A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [60]
We knew each other a little but weren’t exactly best friends, so the meeting was a little awkward at the start. Our conversation was stilted until we spotted a guy nailing a chick from behind in the window of the building directly across from us. The girl had massive guns (and probably weighed about 250 pounds) that were squishing up against the glass with each thrust. The guy finally noticed us mid-coitus, gave us the finger, and closed the drapes. We started howling with laughter and if there was ever a better icebreaker in history, I’d like to hear it.
Art and I started hanging out on our days off and one day he called me to ask if I wanted to check out a movie set. WWF Hall of Famer Rowdy Roddy Piper was in Mexico shooting the movie Immortal Combat (Oscar winner for the best picture of 1994) and was good friends with Art from his days wrestling for Art’s dad in Oregon. Piper invited him to come hang out on the set and Art invited me.
We both ended up getting cast in the greatest movie ever. Art landed a role as a waiter and I landed a role as a punching bag. Martial arts legend Sonny Chiba played Piper’s nemesis and was filming a scene where he got into a brawl with a group of toughs, one of whom was me. As we shot the fight scene over and over, Chiba’s endurance started to poop out. He was really good at pulling his punches and kicks during the first few takes but by the tenth take, he was kicking the shit out of me.
When the movie was finally released directly on video I wasn’t listed in the credits. As a matter of fact, unless you paused the flick at the exact right spot you wouldn’t even see my face. If you did, you’d see my nose and a bunch of hair flying around for two frames. But I looked sexy and it was a screen debut on par with Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.
A few days later when Art came up to my room to tell me how awesome Piper thought he (not both of us) had done in the movie, I couldn’t figure why he’d brought a little kid with him.
Art made me uncomfortable as he swore and talked his typical shit in front of this child, who couldn’t have been more than ten years old. The kid looked like Chicken Little, about five feet tall and weighing no more than 130 pounds, standing silent with a big perma-smile on his face. I almost had a heart attack when Art pulled out a joint and asked me for a light.
“What are you doing, man? Not in front of the kid! Why are you hanging out with him in the first place?”
Art laughed and explained that the kid was actually eighteen years old and was a wrestler. I looked at his scrawny build and thought, “Bless his tiny heart...he doesn’t stand a chance.”
I asked to see some ID and when he showed it to me, he said in perfect English, “I’m a fan of your work and I’m looking forward to wrestling you someday.”
I nodded and thought that the kid would be lucky to carry my ring jacket, let alone work with me. But I ended up working with him dozens of times when he became Rey Mysterio Jr., the greatest high-flyer of all time.
Art and I invented the stupidest sport of all time when we created Halcion Bowling. Halcions are sleeping pills that work very well if you take them with the intention of sleeping. But if you took one and stayed awake, you ended up stumbling and mumbling around like you were drunk. We rounded up Eddy, Tonga, Black Magic, Mike Lozanski, Miguel Pérez, José Estrada, and a pair of twins known as the Headhunters who were distinguished by the master marketing names of Headhunter A and Headhunter B. We downed our Halcions and had the worst bowling game in recorded history. It featured such highlights as Eddy getting a strike by walking down the lane and rolling the ball six inches away from the pins, Tonga getting a strike by rifling the ball into a different lane, and me getting a strike when I fell down the stairs and knocked over two rows of stacked chairs.
When I wasn