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Peter Thomas Fornatale:

A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex

This book is dedicated to Sweet Loretta Modern.

It’s also dedicated to all of the Jerichoholics who have stood

behind me through all of the trials

and tribulations over the last twenty years.

If I were wearing a hat, I would tip it to all of you.

CJ

Foreword

Wow, what an honor to write the foreword to Chris Jericho’s new book! To be asked by Chris himself, no less. Yes, it’s an honor—the same way it’s an honor for an old, broken-down ballplayer to attend the game where his long-standing record is shattered. Yes, that’s me, the old ballplayer, hobbling out onto the field, waving to the fans, doing my best to look happy when the thing that was most important to me, the thing that kept me going when the going got rough, the very thing that defined who I was and how I felt about myself has been stripped away from me.

You see, back some time ago, in another decade, in fact (I believe the year was 1999), I wrote a little something called Have a Nice Day, which shocked the world by being not only commercially successful but surprisingly readable as well. Possessing an underlying warmth to complement the sophomoric humor and wince-inducing stories, my book was like the literary equivalent to the early-’90s Lex Luger; it was indeed the “Total Package.” It was also responsible for letting loose a flood of other wrestling books— some good, some bad, others downright ugly. But I was always confident that when that flood eventually subsided, there would be one book standing tall, refusing to be swept away with the rest of the wrestling refuse. Then Jericho had to send me his first book.

I must say, I really enjoyed an early, incomplete manuscript of A Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex — at first. I found myself rooting for Chris as he forged his way through the rough-and-tumble Canadian independent wrestling scene and feeling his pain as he attempted to clear hurdles both physical and psychological in wrestling meccas around the world—Mexico; Germany; Japan; Pikeville, Kentucky. But somewhere around Kentucky and Tennessee, in the middle of Bruiser Bedlam, Corny, Ricky, and Robert, I sat bolt upright in bed, my genuine enjoyment and hearty out-loud laughter turned to sheer terror in a heartbeat. “Oh no,” I vividly remember thinking. “What if this book is better than mine?”

The wrestling world is full of unique characters, all of them with unique tales worth telling. Anyone who has spent any time on the road is sure to have a number of stories likely to fall under the “truth is stranger than fiction” category, and given the proper time and dedication to the craft of writing, many wrestlers might be capable of turning their true-life tales into first-rate tomes. Which meant my book would be safely ensconced at that number one spot in readers’ hearts and minds pretty much forever. Quite simply, no pro wrestler was going to dedicate enough time and energy to producing a book that could ever do the subject true justice. Most wrestlers were going to tell their story to a hired hand for a given period of time and hope for the best. Sometimes the results were very good—and sometimes they weren’t. Most of them just lacked that certain something, that authenticity that rings true only when a wrestler has spent hundreds of hours in solitude—thinking, being, and willing the words onto the written page. Yes, my spot was indeed safe—until Jericho came around.

All right, all right, Bret Hart’s book is another notable exception, and is a tremendous read. But I think I identified with Chris’s book more, with his ability to take both himself and his subject seriously while simultaneously giving a nod and a wink to the utter absurdity of so much that was going on around him. I identified so much that I spent many hours on the phone with Chris, giving him tips, offering advice—an adjective here, a little more emphasis there. Kind of like an all-star pitcher teaching a formidable opponent how to identify the spin on his curveball—so