“Okay, explain me,” he said with his arms crossed and a vintage Negro whimsical expression on his face. “Sometimes fans don’t want technique and high spots. They no understand. But everybody understands how to laugh and enjoy the show. Tonight I give people what they want and make them smile.”
He was right and just as in wrestling, in business, and in life as well, you have to know your audience, just like Negro did. What do they want from you? What do they want to hear? Your ability to read the room and adjust accordingly can be the difference between playing on the practice squad or winning the Heisman.
People always ask me if I prefer to be a babyface or a heel. I tell them that it’s easier to make people hate you than it is to make them like you, but it’s even harder to make them STAY hating you once you get over. But as long as the audience is making noise, I don’t really care. Because if they’re enjoying themselves, I’m connecting with them, which means they’ll continue to pay to see me. And that’s the essence of my job.
That’s why, no matter what I do outside of WWE, I never downplay my wrestling accomplishments. I’d be crazy not to give the Friends of Jericho some wrestling love in whatever I’m doing, because a certain part of my fan base knows me exclusively from that world. When I’m putting together my lineup for Talk Is Jericho, I always make sure to include a healthy dollop of wrestling guests, even though I love the fact that the success of TIJ lies in its diversity. I understand that if I expect my wrestling fan base to check out the Kenny G or Heaven’s Metal Meltdown episodes, I need to “reward” them with Finn Balor or Roman Reigns shows afterwards. That’s because I know my audience.
So does the great Paul McCartney, who when asked about playing new songs in concert, said that whenever he plays a song off his new album, he makes sure to give the audience a “spoonful of sugar” afterwards by performing one of his classics. This allows Paul to promote his new material, but makes sure to give the old-school fans what they want as well. Know your audience and keep them happy.
This principle doesn’t only apply to performing in front of an audience. It also applies to one-on-one conversations. What does your boss expect from you? What do you say to your wife after she’s spent the last ten minutes telling you about her shitty day? How do you keep people dancing at the party if you’re in charge of spinning the platters that matter?
In the WWE, this is especially the case, as it’s a well-known fact that you’re performing for an audience of one, and the only opinion that matters belongs to Vince McMahon.
After working for him for over seventeen years, I’ve gotten to know something about this audience of one. They say timing is everything, and with Vince I’ll go even further: timing is the only thing. If he looks annoyed, don’t approach him no matter how great your idea is. When you do talk to him and he sits in silence after your pitch, you need to fight the urge to fill in the silence, and just let him think.
But the biggest rule when pitching an idea to Mr. McMahon is never, and I mean NEVER, go to him when he’s hungry or eating. The guy works harder than anybody I’ve ever met, so he doesn’t get a lot of time for snacking. Not to mention that even at seventy-one years old, he’s still built like a shit brickhouse and his diet is probably planned out down to the minute. If he misses that minute, he gets hangry quickly, and who can blame him? I’m smart enough to avoid him when he’s in those moods. I don’t even want to be in the same room while he’s eating, never mind trying to convince him that my latest idea is a genius gift from the wrestling gods. That’s the best way to make sure your carefully thought-out storyline doesn’t flame out and suffer the same fate as the flight of Icarus.
That’s why I waited until the right time to pitch my killer idea for an angle that was to culminate at SummerSlam 2014. I was working a program with Bray Wyatt that had tons of storyline potential, but for some odd reason didn’t have much of a story at all. It had begun with a bang tango, when I surprised The Miz on Raw with one of my secret returns, which in turn led to The Wyatt Family surprising ME and kicking my ass. But at that point, the storyline part of the story pretty much ended. Despite our constant pitches for the angle to get some direction, it seemed that Vince wanted to keep things basic. . . which I didn’t like.
I’m always more effective when I have a detailed angle to work with (see my previous storylines with Shawn Michaels and Rey Mysterio or my latest runs with Dean Ambrose or Kevin Owens for proof) and while my matches with Bray were good, the reasons behind them were almost nonexistent. I wanted to change that and figured out a plan leading to SummerSlam that I was CONVINCED the boss was going to dig.
I knew my audience and I made sure to carefully consider the timing, as I was certain that the key to getting what I wanted was to catch Vince at the right moment. So when I showed up at the arena in Corpus Christi, Texas, for a Smackdown taping, I surveyed the landscape and started snooping.
I arrived at 1 p.m. knowing that Vince would still be in the production meeting, going over the show with the writers, agents, and producers. After that initial meeting, there would be a secondary meeting and after that Vince would eat a meal. Then he would be free to talk to the boys . . . or at least the boys he wanted to talk to. Even though Vince had a theoretical open-door policy, in reality it wasn’t that easy to get an audience with the audience of one.
Vince is a very intimidating guy, and standing outside his door waiting to talk to him is like waiting to go into the principal’s office in junior high school. When you got to the front of the line, it took nerves of steel to muster up the courage to knock and go inside. If Vince wanted to talk, he would give you a big smile and tell you to come in. If he offered up an embrace, that was even better, because he is not a Bayley-type hugger. As a matter of fact, he’s quite the opposite—hugs are prime real estate for Vince and he won’t fake it. I’ve seen him strong-arm guys who were going in for the squeeze and it’s quite awkward . . . I say this with experience because it’s happened to me. My style is to shake somebody’s hand first and then pull them in for the clinch and there’ve been times with Vince where he locked his elbow and slightly pushed my hand back when I was getting a bit too close. So it was a roll of the dice, and you just never knew what you were going to get when you walked in his door.
That day I hedged my bets as much as I could. I’d waited until the second meeting was done and had my idea ready to go with a concise and detailed description. Vince didn’t like a bunch of “umms” or “maybes” when you were making your case. The more confident you were, the more confident he would be in your idea and its potential for success. This is a lesson that applies to life in general as well; confidence is contagious.
But I was prepared and had all the angles covered when I approached his door. However, being the seasoned veteran that I am, I had one more fail-safe in my bag of tricks ready to go before I took the journey to the other side. I was friendly with the entire WWE security staff, including Jimmy Kelly, whose job it was to politely keep anybody out of Vince’s office who he didn’t want to see. Thankfully, after fifteen years of working in the company, I was one of the chosen ones who had carte blanche to enter Vince’s inner sanctum whenever I needed to.
“Has he eaten?” I asked. Jimmy replied that he had and more importantly, was in a good mood.
With that knowledge, it was time to take a chance (and I ain’t talking about Savatage) and jump in headfirst.
I rapped on the door, walked inside (I always felt like I was barging in or interrupting whenever I went into his office) and surveyed the situation. I had entered a large conference room with lines of tables leading all the way to the back of the room, and sitting at the last table farthest away from the door was Vince . . . and his heir apparent, Triple H.
The fact that HHH was there was a red flag. I always worked better with Vince when it was just the two of us in the room. If I had known he wasn’t alone, I would’ve waited.
However, I had already jumped off the diving board and there was no tu
rning back now.
“Oh come on . . . ” Vince said in mock disgust when he saw me, a private joke between us every time I came in to talk with him. He got a kick out of acting like I was the last person in the world he wanted to see, even though he had told me many times, “Anytime you have anything you want to talk about . . . ANYTHING . . . come find me.”
As a result, I was usually in his office on a weekly basis for one reason or another. However, having Triple H in the room now threw me off my game (pun intended) slightly and I felt a little self-conscious walking past the rows of tables towards the front.
Vince stood up with a big smile and shook my hand . . . but didn’t bring me in for a hug. That was another bad sign.
“Hey, boss, I’ve got this really cool idea for Wyatt and me for SummerSlam that I want to run past you.”
“Sounds great, junior.” (He loves calling me that, after I used it as an insult in the early 2000s. I think he gets a kick out of it because he’s a junior himself and apparently hates being referred to as such.) “Do you mind if Paul stays?”
Talk about a loaded question. I really didn’t want Paul (Triple H) to stick around, as his presence threw a monkey wrench into my pitch. But what choice did I have? If I said no, it would be uncomfortable and an insult towards HHH and possibly an insult to Vince too. Besides, it was my fault for not asking Jimmy Kelly if Vince was alone in the room before I went in. But it was too late for that now and besides, I was Chris Jericho! I had helped write some of the best storylines in WWE history and I knew I could sell Vince on this one, no matter if HHH, Outback Jack, or Pauly Shore were in that damn room.
“Of course he can stay. I’d like his input too,” I lied.
Once again, I knew my audience and figured that Vince wanted Paul in the room in the first place or he wouldn’t have asked. So by agreeing to have him there, I was showing some confidence and being a team player. Or something like that.
With the first hurdle cleared, I jumped right into my pitch.
“Okay, so every week Y2J has been getting attacked by Bray Wyatt and The Wyatt Family,” I said. “I clearly need some help, but I’ve been such an asshole over the last few years that nobody trusts me enough to have my back. So I thought it would be great if—”
“Hold on a second, Chris,” Vince interrupted. “Paul, can you grab that other steak for me please? I’m still hungry.”
Fuck.
In my head those three words reverberated across the room with an echo effect like a cheesy radio ad for a Monster Jam show.
“I’m still hungry . . . Hungry . . . HUNGRY!”
Right then I knew I was in trouble. Vince would now be concentrating more on his meal than my pitch. Having the distraction of HHH in the room was nothing compared to the distraction of Vince’s appetite.
Paul grabbed a plate from another table and took it over to the boss. It was steak and broccoli, covered in Saran Wrap with VINCE–2 PM written on it in black Sharpie. It seemed that the steak had been cooked at 2 p.m., and since it was almost 3 p.m. it was time to eat it before it got (stone) cold. And that’s what Vince was about to do.
“Continue,” he said, beckoning as he unwrapped his meaty treasure, grabbed a fork, and dug in.
I continued with my spiel, but I felt like Indiana Jones trying to outrun the boulder in the temple. I’d have to pick up the pace or risk being run over by the giant rock that was Vince’s appetite.
So I continued, throwing caution to the wind. Surely if I could best locker room politics and Bill Goldberg in a backstage kerfuffle, I could best Vince McMahon’s ravenousness as well!
“Okay, as I was saying, nobody in the WWE locker room trusts me enough to have my back, because I’ve turned on everybody I’ve ever teamed with in the past. So next week on Raw, I get attacked and run over by the Wyatts again. They leave me lying and I have to get helped out of the ring. A few segments later, I’m getting tended to in the trainer’s room and I ask the doctors to leave so I can make a phone call. I want to get in contact with the only guy I know who is crazier than me. The only guy who has turned on more partners and has had as many ups and down in the WWE as me. A guy who I can’t stand and whose life I made a living hell. A man I hate with every bone in my body, but who I have the ultimate respect for. A man who I know would go to hell and back with me if I could convince him my intentions were true.
“I would pick up the phone and say, ‘Operator . . . give me the number for the HBK Ranch in Abilene, Texas.’”
With that bombshell, I let the words hang in the air, expecting a big reaction from the old man. All I got was the sound of Vince chewing on his steak, and he only looked up briefly in acknowledgment.
But I was deep into the groove and continued to excitedly unravel the rest of my tale.
“So the next week I’m in the middle of the ring. I say I made the call and left a message extending the invite for HBK to come to the arena so I could explain myself, and even left a first-class plane ticket under his name at the airport. I don’t know if he’s here or not, but I’m praying that he is, because there’s nobody else I can turn to. I know if I could just talk to him face to face, he would see the sincerity in my eyes and hear it in my voice that I really need his help.”
After a dramatic pause, the iconic “Sexy Boy” music would play and The Heartbreak Kid, Shawn Michaels, my biggest WWE rival and the greatest of all time, would come out onto the stage. He would prance down to the ring as only he could, but remain silent as I explained that even though we had tortured each other for years, he was the only man I wanted on my side as I fought the epitome of evil. I was envisioning something out of an old Western, where the sheriff would recruit the lethal gunslinger he had put in jail twenty years earlier to help him stop the band of outlaws that were threatening the safety of his town.
Shawn would stand in silence contemplating my request, and then slowly lift the microphone to his mouth to respond. But before he could say a word, the lights would go out and The Wyatt Family’s “horror graphic” would play. The lights would come back on revealing all three of them standing in the ring surrounding us. I envisioned the crowd going nuts at that point, as the bad guys moved in to attack.
They would beat me down as Shawn looked on in silence, and then turn their attention to him. HBK would turn his back to leave, with the crowd begging him to get involved. When the reaction was at its highest, Shawn would suddenly spin around and dole out some Sweet Chin Music to Erick Rowan. Then Bray and Harper would attack, but Shawn would duck out of the way, nail Harper with a superkick, and force Wyatt to powder out of the ring. At this point, Shawn would grab the mic and say, “Jericho, after being attacked by those slugs, if you want me to watch your back . . . YOU GOT IT!”
I loved the fact that we would never know what Shawn was going to say before the Wyatts got involved. He might’ve agreed to help me or told me to go to hell, but after the Wyatts attacked him what he thought of me was irrelevant; now he had a fight of his own to deal with.
The next week we would have another ring confrontation, which would lead to us clearing the ring and then backing into each other. Of course, we would turn around quickly and Shawn would tease the superkick as I threw up my hands in defense. The tension would build until we eventually shook hands in the ring, showing the world that we were on the same team. Birds would sing, babies would laugh, and the sun would forever shine with the revelation that the first-ever alliance between Michaels and Jericho was going to happen! This would all lead to Bray Wyatt with his Family in his corner versus Chris Jericho with HBK in his corner at SummerSlam.
Phew! Sounds pretty damn good, right? Thank you, Constant Reader. I felt the same way . . . but did Vince agree?
“Well,” I said as straight fire burned in the corners of the room from the heat of my marvelous brainchild, “what do you think?”
I couldn’t wait to hear him say how much he loved my amazing idea and find out what thoughts he had to make it better.
Exce
pt he didn’t say anything.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Bupkus. Zip. Goose Egg. Diddly. Nought. Bagatelle.
He just slowly chewed his food, staring off at an unidentified object in the corner of the room as if he were playing Pokéman Go. When he swallowed, an epiphany seemed to hit him as he looked up from his steak and made a strange face.
I thought to myself, His next words are gonna blow me away, and they did, but not in the way I expected.
“Bad Cow.”
Exsqueeze me? Baking powder?
“Sorry, Vince?”
“Bad COW,” he repeated, with greater emphasis.
Yeah, I caught that the first time. But I still had no idea what the fuck he was talking about.
“BAD COW,” he said emphatically for a third time before elaborating. “This steak is too tough and bland. It’s from a Bad Cow.”
Now out of all the responses that I might’ve expected to hear about my killer idea . . . let’s just say that a thousand monkeys could’ve typed for a thousand years and they wouldn’t have come up with that piece of horseshit.
“I’m sorry that you’ve eaten some ummm . . . Bad Cow, Vince, but what did you think about my idea?”
He stared at me, then back at the cursed chunk of half-eaten meat that had ruined my presentation and muttered, “What else ya got?”
No is a Four-Letter Word Page 7
