Incidentally, I hadn’t been told the finish beforehand either, and after a few seconds referee Mike Chioda told me that Vince wanted Shelton to go over with his finish. That was fine with me, but I’d never worked with Shelton before and had no idea what his finish even was. I whispered, “Okay, but what’s his finish?”
Mike looked at me funny and I could tell he was getting more instructions over the IFB that was jammed in his ear. He finally looked up, his instructions complete, and mumbled, “Tawboww munchex.”
I couldn’t understand what the hell he said, and I asked him again. “Huh? What’s his finish?”
“Beeboo Crawtaints.”
“What is it?”
“Steve-O Rufinks.”
Chioda had a habit of mumbling instructions while in the ring so fans wouldn’t understand what he was saying, but now I couldn’t understand him either. At that point I had the most confused scowl on my face, and when I saw myself on the Tron, I wondered if Vince thought I had that look because I was pissed that I had to drop the title. In reality I was just trying to decipher Chioda’s mumbo-jumbo. When Shelton climbed into the ring, I told him he was winning the match with his finish. He had to suppress a smile as he heard what Vince wanted, and I hissed at him to stop grinning and tell me his finish already.
“T-bone suplex,” he whispered with an exultant look on his face.
The match began and I called the whole thing in the ring, which was a challenge, but it turned out to be one of my favorite performances ever. It was such a rush to be flying by the seat of my spandex live without a net, and I got into a zone. Finally I shot Shelton into the corner, and when he reversed me I jumped straight to the second turnbuckle and leaped back toward him.
I wasn’t sure what a T-Bone Suplex was, so I came off with my arms and legs extended like Patrick the starfish. I figured that no matter what it was, he could give it to me if I gave him enough space. Sure enough, he caught me in midair and flipped me over his head for the three-count and the victory.
As I watched the ref raise his arm and hand him the title, I felt a wave of pride wash over me. Despite Vince’s words in Kitchener, I did feel like an accomplished wrestler. I’d entered the ring with no finish and no opponent and was able to put together a pretty damn good match on the fly. Backstage all eighteen of my prospective opponents gave me a standing ovation, including Shelton, who was still in shock over his title win. Benoit came up to me, full of his trademark intensity, and said, “That was fucking great. That’s wrestling right there. Not too many people could do that. What a piece of art. Congratulations.”
It was high praise from the best wrestler in the world and a man I considered to be a mentor and one of my best friends.
CHAPTER 34
Hell of a Hand
My son Ash was born on September 24, 2003. He arrived when Jessica and I decided to induce his birth so I could be home to witness it. I worked on a Monday and flew home to attend my son’s birth on a Tuesday, and he was polite enough to wait for his dear old dad to turn up before he made his big entrance into the world.
Being a father is the most magnificent feeling in the world, and it was hard to go on the road to be away from my son, but it was my job and I had to make the sacrifice. However I’ve always made a point of being there for the important milestones, and I made sure to book off work on the day of his first birthday party.
Ash’s bash was on Saturday and I’d fly out to the live event in Springfield, Missouri, early Sunday morning. But a few days before the party, reports began circulating that Tampa was going to be hit by a serious hurricane that might shut the airport down. I took no heed, as nothing was going to make me miss my little guy’s first birthday shindig.
I was in the middle of the Blue’s Clues – themed fiesta featuring a water slide– bouncy house and seventy-five of our closest friends, when my house phone rang. I heard Howard Finkel’s distinctive voice on the machine telling me that because of the storm, the office wanted me to fly out that night. I was watching Ash smear cake all over his face and everything else in his vicinity and ignored the call. I disregarded the next three calls as well, but when the phone rang for the fifth time, I picked up and explained to Howard that I would take my chances on flying out the next morning and that was that.
Ash is a ham just like his daddy. Note his shark shirt: he’s been obsessed with sea creatures his whole life.
There’s nothing more beautiful than a mother and her child.
Except it wasn’t.
The next day I woke up to a full-fledged hurricane.
The wind was blowing so hard it looked like the palm trees in my front yard were going to snap in two. The rain was coming down in veritable sheets and the airport was indeed closed down. It was decided after much deliberation with the office that I would pick up Stacy Keibler (who had also refused to fly out the night before) and drive to Miami to catch a flight to Kansas City for Raw on Monday. Stacy and I drove through the aquatic night, risking our lives to make it to the show, but we got to Miami that night (and Kansas City the next day) safe and sound.
When I arrived at the Kemper Arena (where Owen Hart had fallen to his death years earlier), I was told that Vince and John Laurinaitis (who had replaced JR as the head of talent relations) wanted to see me in his office.
I walked in and Vince said, “It’s been brought to my attention that you missed the show yesterday. I want to know why.”
“Johnny already knows the reason why, Vince. It was my son’s first birthday party and I wasn’t going to miss it.”
Vince looked a little thrown off, as if he didn’t expect my excuse to be that legit.
“I understand that, Chris, but you still should’ve made the show. If the airport was closed, you should’ve rented a private plane.”
I could’ve rented a fleet of private planes, but none of them would’ve been able to take off due to the little hurricane that was going on.
“I’m going to have to fine you a thousand dollars,” Vince said sternly.
Fair enough. I’d missed a show (that I wasn’t even in the top two matches of) in exchange for being at my boy’s first birthday party. Seemed like a good trade-off and I was willing to accept my penance.
“All right, boss, I’ll pay the fine, but you might as well make it two thousand and keep the extra grand for next year, because no matter what I’ll be at his second party too.”
I was, and I’ve never missed any of my three children’s birthday parties yet.
(Another Quick Author’s Aside: I never did get fined for missing the Springfield show. And three weeks later when I got my check, I saw that I’d been paid $1,500 for the gig. I’m not sure what happened, but I suspect Vince respected my resolve and decided to forget about the fine and pay me anyway. Either that or somebody fucked up and I’ll get a bill as soon as they read this.)
We went back to Japan in February 2005 and taped Raw in Tokyo for the first time ever. The Japanese crowds were unique in that they made minimal noise when watching the matches (their reaction to my match with The Rock three years earlier being a notable exception), which was a direct contrast to the raucous North American crowds the WWE was used to.
But the apparent passiveness of the fans caused great concern to the WWE production team. Both Kevin Dunn and Vince asked me why the fans were so silent, and I responded, “Japanese fans appreciate the actual art form of wrestling—they study the matches instead of just watching them. They pay more attention to the nuances of the performance rather than just scream and yell.”
Both said they understood, but the silence was madness to them and they ended up adding canned crowd noise to the show, which in my opinion diminished the novel Tokyo atmosphere.
Because we were taping both shows in Tokyo, it was a rare tour that boasted both the Raw and Smackdown! rosters. The whole crew had gone out to Roppongi the night before and gotten totally shmammered. I don’t remember much about the whole evening, except for the fact that I spent a good p
ortion of it trying to convince The Undertaker to let me kiss him on the lips. There was no way the Fonz was going to allow that to happen, but he did let me kiss him on the cheek, so it wasn’t a total wash.
I woke up the next day feeling like Mel Gibson’s publicist, and when I found out I had Benoit in a Submission match, I threw up. I’m not sure if it was alcohol or dread that caused it—but I’m guessing it was a combination of the two.
Working with Chris was always a battle, but combined with the submission rules and the feeling that my head was going to burst open and spew out a geyser of Crown Royal, you can see I had a frickin’ nuclear war on my hands.
We spent the majority of the contest exchanging a plethora of holds, and I almost submitted a few times—to vomit. I eventually tapped out to the Crippler Crossface and we shook hands to the delight of the Japanese fans, impressed with our work and our sportsmanship.
I was just impressed I hadn’t shit myself.
Afterwards, the legendary Dr. Death, Steve Williams (who was on tour with All-in Japan), congratulated us on the match and said it was the best he’d seen in years. WWE Magazine even voted it the Match of the Month.
Match of the Month? Hell, if they knew how hungover I was, I would’ve received Match of the Decade.
I’ve always been of the belief that the story leading to the match is more important than the match itself. It can make the difference between the ultimate battle of good and evil that entices millions to pay money to see it or just two half-naked guys slathered in oil rolling around on a mat in their underwear (I think I saw that once in the movie Rambone).
That adage was even more relevant when it came to WrestleMania, and I’d always had a hand in crafting interesting stories building to my Mania matches. Whether it was the basic story of froot guy vs. stuffed shirt that Regal and I had told, the story of the student trying to destroy the teacher that was the crux of my angle with Shawn, or the returning hero coming to get revenge on the dastardly villain who’d severely wounded him that HHH and I had laid out, my Mania stories had always shown great creativity and garnered plenty of interest.
That’s why I was so disappointed in 2005 when WrestleMania XXI from Los Angeles was looming and I had absolutely nothing planned for the show. I felt like the company had relegated me into the dreaded “Hell of a Hand” category, which meant I could always be counted on to have a good match with anyone but would never be considered a money-drawing main-eventer. It wasn’t where I wanted to be, and once again I wondered if it wasn’t time get some space and disappear for a while.
But in the meantime, there was no way I was going to head into Mania and end up on the DVD-extra dark match battle royal that took place before the show every year.
I called Gewirtz, who as usual was lounging in bed with his harem. He was going through his Jessica phase and couldn’t decide if he liked Alba, Biel, or Simpson better. So he had simply chosen all three.
He was sympathetic to my concerns and told me he had an idea that might work. He ordered Biel to fetch his notes so he could explain his proposal of a Hollywood Dream Ladder match, that would include six other performers of prominence who also had nothing going on for Mania : RVD, Kane, Benoit, Edge, Christian, and Shelton Benjamin. The concept of the match was that the winner would get his dream of anything he wanted fulfilled, which in turn would lead to RVD winning and bringing back ECW.
It wasn’t exactly a World Championship match against The Undertaker, but it was better than nothing. He was in the midst of telling me the details when Simpson grabbed the phone from him and hung up, hungry for more vitamin G.
A few days later, Brian kicked the Jessicas out of his place and resurfaced for air. He told me that Vince thought the Hollywood Dream match was a stupid prize for the winner and wanted something else to be at stake. We kibitzed for a few minutes until I suggested, “Why don’t we make the match for a contract that guarantees a title shot the next night on Raw?”
Brian took it one step further and proposed that the contract would be valid for one whole year and could be used at any time. Vince approved with his sole modification being that the contract had to be in a briefcase, and the Money in the Bank match was born.
A few days later Vince changed his mind and decided that he would rather have me vs. Edge vs. Benoit in a three-way Submission match, despite the fact that Edge didn’t even have a submission. I hated the idea as I thought the concept (and the match) would be a hard sell and that the Money in the Bank was much more exciting and better for all involved. The rest of the guys agreed and we scheduled a meeting with Vince and Stephanie to convince them to stick with the MIB; to their credit they heard us out and agreed.
Everyone was glad they did, because the match was a staggering spectacle that came close to stealing the show. Shelton especially was on fire and tore the house down when he ran up one ladder that had been positioned on a slant next to another and clotheslined me off the top. (Shameless Braggart Author’s Note: That was my idea.) I fell to the mat and rolled out of the ring to the floor.
As the normally jaded L.A. crowd chanted, “Holy shit,” I looked up to see Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider, sitting in the front row.
Sandler yelled in his Waterboy voice, “Get back in there, Jericho! Hoo-hoooo-hoooooo!”
I grimaced and said, “What a way for a grown man to make a living. Loved Cajun Man, by the way.”
I crawled back onto the ring apronnn and got kicked in the noggonnn by Christionnn.
The MIB was a huge hit and has been one of the highlights of every WrestleMania since. It was such a successful concept that it has since spun-off into its very own PPV.
Awww, our little baby is all grown up.
Shortly after MIB I decided I was going to leave the WWE. Physically I was feeling fine, and after fifteen straight years of wrestling, I’d never been seriously injured (besides breaking my arm in 1994) nor had to take any time off.
But mentally I was burned out.
It was getting harder to leave my wife and my son to go to work and it was getting increasingly more difficult to put together matches. Normally I would go into a quiet corner somewhere and ideas for a match would pop into my head rapidly. Now I’d rack my brain for hours and only the most generic of ideas would come.
My drive and desire weren’t there like they used to be either, partially because I’d been painted with the scarlet letter of being a “Hell of a Hand,” and further down the card in working with guys like Tomko, Carlito, Muhammad Hassan (remember him??). I once again felt like I’d gone down a rabbit hole and returned to 1999.
If I was working in the ’70s territory system, it would’ve been time to pack up my Caddy and move on to the next company. But now there was nowhere else to go, and even if there was, I wasn’t interested in wrestling anymore. I wasn’t 100 percent mentally into it, and that’s a dangerous place to be. It makes it that much easier to get injured, and more important, it’s the source of a bad attitude. I was starting to complain more in the dressing room, and I didn’t want to become one of those guys.
The WWE had been very good to me and I wasn’t going to start grumbling and whining about every little thing, setting a bad example and breeding unrest among the entire roster, especially the younger guys.
Plus, I needed to get away to explore my other opportunities and interests. Fozzy had offers to tour the world, but I had no time to take advantage of them. I also wanted to get a place in L.A. so I could seriously study the art of acting. Most important, I had an awesome wife and a young son whom I wanted to spend more time with.
My contract was coming up in July and Johnny kept asking me about re-signing. I kept stalling and telling him I needed to think about it, but in my heart I already knew that for the first time in my life I didn’t want to wrestle anymore.
CHAPTER 35
The Hardest Working Man in Show Business
Our WWE bus pulled up to the hotel in Birmingham, England, and I couldn’t wait to hit the sackski. We were
in the middle of a UK tour of twelve shows in twelve nights and we’d been driving for hours. It was past midnight and I was surprised how many people were still hanging around drinking in the expansive lobby. As I was waiting to get my bags off the bus, the driver told me that there had been a kickboxing tournament at the arena next door that night and both the boxers and their fans were staying at the hotel.
As we walked through the lobby to the elevators, a drunken fan with a skinjob for a hairdo asked HHH for an autograph. He was being obnoxious, so H ignored him and got on the lift to his room. The punter started yelling, “All you wrestlers are assholes! You’re all a bunch of pussies!”
One of our referees, Jack Doan, told him to calm down and the guy popped him in the face and tackled him to the ground. I dropped my bags and ran to Jack’s rescue, pulling the guy off by fishhooking his eye socket with my finger. Baldboy’s friends rushed over to help him, our guys ran over to stop them, the kickboxers and their hooligan sycophants joined the fray, and suddenly the lobby was a Charles-town Chiefs– Syracuse Bulldogs bench-clearing brawl. But even Ogie Ogilthorpe would’ve skated away screaming from the beatdown the WWE boys were giving the kickboxers and their fans.
Bodies were being batted around like Hacky Sacks at Woodstock ’94, and it wasn’t the boxers doing the batting. Viscera, a 400-pound behemoth, was simply sitting on one hooligan, giggling as his victim squirmed and wheezed for breath. Benoit had another guy in the Crossface, laughing outright as the guy screamed like he was in Stu Hart’s dungeon. I was wandering around tearing the shirts off of random wankers because I felt like it, which was akin to shooting fish in a barrel. At the end of the brawl, I’d collected five of them as trophies.
Finally the cops came and the boxers and their toadies scattered like the Socs after the Greasers defeated them in the parking lot rumble. The cops were WWE fans, and after asking a few questions, they kicked the remaining dregs out of the hotel, got a few autographs for their “kids,” and left us alone.
Undisputed: How to Become World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps Page 28
