A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [68]
On the first night in my room I was lying on my bed reading The Stand by Stephen King, when the door flew open and a skinny guy dressed in black walked in and started screaming at me in German. I have no idea why he was screaming at me, but before he could pee on my rug I shouted, “Go away...get the hell out of here!”
He didn’t budge and his tone grew angrier. When he first busted in he’d scared the shit out of me, but now I was pissed off. I started yelling, “Fuck off, Fuck off, Fuck off,” while pointing to the door with authority, figuring that he had to smell what I was cooking. When he didn’t budge, I whipped the 1,100-page novel at him. It smacked him on the noggin and he stormed out the door, screaming all the way down the stairs.
I have no idea what his deal was, I was just thankful that he hadn’t pulled a gun. I learned my lesson and made sure to always turn the key in the lock every time I walked into my room. After all, I didn’t want anyone interrupting me while I was peeing in the sink.
The next day I when I showed up for the first night of the tournament, I was introduced to the strange traditions of Catch. At the beginning of the show all the wrestlers in the tournament had to parade out of the dressing room in single file and march around the inside of the ring. Then we all had to stand in a circle staring at each other, units in our hands, while the announcer introduced us individually.
When I heard “From Canada, Chris ‘Lion Heart’ Jericho,” I would have to walk into the center of the circle and wave like I was on Catch Soul Train. Even if you were involved in a fight-to-the-death blood feud, you still had to stand side by side with your hated rival every night.
I made my Catch debut against Indio Guajardo, a sixty-year-old wrestler from South America who lived in Germany and spoke no English whatsoever. We were able to string together a match by speaking Spanish, but there wasn’t much to talk about as he really didn’t want to do anything. He was a Hamburg wrestling institution—he’d been working there for decades—but when we got into the ring it was horrible.
Instead of trusting Indio’s judgment and doing the type of match that he wanted to do, I tried to do a bunch of moves that totally clashed with his style. I tried to give him a monkey flip but when I jumped on his thighs to flip him back he just stood there and I threw myself onto my back for no apparent reason. I tried to give him a leapfrog but when I leaped into the air he just stood there and I did the splits in midair for no apparent reason.
Instead of working for the match I worked to showcase myself, which made us both look like shit. I finally suplexed him—a big deal because he never left his feet—and got the win, but it was too late.
The match was one of the first occurrences of what I came to refer to as the Jericho Curse. Every time I debuted in a new company my debut match sucked. Most of the fans and the guys in the back thought I was the shits. That night I learned the very important lesson that while having a good match takes two people, having a bad match only takes one.
I was feeling like an ass afterward when I was approached by two of the other guys in the tourney. “Don’t worry about it, mate,” one of them said. “Indio has been here a long time and he doesn’t really have good matches anymore.”
I still felt like the worst wrestler ever but I appreciated their attempt to make me feel better. They introduced themselves as Robbie Brookside and Doc Dean from Liverpool. I was instantly impressed because they hailed from the same city as the Beatles! They were also my age, and had long hair to boot. They’d been coming to Hamburg for a few years and knew a girl who gave them a cheap rate at the hotel she ran—they just had to make up the difference in other ways. Aside from the giant bloodstain splattered across their hotel room wall, it seemed like a good deal.
It was a constant learning experience hanging out with my new friends because they spoke in their own language. Traditionally, wrestlers spoke