Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [111]
His reaction took me aback. “You’re upset you’re not on the show? Why don’t you grow up? A lot of people aren’t on the show!”
I stood there in stunned silence. Grow up? But Vince was incensed and the blitzkrieg continued.
“You know what the problem with you is? You’ve got a gigantic chip on your shoulder. You think you’re an accomplished wrestler, but you’re not! You think you know everything and you’re getting the reputation of being hard to work with.”
Wow, where did all of this come from?
I didn’t feel that I was hard to work with, I just had a lot of confidence and the courage to stand up for what I believed in. Chris Kanyon had given me the nickname AO Jericho when we worked together in WCW, which stood for Always Opinionated, and it fit me perfectly. Being AO was what helped me make it as far as I had, but AO also bit me in the ass at times.
Vince told me to suck it up and stormed away, leaving me baffled. His words really pissed me off, and for the first time since I walked through the doors of the WWE, I began to wonder if I really wanted to be there. I was having serious doubts about my position in the company as it was, and being told to “grow up” by the boss certainly didn’t help my disposition. After fourteen years on the job, maybe it was time to take a step back.
Even though the front office of the WWE didn’t feel the same way, I began dubbing myself “the Larger than Life Living Legend.” I’d been using the nickname for a few months and was getting some good mileage with it, when I got a call from my lawyer, John Taylor. John had been instrumental in getting me out of WCW in ’99, and he had since started working for the WWE. I was flabbergasted (kooky word) when he told me the purpose of his call: I was being sued by Larry Zbyszko.
Larry Zbyszko? I hadn’t heard his name in years, not since he was the single worst commentator in wrestling history. He would sit at the desk in WCW and talk in the most sarcastic, patronizing voice with the sole purpose of getting himself over, which was the exact opposite of what he was supposed to do. He would bash wrestlers for using high-flying moves and make fun of their costumes or hairstyles or body types or their taste in pistachio brands, whatever he could find to amuse himself. He didn’t do it in a froot Jesse Ventura heel-announcer way either, he did it in a smarmy way that down played the product. The only time he showed any emotion whatsoever was when he mentioned his golf game.
His biggest claim to fame was a great angle where he turned on his mentor, Bruno Sammartino, and began claiming that he, not Bruno, was the Living Legend. Now a quarter of a century later he was suing me, Vince, and the entire WWE for stealing his nickname, demanding restitution. Whatever his motive, it didn’t seem to concern Vince, as when I mentioned the lawsuit to him, he didn’t even know about it. Why would he? Larry’s claim was lame.
But even so, I still had to waste an entire day of my life giving a deposition in a room full of Zbyszko’s lawyers. It was quite outlandish as he had a whole team of them, like this was Roe v. Jericho. I had to sit there as his legal beagles asked me if I knew that Larry had received the rights to use the name Living Legend from beating Bruno in a match. I asked them if they knew that wrestling was show business and Larry beat Bruno because that’s how it was booked. Then they submitted a copy of Pro Wrestling Illustrated which had an interview saying I was the true living legend in wrestling.
One of his lawyers said, “These magazines prove that you violated the trademark.”
I said, “You do realize that those magazines are semi-fictional? I wasn’t even interviewed for that article!”
The fact that Luscious Lawrence had submitted the fabricated magazines as evidence in the first place, made me want to countersue him for perjury, especially when it came out that he didn’t even have a trademark on the epithet. The whole suit was a bigger joke than Larryland, only succeeding in wasting my time and stopping the production of a really