A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex (44 page)

Their attitude toward their work was piss-poor as well. I overheard Scott Hall asking Bret Hart one night in Huntsville, Alabama, “Why do you care so much about this match? It’s just a house show.”

That attitude was shared by head booker Sullivan, who asked me once, “Why do you care so much about your match? Nobody else does. Just go in the ring and get it over with. This company is the
Titanic
heading toward the iceberg anyways.” It was great to hear such positive words from the man who was technically in charge of my on screen career.

Ric Flair overheard Sullivan’s words and though he had jobbed me out three years earlier, he was one of the few vets in the WCW locker room who gave a shit about the young guys.

“Don’t ever stop caring about your work,” he said with dead seriousness. “Around here a good match is all you have. It’s the only thing that makes you rise above the bullshit.”

Flair was right, because as a plain, dry piece of babyface toast, a good match WAS all I had. The nWo were supposed to be the bad guys, the evil empire tearing the company apart, yet they booked themselves to be the most entertaining, coolest act on the show. They had crowd-pleasing catchphrases, cool merchandise, a great sense of humor, and nobody in the company ever stood up to them. The fans started to treat them as the babyfaces, which emasculated other babyfaces (like me) who had no angles, no balls, and no chance to show any personality. The era of the Cool Heel had arrived.

As WCW continued its domination over the WWF, Eric became increasingly drunk with power. To capitalize on the company’s growing popularity, TBS had started another two-hour weekly show called
Thursday Thunder.
Bischoff was looking to give the show a boost and decided at the last minute to re-form the Four Horsemen, who had broken up a few months earlier.

Flair had received permission weeks earlier to miss the show so he could attend his son’s wrestling tournament, and when Eric found out, he fired him on the spot. Then he called a meeting with every WCW employee in the Target Center in Minneapolis.

“I’m going to starve that piece of shit Flair and his family. I’m going to make sure that they end up living on the street.”

Eric also guaranteed that the WWF would be out of business within six months. With his ludicrous claims and gestapo tactics, Eric had become the Hitler of wrestling and was acting like he’d lost his fuckin’ mind.

He constantly trumpeted to anybody who would listen that Hogan and the nWo were the sole reason why WCW had pulled ahead of WWF in the ratings war. He never stopped to think that another reason may have been the hard work of the leprosy-afflicted cruiserweights.

Nobody in the mainstream audience had ever seen the style of matches that we were delivering on a consistent basis (sometimes for twenty minutes or more) on live TV. We were carrying the load and giving the fans tremendous performances while Hogan and the boys were stinking out the joint with theirs. In their arrogance, they’ll tell you that the people paid to see only them, and in my arrogance, I’ll tell you that the people walked away from the shows happier because of our hard work.

The overall bad attitude and lack of attention toward 80 percent of the roster was leading to mutiny. I saw it firsthand at a
World Wide
taping before a match I had with Mike Rotunda.

Alex Wright and a jobber named Hardbody Harrison were standing face-to-face. Hardbody had one of those Mr. T. bendable pump-up bars and was brandishing it like a weapon.

“I wanna be the heel,” he said in his Ebonics accent.

“No, I vant to be ze heel,” Alex said in his German accent.

They were arguing over who got to be the bad guy, like a couple of eight-year-old kids who both wanted to be Darth Vader. The argument escalated to a pushing match and was broken up by referee Peewee Anderson.

“Stup it! Who’s sposed ta bae the hee-ell?” Peewee said in his hick Georgia accent.

The scene had turned into a bad Dana Carvey routine, as the German, Ebonics, and bumpkin accents all blended into one. The comedy show continued when Alex wrenched the Mr. T. bar out of Hardbody’s hand and conked him over the head with it. Hardbody pitied the fool and jumped on Alex. The two of them rolled around on the floor engaged in the worst fight ever. Meanwhile, my ring music was playing and I had to tear myself away from the catfight to go have my stupid match. It was far less entertaining than the match that was already taking place backstage.

It wasn’t surprising that Hardbody had attacked Alex; he was in his own world anyway. He was constantly submitting weird angles and stories to the office, trying to get himself a push.

First he came up with the idea of painting his face and becoming Sting’s black nemesis, Stang. Then he came up with another beauty that had Diamond Dallas Page (DDP) bringing a special magic diamond crystal to the ring. Hardbody would attack him, steal the crystal, and drop it into a tank of piranhas. This chicanery would force DDP to jump into the piranha tank to retrieve the magic crystal, live on PPV. I would’ve paid to see that one.

Maybe I should’ve hired Hardbody to write an angle for me too, as I was grasping at straws to get noticed.

I tried to jazz up my ring entrance by throwing my back up against the guardrail, goading the fans to pat me on the back and get their faces on TV. I was sick of seeing babyfaces (like Lex Luger) slapping the fans’ hands and looking like they would rather be dipping their balls in hot pitch. Unfortunately for me, most of the fans who lined the barricades were guys, so when I vigorously threw myself at the rail it looked like I was trying to get groped by a bunch of dudes. Mission accomplished.

I also had another mission to accomplish by moving out of Canada. After avoiding it for a year it was time to leave Calgary as the flights were too long, the taxes were too steep, and Bischoff had been pressuring me to follow through on his original request.

I didn’t have to worry about getting a work visa in the U.S., because I was born in New York when my dad was playing with the Rangers.

But I did have to worry about finding a place to live and because of my hectic schedule I had no time to look for a place in Atlanta. I was able to convince Eric to let me move to Orlando (like he cared) and I found an apartment during the two-week
World Wide
tapings.

So I packed up my Mustang, rented a U-Haul trailer, and made the drive down to Florida with my friend Ajax. I noticed right away that my new hometown was filled with tourists and old people. Since I didn’t know any vacationing seniors, I started looking for a church that could help me fill the rare downtime.

I hadn’t attended church regularly since I’d been laughed out of St. Chad’s in Winnipeg over seven years earlier. Plus after my mom’s accident I had some issues with God and though I continued to talk to him every day, I hadn’t felt the desire to return to church. But the time had come to get some fellowship but I had no idea where to go. So I let God decide.

I opened the Yellow Pages to the church section, closed my eyes, and pointed. God’s fingers did the walking and landed on an ad for the Tabernacle Baptist Church. I went to check it out and when I did, I was blown away. It was like the church scene in
The Blues Brothers
with people jumping up and down and dancing, all singing up-tempo hymns while accompanied by a ten-piece band. The pastor, Steve Ware, told jokes and showed clips from popular movies to back up his sermon.

I’d never been to a church like it and I was surprised at how much
fun
it was. I was grateful that God had led me to Tabernacle via the Yellow Pages Ouija BoardTM. He must have known that my soul needed cleansing—and some detoxification.

On the road, I went out every night to maintain my sanity. Since most of the crew was on the same boat as I was, it was easy to form drinking alliances with various groups, each gang possessing different qualities and unique names:

1. The Chubba Bubbas

Hugh Morrus

Johnny Grunge

Rochester Roadblock

Rocco Rock

Chris Jericho

Special Quality—All the members accused the others of being fat, flabby, and chubby. A proper greeting was “Hello Fatso,” followed by “Hello Chuboots.” Girls of plus sizes and rotund shapes were appreciated, as was a one-legged woman. She was nicknamed Eileen. Think about it.

2. The Drunken Four Horsemen

Steve McMichael

Raven

Curt Hennig

Chris Jericho

Special Quality—Being the last people in the bar, NO MATTER WHAT. Must be able to gargle Jack Daniel’s for over thirty seconds. Must party with anyone, no matter the age or sexual orientation, a rule that encouraged Raven to go on a midnight motorcycle ride with a seventy-two-year-old woman.

3. The Useless Pop Culture Trivia Triumvrate

Konnan

Raven

Chris Jericho

Special Quality—Being able to waste hours of time discussing such important matters as what Isaac from
The Love Boat
’s real name was (Ted Lange) and who was Meeno Peluce’s half-sister (Soleil Moon Frye).

There were others, but you get the idea.

I spent most of my time with the core members of my Indian caste system, Benoit, Guerrero, and Malenko. I’d known Eddy and Chris for years, but I hit it off with Dean the best. I’d never met him before WCW, but everybody who’d ever worked with him told me how good he was. What they hadn’t told me was how funny he was.

When the camera was on, Dean was a stone-faced no-nonsense performer who kicked ass and got the job done. But backstage, he was funnier than Will Ferrell. If he had projected his natural personality onto the screen, he could have had his own sitcom on the WB fo’ sho.

He produced a steady stream of one-liners, no matter what the scenario.

When the overweight Brian Knobs walked around the dressing room in a thong, Dean mused, “That’s not a G-string, that’s the whole alphabet.”

When we went to a strip club and watched an overly skinny stripper dance, Dean quipped, “I don’t know whether to tip her a dollar or a food stamp.”

Dean and I began to travel together. We had to pay all of our own expenses, so doubling up helped to save money and kill time during the long rides.

At first, Dean and I traveled together with Benoit and Eddy, but after a while four guys in the same car and in the same room got to be too much no matter how much money we were saving.

Plus Benoit and Eddy liked to get up at seven in the morning, have breakfast, and work out. Dean and I liked to sleep in until noon, have lunch, and work out. Why get up early when you didn’t have to?

Eddy and Chris were very strict with their diets. They were the first guys I knew who checked the labels on food to find out the nutritional information. I ate whatever I wanted within reason (and looked like it) and Dean was the same way. One day I decided to mimic Chris and see what the hell the big deal with the labels was. I studied intently and looked up to see Dean across the aisle doing the same thing. Our eyes met and we burst out laughing at how stupid the situation was. We bought the donuts and left.

Then we had the bright idea to stay up all night after every
Nitro
until our flight left the next morning. We started our plan by going to the seediest clubs we could find in whatever town we were in. But that “thrill” soon wore off, so we thought it would be funny instead to keep everyone else awake. Because so many of the wrestlers had their rooms paid for by the company (not us), everyone was based out of the same hotel. As a result, it wasn’t hard to con the hotel security guard into giving us the keys to the other guys’ rooms.

Dean and I would open our victim’s door and run into their darkened room wearing lucha masks and screaming our heads off. One night, we broke into the room of a bunch of Mexican minis, midget wrestlers from south of the border. We found all five of them sleeping on the same king-size bed in a K position.

It was kompletely hilarious.

My three amigos and I had all wrestled for the bigger companies in Mexico, Europe, and Japan, earning us the nickname the New Japan Four. The name didn’t quite fit for me, because even though I’d worked in Japan dozens of times, it had never been for New Japan. I knew that WCW had a working agreement with New Japan and that was one of the reasons I’d been so excited to sign with them in the first place, but I still hadn’t had my chance to go.

Just as I reached the end of my rope, New Japan called and saved my career.

CHAPTER 46

CHRIS BIGALOW, ORIENTAL GIGOLO

I
had just finished vacuuming my apartment when I received a call from Brad Rheinghans (who I used to watch in the AWA), the American liaison for New Japan.

“New Japan needs you to send them your measurements. They want to bring you in to be Jushin Liger’s new rival and you’re going to have a costume like his.”

Brad told me that I was going to debut as the evil Super Liger in front of 65,000 people at the Tokyo Dome. Liger was one of THE faces of New Japan Pro Wrestling and being introduced in this manner was akin to debuting at WrestleMania as Don Cena, John’s evil twin.