A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [29]
When I protested, she said, “You’ve worked too hard and I’m not going to spoil this for you. I’m proud of you and I want you to do this and be the best that you can be!”
As broken-down as her body was, her mental drive and iron will were stronger than ever. If she’d asked me, I would’ve moved home in a second, but that wasn’t the way she wanted it.
Even though my dad was a hard-nosed NHL tough guy, I think I got most of my mental toughness from my mom. She lived as a quadriplegic for fifteen years and during that time she went through enough trials and tribulations for fifteen people, yet she never gave up or stopped fighting. When she gave me her blessing to continue on with wrestling, there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to let her down. Her iron will become my iron will and failure was no longer an option.
I had to make it big for her.
CHAPTER 9
THE PIED PIPER OF PONOKA
When I got back to Calgary, I knew it was where I was supposed to be. When I’d seen all of my old friends back in the Peg, I realized how much I’d grown and changed as a person. Now that I had something to believe in, there was no turning back.
October 2, 1990 (just over a month before my twentieth birthday), was the day of my first match, and it was rapidly approaching. Lance, Victor, and I had been booked to make our professional wrestling debut with the Canadian Wrestling Connection, which was owned and promoted by none other than the CWC champ himself, Bob “The Judge” Puppets.
Puppets was notorious for being a terrible promoter. He never advertised his shows, and most of them bombed like a Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez movie. He once promoted a show at a college in Rimby, Alberta, on the same night as the homecoming free beer bash. Final total: Free Beer Bash—1000 tickets sold, Puppets Show—seven tickets sold. I guess those seven people were on the wagon...or nerds.
But Puppets’s promoting track record meant nothing to us because we had a match to prepare for and names to decide on. Since Dr. Love had already solved his name problem, only Lance and I were still struggling.
We all agreed that Puppets’s Rob Benoit idea was lame and I decided that Christian Chris Irvine wasn’t flashy enough, so I was leaning toward my new choice of JACK ACTION. Jack Action was perfect and I had already worked out the most important part of any name: how to sign my autograph. Paul Stanley from Kiss signed his name with a star at the end of his Y and I ripped him off by signing a star at the end of my N. Hey, it was better than the X that I signed for the Ranger fans who wanted my autograph just for being Ted Irvine’s son when I was four years old!
Lance, however, didn’t think that Jack Action was the moneymaking merchandising machine that I did and he told me so.
“I saw you autographing your notebook as Jack Action and you can’t call yourself that. It’s a terrible name. It sucks.” Always the diplomat, that Lance.
I denied old Jack quicker than Peter denied Jesus and said, “I know Jack Action is stupid. I was just messing around.” Even though I thought the name was amazing, Lance’s typical bluntness had killed the Action Man forever.
Then I experimented with different variations of the last name Skywalker. I thought Shawn Skywalker would be cool but I didn’t want my name to be too much like Shawn Michaels. I had already stolen his look, his costume, and his canary yellow hair, so taking his name too would’ve been a bit much. I tried to think of other decent S names to match Skywalker. Shane Skywalker? Seamus Skywalker? Shakira Skywalker? Nothing fit.
Then I remembered a name that I’d flirted with when I was trying to go the Christian route... Jericho. There was a lame comic book character named Jericho and a great record by the German metal band Helloween named