A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [59]
Despite my evil tactics, Dandy won the next two falls and retained his title. I scuttled back toward the dressing room in shame while threatening a little kid in the front row (the same way that Fatwell had done to me a decade earlier), when I was hit in the side of the head and mouth by a plastic cup filled with beer. Then a rancid smell hit me and I realized that the fluid in the cup wasn’t beer—it was urine. And it was warm.
I was sitting in the dressing room covered in piss, when Dandy returned from the ring with one of the security guards.
“You remember that big commotion in the crowd after the first fall?” he asked. “The reason the guards took the guy out of the arena was because he was heading toward you with a gun.”
For those keeping track at home, that was the third time a gun had been pulled on me during my sojourn in scenic Mexico.
How much did someone have to hate me to want to shoot me because of a wrestling match? For that matter, how much did someone have to hate me to pull out their wiener in a public place and throw a cup of fresh piss at me?
By the way, did you know that pee tastes salty?
Thankfully I was tasting success along with pee pee. As a result a plethora of Corazón de León merchandise had hit the market, including trading cards, balloons, clocks, official T-shirts, bootleg T-shirts (I had to buy one from the bootlegger when he refused to give me a freebie), and a comic book that saw me having adventures with the assistance of a magical talking frog. I was on the cover of every wrestling magazine (there were over a dozen at the time) and receiving critical acclaim. I was honored when Arena magazine, the most prestigious lucha magazine in Mexico, voted Corazón de León and Ultimo Dragón vs. Negro Casas and el Dandy the match of the year for 1993. I was awestruck, as there were thousands of matches in Mexico every year. The match had been almost an hour long and was a breeze since all four of us had similar styles and attitudes. Our only goal was to make the other guy look good and we did.
There was a Mexican tradition that when the crowd felt they had seen something special, they would throw money into the ring. After our match Negro began to encourage the crowd and a domino effect occurred. Soon the entire ring was littered with bills and change. We split it among the four of us along with the two referees who were assigned to the match. It was a nice pat on the back and getting hit with a handful of cash was much more pleasant than getting hit with a cupful of piss.
Another lucha tradition was settling major feuds with a mask vs. mask match, where the loser would have to unmask for good. For wrestlers who didn’t wear a mask, hair vs. hair matches, where the loser shaved his head, were just as popular. When I was booked in my first hair match, the possibility of me losing my trademark blond mane became a big draw.
The angle started when a trio of wrestlers called the Cavernícolas (the Cavemen) attacked me, leading to me beating two of them and challenging the third to a hair vs. hair match.
A loud crowd of 8,000 fans filed into Arena México on a Sunday afternoon three weeks later to see me shave the fat bastard bald.
It was the first time I was ever involved in a multiweek story line and it was rewarding watching the crowd grow week after week as the story built. The Cavernícolas weren’t a big act on their own, but the cliff-hanger angle made them into an attraction, teaching me that with the right push even an average performer could be made into a star and draw a crowd.
CHAPTER 19
HALCION BOWLING
I was working a crazy schedule and when I had a rare day off I liked to chill out by listening to music and reading a book on the roof of the Plaza. It was a solitary, peaceful place to collect my thoughts and get some alone time. So