Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [31]
As we walked off the stage, Sandler came up to me. “We’re good,” he said. “Respect.”
He didn’t apologize and neither did I. We didn’t have to. Respect.
Chris Farley and I wrestled three times when I was on the show. All three matches were on the same night.
The first match happened in the graphics room, which was located halfway between Lorne’s office and the writers’ room. The graphics room was a great place to go if you didn’t want anyone to bother you. When you were tired of the phone calls and sick of people popping into your office, you could always find places such as the graphics room where no one would even think to look for you. Fred Wolf, David Spade, Chris Farley, and I were in there shooting the shit and kicking some ideas around for sketches. Mostly they came up with ideas and I stood there and watched. I had run out of ideas long ago, but I knew if I hung around I might wind up in something by accident.
Somehow the conversation turned to the subject of wrestling. I had wrestled in high school, and Fred and I had talked earlier in the year about possibly doing a high school wrestling sketch. We ran the idea by Jim Downey, but nothing ever came of it. Fred suggested to Chris that despite his size advantage I could probably beat him in a match. Chris bellowed, “Shut up, Fred!”
Now, Chris was well over 300 pounds, and I wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of locking horns with him. Fred and Spade would talk out an idea and Fred would end by saying something like “And then Jay can come out and pin Chris.” Chris was turning red and my stomach was churning. Spade got into it, too, and began goading Chris. They both told Chris that if they had to bet, their money was on me to win the wrestling match. With that, it was on.
Chris squared himself in front of me, in what was more of a football stance than a wrestling stance. I crouched into a proper wrestling stance, figuring I might as well look like I could take him. I kept my arms out in front of me and countercircled Chris. Spade and Fred grew tired of all the dancing and started hollering that we were both chickenshit. Farley hollered, “Shut up, David!” and turned his head. At that moment I sprung forward and made the terrible mistake of shooting in on Chris’s leg. I grabbed hold of his enormous thigh and tucked my head up against his hip for a single-leg take-down. Chris simply collapsed forward, smothering me. I fell to the carpet with all of Chris on top of me.
From years of wrestling I was preprogrammed to fall facedown and immediately tuck my arms in close to my sides. The move is called turtling, and it prevents your opponent from executing any moves. Chris wasn’t interested in moves. For the next five minutes he just sat on my back bouncing up and down like a little kid. It felt like my spine was beginning to crumble like a bag of potato chips. Chris kept bouncing up and down shouting, “Ha, ha! Ha, ha! Jay! Jay! Jay!”
I was going to become a cripple in the graphics room. I tried to reason with him. I waited for him to be in the air during one of his bounces so I could inhale enough to speak. When he landed back down on top of me, I calmly whispered, “Chris, seriously, you are going to break my back.” He just kept clapping his hands, bouncing up and down, and shouting my name. I tried again and again. “Chris, if you keep bouncing on me, you are going to break my back. Please stop. You win.” Spade intervened and said, “Get the fuck off of him, Farley.” It was like an older brother chastising a little brother. Chris got up and asked me if he won. “Yes, Chris,” I said. “You won.” And then what was left of me hobbled into the men’s room.
I splashed some water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror. I was pissed at myself for shooting in on his legs. I was so soundly defeated and humiliated, yet I wanted a rematch. I headed back to my office, and as I passed through the writers’ room, I overheard Chris telling Jim Downey how he kicked