A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [77]
I was surprised when Jim called me back excitedly the next day. He’d already seen some of my work via an audition tape Lance had sent him chock-full of highlights of the two of us wrestling each other. One of the clips featured me taking a crazy bump over the top post straight to the floor and Cornette wouldn’t stop raving about it. When I brought up that I’d interviewed him for my college newspaper five years earlier, he laughed and then cut to the chase. “I would love to bring you and Lance in to work as a tag team.”
There was more emphasis on tag teams in SMW and the top stars in the company were the Rock ’n’ Roll Express. Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson were former NWA and WCW tag team champions and one of the biggest drawing acts of the 1980s. I thought Lance and I would be a perfect fit for the company. I didn’t want to spoil any of Lance’s plans though, so I called to ask his opinion. He liked the idea and we were Tennessee-bound.
Cornette’s plan was to put us together as a young and fearless team called the Thrillseekers. Our gimmick was that we were more extreme than the rest of the performers in SMW. This extreme didn’t mean that we broke tables or shot staple guns into our heads; it referred rather to our devil-may-care attitude as we walked the earth seeking thrills...or something like that.
The idea was that we’d explode into the territory performing flashy moves and working diverse styles that had never been seen by these fans before.
Cornette made the arrangements to fly us down to Knoxville to sell us on his company. He also had an idea of what he wanted us to wear in the ring and sent us a few rough designs. They featured a pair of stickmen wearing singlets, resembling a Southern Spirit Squad. Cornette’s notes stated that our first names were to be written on the front in “gold lamé or similar material.”
It was lame all right. We would’ve been better off wearing loincloths.
We were both excited about the prospect of working full-time in the States and we had no idea what kind of money we could expect to make. I had left Mexico on good terms and even though the peso had crashed, I knew I could go back and make a good living. But I felt at this stage of my career it meant more to get the gig with SMW even if it meant a huge pay cut, although Cornette didn’t need to know that. So it was time to do some hardball negotiating.
From the moment Lance and I stepped off the plane in Knoxville it was as much of a culture shock as being in Mexico City the first time. For starters, even though we were still in North America I had a real problem understanding a damn word the people were saying. Trying to figure out the Southern accents was harder than trying to decode carny and Cockney combined.
Cornette met us at the gate wearing a tight SMW T-shirt that barely covered his ample belly and a pair of Zubaz workout pants that were in style a decade earlier. He had a haircut like a first-grader, short and parted with an ax to the side, and was sporting a pair of Coke-bottle glasses.
“Hey y’all.”
“Pardon?”
“Jeet yet?”
“Excuse me?”
“Jeet yet?”
I just nodded politely until I decoded that he was asking, “Did you eat yet?”
When I finally jate, the food was just as alien as the accent. Blooming onions, grits, okra, BBQ that wasn’t actually BBQ at all, but some kind of mystery meat covered with a cold, slimy sauce. And what the hell was a Waffle House?
The culture shock continued when I saw a huge billboard on the side of the highway featuring a familiar face.
“Why is there a picture of Burt Reynolds from Smokey and the Bandit on that billboard?”
“Burt Reynolds?” he asked in amazement. “That’s not Burt Reynolds, that’s Richard Petty...one of the most famous NASCAR drivers ever!”
I’m from Canada. What the hell