The Best in the World

by Chris Jericho

  “He’s got so many already. What would one more even matter? Plus, it would be so small that nobody would even care,” Vince (who had no tattoos) explained.

  I pointed out that it didn’t matter how big the tattoo was or how many Punk had, I was violating him and he would have to live with that every day.

  I could tell by his expression that Vince was rethinking his decision, but then he went back to his fear that tattooing Punk might make him bleed, and I knew I’d lost the battle. But in typical McMahon fashion, even though he’d nixed my idea, he had an alternative.

  “I know Punk’s dad had some drinking issues. Why don’t we use that? You can accuse Punk of being one drink away from ending up an alcoholic just like his father.”

  It was a heavy subject, but if going there took the fans to that different emotional level and legitimately made them angry, I was all for it. But was Punk? He was and immediately waved off any concerns and felt we should go for it all the way.

  That night, I went on Raw and told millions of people worldwide that CM Punk’s father was an alcoholic and Punk himself was such a failure that it was just a matter of time before he ended up the same way. I got a serious “oooooohhhhh” reaction when I dropped that bomb, and the few remaining Y2J fans soured on me pretty quickly.

  It was an uncomfortable subject for a lot of people as it hit them pretty close to home. Every day, I read on my social media pages how much of an asshole I was for using something as serious as alcoholism in a wrestling angle, but that’s precisely why I was doing it. Now people legitimately wanted to see Punk kick my ass.

  But the angle was so strong that Vince began to have second thoughts about what kind of match he wanted us to have at WrestleMania. The following week on the last Raw before the PPV, Michael Hayes once again delivered some bad news.

  “Vince doesn’t want you guys to have an actual match at Mania. He feels you’ve gone too far with the alcoholic thing to go out there and do highspots. He wants you to have a ten-minute brawl and end with Punk getting DQ’d for not breaking the count when he has you in the ropes.”

  Talk about a shitty finish for one of the main events of WrestleMania! I originally wanted the match with Punk because I thought we could have a modern-day Steamboat-Savage classic, but things had changed and Vince DID have an interesting point. I’d taken things way too far by bringing Punk’s family into the fray and had almost peaked the angle too soon. In retrospect, we should’ve started the alcoholic father storyline after our Mania match, the same way Shawn and I used Rebecca to ramp up our feud after already working each other for a few months. But now it was too late and we had painted ourselves into a corner.

  Neither Punk nor I wanted to give up on having some semblance of an actual match, but Vince’s mind was set. I think the only thing that saved us from the quick DQ finish was that Sheamus was winning the world title from Daniel Bryan in eighteen seconds on the same show, and after some serious discussion, Vince decided he didn’t want two short world-title matches. So he compromised by adding a stipulation that if Punk got disqualified in any manner, he would be stripped of the title. That way he wouldn’t be able to go completely ballistic on me because he’d have no choice but to follow the rules. I thought that was a pretty clever solution, and now that we had our marching orders, all we had to worry about was the match itself. And I was going to do everything I could to make it a classic.

  —

  Since I was in one of the three main events at the biggest show of the year, I wanted to do something special for my entrance into the Sun Life Stadium in Miami. I was the heel, so I wouldn’t be getting ziplines or elaborate spaceships lowering into the ring like Edge had a few years ago (nor did I want Stay Puft marshmallow inflatable letters spelling out my name like Miz had), so it was up to me to think of something original.

  I called Jonathan Logan again and asked him to make me a new jacket with five times as many lights as the first one. He created a masterpiece that boasted more bulbs than a greenhouse, with a remote control that both turned the lights on and changed the speed at which they blinked. He’d also included a zipper in the lining to make it easier to get to the broken wires (which happened on a weekly basis); and when opened, the electronics pattern looked like a damn NATO circuit board.

  The jacket was heavy and Jonathan said if he made the same one for Justin Bieber, his slight frame wouldn’t be able to support it (I’m sure David Lee Roth could’ve worn two of them and done a spinning roundhouse kick at the same time because he was DAVID LEE ROTH). I wasn’t sure my financial frame could support it either because this one was even more expensive than the first one. How much? Let’s just say I paid four hundred bucks for my first car (a ’76 Volare) and this jacket was 37.5 times that. But it was WrestleMania, dammit, and using the Paul Stanley theorem, I was once again going to spare no expense. Plus, the jacket looked like it was worth every penny and was going to be one of the visual highlights of the PPV.

  I spent the day of the show in the bowels of the Sun Life Stadium doing yoga, talking to Punk about the match, and doing a press conference with new WWE Hall of Famer Mike Tyson, where I forgave him for betraying me and knocking me out the last time we saw each other.

  Afterward, I walked out onto the massive stadium stage and took in the thousands of empty seats, thinking about how amazing a phenomenon WrestleMania was. Vince was coming up the rampway, and I asked him, “Do you ever just take a minute to reflect on all this? You should, man. . . . What you’ve accomplished is incredible.”

  He looked at me strangely for a moment, then turned and surveyed the stadium for a good ten seconds. Then he looked back at me and said, “Thanks for that, Chris. Now let’s get to work.”

  When I got back to the dressing room, everyone was giving me weird looks and giggling. I asked what was up and they finally gave in and showed me pictures of Christian and Brodus Clay parading around the dressing room in my jacket, one looking like a broom covered in a bedsheet and the other the epitome of Fat Guy in Little (Light-Up) Coat.

  Finally it was showtime and I was taken around the stadium to the Gorilla position in a golf cart, switching my jacket on and off to make sure there were no issues. I didn’t want a reprise of the night I debuted my blue jacket and have it conk out, but now satisfied that this new one worked perfectly, I was ready to rock.

  I paced around Gorilla as the prematch hype video played, waiting to hit the stage and make history. The package ended and I turned my jacket on one last time to make sure it worked properly before my music hit and it did.

  On one side.

  The lights on the left part of the jacket flashed brighter than a thousand suns, but the lights on the right were darker than Darth Vader. I couldn’t believe I’d paid fifteen fuckin’ grand for this thing and it was already broken!

  The stupid jacket threw me completely off my game. I was so ticked off, I totally forgot about my match because I was too busy thinking of how I was going to keep 75,000 people (and VINCE) from noticing that only fifty percent of my amazing Technicolor dreamcoat was working.

  I came out onto the stage leading with my left side, so the cameras could only see the lighted part of my jacket. Then I lurched down the 150-foot rampway sideways like Bela Lugosi holding his cape in front of his face (pull the strings), doing my best to make sure the camera could only shoot the flashing side. I didn’t know if I was fooling anybody, but I was never so relieved to hear Punk’s music in my life, so I could finally take the jacket off.

  My wardrobe malfunction behind me, Punk and I had an excellent match. I started by trying to goad Punk into getting disqualified by taunting him about his father and begging him to hit me with a chair. He came close to losing it, but held on to his emotions and decided to take out his frustrations on me by kicking my ass the old-fashioned way.

  We jam-packed the bout with killer spots, including me suplexing Punk over the top rope all the wa
y to the floor, me catching him in the Walls as he was going for a top rope frankensteiner, and him diving on me halfway across the floor from the top turnbuckle. It climaxed with an intricate series of reversals and rollouts that ended up with me tapping out to his Anaconda Vice submission.

  Overall, I was very happy with the match and while it wasn’t the Steamboat/Savage classic I’d originally envisoned, I think it’s underrated. In my view, it was better than the Rock vs. Cena contest that closed the show and ended up as the second best on the card behind Taker-HHH, which tore the house down. I think some fans had such high expectations for our match that it fell short in their eyes, but it didn’t to me. I dug it and was excited to continue working with Punk, as we were only getting started.

  This is the original finish I came up with for the Mania match with Punk, in my hotel room a few days before the show. Some of it we used, some of it we didn’t, but you gotta start somewhere.

  The next night on Raw in Miami, I claimed that not only did Punk’s dad have a drinking problem, his sister was a junkie as well. Then after he got crushed by Mark Henry, I came down to insult him even further by pouring whiskey over his head. I was hell-bent to make sure he fulfilled his drunken destiny one way or another.

  When I pushed my way through the crowd to approach the fallen Punk, I had a Jack Daniel’s bottle made of the dreaded sugar glass, and filled with iced tea, in my hand. Originally, Vince had insisted that actual Jack be used to fill up the bottle, but I balked at the idea, considering that Punk really was straight-edge and I didn’t want him swallowing a mouthful of the real stuff. Besides, who was going to know?

  “People in the front row will know it’s not real alcohol if they can’t smell it,” Vince claimed (which reminded me of Ed Langley’s thoughts about ether from twenty-two years earlier). So we were going to pour actual alcohol over a teetotalor’s head just to impress twenty people sitting at ringside? Finally, Vince acquiesced and switched it to tea, but then we had a lengthy discussion about whether I should smash the bottle over Punk’s head or not. Vince was concerned that Punk might get cut and I thought of how much things had changed since 2002, when Kane had thrown me through a sugar-glass picture window and I spent the rest of the night picking dozens of sugar slivers out of my back.

  Punk was insisting I smash it over his head, but Vince was reluctant and wanted me to hit the ring post just above his noggin instead. Either way was fine with me as I knew the angle was going to be a standout no matter what. We went through it a few times and the props guy warned me not to swing the bottle too fast so it didn’t break apart in the air before making contact.

  I hopped over the barricade and slowly stalked my prey, wearing a swank pair of Jonathan Logan distressed leather pants, pointed dress boots, and no shirt. If I was going to trample on a man’s dignity, I was going to do it with style.

  “Here’s to ya, Punk,” I taunted, raising the bottle in the air and slowly pouring the sweet amber over his head. It streamed through his hair, down his face, and into his mouth as he vainly attempted to spit it out, as the crowd’s hostility toward me hung in the air like the southern Florida humidity. I scoped the audience, secretly impressed with their reactions, and decided to stomp Punk in the face for the final coup de grâce. As I lifted my left foot in the air to deliver the fatal crushing blow, my right foot slipped in the pool of iced tea and I fell on my ass.

  It was the worst thing that could’ve happened at the worst time. There was no getting out of it, no way to cover it up. It was like Jason Voorhees raising his machete over his head to kill a helpless coed and slipping on a banana peel.

  I had killed the intensity, and the impact of the attack disappeared like a thief in the night (I ain’t talking about Bruce Kulick) once I’d busted my tail. All I could think to do was completely ignore the fall, pop right back up on my feet, and smash the bottle over his head (it exploded a millisecond before it made contact for the blown spot daily double).

  I had botched the angle big-time. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if I had slipped and fallen as I was about to punch Rebecca Michaels?

  Stupid pointed dress boots.

  —

  We got back on track the next week when I accused Punk’s mother of illicit behavior and claimed Punk was a “bastard,” which to Vince was the ultimate insult.

  Not sure if being called a bastard would win any best insult awards, but it was better than the worst insult I’ve EVER heard, delivered by The Miz. We were in Montreal and he was berating the crowd in French about all of the things he hated about the city—their language, their hockey team, their specialty foods.

  “J’deteste Montreal! J’deteste les Canadiens! J’deteste poutine!” he screamed.

  “What? He hates poutine? That tasty concoction of French fries drowned in gravy and covered with cheese curds? I’M GONNA KILL HIM!”

  Poutine insults aside, referring to Punk as a bastard seemed like a pretty lame putdown to me, so I decided to add an additional insult of my own. During my previous attack, some of the Jack Daniel’s (tea) had gotten down his throat, so in my mind I’d done what I had promised and gotten him to take his first taste of alcohol. So I deemed him CM Drunk. Then I attacked him again and this time poured an entire six-pack of beer over his head. But this time I didn’t slip, and the attack worked like a drunken charm.

  At the next Raw in Detroit, I cheekily had a liquor basket delivered to him during his in-ring promo. That seemed to be the last straw for poor old Punk, as later in the show I went spying on him in his dressing room and saw him sodomizing a cat.

  I’m just making sure you’re still paying attention, fearless readers.

  What I really saw when I peeked into the dressing room was CM sitting in the corner, surrounded by empty bottles from the liquor basket. Now that I had actually gotten him drunk with my evil trickery, my conspiracy plan was ready to take the next step. I found a little-known codicil in the WWE talent contract that said if a performer was drunk during a show, he would be fired. In Punk’s current state of intoxication, he would be stripped of the title, and since I was the number one contender, the title would go straight to me. At least that’s the way I saw it.

  The next step of my plan was bringing out a pair of Detroit cops to administer a roadside DWI test on him. If they determined he was over the limit, he’d be terminated and relieved of his championship duties immediately. I called him out and a few seconds later, he wobbled down to the ring, slurring his speech slightly and doing an overall great job of acting drunk. Even though he never partied for real, Punk always hung out with the boys until the wee hours of the morning, so he’d been around plenty of drunks in his life (myself at the top of the list) and knew how to play it perfectly.

  The cops made him balance on one leg and count to ten, walk a straight line, and then asked him to say the alphabet backward. When I pitched the idea to the writers that Punk should actually recite the letters backward, I was shot down and told that nobody could do that even if they were sober. So I wrote down the alphabet backward, memorized it for twenty minutes, and enumerated all twenty-six letters to the writers in reverse order, without error.

  Punk now did the same (although he got the R and the T mixed up), slowly picking up the speed of his delivery, before dropping his drunk act and revealing that he’d been faking it the whole time to trick me. When he finished with the letter A, he punched me in the face. It was an entertaining segment that set the stage for our blow-off match, an extreme street fight in Punk’s birthplace, Sweet Home Chicago.

  The Windy City crowd was as raucous as always (my favorite wrestling crowd in the U.S.) and we had a perfect match, even better than Mania, in my opinion. We wore the old-school ’80s street fight uniform, a pair of jeans with knee pads and boots pulled over the top, and taped fists. Then we beat the holy hell out of each other with kendo sticks (which left me with some wicked welts on my back), garbag
e cans, ring bells, and all sorts of other assorted plunder. Punk’s sister, Chaleen, was in the front row and got revenge on behalf of her family by slapping me in the face hard when I taunted her. Punk used that momentum to put me through the announce table with an elbow from the top rope and then sprayed me in the face with a fire extinguisher while I had him in the Walls of Jericho. I was so worried about closing my eyes to protect them from the spray that I forgot to close my mouth and swallowed some of the weird white frozen foam. Not the healthiest of snacks, but for the next few days, I didn’t have to blow on hot food before I ate it.

  He eventually finished me off with the GTS, and the Punk-Jericho feud was officially in the books . . . at least on TV. But the angle was so hot, we continued working together in different countries all over the world, wowing the crowds with our magic tricks.

  There was one country in particular, though, that wasn’t too happy with me or my tricks.

  Professional Flag Kicker

  The WWE tours all over the world, but when we were invited to perform in China for the first time ever, it was a major coup. We’d been on TV over there for years, but it was hard to make any headway due to all the other entertainment options in the country and the fact that the Chinese government didn’t really understand what we did. But they wanted to book us as one of the few American acts to perform at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, along with a symphony orchestra and a Right Said Fred concert. (I keed, but what a mental image!)

  We were in the middle of an Asian tour and flew to Shanghai from the Tokyo Haneda airport, which was jam-packed with chain-smoking Japanese businessmen. We were told to wear suits on the plane to make a good first impression in China, which was a good idea in theory, but Haneda was so smoky and stuffy that I wanted to barf all over my sweet Hugo Boss ensemble. Thankfully, I made it to Shanghai without hurling, and when we landed we headed straight to the venue.