A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [170]
I saw Keith Hart for the first time since he tried to snap my teeth in half almost nine years earlier. I went and shook his hand, then we both stood there awkwardly. A fly landed on his face and when I went to shoo it away, he went into a fighting stance like he expected me to attack him.
Maybe he thought I wanted revenge...or a refund.
As I was leaving Stu’s house, I saw the Hulkster. He was the only guy from WCW to show up at the funeral (besides Benoit) and I thought it was a very classy gesture on his part. I talked to him for a few minutes until he came flat-out and asked me, “Are you going to go work for Vince?”
I was still keeping my plans of defection on the down low, but on that day I didn’t care too much about keeping secrets.
“Yeah, I think I’m going to give the WWF a shot.”
He looked me in the eye and said, “Can you take me with you?”
CHAPTER 55
THE CLOCK HITS ZERO TONIGHT
I didn’t take Hogan with me, but I was officially WWF-bound. My signing was announced on the WWE Web site a full month before my contract with WCW was up. I thought for sure that Eric would run me through the wringer on TV as a result. But he must’ve considered me damaged goods because he still didn’t do a thing.
On the day my deal expired, I sent Eric a fax thanking him for the opportunity he’d given me. Even with all the animosity and bad feelings between us, he still gave me a chance with the company and paid me a huge amount of money to wrestle on national TV. At the very least I owed him a thank-you for that.
Now that I was an official WWF superstar, I was on the phone with Russo constantly, discussing ideas and scenarios. He seemed to be as excited about me coming in as I was because my arrival into the WWF was going to be a huge deal and the company was already thinking of ideas for my debut. So was I.
I was dropping off some mail at the post office when I saw a clock on the wall counting backward. Underneath the clock it said, “Countdown to the New Millennium.” It was six months before the year 2000 and the clock was keeping track of the time until New Year’s Eve:
176 days, 17 hours, 8 minutes, 12 seconds, 11 seconds...
I thought, “That would be a cool way for someone to come into the—wait, that’s a cool way for me to come into the WWF!” The WWF was famous for airing vignettes weeks before a new character’s arrival to build anticipation and excitement. I’d just discovered my vignette. I called Russo and he promised to run my idea past Vince that day.
The Millennium Clock idea was…ahem...timely, because I’d been trying to think of a replacement for the Lion Heart name for a while. I’d been using it for years and I wanted to come into my new company with a new look, a new name, and a new nose. Well two out of three ain’t bad.
So it was goodbye Lion Heart, hello Millennium Man. I would enter the WWF promising to be the performer to take the company into the year 2000 and beyond.
Russo called me back a day later and said that not only did Vince love the idea, but he was going to calibrate the clock to start a month before my debut. This way, it would hit zero right at the exact moment of my first WWF appearance on the August 9, 1999, edition of Monday Night Raw.
A month beforehand, I flew to the WWF offices in Stamford, Connecticut, to nail down the details of my debut. I met with Jim Johnston, who wrote the music for all of the superstars. We spent an hour talking about who I was and what my character’s attitude was, so he could get a feel for what my entrance music should sound like. Instead of recycled TBS basketball music, I was getting a custom-made fancy-pants song written just for me.
I met with Kevin Dunn, the producer of Raw, to talk about my entrance video and his plan of using a double blast of pyro to give my arrival extra impact. As I took promo shots and went over merchandise ideas, again I felt like