A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [18]
With my apprenticeship complete it was time to learn many more important lessons as a student in the Hart Brothers Pro Wrestling Camp.
PART TWO GALGARY
CHAPTER 5
THE OBVIOUS TRANSITION FROM ARCHERY TO WRESTLING
In January of 1989, six months before I was planning to leave for Calgary, Stampede Wrestling went out of business. It was a huge blow for me and I was terrified that the Hart Brothers Camp was going to close too. My fears were somewhat alleviated when a story appeared announcing that the Canadian National Wrestling Alliance was planning to pick up right where Stampede had left off. I was relieved that there was still going to be a wrestling company in Calgary and that the school was still going to be operating. But the relief was bittersweet because my goal was to be a Stampede wrestler, not a CNWA wrestler.
But you can’t stop rock ’n’ roll and you couldn’t stop Christian Chris Irvine either. I steamrolled on and made my arrangements to attend the camp. The price for the eight-week session was a cool 2,000 bucks and I would have to fork out an additional four hundred bucks a month to stay at (according to Ed Langley) “Okotoks’ finest hotel,” the Willingdon. I planned to cover the costs with a $5,000 bond that my dad had cashed in for me. I made all of my reservations and six days after I graduated with honors from Red River Community College (I’m a freakin’ genius), I packed up all my belongings into the trunk of my ’76 Volare and left the nest. I was nineteen years old.
After kissing my crying mother goodbye, I pulled out of the driveway fully intending not to come back until I’d made it. As I drove away, I looked in the rearview mirror and waved goodbye to my mom as she began to walk back into the house. I would never see her walk again.
My ’76 Volare had a lot of character, which is the automobile equivalent of saying that a girl has a nice personality. The color was a mesh of bottle green and rust red and featured a standard transmission that had been modified so that reverse was where first gear would be, third gear was where reverse would be, etc. Sometimes when I tried to put the car into gear the tranny would jam and I would have to crawl underneath the car to pull the gears back into place. But the Volare was my baby and I’d used the 400 bucks I’d earned as the Keystone Wrestling ring boy to buy the chariot that was going to transport me to the land of the big bucks.
So I popped the new Ratt cassette into the stereo that had only one working channel and began the twelve-hour journey to Cowtown. I drove past Westwood Collegiate on my way out of town and saw the big sign on the front lawn that said HAVE GOOD SUMMER (no joke). I thought to myself, “Someday my name is going to be on that sign.” It took fifteen years, but eventually it was.
After almost falling asleep an hour into my drive, I put on some Iron Maiden and began to think about all of the negative feedback I’d received about my decision to follow my dream. One event in particular stuck in my head. When Tony, the minister at my church, announced to the congregation that I was leaving Winnipeg to become a wrestler, there was a ripple of noise in the crowd when they started to laugh. Not all-out belly laughter, but it was enough to really piss me off. Tony didn’t make the announcement to make fun of me, he did it because he was proud of me. But to the general public, leaving town to become a pro wrestler was akin to wanting to become a sword swallower or a mime (mimes rule!). I had been dealing with people telling me I was too small to wrestle for years but this was much worse. These people were supposed to be a support group for me and I’ll never forget the stabbing embarrassment or the white-hot anger