A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [45]
The next Monday, I pulled up to a house that resembled the Addams Family mansion, only the family that lived inside this house was much stranger. I knocked a few times and there was no answer, so I walked inside the unlocked front door and introduced myself to Stu and his wife, Helen, who were sitting right inside the foyer. I guess they didn’t feel like answering the door. Hito was there with a few Japanese kids and he grunted in my direction and led me down the steps into the Dungeon. I saw right away why it had that name. It looked like the basement of the house in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, dark and damp with pipes hanging from the low ceiling and a mat slightly raised off the floor that served as the training ring. There were some weights lying around with HART branded onto the plates (years later before the house was sold, Bret gave me one of them as a gift). Overall, the world-famous Dungeon was just a big unfinished rumpus room. But it was a rumpus room haunted by the screams of a thousand wrestlers.
The first thing Hito made me do was take 500 back bumps in a row. I was numb after the first fifty, but I kept going. This was true Japanese wrestling training and I wanted a taste. After about 300 bumps I started slowing down from the fatigue and when Hito told me to speed up, I said, “No problem.”
Hito threw his hat at me and yelled, “Yes, there is problem! You are problem! Just do what I tell you and no speak!”
I shut up and continued training with Hito and his students for the rest of the week and taking around 3,000 bumps in the process. I learned different wrestling holds and techniques that I’d never seen before and I had highly intense practice matches with the Japanese guys. The highlight of the week arrived when Stu shuffled down the stairs and hung around the ring watching like a predator. I sensed the danger and with Jesse’s words of warning echoing in the back of my head, I tried to stay inconspicuous. Stu was in his mid-seventies, but he still got off on stretching guys the same way that his son Keith got off on stretching me. Thankfully Stu never put his hands on me but he did stretch the shit out of the one Japanese kid who made the mistake of shaking Stu-San’s hand. After the greeting, Stu held on to the guy’s hand and said, “Let me show you something.” He pulled the kid closer and stuck one arm on the kid’s head and the other under his chin. As Stu applied the pressure, I realized where Keith learned the hold that he’d locked on me during my first day of camp. But this kid didn’t contain his screams like I had and his cries of pain joined the legions of others that already haunted the Dungeon.
PART FOUR MEXICO
CHAPTER 14
THE WORST BALL-HUGGERS EVER
After finally experiencing the legend of the Dungeon, I felt that I’d gone as far as I could go working in Calgary. My career had been in a constant state of one step forward, two steps back and I’d grown stagnant working in the same places against the same guys. If I was going to get better, I needed a change of scenery and a change of style. I put together a promo tape filled with nonsensical high spots and flashy moves performed in front of twenty-five fans in high school gyms, and sent it to promoters around the world. I’d received bupkus in response and it was getting discouraging.
That’s why it was such a blessing to get a call from Mike Lozanski asking me if I wanted to go wrestle in Mexico. Mike had gotten the opportunity to work for a company based out of Monterrey and since Mexican wrestling was based around tag team matches, the promoter wanted Mike to have a permanent partner.
I jumped at Mike’s offer, and a few days later we bought our own tickets and flew via Mexico City to Monterrey, in the northern part of Mexico.
The promoter, Carlos Elizondo, didn’t have work visas arranged for us, so when we went through customs in Mexico City, we were to claim that we were on vacation. Of course, if