A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [114]
Embarrassed by my lack of knowledge regarding Back to the Future minutiae, I tried to patch things up with some idle chat.
“How long have you been in Japan?”
“Too long,” he responded and turned away for the last time. I shuffled away with my bottom lip dragging behind me and sulked in the corner while Lenny and Lloyd had a grand old time talking about acting or spelunking or whatever. They even called Lenny’s brother in Vancouver to chat and I thought all the while, “Hello, I’m right here Ignatowski! No long-distance charges required, ya jackass.”
While Chris Lloyd wasn’t a fan of mine, some of my other fans had a lot more in their pockets than dry cleaning receipts. While a few of my sponsors were highly annoying and obnoxious, others had no ulterior motives and honestly wanted to show respect. They appreciated the hard work that was required to entertain them and wanted to repay us in some small way for the sacrifices we’d made.
My biggest sponsor was Rakutaru, a well-known Japanese television personality, motivational speaker, and comedian. He sat in the front row of every show we had in Tokyo and afterward he always took the whole crew out for Yakuniku. Yakuniku was Korean BBQ and was by far my favorite Japanese food, along with Yakitori (skewers of chicken) and Shabu Shabu, a thinly sliced roast beef that you boiled at your table like a fondue.
After each feast, Rocky gave me cab fare home, but where a cab cost only 1,000 yen, he’d give me 20,000. “Paying for the taxi” was his way of giving me a present (presento) without being obvious about it.
One night I had to take one for the team when he took us out for sushi instead. He ordered one special piece that tasted like the mushy poop it resembled. It was rubbery and gelatinous, but I didn’t want to be rude so I took a small bite and swallowed it whole with a gulp of beer. I was pushing the rest of it away, when Dragón informed that it would be better to finish it, as it cost $750 for the single piece. I’d bought my first car for 400 bucks.
Rocky was an awesome sponsor and even took the entire Fuyuki-Gun to Hawaii for the Christmas of ’95, all expenses paid. I felt bad telling my mom that I wouldn’t be home for Christmas for the first time in my life, but she agreed that I couldn’t pass up a free trip to Hawaii.
I was quite the James Bond world traveler as I went skiing in Banff in the Rocky Mountains and less than twenty-four hours later I was surfing in the Pacific Ocean off Waikiki Beach.
The most difficult thing about surfing is paddling far enough out to be able to surf in. What a waste of time! Why can’t somebody invent a towrope made of foam to pull lazy Howlies like myself out into the surf? And once you’ve blown yourself up paddling, you have to actually stand up on the damn thing. I tried and fell down and tried and fell down until I finally got up on the stupid board. The theme from Hawaii Five-0 started playing in my head and I imagined myself a speck of humanity in the middle of an eighty-foot pipeline.
In reality, I was gliding on two inches of wave until I panicked and fell back into the water five seconds later. As my head popped up out of the drink, I narrowly avoided being surfed over by a pair of giggling eight-year-old girls who pointed at me with laughter as they zipped by.
Bitches, man. Bitches.
CHAPTER 37
YOU’LL NEVER WORK IN JAPAN AGAIN
When I returned to WAR, business was declining. There’d been a huge influx of wrestling companies in Japan (over twenty) and it was getting harder to draw the fans.
I started to see members of the Yakuza sitting in the front row, always wearing their loud Bill Cosby style sweaters. I suspect that Tenryu made a deal with the Japanese mafia to help sell (extort) tickets to the shows in the smaller towns. It was a common practice in Japan for the mafia to launder money through wrestling.
Part of what endeared Tenryu to the fans was his stiff work in the ring. But whenever the Yakuza were in attendance,