I expanded that industry even further when Norm and I came to an agreement to start The Jericho Network, an offshoot of PodcastOne that was to be operated by me. I would pick the shows and the hosts, make the deals, and decide the content for my network, which had the huge benefit of being under the massive PodcastOne banner, meaning it would attract more advertisers and give the shows a certain prestige right off the bat.
The first podcast on TJN was “Keepin’ It 100 with Konnan” and it was a success out of the gate. Others followed, and while some were hits and others were not, all of them were quality programs, with subjects and hosts as diverse as Talk Is Jericho. I’m very proud of all the shows on my network, as well as the fact that I have a vehicle to put them on in the first place.
I’m also proud that I’ve never become complacent. I may be accomplished in wrestling and music, but it doesn’t stop me from doing the work required to be an A-list podcaster as well.
You shouldn’t be afraid to do the same. Take a chance and expand your horizons, because with hard work you will always succeed.
Okay, now that you’ve finished this chapter, get back to work! You can read the rest of the book later.
CHAPTER 5
THE
RICHARD
HAYDEN
PRINCIPLE
DON’T TAKE NO
FOR AN ANSWER
Well, I won’t back down, no I won’t back down,
you can stand me up at the gates of hell,
but I won’t back down . . .
—TOM PETTY, “I WON’T BACK DOWN”
(Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne)
Who doesn’t love the movie Tommy Boy? It’s by far Chris Farley’s best work, boasting a great cast of supporting characters led by the sardonic straight man Richard Hayden, played by David Spade. Hayden has the unenviable job of taking Tommy on a road trip to try and teach him how to be a brake-pad salesman after his father’s death. Slowly but surely (don’t call me Shirley), Tommy begins to understand the concept of selling the products and selling himself. But he doesn’t pick it up all at once, which leads to one of my favorite exchanges in the film when Richard is trying psych him up for the big sales pitch.
“All right, now it’s sale time so remember, we don’t take no . . .”
“No shit from anyone,” Tommy finishes his sentence triumphantly.
“No.”
“Umm, we don’t take no prisoners?” he retorts hesitantly.
“We don’t take no for an answer,” sighs an exasperated Richard.
Now think about that phrase, “We don’t take no for answer.”
Pretty simple in theory, right? Maybe so, but don’t get cocky, kid. In reality, it’s not as easy as it seems (and I ain’t talkin’ about Unmasked). I warned you earlier in the introduction of this book about the power of the word “no.” Usually when we hear that lexeme, something negative happens. It’s like just hearing that word gives us permission not to try. And if you don’t try, Constant Reader, well, that’s the death of your dreams. What you have to realize is that when it comes to your personal and professional goals, there’s always a way to get what you want. It just takes some time, creativity, and persistence.
There are tons of examples during my career of me not taking no for an answer, and you can read about them in my other three über-successful books (aka The Greatest Trilogy in Literary History or J. R. R. Tolkien Was a Stupid Idiot Hack). But rather than retell those tales, I want to do something a little different in this chapter. They say that 90 percent of being a good parent is just showing up. Well, in the worlds of rock ’n’ roll and wrestling, 90 percent of the job (at least in terms of the hours you spend) is traveling from one gig to another and getting there in one piece and on time. It was Cooper—Alice—who once said, “They don’t pay me for the show, they pay me for the other twenty-two hours before the gig.”
Alice has a great point, but I have a couple of other interesting thoughts to share with you that illustrate how you can have a better journey to the gig, just by utilizing a little creativity.
The first classy anecdote deals with a classy problem I once had back in the ’90s.
In 1995 I was traveling to Japan every month for WAR (an acronym for the amazingly named Wrestling and Romance), racking up thousands of frequent flyer miles and getting systemwide first-class upgrades in the mail as a result. The upgrades claimed to be good for any international flight, yet whenever I tried to use them, I was told they were ineligible because Wrestling and Romance were buying me the cheapest ticket fares possible. It was frustrating to have this first-class check with nowhere to cash it, so just for fun I would call the airline daily for a week or so before the flight and try to upgrade. Then when they told me my ticket wasn’t the right fare class to redeem the certificate, I hung up the phone, and called back instantly. After all, it was a three-hour flight from Calgary to LAX and a twelve-hour flight from LAX to Tokyo (even though there were direct flights leaving from Calgary, WAR still flew me on connecting flights through Los Angeles, but that’s another story), so I had nothing to lose, right?
Finally, my persistence paid off one day when I was making my daily play-dumb call and the lady at the end of the line took my upgrade number, messed around on the computer for a minute, and asked what seat I’d like in first class. I couldn’t believe I’d actually succeeded for once, and ran around my sparsely furnished apartment doing the “First-Class Dance” (if you wanna see this little jig, Constant Reader, ask me to show it to you the next time I see you) and basking in the glow of my good fortune. I continued calling before every tour, and even though I only got upgraded a few more times, it was a lot better than sitting in middle-seat smoking every flight. More importantly, that experience taught me that certain airline employees can pretty much do whatever they want, and if you keep trying, sooner or later you’ll find somebody who can help you get what you need.
Another example of this Airline Enigma happened after I went to the 2016 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in New York City with my Wise Cousin Chad. After drinking all night with Lars Ulrich and Roger Glover of Deep Purple (does your foot hurt from those names I just dropped?), we slept through the alarm and missed our early-morning flights home. My heart started beating faster than Lars’s drums on “Dyers Eve” when I remembered that my son Ash had a big football game later that afternoon and I couldn’t miss it. Luckily, I was able to quickly rebook another flight that left only an hour after the one I had slept through. But after lazing around the room for a half hour, I realized that I didn’t have as much time to make it to the airport as I thought, and scrambled out of the hotel quickly. My flight was leaving out of JFK airport, which was a ways away from our Times Square lodging, as well as the WORST in the United States to check into if you’re in a rush.
Besides being one of the only airports in America where you have to check in exactly sixty minutes before your flight (being just one minute late will cause your reservation to automatically be cancelled and rebooked), getting from the rental car center to check-in takes at least thirty minutes on the slowest train ever. So even though I got to JFK (and I ain’t talkin’ about Kevin Costner) about seventy-five minutes before my flight took off, which would be plenty of time in almost any other airport in America, I knew I could still be in trouble.
After getting off the train (that stopped an agonizing half dozen times), I had a sparse fifty minutes to check in and make my flight, knowing that I still had a seven-minute walkrun (that’s a new word I just coined) down a winding, outdoor tarp-covered sidewalk. Then there was another escalator and another walkrun (see, that word is a thing now) through the terminal, and when I finally arrived at the check-in desk, I had less than forty-five minutes before the plane took off.
I breathlessly explained to the blank-faced lady behind the counter that I was seriously late and needed some help to make the flight, but she told me there was no way I would make it, and that the next plane didn’t leave for five hours.
; I had two options at this point:
1. Accept Bertha Blankface’s answer, concede defeat, and go sit in the concourse for five hours.
OR
2. Take the advice of one Richard Hayden (“We don’t take no for an answer”) and come up with another option.
I decided to take option two, so I mustered up my courage and asked to speak . . . to a Red Coat.
For those who don’t travel a lot, a Red Coat is the supervisor of the check-in folk and is like a mythical creature: rarely seen but with the magical powers to get almost anything done on almost any flight. If you find the right one, they can save your keister, and I needed some serious keister saving right now if I was going to make it back to Tampa in time to see Ash’s big game.
A few minutes later (I had about thirty-six minutes before my bird took wing), a pleasant-looking aged Red Coat magically appeared on a cloud before me to assess my situation. She looked into her crystal ball/computer and told me she would try to cast a spell to override the system and see if I could make the flight— but then she couldn’t find my reservation.
And that’s because there wasn’t one.
When I had rebooked my ticket earlier that morning, I was in such a panic that I’d accidentally made the new one for three days later.
“Oh boy . . . .I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do,” she said with a sympathetic wince underneath her wizard’s hat.
My heart sank like the Black Pearl when I realized I was actually going to miss Ash’s game . . . until as if on cue, two baggage handlers who looked like Bill and Ted approached me and asked the magic question.
“Are you Chris Jericho?”
I answered that I was and they gave each other high fives with a grin. (Humble Author’s note: It always embarrasses me when grown men give each other props for completing the simple task of figuring out that I’m me. I mean come on . . . it’s not like they captured a Charizard or something.) But on that day, I could’ve kissed them, because now that this new shit had come to light, the thaumaturgic Red Coat looked me up and down thoroughly.
“You are Chris Jericho, aren’t you?” she said knowingly.
Then she glanced at her watch, which showed thirty-four minutes before the wheels went up, and went back to the crystal ball/computer. She found a seat on the flight I was trying to catch, and two minutes later handed me my boarding pass, as her lowly minion Bertha Blankface looked on in disapproval.
“There’s one problem though,” Red Coat said. “There’s not enough time to check your bag, so you’ll have to take it through security yourself and gate check it on the plane.”
I almost asked her to repeat herself, as after twenty-six years of traveling through the airports of the world, this was the first time I’d ever been told I could take a checked bag THROUGH TSA. And it was a big-ass bag too, one that weighed about seventy pounds and was a chore for me to lug around. I had no idea how it was going to fit through the X-ray machine, but at that point it was not for me to reason why, it was for me to do or die. So I walkran (I’m adding tenses to this new word that’s sweeping the nation) towards the security line, which of course was super long. On top of that, to the surprise of no one, the attendant told me I couldn’t take that big of a bag through security. I didn’t take no for an answer and told him that the Red Coat necromancer had given me the go-ahead. Thankfully, she materialized behind me and waved her wand, causing the attendant to drop to his knees in fear. Then she led me to the front of the line and bade me farewell. A single tear fell out of my eye as she disappeared in a cloud of smoke, as I knew I would never see this remarkable Red Coat again. But I had to forge on, and with only twenty-five minutes before the eagle unlanded, I hefted my cumbersome suitcase onto the conveyer belt of the security machine.
I was wondering how in the hell this cyclopean bag was gonna fit through the small opening of the X-ray machine, and imagined Andre the Giant’s mom during birth as I tried to shove it into the opening. But after a few minor adjustments, I was surprised to find that those X-ray machine tunnels are bigger than I’d thought. I was able to push the case through quite easily, and after dealing with the minor setback of having to remove an economy-sized bottle of Listerine (it is not like it was nitrogylcerin . . . or was it?) out of my satchel, I was on my way to the promised land of Flight 1209. My gate was A32 and since I was at A10, I had mere minutes to walkrun (okay, even I’m getting sick of this word) to the gate, dragging the monolithic valise behind me. But after performing the mad dash at a medium pace (and I ain’t talkin’ about Adam Sandler), I arrived at the gate just as the last passenger was boarding. I flashed my boarding pass to the gate dude who was rocking a baldfro that would’ve made Larry David proud, but he stopped me and said that my portmanteau wouldn’t be permitted on the plane and I’d have to check it.
“That’s pretty, pretty, pretty obvious . . .” I muttered as I left the bag at the desk and walked on the plane like Sasha Banks. When I sat down in my seat, the flight attendant inquired if I’d like something to drink and I asked for a coffee.
“I’m sorry, sir, there’s none brewed.”
I decided to take a chance. After the hassle I’d just endured to make that flight, there was no way I was taking no for an answer when it came to that java! I batted my eyelashes, smiled, and politely asked if there was any way she could please make a quick pot if it wasn’t too much trouble. She paused for a second, then said, “Let me see what I can do,” and a few minutes later I was taking a sip of Mrs. Folger’s finest.
“We don’t take no for an answer” flashed through my mind and somewhere in Sandusky, Richard Hayden was fixing his toupee and smiling.
CHAPTER 6
THE
NEGRO CASAS
PRINCIPLE
(AKA THE
BAD COW INCIDENT)
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
So tell me what you want,
what you really really want . . .
—SPICE GIRLS, “WANNABE”
(Spice Girls, Matt Rowe, Richard Stannard)
Water was dripping off the ceiling of the sweaty little arena in Acapulco, streaming down my back in rivulets and making me feel like I was wrestling in the rain.
The ring canvas was as damp as the clothes of the two thousand fans jammed into the mid-sized building getting their weekly lucha libre fix. The place was so humid that my hair was plastered to my head like Waldo, and it was all I could do to gulp in enough air to stay conscious. Even though I wrestled in these swampy conditions dozens of times a month, I never quite got used to the swelter. Especially on a night like this when the crowd wasn’t nearly as hot as the temperature in the hall.
That’s how it goes . . . some nights you get crowds that don’t have the energy you want, and the match suffers. Maybe it was the incandescent climate or the fact that there were lucha shows every Wednesday and they had seen all of our tricks, but whatever the reason, this crowd wasn’t making noise no matter what we did.
Thankfully, one of my opponents in the tag team main event happened to be Negro Casas, the best wrestler you’ve probably never heard of. He was so good in everything that he did—a true Jedi master of ring psychology—and I could tell that the lack of reaction was frustrating him. We had been doing a match based around quick and intricate combinacions (also known as high spots) and the crowd was just dead. They had seen a whole night full of spectacular moves and had reacted favorably, but it was becoming apparent that this wasn’t what they wanted from the main event. Negro felt it and since he knew his audience so well, he decided to call an audible.
The planned finish for the second fall of our match was for me to give him a moonsault off the top rope, but when the time came for the fall, he grabbed me in a headlock and whispered in his weird English, “No moonsault. Push me corner and when I hit my partner, roll up me.”
As the veteran, it was his job to call the match, so I did what I was told. I worked my way back up onto my feet and pushed Negro off the ropes opposite his corne
r. When he ran towards me, I sidestepped him and gave him a shove straight into his partner, Gran Markus. The collision drove Markus off the apron to the floor, and Casas stumbled backwards right into my awaiting schoolboy. He whispered to the ref to count to tres and the crowd came alive when I got the pin, cheering wildly at how the stupid heels had run into each other like los Tres Chiflados.
After the finish, Negro yelled at Markus to come back in the ring and initiated a shoving match with his beefier partner, which made the crowd cheer even more. Then he did something so subtle and genius that I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday. With the water still running down the sides of the walls, and the humidity so thick you could cut it with Valyrian steel, Negro yelled at the ring announcer to hand him the microphone.
He grabbed the stick with authority . . . and promptly electrocuted himself.
Now, he didn’t actually get shocked like Ace Frehley in Lakeland, circa 1976, but he sold it as if he had. He threw his sweaty hands up in surprise, dropping the mic as quickly as he could. Then he did a little dance with his hands between his knees, like a five-year-old kid who has to go wee-wee, shaking vigorously and making wacky, whimpering noises.
After a night of quebradoras, pescados, and tope con hilos, the biggest reaction of the show was drawn by a guy doing the hippy-hippy shake after pretending to be electrocuted. Once our match started, Negro noticed that the crowd wasn’t there to see Cirque du Soleil acrobatics; they were there to see the top-guys entertain them. He was savvy enough to know his audience and change the direction of the match before it was too late. His instincts were right, and they were rewarded by the fans throwing money into the ring afterwards, which in Mexico was the ultimate sign that they felt they had just seen something special. At the time, I didn’t fully understand why Negro had made that call, so afterwards in the dressing room I asked him why he had decided to change the course of the match in such a drastic way.
No is a Four-Letter Word Page 6
