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We would do band names in London, hockey teams in Edmonton, or city nicknames in New York:

“Here we are in the Big Apple!”

“What?”

“The city that never sleeps!”

“What?”

“The Windy City!”

“What?”

“Cowtown!”

“What?”

“The City of Lights!”

“What?”

Well, you get the idea. It was completely preposterous, but our rallies provided some tremendous improv training that would prove to be invaluable later in my career.

I wore this outfit to host “The Highlight Reel” every weekend for the entire summer of 2003. By the time fall rolled around, it smelled of glue and stale beer due to Austin dousing me with Steveweisers nightly.

Afterwards, I would get in Steve’s face and taunt him because I knew he couldn’t touch me. Austin would tell me, “Fine, I can’t touch you, but there’s no reason for us to be angry with each other! I’d rather just drink a beer with you, Chris. Do you like drinking beers?”

“Of course I like beer, you idiot! Do you have Miller Lite?”

“What?”

“Coors Light?”

“What?”

“Bud Light?

“What?”

“If you want to see Stone Cold Steve Austin drink a beer with Chris Jericho, give me a ‘Hell yeah!’ ” The crowd would yell, “Hell yeah!” enthusiastically. But I wouldn’t bite until I had it my way.

“Yeah, I’d like a frosty beverage myself. So if you wanna see Chris Jericho drink a beer with Stone Cold Steve Austin, give me a ‘Do-wah-diddy-diddy-dum-diddy-do!’ ” The crowd would quizically boo my ricockulosity as Steve and I would struggle to keep a straight face.

The timekeeper would throw us a couple of beers and we would shake ’em up and toast each other. I’d take a nice sip and then tell Steve, “You know what, Austin, you’re not such a bad guy after all. I actually kind of like you,” and give him a friendly slap on his back like an old drinking buddy.

Steve would then freeze in his tracks.

The crowd would start to buzz, sensing what was about to happen, since I’d just broken the agreement and touched him. Austin would get that hell-raisin’ smile and stare a hole through my back, as I’d be glad-handing to the crowd and acting the damn fool. As soon as I turned around it would be a swift kick to the gut and a Stone Cold Stunner courtesy of the Texas Rattlesnake.

I would gout beer out of my mouth in a sweet amber stream and take a huge overexaggerated bump through the ropes onto the floor. Steve would spend the next ten minutes drinking beer (and pouring it on me) while saluting the crowd with middle fingers. I took one bump a night on the road that whole summer, and besides constantly smelling like Steveweiser, it wasn’t a bad way for a grown man to make a living.

In the early 2000s, the WWE was doing PPVs in England twice a year, where the entire crew would fly out from New York on a Friday night and arrive in the UK on Saturday morning. We’d clear customs and go straight to the arena, where we would eat and prepare for the show. The PPV would start at 7 p.m., and as soon as it was over we would head back to the airport and fly back to New York, arriving early Sunday morning. It was a grueling schedule and the quality of the matches was never quite up to snuff as a result. That’s why I was so relieved when I found out that I would only be doing a “Highlight Reel” with Austin and Eric Bischoff as my guests for the Insurrection PPV in Nottingham.

A few months earlier Vince had made the shocking decision to hire Eric and make him the storyline general manager of Raw. I was skeptical, but I have to give Eric credit for having the balls to come to the WWE. With the amount of guys he’d fired or mistreated during his time as the boss of WCW, it was almost like the warden being put in prison with the inmates. But Eric was a consumate professional and slowly began to win over the locker room. I noticed that he was a different person now that he wasn’t in charge, and like most of the guys who came from WCW into the WWE, from Big Show to Booker T, to Kevin Nash, to DDP, when taken out of the destructive, cancerous atmosphere of WCW they were actually pretty good guys.