A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [39]
Goliath was lazy and I’d been in the ring with him the whole match, so when Como tagged in, I went straight to the top hose and gave him a drop kick. The hoses had no leverage, so when I jumped I slipped and landed right on my hand. I instantly knew I was hurt.
Wrestling is a hard-hitting form of entertainment and you really do live each day in pain just as Jesse the Body had warned me. As a result, you get to know your body to the point of recognizing the difference between an injury that will go away on its own and one that will need medical attention. This one needed medical attention. I finished the match, didn’t get paid the 100 bucks I was promised, and drove to the hospital. After a four-hour wait, I was denied care because I didn’t have insurance. I called my dad, who gave me his credit card number and the doctor told me I had a hairline fracture in my hand. After all was said and done, I drove 3,000 miles, got ripped off 100 bucks, and ended up with a $1,000 hospital bill just for the privilege of wrestling one match in a flea market. That, young grasshoppers, is what is known as paying your dues.
At least I got to meet Lars Ulrich a few days later on the Sunset Strip...if your definition of “meet” is being brushed off and totally ignored in the middle of the street, that is.
My job didn’t get any more lucrative when I returned to Calgary and I hit the bottom of the Jeri-Chasm when Ed booked my next match at a kid’s seventh birthday party. You heard me.
Lance and I showed up at a farmhouse outside Okotoks to find six kids and their moms wearing parkas and party hats in the middle of the frozen barn. Ed was friends with the kid’s dad and wanted to show off, so he arranged for the kid to get his own private wrestling show. I got Kedzo the Klown for my seventh birthday party, and this kid got two full matches including ring entrances. Afterward the kids were excited and the moms were excited and all of them were having their pictures taken with the half-naked muscleheads with the frozen nipples. Since I’d just entertained a bunch of kids with a match and provided a bunch of ladies in mom jeans with Chippendales On Ice, I was expecting a nice payday. And I got paid all right—with a hot dog and a glass of orange juice. They didn’t even give me any ketchup, and at that point my career wasn’t cutting the mustard. (Funny author’s note: Rumors that Ed later booked me at a bar mitzvah are unfounded.)
With my options drying up in Calgary, I was stoked when I got a call from Winnipeg promoter Tony Condello, who’d decided to bring Chris Jericho back to his hometown for a series of shows—the conquering hero returns! None of my friends had ever seen me wrestle live and I was excited that the first show was a TV taping in a beautiful nightclub called Club Taboo. It was the perfect place to prove to everybody that I was making it big.
Tony was taping a month’s worth of TV and when I walked to the ring for the first of four matches that night, the crowd exploded. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced, as it seemed that every single person I’d ever known in Winnipeg was there chanting “Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!” It felt even better when I scanned the crowd and saw my mom in attendance.
After a lengthy hospital stay, she’d returned home to her newly renovated house and had started getting acclimated to the huge change in her life. One of her first outings was to Club Taboo to see me wrestle and I’ll never forget looking into her face and seeing how proud she was of me. She was living vicariously through me and after urging me to continue following my dreams despite her accident, she’d