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I had no pride and that’s the way I wanted it. As a craven heel, there was no way I was going out with my head held high, riding off into the sunset with my loyal fans chanting my name. I wanted to be forcefully removed, kicking, screaming and crying like a coward. That was the last time I was seen in the WWE for more than two years.

Over the next few days, I had a blast reading Internet feedback from fans who were livid that the WWE would treat me so dishonorably and have me exit in such a demeaning manner. Little did they know that the pathetic exit was all my idea.

John and I received another standing ovation when we walked through the curtain. Ricky Steamboat, who had recently been hired as an agent, said, “There was a rumor going around that you were in a slump, Chris, but you’re definitely not in a slump anymore. That was an amazing performance. Congratulations!” Not a bad compliment from one of my heroes.

The rumors were right—I’d been in a mental slump and hadn’t been performing at the level I should’ve been. But I promised myself I would go out on top in working with Cena, and I did. After fifteen years of basing my entire life around wrestling, I could now call it a day with no regrets and move on knowing I was walking away at my peak.

Vince echoed those same thoughts when he called me the next day.

“As good as the SummerSlam match was, I daresay that last night’s was better. Quite frankly, with all due respect to James Brown, you are the hardest working man in show business.”

I wasn’t yet—but I was about to be.

CHAPTER 36

Buffet Nazi

Castle Donington is the site of the biggest heavy metal festival in England, most famous for drawing over 100,000 people for the 1988 lineup that featured Iron Maiden, Kiss, Megadeth, David Lee Roth, Guns N’ Roses, and Helloween. (Headbanging Author’s Note: All six of these bands are in my all-time top fifteen.)

It had since changed its name to Download, and Download wanted Fozzy. Bang Your Head in Germany was a good festival, but Download was the granddaddy of them all. We still weren’t getting any support or respect from our record company, or from most of the UK rock press, yet we had still risen to the level of being asked to play Download.

We had to hit a home run on our biggest stage yet.

The 2005 Download lineup was amazing, with Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Slayer, Megadeth, My Chemical Romance, and System of a Down headlining, so we had our work cut out for us.

We were the second band of the day on the second stage of the festival, sandwiched in between Celtic punk band Flogging Molly and Finnish shock metal band Lordi. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the crowd, especially after Molly had whipped them into a frenzy. I was imagining pure apathy but was pleasantly surprised when the crowd started chanting “Fozzy!” the second Molly’s set finished.

We started the set by barreling into “Nameless Faceless,” and I noticed two things right away: the stage was huge and the crowd was massive. There were thousands of people waiting to see Fozzy at only 2:30 in the afternoon, but that was how festivals worked. Fans camped out for days and partied for the entire weekend, checking out as many bands as they could. I was on a mission to grab the attention of the 25,000 rockers in attendance immediately. So I ran across the stage and leaped straight off the edge.

I soared through the air and … kept soaring.

And soaring.

And then I stopped in midair with my arms and legs flailing like Wile E. Coyote as time stood still.

Then I dropped.

I hadn’t anticipated how high off the ground the stage was and I felt like I was falling a hundred feet. When I finally landed in the photo pit in front of the barricade, I felt my ankles buckle awkwardly, like my bones were bending inward to their breaking point. But instead of fracturing, they snapped back into place like rubber bands.

I was lucky they didn’t shatter into pieces, and had the passing mental image of being stuck in the pit writhing in pain with two broken ankles before