Extended Review of “A Lion’s Tale: Around The World In Spandex”

(Book by Chris Jericho, Review by John Downey)

My worries about this book being a ghostwritten autobiography, due to the presence of a second author, were addressed right away in Peter Thomas Fornatale’s foreword: “First, I want to say that this book is not an “as told to” autobiography. My role was to brainstorm ideas and help with organization and structure. The voice is 100% Chris Jericho.” That’s certainly one way to cut to the chase, though the next 500 pages make that foreword seem redundant. Chris Jericho has a vibrant, distinct personality, has wrestled over the world, won gold in the 3 largest wrestling organizations in North America, and has probably forgotten more about the business than most people will ever know (and still knows quite a bit, as his recent ladder match with Shawn Michaels was named Match Of The Year by Wrestling Observer). The only way that the story of Chris Jericho’s life could be boring would be if there was a concentrated effort to bore the audience. As it is, this is the best autobiography of a wrestler I have ever read, and I’ve read most of them.

Jericho (born Chris Irvine, son of a noteworthy hockey player named Ted Irvine) was drawn to wrestling as a child, first from attending American Wrestling Association (AWA) events in Winnipeg. Jericho found a connection with the smaller wrestlers who would have to do something extra to stand out in what is usually an art for the “big boys”. The man who made Jericho consider becoming a wrestler, though, was Owen Hart, who was Jericho’s size (if Jericho made a concentrated effort to get in shape), lived in a town not far from where Jericho lived (Calgary), and was quickly becoming one of the biggest names in Stampede Wrestling (whose best talent eventually ended up in the WWF). Seeing Owen Hart become successful convinced Jericho that he could be successful, too.

Jericho trained in the Hart Brothers Camp in Calgary, though Jericho makes sure to point out that training to be a wrestler is nowhere close to the experience that he thought it would be. For instance, though there were several successful wrestling Harts, only Keith Hart showed up for a few sessions, and those were usually marked by him torturing students who had the gall to stand out in their class. Also, there was only one other student in Jericho’s class who seemed to stand a chance at making a career out of wrestling, Lance Storm (who went on to become a respected name in the business in his own right). Jericho was under the impression that he would be working with like-minded individuals, but he ended up sharing class time with hillbillies and freaks. Even the training itself was incomplete. Jericho and his classmates were taught how to take falls and perform impressive athletic feats, but he wasn’t taught how to put them together into a logical wrestling match, which is something that, as I understand it, goes hand in hand with learning how to fall properly in most wrestling schools today.

After he gained a lot of experience wrestling in high school gyms, armories, and birthday parties (seriously), Jericho gained employment in Mexico. After being taught for months how to take convincing falls and draw people into a match, Jericho found that most of what he learned didn’t apply in Mexico, where lucha libre was the popular wrestling dish. Whereas Jericho was taught how to absorb high-impact moves, lucha libre involved wrestlers taking lots of rolls, flipping each other using one hand, and wrestlers dancing around for no reason to the delight of the fans. It wasn’t uncommon for matches to have multiple falls to a finish, or multiple referees, or for matches to end when a wrestler did an eye-catching dive onto another wrestler located outside of the ring—which is a rule that doesn’t apply to any other wrestling organization that I’ve ever heard of. Jericho, taking the name Corazon de Leon, became a sex symbol through his good looks and natural charisma, which upset a wrestler named Vampiro, who was easily the most popular wrestler in Mexico at the time whose position as such was never in any danger. Vampiro gave Jericho intentionally bad advice (none of which Jericho listened to), told Jericho’s employer that Jericho was unhappy with his pay and working conditions, and often lied about how he broke into the business. (This isn’t the first time that I’ve read about wrestlers having a problem with Vampiro. In fact, so much word of his misdeeds has gotten around that he has essentially been blackballed from most wrestling organizations in North America, with the only ones that use him being desperate for talent.) Jericho talks about how he enjoyed being the bad guy, as it was easier to make people hate him than to make people like him. He was so good at pissing off crowds that in the course of one match not only did somebody throw a bottle filled with fresh piss at him, but another person also pulled a gun. In most cities in Mexico, though, Jericho was well-liked, and became a solid performer, good enough to hold the NWA Middleweight Championship for 11 months.

Jericho met two close friends in Mexico, Art Barr and Eddie Guerrero, though both gave him a cold reception at first. Jericho broke the ice with Art Barr by accident, when they happened to see two people have comically absurd and disgusting sex. They had a lot in common, including missing their families more than most of “the boys” and having similar tastes in music. Barr was at the top of his game, on track to possibly become one of the most popular wrestlers in the world, when he suddenly died in his sleep. Jericho was staying in Barr’s room (at Barr’s insistence) when he heard of Barr’s death, and Jericho’s description of the minutes after hearing the news are heart-wrenching. Not long after Barr’s death, the peso crashed, and Jericho, who found himself working for a third of his usual salary in a place that reminded him of his dead best friend, sought employment elsewhere.

Jericho ended up working in Germany, where a style of wrestling called “catch” had caught on. It’s a style of wrestling that I wasn’t familiar with, and Jericho doesn’t do the best job of explaining it. (As I understand it, German fans were conditioned to accept matches that actually looked real. To this end, matches usually featured a lot of jockeying for position and attempts at submissions. Moves off of the top rope and other theatrics didn’t fit in this style.) Jericho’s first match in Germany sets off a habit that he calls “The Jericho Curse”: his first match in any promotion will suck. Jericho’s problem was that he tried to make himself look good in the match, as opposed to working to making the match better. When he figured this out, he started having great matches, though he doesn’t go into detail on any of them. He expresses gratitude for the opportunity he received in Germany, but when he got a chance to work for a bigger paycheck in front of larger audiences, he jumped at it.

Jericho was brought in to Smoky Mountain Wrestling, a southern wrestling promotion, by its owner, Jim Cornette, who had also made a career out of being a wrestling manager. Jericho’s first face-to-face conversation with Cornette let Jericho know that, even though he was working in North America again, Smoky Mountain was going to be just as strange as working in Mexico and Germany, as it took several moments for Jericho to figure out what Cornette was saying. (Cornette’s literal words: “Jeet yet?” Translation: “Did you eat yet?”) Fortunately, Jericho was working for one of the smartest men in the wrestling business, so, for once, Jericho didn’t have to worry about trying to find the midpoint between “what the booker is saying should happen” and “what I should do to make myself look good”, as they were often the same thing.

Cornette put Jericho in a tag team with his Hart Brothers training buddy, Lance Storm, and dubbed the duo the Thrillseekers. They were introduced through vignettes that made them look wild and cool, though Jericho mocks them as he describes them, and were immediately put into a feud with Well Dunn, who needed a good excuse to be kicked out of SMW, as they were going to be joining the WWF’s roster soon. (Though Jericho never explicitly states this, Cornette’s decision to have Jericho and Storm team up said a lot about Cornette’s faith in them, as Cornette had managed some of the greatest tag teams in wrestling history, including the Midnight Express. I gather that the only reason why the Thrillseekers didn’t win the SMW Tag Team Championship was because they didn’t need the titles in order to become popular.) Jericho was put off by the way that SMW engaged wrestlers with the fans. During intermission, wrestlers would work the concession stands, signing autographs and hawking merchandise. Jericho saw this as being beneath him, as wrestlers are supposed to have a mystique about them, and that mystique was destroyed when you sold bandanas and promotional pictures of yourself directly to the fans. In the book, though Jericho acknowledges that this was a terrible attitude to have, since he and Lance were the highest paid workers on SMW’s roster and should have just done as they were told in order to show their gratitude. Jericho also says that this was something that SMW’s audience liked, as they preferred their wrestlers to be accessible figures rather than children of Olympus, and that if Jericho had simply done his job, the Thrillseekers might have replaced the Rock And Roll Express as the most popular tag team in the south.

Cornette was pleased with Jericho’s work, and told him that the WWF was interested in hiring him. When he learned of the details of the job, though (basically, he was to be a colorful character who lost most of his matches), Jericho, along with Lance, took a job in Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling in Japan instead. By now, Jericho was used to expecting the unexpected, but he still wasn’t ready for what Japan had to offer. Wrestling match results were published in Baseball Magazine. He found a sports drink called Pocari Sweat. Most toilets in wrestling arenas were little more than holes in the ground.

FMW was strange, too. It employed boxers, men willing to set themselves on fire, and men in panda suits. It employed wrestlers, too, but they seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. Jericho’s stint with FMW was a bust, as he found himself waiting for future bookings and not getting them. When FMW did a tour (series of wrestling shows) based around tag team matches, they didn’t call Jericho. Eventually, FMW called and requested his services, but Jericho had already found a new home in Wrestle and Romance, a rival Japanese organization. (That name doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me. The only possible explanation I have for it is that the “Romance” half is in reference to the splintering politics and fantastic fighting techniques as described in “Romance Of The Three Kingdoms”. If that’s the case, though, why name a Japanese wrestling organization after a piece of classic Chinese literature? Even worse, the organization later changed its name to Wrestle Association R, which makes even less sense.)

Jericho had a much easier time making his name in WAR once he got accustomed to the Japanese style of wrestling, where gaining respect was based more on how hard a match was fought than if you actually won the match. For example, when Jericho wrestled an imposing man named Haku, Jericho threw punches and kicks that were much stiffer than most wrestlers would be willing to throw or take. It made sense in the context of the match, though, since Haku had a well-earned reputation of being a tough guy (indeed, several of his peers have told of his tendency to fend off half a dozen drunkards in a bar without breaking a sweat), and in order for Jericho to look like he had a chance in the match, he would need to go the extra mile. Jericho was also allowed to kick out of Haku’s finishing move, the powerbomb (which resembles a piledriver, but instead of planting the opponent on his head, the “attacking” wrestler throws his opponent onto the ground backfirst), which elevated Jericho’s profile despite losing the match soon after taking the move.

After becoming a star in Japan, Jericho worked for Extreme Championship Wrestling, an exceptionally well-booked Philadelphia-based promotion. ECW, even at its peak, rarely drew over 1,000 fans to its events, and its owner, Paul Heyman, was known for giving checks that bounced more often than not, but ECW’s influence was felt throughout the business, as its best ideas were used by larger wrestling promotions (ECW’s Sandman, for instance, was very similar to the WWF’s later Stone Cold Steve Austin), its best workers usually found themselves working for big money elsewhere, and its fan base were a creative, angry, and loyal bunch of individuals—the same people could be seen in the same seats at every ECW event (no matter where they held shows), providing weapons to the wrestlers, and delivering thoughtful chants, such as “She’s a crack whore!” (to a dastardly female), “You suck dick!”, and “Do the job, Dean, do the job!” (towards Shane Douglas, who, as Dean Douglas in the WWF, was told to lose matches in situations that made no storyline sense whatsoever). In short, getting over in ECW would get you far.

In the wrestling business, Paul Heyman was a strange figure. He would often book the shows while they were in progress (Jericho informed Heyman that Mikey Whipwreck couldn’t be in the 3rd match of the night because he was in the match that was going on right now), use grievance fares to fly in talent for cheap, and never edited out any mistakes that his performers made in a match before it aired on TV. He would be the first man that any wrestler saw when they came back from the ring, and he would always give his employees compliments, which was a big no-no in the business, since wrestlers usually were full of themselves already. His instincts for the business were on par with Cornette’s. The only difference is that Cornette got an opportunity to exhibit it, while Heyman, through ECW, made his impact from scratch. Everyone on an ECW show had their place, even the worst performers. For example, Heyman brought in a guy named 911. He was a big guy with natural charisma, but he couldn’t, you know, “wrestle,” not even in the WWF sense of the word. To work around this, Heyman would have 911 walk out during deliberately-juvenile happenings (a Santa Claus appearance, for instance) and chokeslam everyone in sight. Through a steady stream of use, 911 became one of the most popular guys on the roster, despite rarely actually competing in a match.

Heyman’s ideas for Jericho were equally genius. First, Heyman promoted Jericho through a series of vignettes on the ECW TV show, constantly referring to him as the “Last Survivor of Stu Hart’s Dungeon”. Then, in one of his first matches in ECW, Jericho was allowed to suplex Taz, who rarely ever left his feet, let alone get suplexed. (Taz is another example of Heyman’s booking genius, as Taz was booked to be the most dominating man in the world despite standing at only 5’9’’ and being towered over by most of the fans.) Jericho wasn’t allowed to beat Taz, though, as Taz gave Jericho a suplex that was so vicious, it “knocked him out”, making Jericho look good in defeat while making Taz look like a killer.

It didn’t take long for other wrestling organization to take notice of Jericho, as WCW’s Eric Bischoff quickly offered Jericho employment in his company (though, to be fair, Bischoff was making that offer to anybody with a pair of boots, as he wanted to lock up as much talent as he could before Vince McMahon did). Jericho agreed, and said he would start working for Bischoff as soon as he was done with his scheduled ECW dates. When Jericho told Heyman that he was going to work for WCW, though, Heyman told Jericho that he wanted Jericho to win the ECW World Television Championship before he left. Seeing as how Jericho was being paid for each show, and had no contract with Heyman, there was nothing legally stopping Jericho from leaving ECW with the belt around his waist, but Jericho agreed to Heyman’s plan, winning the title and then losing it shortly afterwards. (Jericho expresses confusion over this turn of events, wondering why Heyman did him this favor. It should be noted, though, that Paul Heyman hated WCW, and constantly took potshots at its bookers and performers. Heyman had done some great work for the promotion for chump change, and Bill Watts, who was running WCW at the time, treated Heyman and his friends like crap. On WWE’s “Bloodsport: ECW’s Most Violent Matches” DVD, Heyman gleefully states (I’m paraphrasing here, as I don’t have my copy with me), “Eric Bischoff did NOT ‘discover’ Chris Jericho. In fact, the VERY FIRST TITLE that he ever held in the United States was the ECW World Television Championship.” I’m guessing that Heyman arranged for Jericho to win the belt in case Jericho became a star in WCW, just so he could say, “I got there first.”)

The first time he called WCW’s offices to try to work out a long-term contract, Jericho was told that he would have to have a tryout match. This, despite already being told that he had a job. Welcome to WCW.

Jericho’s time spent working for WCW did more to kill his interest in wrestling than anything else in his career. His colleagues would get hostile if Jericho did something as unforgivable as introduce himself or (gasp!) give a compliment. His first match on TV ended in a double count-out when his opponent missed a dive on the outside and Jericho checked on his health rather than take advantage, which was meant to make him look noble but (and Jericho predicted this the second he was told of the finish) it actually made him look like a moron. The head booker, Kevin Sullivan, told Jericho to stop caring so much about his work (Ric Flair, upon hearing this, told Jericho to do the exact opposite). The only bright spot in Jericho’s early tenure was that WCW had a working relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling, one of the largest wrestling organizations in Japan, and with no plans for Jericho, WCW sent him to Japan. New Japan was so pleased with his work that tentative plans were made to put the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship, one of the most prestigious belts in the world, on Jericho when WCW put the kibosh on those plans and made him return to America.

It wasn’t until Jericho was allowed to be a bad guy that Jericho found success in WCW. While the NWO group had made the idea of a cool bad guy seem fashionable, Jericho decided to be a chickenshit asshole instead. He called his opponents by incorrect name (he once referred to Booker T as “Tooker B”), he cut lengthy inane promos in which he gave himself countless nicknames, and he would exaggerate his Canadian accent. He became popular enough to win the WCW Cruiserweight Championship, though that isn’t as big of a deal as it may sound, as the belt didn’t mean much.

Jericho also engaged in a feud with Bill Goldberg, who had been on a long winning streak at the time. Jericho would call out Goldberg, only to easily defeat a midget dressed to look like him. When Goldberg didn’t show up to the arena, Jericho would challenge him to a match, have the referee count to 10, and claimed that he won by count-out. Fans (including myself) enjoyed the feud, since Jericho was entertaining in his role, and there seemed to be a lot of money to be had in seeing Goldberg beat the snot out of Jericho. Goldberg vs. Jericho never happened, though, since they couldn’t agree on the terms. Bischoff, Goldberg, and Hulk Hogan thought that Jericho should lose to Goldberg on free TV. Jericho argued that Goldberg vs. Jericho should have been put on PPV. (Hogan later told Jericho that he admired Jericho for standing up for himself, because Jericho was right. I can’t recall any other instance in which Hogan admitted that he was wrong, so props there, I guess.) After several weeks of build, the feud was ended without a proper showdown (though they did have a disappointing match in WWE), which is when Jericho started looking for employment in the WWF.

The book ends right before Jericho debuts for the WWF, leaving enough material for a second book, since Jericho’s best days happened in the WWF. With the book being 500+ pages long, I had to omit Jericho’s descriptions of bowling while taking sleeping pills, getting high on GHB at one of the most prestigious Japanese wrestling events, and his first sexual experience, among other lovely stories. I’ve learned more about the wrestling business from reading this book than from Mick Foley’s 3 autobiographies or Freddie Blassie’s book (which is saying a lot, since I think the world of those books). It’s also funny throughout, which makes it easy to read. Between the plain facts of Jericho’s career, the strange stories that he brings up (Cornette ends up threatening some Dairy Queen employees), and Jericho’s running commentary, I have to recommend this book. Even people who hate wrestling will like it.