I pitched for the Big Red Machine to be my lawfully wedded partner, but Vince shot me down quickly. “Actually, I have somebody else in mind.”
Who could it be now . . . Giant Silva? Outback Jack? Funaki?
“Show.”
Big Show? I hadn’t thought about The Largest Athlete in the World, and I’m not sure why, as he fit all of my criteria. Multiple-time world champ. Physically imposing (he’s a GIANT after all). Plus, Show’s dry sense of humor was the perfect weapon to combat DX’s sarcasm.
But I had a few concerns about teaming with Show that I wanted to address with Vince right then and there.
“I think it’s a great idea, but there are some things I’d like to tweak about his character.”
If I was going to do this, I wanted Show to update his look the same way that I had when I dropped the Y2J character.
“I’d like to update his gear, get rid of that one-strap Tarzan singlet thingy, and switch to tights.”
The single-strap singlet had been the trademark of Andre the Giant and since Show had been brought into the business as Andre’s son, I guess he still felt it necessary to wear the same style of clothes as his dad. I’m glad I didn’t feel the same way, as a full-length fur coat and cowboy boots would’ve looked ridiculous.
But I felt if Show switched to trunks, it would both signify a change in attitude and make his physique look even more imposing.
Vince nodded and asked what else I wanted to change.
“I want him to drop all of the comedy he’s been doing. He’s a legitimate giant and I want us to start promoting him like one again.”
The problem with Show was the WWE was taking him for granted. Over the last few years he’d seemingly been booked to take the entire roster’s finishing moves. I’d even locked him into the Walls during a Royal Rumble match a few years earlier. He was such a great athlete and moved so well that we almost forgot he was a foot taller than most of the rest of the crew. It wasn’t until you saw yourself standing next him in a picture or on TV that you remembered how huge he really was.
On top of that, he had such a great sense of humor and was so laid- back that WWE had a habit of making him the butt of everyone’s jokes. Whether it was Goldust as The Crocodile Hunter finding Show napping in the corner and calling out, “It’s the sleeping elephant, Crikey!” or Show coming to the ring imitating other superstars (The Showster, who preached about “Showamania running wild, brother”)—all of that had to stop. I wanted him to be a badass monster again.
Also, I felt, in order to compete with DX, Show needed to adopt a more serious character. New suits, no bullshit. He was up for it, and once he made the minor changes, we were ready to get over like Rover. And we worked together so well that eventually we got over like Clifford the muthafuckin’ Big Red Dog.
—
Show was fired up about our new partnership, and I wasn’t surprised. I’d always found him to be a great performer when he was motivated and this new scenario gave him something to sink his huge bicuspids into. He tried wearing trunks but didn’t like the look (he must’ve run into Malenko first) so he switched to a full-on singlet that worked for him, and he still wears it today. But either way, first step in my plan to rebuild the perfect beast was accomplished.
I wanted to cleanse the fans’ Big Show palate and remind people just what an intimidating powerhouse he was. Since we’d known each other for years, I figured the chemistry would be there, but it wasn’t quite right at the beginning and we got off to a sluggish start. We debuted at the July PPV against Rhodes and DiBiase and the match was clunky at best, as Show and I tried a few double-team moves that weren’t really our style. I hit the ropes so Show could press me onto a prone Cody, but he wasn’t really a press slam guy and our timing was off, so it looked like shit. Even though we won the match. I knew we’d have to rethink what kind of team we wanted to be.
The secret to Show and Jericho was that we weren’t like most “big guy, little guy” teams. Whereas in the past, Rey had used Show’s shoulders as a platform to do splashes off of, and Eddy had Show catapult him in the air straight onto his opponent’s shoulders, we weren’t that kind of team. As evidenced by our less-than-spectacular debut, we weren’t about dynamic flashy moves. We were about being devious and using each other’s strengths to win.
We decided to base everything around his knockout punch, called the WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction), which he’d been using as his finish for a while. As a matter of fact, the first guy he tried it on a few years earlier was me and I told him beforehand to hit me as hard as he could with his ham-hock fist. He nailed me so hard my forehead had knuckle prints in it (no joke). Vince loved it.
“Damn, you’re a tough bastard,” the boss said in admiration afterward. I smiled bashfully as my forehead swelled up like a tsunami.
So every time we won a match, it was because Show found a way to plaster our opponent behind the ref’s back, and I would capitalize by jumping on the guy for the pin.
We got a lot of easy heat because Show was so damn tall he could do things most guys couldn’t. He could punch somebody in the ring while he was standing on the ground by simply reaching up from the floor. He could legally tag me from pretty much anywhere on the apron because he could hold the tag rope and stretch out almost three quarters of the way across the ring. He could cut off a babyface by merely holding up his foot or body checking the guy when he hit the ropes close to our corner. Plus, I could bump around for the good guys and, when things got rough, tag Show in and hide behind him with a shit-eating grin.
Our chemistry backstage was great too, although we got along so well, we bickered constantly . . . if that makes any sense at all. Since I had an overall master plan for who and what I wanted us to be, I came up with most of the ideas for the matches and wasn’t particularily politically correct in overruling Show’s suggestions.
“Hey, what if we did it this way?” Show suggested after I’d laid out some ideas.
“Nope, my way is better, so let’s just do it as is.”
Show would get all sulky and say, “OK, I’ll just shut my mouth and sit here like a big dumb giant.”
Then I’d console him and tell him his ideas were good . . . it’s just that mine were better.
We got to know each other so well, we started acting like an old married couple.
“When is our match?” Show would ask, squinting at the card taped on the wall.
“Would you put on your glasses? You’re driving me crazy!”
“You need to chill out and quit bitching at me! Have a diet soda, for shit’s sakes.”
Then we’d walk away from each other in a huff, only to get back together a while later and continue talking like nothing had happened.
But it was a lot of fun teaming with Show and I’d have to say he is my favorite tag-team partner ever. We got over great, to the point I had to start protecting our heelish integrity, much to Show’s chagrin.
The announcers nicknamed us Jeri-Show, but I refused to refer to ourselves that way and asked Show not to either. I felt that having an official team nickname was too cute and would give the fans a familiarity, like we were their buddies. Every time the writers gave us something with “Jeri-Show” in it, I ignored it and requested that Show do the same (although I think he slipped and said it a few times).
The merch department wanted to design Jeri-Show T-shirts, which I nixed for the same reasons I did when I was on my own. But now I had to answer to my seven-foot partner who wanted the extra royalties. I was able to convince him that the minimal money we’d make from a Jeri-Show coffee mug would be far eclipsed by the money we’d make from being top heels working in the main events against DX.
My favorite tag-team partner and one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met. This pic shows just how massive Show really is . . . although he’s wearing high heels and standing on a box.
Meanwhile, we were decimating every team on the roster, on our way to the critical mass showdown against Hunter and Shawn. I did the talking while Show did the knocking . . . out, as he’d reclaimed his crown as the biggest, nastiest monster in the WWE. He was a giant and nobody could touch him . . . nobody! Well, nobody, that is, except The Great Khali.
The other giant in the WWE.
Khali and Show had been at odds for years, as they had what the boys called “Giant Heat,” which meant they resented each other because they were both Brobdingnagian (best word in this book). They had spent their lives being the biggest person in the room, astonishing specimens that everybody stared at and instantly feared. Now, for the first time, they had to deal with competition for that honor and neither of them liked it. Khali was taller, Show was better in the ring, and each was jealous of the other as a result.
We were in Aricebo, Puerto Rico, having a tag match against Khali and Taker. It was the first time I’d ever wrestled Taker, and experiencing his ring entrance live was surreal. When the lights went out and that Taco Bell gong hit, there was no feeling like it. The crowd hushed in awe, then went batshit when the blue lights pierced the veil of darkness, and Vince McMahon’s greatest creation slowly marched to the ring. He stalked his way up the ring stairs and took off his hat to expose the pure whites of his eyes as his tongue rolled out of his mouth. Creepy, classic, and exhilarating, all at the same time.
The match itself was nothing special, highlighted only by Khali stealing one of Show’s spots right in front of his face. Show had this trademark move where he took a guy into the corner, shhh’d the crowd with his finger, and delivered a BRUTAL overhand chop that sounded (and felt) like it had caved in his opponent’s chest. It hurt like a mutha, but always got a huge reaction, which made it a little more bearable. Khali had stolen it from Show and used it all the time during his matches, even though Show had asked him more than once not to. But who was going to stop him? Khali was seven feet tall and didn’t give a shit what anybody thought, especially his nemesis, The Big Show. But even still, he had huevos El Gigante to do the chop right in front of Show’s face.
“Motherfucker just stole my move,” Show mumbled on the apron, and I knew something was gonna go down. He was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore.
We were in the dressing room after the match, and Show was still fuming, steam practically bellowing out of his ears. When Khali came in a few minutes later, the shit was on.
“Hey, motherfucker, why do you keep stealing my spots, huh? That’s total bullshit and you need to stop it now!”
Let me say that I really like Khali and respect what he’s done, because I know what it’s like to be the only foreigner in the locker room who doesn’t speak the native language. He still made every effort to fit in, despite the fact that his minimal knowledge of English, deep voice, and heavy accent made it almost impossible to understand him at first. He peppered every sentence with liberal doses of bro and man, and they were the only words you could understand at times.
“Wha’ you talkin’ ’bout, bro?” Khali retorted, his accent as thick as his upper torso.
“Don’t play that innocent bullshit with me! I’ve told you before to stop stealing my stuff. You can’t do any of it properly anyway, because you’re the fuckin’ shits!”
Khali stared at him stoically and replied, “You’re the shits too, bro.”
That made me laugh in spite of the tension; I thought it was great that Khali didn’t deny he was shits, but wanted to make it damn clear that he felt the same way about Show . . . bro.
That pushed Show over the edge and he threw Khali’s bag in the corner, which was the equivalent of slapping him across the face with a glove and challenging him to a duel. Khali accepted and rose to his feet as quickly as he could (which took about five seconds).
The two biggest men in WWE history stood face-to-face and I’m not sure either of them knew what to do. Show had spent some time training as a boxer, and Khali had been a police officer in India (can you imagine running through a stop sign and seeing that monster walking up to your window?), but I wasn’t sure how many actual street fights either one of them had been in. I mean, they were giants; who ever messed with them in the schoolyard? I guessed that, due to the intimidation factor alone, they had avoided fisticuffs for most of their lives.
But this was different. This wasn’t just about stealing spots, this was years and years of “Giant Heat” coming to a head. It was the law of the jungle and only the biggest beast would survive. Plus there was going to be a fight no matter what; they had gone too far to back down now and the boys were watching. Taker, Kane, Regal, Punk, everyone was gathered around now, and to pussy out at this stage would be locker-room respect suicide.
A few seconds later, Show threw the first punch, which connected with a loud smack to Khali’s overdeveloped jaw. It rocked him backward, but he didn’t go down and Khali landed a punch of his own. With the opening shots fired, the floodgates opened and the two titans began swinging like Tiger Williams. I counted at least five more smacks and cracks as the blows connected with each other’s faces, shoulders, necks, and chests.
I had a front-row seat for King Kong vs. Godzilla and they were in a fight to the death. Nobody in the locker room was too keen to break them up either, and besides, how could we? Their fists were as big as my head! If I tried to intervene, I was going to get swatted away like a biplane trying to shoot Kong off of the Empire State Building. And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Cody Rhodes was hanging in the corner as far away from the melee as possible, and even though Kane had the size to intercede, he was wearing only a towel and I’m guessing he didn’t want to get involved in case it fell off and exposed his big red machine.
The battle raged on until finally Show took a wild swing and tripped over a chair, which caused him to crash onto the floor with Khali on top of him. The boys waded in at that point to pry them apart and the fight was over. The brawl was fairly even, but Show still insists he lost because Khali landed on top. Now, if we were judging by the rules of a hockey fight, then yes, Show lost, but from where I was standing, it was an impressive back-and-forth scrap. Show might not have lost the battle, but he definitely lost the war when Vince made him apologize to Khali for throwing the first punch, during a closed door meeting a few days later.
Show apparently told Khali that he was out of line and shouldn’t have swung first (although in the George Lucas rerelease, it was Khali who swung first) and that it wouldn’t happen again. Khali nodded his head and said, “No problem, bro.”
—
Big Show and I were together for the better part of five months before we finally got to the pot of DX gold at the end of the tag-team rainbow. In that time, our partnership experienced a lot of twists and turns and we even battled against each other when we challenged The Undertaker for his world title in a three-way dance on PPV. Our plan was to gang up on the Deadman and beat him up so bad that he would be easy pickings for the pin. Problem was, we couldn’t decide who would get the victory; we each wanted to be the champion.
The three-way was good, not great, but it’s become legendary because of a two-second ad lib that became one of my most famous lines.
We were in Washington, DC, and I had just thrown Taker back into the ring, when a fan in the front row yelled out, “Go back to Toronto!” I was in the middle of an intense title match (any match with Taker was intense), but for some reason, this guy’s comment really annoyed me. First off, I thought it was the worst insult ever. We were in the United States, next door to Canada, the friendliest country ever, and there wasn’t any unrest between our two nations, so there was no reason to tell me to go back. It wasn’t like I was in Saigon in 1968 and the Viet Cong were demanding that the Damn Yankees (and Ted Nugent) get out. Second, I’m not from Toronto, I’ve never been from Toronto, and it ticked me off that even though this dummy knew I was from
Canada, he hadn’t done enough research to know what city. So I decided to let him know exactly where I’d grown up.
“I’m from WINNIPEG, you idiot!” I snarled without a thought and slid back into the ring.
I’m not sure exactly why, but my retort spread like wildfire. Ever since that moment, there hasn’t been a day that goes by that somebody hasn’t texted, Tweeted, Facebooked, Instagrammed, Vibered, Snapchatted or Ear-Sayed it to me, and if I could put that quote on a T-shirt, I would. I can’t explain its appeal, but like I said earlier, you just never know what’s gonna catch on, so why hassle it?
It’s ridiculous that after all the monumental things I’ve accomplished in my career, the two bits I’ll be remembered for the most are “I’m from Winnipeg, you idiot” and “Armbar.”
Taker beat both of us and retained his title, but we were still the tag-team champions. Now with all of the animoisity cleared away, Show and I were a stronger unit and ready to focus on the sole remaining team we hadn’t beaten: DeGeneration X.
—
DX was one of the most popular acts in WWE history and Shawn and Hunter had recently reunited, much to the fans’ glee. They were cocky, comical, charismatic, and had no problems annihilating their opponents with their promos. But Show and I were beyond that and wouldn’t allow ourselves to be pushed around or intimidated by them. DX vs. Jericho/Show was a guaranteed moneymaker as it was, but Vince wanted to raise the stakes even higher and make our match a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs and have it headline the next PPV.
In the same way Shawn and I had at first balked at having a ladder match for the world title a year earlier, the four of us weren’t too keen on this idea at first either. But the TLC brand name brought instant importance and prominence to the match and, along with the fact that the tag titles were also at stake, made this match must-see TV (shut up, Miz). So we agreed to do the match on the condition we could do it our way—less stunt show, more psychology.
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