A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [144]
We discussed our match while an 800-pound Super Liger sat in the corner. I was told in no uncertain terms that Liger was beating me with his finish in the middle of the ring, clean as a sheet. I’m sure that the consensus was to get whatever they could out of me by having me lose to everybody on the roster.
Now I had something to prove and we had an exciting hard-hitting match that the crowd really enjoyed. Liger beat me but it didn’t make any difference because I’d brought Sexy back.
Afterward Liger shook my hand and was clearly pleased. Even more importantly, I ran into the head booker, Riki Choshu, in the backstage hall.
“You Chris Jericho? You same guy as Super Liger?”
“Yes sir,” I said nervously.
“Hmmm,” he pondered while nodding his head. “Chris Jericho very good. Super Liger very bad.”
“I think maybe Super Liger dead,” I replied.
“I think maybe good idea,” Choshu said and shook my hand.
And that’s how I regained my Japanese mojo, baby.
Now that I was back on track, I threw myself into the Japanese style like never before. I’d always been enamored with the whole feel of the Japanese wrestling companies and New Japan was the biggest of them all. We worked in bigger arenas in front of bigger crowds. That also meant that there were a higher class of female fans who had no problem donating to the cause by using their parents’ money to buy me expensive gifts and meals.
Chris Bigalow, Oriental Gigolo.
Being in the big leagues meant that the attitudes and the work rate were more serious as well. Every day I trained with the entire New Japan roster in the arena before the show. We would run laps and work out with the weights that were set up in every venue. I did a Japanese style workout where you took a deck of cards and threw them to the floor one at a time. Then you would do the number of squats (black suits) or push-ups (red suits) listed on each card, with the ace high, in quick succession. Sound easy? Try it, junior.
We did a lot of stretching in the ring, which confirmed my suspicion that Stu’s training regimen we’d followed in Calgary was indeed derived from Japanese techniques. We did one style of back bridges that involved being stretched around a spare tire like a Gumby for minutes at a time and another style where we only used our necks for support. It was thirsty work and everybody did the stretching as a team. The camaraderie was cemented by the tradition of everyone wearing uniform track suits with their last names written on the back like hockey jerseys.
It was traditions like these along with the air of dignity surrounding the sport that made Japan my favorite country to work in. Benoit felt the same way and we were stoked when we found out that we’d been booked on the next tour together.
We were near the end of the fifteen-hour flight from Atlanta to Narita so I started filling out my customs form. I grabbed my passport to check the work visa number and almost threw up when I realized I’d brought the wrong one. Having both an American and a Canadian passport was one of the benefits to being a dual citizen; it was also one of the detriments especially when you are as scatterbrained as your fearless scribe. My visa stamp had gone into my American passport and I had brought my Canadian one instead. I was freaked out that the customs officials would simply send me back to the States. When we landed, I was placed into a holding room with the other dregs of society who had tried to sneak into Japan without the proper documentation and had been detained.
After spending an hour with Borat’s extended family, a customs official rescued me. Since New Japan had such a high profile in the country, the company was able to smooth things out for me. But before I was allowed to go, I had to sign a form that literally said:
I, Chris Irvine, promise to never enter Japan again without the proper visa