A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [12]
We also made a point of spending time together at his office, which just so happened to be upstairs from a convenience store that rented WWF videotapes. So we rented the latest tape, ate some Kentucky Fried Chicken (well what did you think KFC stood for?), and watched wrestling. My relationship with my dad at that time was based on body slams, biscuits, and Bibles and we became closer as a result of the three.
Now that I’d decided the course of my life, I knew I would have to get a whole lot bigger. I joined a gym, stuffed myself with protein (along with a sock), read every muscle magazine I could find, and ordered the Arnold Schwarzenegger EZ Curl Bar to “Get 21 inch arms just like Arnold.”
One day while watching Stampede, my heart jumped out of my mouth when I saw an ad for the Hart Brothers Pro Wrestling Camp. This was my chance to be trained by Owen and the entire Hart family, including Stu Hart himself! I wrote to the address on the screen and a couple of weeks later when I opened the reply, I found out two things:
1. I had to be eighteen to go to wrestling camp, and
2. I should be about 225 pounds.
The letter had been written by a guy named Ed Langley, who was the representative for the Hart Brothers Camp. His advice on weight gain was to eat beef, fish, liver, and to drink only milk... a direct violation of Koko B. Ware’s rule. He also advised me to lift weights for two and a half hours a day and run three miles a day. So I ate raw eggs and liver (trying not to barf) and lots of fish and beef. Every shift at work, I’d weigh myself on the deli scale to check my progress. I started at 175 and my grand plan was to be 235 pounds by the time I left for wrestling school.
I’d decided on 235 as my target weight about a year earlier when I met Ricky the Dragon at an annual car show called the World of Wheels. The show featured fancy funny cars, soap opera stars, Playboy Playmates, and more importantly, a WWF wrestler! Of course I couldn’t give a shit about seeing Michael Knight from All My Children or meeting Miss March, Mary Jane Rottencrotch, I just wanted to meet my hero himself, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat! I met Wallass at the show and tried to decide what I was going to say to him, as we figured we’d have time to ask the Dragon one question. We got our tried-and-true picture system ready and when I reached the front of the line, my big question for Ricky was “How tall are you?” (Hours to think of an inquiry or a witty anecdote and “How tall are you?” was the best I could do. The trend continued.)
Ricky replied that he was 5 foot 11 and when I asked him how much he weighed, just as he answered 235 pounds, Wallass snapped the picture. When I got the picture back we were both actually in the shot, even though Steamboat’s eyes were half closed and I looked like a complete tool with bad hair and my mouth wide open like a Muppet. Wallass’s photographic ineptitude had struck again.
Steamboat was the same height as me but a whole lot bigger. From that moment on, working out became my second biggest hobby. My biggest hobby was my band.
I started playing bass guitar when I was fourteen years old when my cousin lent me his Paul McCartney Hofner bass. I kinda knew my way around a guitar, after taking lessons when I was nine from a guy called Brad Roberts. Coincidentally, Brad would become internationally famous as the leader of the Crash Test Dummies, best known for the song “Mmm Mmm Mmm.” I knew they had really made it big when Weird Al Yankovic parodied the track.
When I entered junior high, I made the rock ’n’ roll decision to give up the guitar and