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I’m surprised I didn’t have to write it 100 times on the blackboard too.

Then they searched my bags for drugs and porno, fast- forwarding through my VHS copy of Planes, Trains, & Automobiles looking for boobies and confiscating my Road House video when they found some.

Kelly Lynch! Kelly Lynch! YEAHHH Kelly Lynch!

Benoit was one of my best friends, but you wouldn’t have known it on the first night of the tour. When we were booked in a tag team match against each other, he attacked me before the bell and pounded me like a meat tenderizer.

Similar to when he’d slapped me at the J Cup, the attack was like having a bucket of ice water poured over my head. We took out our WCW frustrations by beating the living shit out of each other. During the melee I went for a spin kick and instead of connecting full force, I brushed the side of his face instead. He still took a bump and nobody knew the difference—nobody except him.

After the match I went looking for him but he’d pulled his usual Houdini act and I couldn’t find him anywhere. I finally found him in the corner of a boiler room and asked what was wrong.

“I bumped off that spin kick. You didn’t connect and I never should’ve bumped.”

“Nobody noticed. The match was killer.”

“No, it was a rookie mistake and I never should’ve done it.”

He was a perfectionist and decided that he needed to purge himself by doing 500 hack squats right then and there. I’d thrown the errant kick, so I thought it was only fair to join in on his Opus Dei routine and cleanse myself too.

I hadn’t done a single hack squat since wrestling school, never mind 500. After doing 300 my legs felt like they were going to detach themselves and beat me over the head for being so stupid, so I stopped. I don’t think Chris noticed and he continued squatting with machinelike precision until he reached 500.

My legs were not pleased with their boss and they completely mutinied on me when I woke up the next morning. When I tried to get out of bed I collapsed on the floor while my legs stood beside me snickering. I crawled to the shower and sprayed hot water on my screaming limbs, hoping to reach a truce. They laughed in my face and knotted themselves tighter than Mick Foley. To make matters worse, when I showed up at the arena I found out that I was supposed to wrestle Liger in a championship match for the NJPW junior heavyweight title.

It was my first shot at the title and I was walking like the Tim Conway old man (dated reference). So I secluded myself in the corner and stretched my legs for an hour. I was able to pull off a decent match but I paid dearly the next day when I spent the whole afternoon in bed negotiating with the terrorists that had taken my pins hostage.

My legs went back to work the next night when I was put into a match with the legendary Great Muta. He was one the biggest stars in Japanese wrestling and a seasoned vet who knew all the shortcuts necessary to having a long career in the business.

Muta had Red Light Fever, which meant whenever the red light of the camera was on, he was an animal (just like me in Germany). He did all of his crowd-pleasing moves and had great matches every time. But whenever we worked in the smaller towns where there were no TV cameras, he worked at half speed and did just enough to get by. He probably extended his career ten years by pacing himself that way. When I asked him about it, Muta pointed to his head and said, “Wrestling is all up here. It isn’t about moves and high spots, it’s all about psychology and thinking.”

He was right.

As the tour marched on, I started going stir-crazy. Being on the New Japan tour for three weeks, living and working in a foreign country, could mess with your head. The best way to alleviate the stress was to have a few cocktails. There were always fans who wanted to hang out with wrestlers and be a part of the revelry no matter the cost. So I developed the hazing process of drawing Kiss makeup on their faces with a permanent marker. If the diehard fan wanted to hang out, he would have to boast a star over one eye or