A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [50]
Our next match was in a small town outside Monterrey called Matamoros. The arena in Matamoros was straight out of the movie Bloodsport: dark and dingy and surrounded by a fence of chicken wire that separated the fans from the ring. During the matches, the fans held on to the chicken wire and pushed it in and out like rabid wolverines. It was a real-life Scorpions video.
The ring was a boxing ring that had absolutely no give and was not made for bumping. My opponent, an American named Fabuloso Blondy, warned me that we wouldn’t be able to do much of anything during the match. I figured he was just being lazy and called a hip toss. He ran off the ropes saying “Fuck that,” and hip-tossed me instead. When I landed on what felt like concrete, I nearly pooped my pants. No shit. We did nothing but exchange holds after that. It wasn’t worth the money we were making to blow out our O rings in this dumpy town. Not to mention that we got ripped off by the promoter anyway.
After the match I was covered in dust and grime from the filthy ring and I wanted to clean up. I changed my mind when I saw that the shower was a garden hose stuck in the back of a toilet tank. A guy had sucked on the end until a lonely flow of water trickled out. I threw up in my mouth a little because even though the water wasn’t out of the actual bowl, where I come from toilet water is toilet water.
The biggest star in the country at the time was another Canadian named Vampiro Canadiense. Everywhere you looked you saw the image of the vampire wrestler with the Alice Cooper makeup and the long red and blue braided hair. At his peak he was the Mexican equivalent of Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin. He’d arrived in Mexico just as lucha libre had exploded with increased TV exposure and he had ridden the boom to superstardom. There were Vampiro dolls, T-shirts, comic books, chocolate bars, soap bars, singles bars, everything.
So when it was announced that he was coming to Monterrey to challenge the heavyweight champion, Black Magic, for the title, the city went wild with anticipation.
The Monumental sold out quickly, but on the day of the show Vampiro showed up at the airport on crutches. He had suffered some sort of injury and couldn’t work that night. Elizondo needed a suitable replacement and he picked me. It was ironic because when I first arrived in Monterrey, Elizondo had toyed with the idea of calling me Vampiro Americano to try to cash in on Vamp’s popularity. A few years later, he gave the name to a Dallas-based wrestler named John Layfield, who went on to become WWE champion JBL.
Black Magic was an American from Florida named Norman Smiley, who was thrilled to be working with another foreigner and was quite responsive to my ideas. I called most of the match even though he was more experienced than me. He ended up holding my tights to win the third fall, but even though he had beaten me, Magic gave me my first great match in Mexico. The fans went loco when I beat him in the first fall and as the match progressed they started to believe that this hot young upstart could win the title. The champ took me to a different level by allowing me to hang with him and I’m still grateful for that. He could’ve telephoned in his performance against the nobody and sandbagged me but Magic worked his ass off to make me look like a superstar.
When I walked back to the dressing room, Elizondo congratulated me by giving me my pay envelope containing $1,000. It was a Mexican tradition to receive a double payoff for a title match and I was shocked to have made that much money for one match. The next person to congratulate me was Vampiro, but he didn’t seem very sincere. Later on at the Cuatro Milpas, he took me aside to give me advice on how to survive in Mexico. He said that all of the Mexican wrestlers were jealous of me and that I couldn’t trust anyone.
“But you can trust me. I really want to help you make it here.” Then he told me if I wanted to make it big, I needed to start wearing a different outfit.
“I know this country and I know