasn’t my favorite person at that point, but his treatment of Brian during his hard times was first-class. He even orchestrated a Brian Hildebrand Tribute show in Brian’s home city of Knoxville (in the same building I’d wrestled with a broken arm four years earlier). Brian was quite touched by WCW’s efforts and when asked what match he wanted to see on the show, he requested Benoit and Malenko vs. Eh and Wey, North and South of the Border, the Greatest Tag Team That Barely Ever Was...Guerrero and Jericho.

The four of us had wrestled the match before but always with limited TV time. This time there were none of those shackles and in an unprecedented move, Arn Anderson, who was running the show, put our match on last. It was the first and only time I was ever in the main event of a WCW show and the four of us responded by having one of the best matches of our careers.

Brian was too weak to work on the show, but he was sitting ringside the whole night. I grabbed the mike before the match and cut a vicious promo accusing him of faking his cancer to elicit sympathy from the stupid rednecks. Brian looked at me in defiance as the crowd booed the hell out of me, and I know he loved it.

The finish was the best ending to a movie ever. The ref got knocked out just as Dean put me in his Cloverleaf submission and Benoit put Eddy into his Crossface submission. Just as we tapped out, Brian slid into the ring and signaled for the bell with his trademark double-handed bang-bang motion to a massive pop. Everyone in the building gave him a standing ovation and the smile on his face was big enough for Oprah to bathe in. It will be etched in my mind forever (the smile, not the image of Oprah bathing).

I still have a picture of the five of us taken backstage after the show hanging in my office today.

Afterward, the five of us went back to Brian’s house in Morristown to relax, reflect, and enjoy the rest of the evening. As a token of his esteem, Eddy gave Brian his Black Tiger mask (the character he played in Japan) and Brian did a dance of joy. When I gave Brian the gift of my Super Liger party mask he did a dance of indifference and went back to looking at his Black Tiger mask. Poor Super Liger still got no love.

Brian had a vial of prescription marijuana to help him deal with the painful chemo treatments. I wasn’t much of a weed smoker, but I got so high I became Cheech if he had smoked Chong. If you can’t smoke weed, drink pure moonshine, and eat hash brownies with your dying cancer-stricken friend, then who
can
you smoke weed, drink pure moonshine, and eat hash brownies with?

CHAPTER 52

SHE WAS MY DENSITY

E
ven though my career was a little shaky, things were looking up personally. After years of meeting Mrs. Right Now, I finally met Mrs. Right. I was eating in a Japanese restaurant that all the boys went to whenever we had a show in Tampa. Scanning the crowd, I saw Disco Inferno talking with a breathtakingly beautiful blonde. I was staring at her when she glanced over and busted me red-handed. When our eyes locked, I was completely enchanted.

But the fact that she was talking to Disco was a warning sign for me, because whenever you saw one of the boys talking to a good-looking girl, chances were that something had already happened between them, or was about to. But she was way out of Disco’s league, which made me think, “How typical. The hottest girls are always attracted to the biggest dweebs.”

When Disco finished his conversation, I asked him, “Who is that girl you’re talking to?”

“Oh, that’s my friend, Jessica.”

When I heard the magic word “friend,” the race was on and I insisted that he introduce us. He did and we didn’t stop talking until the restaurant closed hours later.

Disco had been showing Jessica a copy of the new
WCW Magazine
that featured him on the cover (sign #147 that the company was going down the toilet) and also featured an article that asked me such hard-hitting questions like what was my a) favorite number, b) animal, c) Backstreet Boy (A.J. like a muthaaafuckaaaa), etc.

I said that ferrets were my favorite animal and she was intrigued because she had two of them at home. She told me that her favorite number was 7 and when we looked at the survey, my favorite number was also listed as 7. When I asked her for her phone number and entered it into my PalmPilot, it was the 77th entry.

It didn’t take long to realize that she was my density...I mean my destiny.

I became so intrigued by her that suddenly there was nobody else in the entire restaurant. I went into total fence-building mode (when one of the boys gets so into a girl he gives nobody else a chance to talk to her) and ignored everybody else in the room.

I didn’t notice when Eddy stole my swank fanny pack off the back of my chair and put it in the freezer for safekeeping. I didn’t notice when the food came or when the plates were taken away. I just noticed this awesome girl with the pretty smile and the prettier personality. But our amazing connection was almost torn apart when Raven broke down my fence and stomped into my yard.

The two of us had developed a system during our time in the Drunken Four Horsemen where if we saw a girl we liked, he became the bad cop and I was the good cop. This way the girl had two flavors to choose from like a cheap-ass Baskin-Robbins.

But I didn’t want to play that way with Jessica and tried to shoo the annoying Raven away. But he kept interjecting himself into the conversation and after a few lascivious remarks, flew in for the kill.

“Well, I’m going to go over to the Dollhouse,” Raven said. “Do you want to come with me?”

The Dollhouse was an infamous strip club in Tampa, and it was now the enemy along with Raven, who was intent on stealing her away.

She looked undecided and the moment of truth had arrived. Was she going to go to the Dollhouse with Raven, who she’d never met before, or stay at the restaurant with me where she belonged? Jessica turned and asked me, “Are you going to go?”

I played it cool even though if she’d wanted to go to the Dollhouse you know damn well I would’ve followed her.

“I don’t think so. I’m just gonna stay here.”

She dazzled me with her smile and said to Raven, “No thanks. I’m just going to stay here.”

Angels burst out of heaven singing, bells chimed, babies gurgled with laughter, and birds snuggled in the trees. All was now well in the world.

We left separately and by the time I got home that night, she’d already left a message on my machine. There was no two-day buffer zone for her. I called her the next day and was disappointed to find out that she was going to her dad’s cabin in northern Minnesota (she’d grown up only five hours away from Winnipeg) for three weeks.

We spoke on the phone every day while she was gone and the daily conversations helped us build a strong foundation for our relationship. We got to know each other well before anything physical happened. It was the exact opposite of the way most relationships begin and showed us that we had something special.

By the time she came back from Minnesota, she was already my girlfriend even though I’d kind of forgotten what she looked like. When I saw her again, she was more beautiful than I remembered and we’ve been together ever since. (Great Caesar’s Ghost, that line is going to get me some brownie points when she reads it.)

Right after I met Jessica, I sprained my ankle in Las Vegas during a match against Booker T and was told by the doctor that I couldn’t wrestle for six weeks. I only had sixteen weeks left on my contract, so the injury was a blessing in disguise.

When Eric realized that I wasn’t going to re-sign my contract, he suspended me from appearing on TV. That darned suspension really taught me a lesson, especially since I still received every penny of my weekly check in the interim.

It’s good work if you can get it.

PART TEN NEW YORK, NEW YORK

CHAPTER 53

TIME TO RACK

D
uring my suspension, Barry was negotiating with Jim Ross, who in addition to being the best announcer in the business (and a hell of a Foreword writer) was also the head of WWF Talent Relations and Vince’s right-hand man.

JR was a huge football fan and made an effort to recruit all of his new signings the same way a football team would. He made a point of flying down to Tampa to have yet another secret meeting with me. Was I in wrestling or the CIA? He and his associate Gerry Brisco gave me a big pep talk touting the virtues of working in the WWF compared to WCW and discussed plans the company had for me.

The WWF’s contract offer was a three-year deal at $450,000 a year, with an intricate system of bonuses based on attendance and pay-per-view buys. If you worked hard in the WWF and succeeded, you were rewarded and made more money. During all the years I worked in the WWF I never made less than double my guarantee, sometimes triple.

In the meantime, WCW had upped their offer to where with bonuses it almost reached the magical seven-figure mark, but it was too late. Even though the WWF was offering half the money I would’ve agreed to a bag of used hockey pucks to work for Vince. Or a bag of brownies.

It wasn’t about the cash and it never had been. It was about finally achieving my elusive dream and enjoying my career again. All of the bullshit I’d experienced in WCW had drained my love for wrestling and I wanted it back.

Since I was suspended from TV and had been taken off the road, I got to spend four straight months with Jessica. We knew we had something special when we saw each other every day and still wanted more.

Eric however had had enough of me and felt that it was best for Chris Jericho to just disappear from WCW. My name was never mentioned and I was never seen on
Nitro
again. It was probably the right decision, as no matter what form of burial he might’ve thought of, I just would’ve taken it and got more over in the long run anyway. WCW had taught me the valuable lesson of taking any scrap of TV time given to you and using it to make an impression.

That lesson would benefit me for years to come.

I also used the time off to work on another one of my dreams.

One of the greatest feelings in the world is hooking up with other musicians and playing music. It’s the ultimate form of both individuality and teamwork and a total creative rush. I’d never stopped playing, but since I’d moved away from Lenny in Calgary, I hadn’t found anybody to jam with. I missed being in a band and now that I had the time to rock, I picked up the phone and called a guitar player in Atlanta named Rich Ward.

Rich was the backbone of the pioneer rap-metal band Stuck Mojo, and had been touring the world for years like I had. I’d seen Mojo in concert a few years earlier and I was impressed by their energy, their music, and their allegiance to wrestling.

They had wrestling dolls lined up on the amps, wore championship belts while playing, and threw out wrestling-influenced catchphrases like “To be the band, you got to beat the band” and “That’s the bottom line ’cause Mojo said so.”

Mojo had filmed a video starring DDP for their song “Rising” and our paths crossed when Rich came backstage at a WCW show in San Antonio during a Mojo night off. Rich and I were kindred spirits right from the start. We had the same sense of humor and liked a lot of the same bands, including Stryper. I was amazed because even though Stryper had been a huge influence on the early part of my career, it was rare to find somebody else who would admit digging them.