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By Root 1784 0

22 on the New York Times best-seller list) and seeing Cena and Michaels tear it up, I knew it was time. But after the maelstrom of emotions I went through after Benoit’s passing, I started to second-guess whether it was worth it. Since I had left the WWE only twenty-five months earlier, Eddy Guerrero and Chris Benoit, two of my best friends in the business, had died; Mike Lozanski, one of my oldest friends in the business, had died; Jerry Palko, the man who had taken me into his family when I first moved to Okotoks to train with the Hart Brothers, had died; my mother had died; my grandmother had died; even my dog Blaze had died. All of those losses had changed me. I wasn’t the same person as when I left, and I didn’t know if I wanted to return after all.

But by defending the industry on the talk shows and becoming its unofficial spokesman, I realized who I was.

I was a professional wrestler and always had been.

Much like a bullying big brother who protects his little brother in the schoolyard, I could say derogatory things about wrestling if I wanted to, but there was no way I was going to let anybody else bag on it. I wasn’t going to allow people to verbally trash the business and demean the sacrifices that me and my peers made to entertain millions of people all across the world. The WWE once again needed a savior to bring the business back to where it was before the tragedy.

Another reason I wanted to return was because I felt I was the last of a literally dying breed. I had been a part of a small group of performers who had learned the art of the business in different countries around the world, and almost all of us were gone.

Owen, Davey, Pillman, Chris, and Eddy were dead. All the luchadores were back in Mexico with the exception of Rey. Lance, Dean, and Ultimo Dragon had retired, and to the average fan so had Chris Jericho.

Except I hadn’t retired and I never claimed to. I just needed a break to recharge my batteries so I could come back better than ever, and I was ready to do that. It was my duty.

Dixie Carter, the president of TNA Wrestling, had been calling me ever since I left the WWE. She made it quite clear that her rival company was interested in bringing me in and wanted to have (take) a meeting with me at my leisure. I had no intention of working anywhere but the WWE, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a meeting. It also wouldn’t hurt to use TNA’s interest to give me a bit of leverage with Vince.

So I agreed to meet Dixie and her right-hand man, Jeff Jarrett, for lunch in Tampa. We had a good meeting, but it didn’t dissuade me from going back to the WWE even though I was excited for them and their organization. After all, the better TNA did, the better it was for the whole business. For the first time since Vince bought WCW, he had some competition.

Barry Bloom and I had been negotiating with the WWE for weeks and couldn’t come to an agreement. I had a certain dollar figure in mind that I wanted in order to come back, and they were hesitant to give it to me. So after my meeting with Dixie, I had Chad type up an email asking if Chris Jericho was going to TNA since he had just seen him eating lunch with Jeff Jarrett and Dixie Carter in Tampa. He signed it Ralph Molina (the drummer of Neil Young’s Crazy Horse), and wisely sent it off to a few prominent wrestling websites.

The news spread quickly, and suddenly the magic number was soon agreed upon. That meant everything to me, as it proved that Vince saw me as a major player, something I hadn’t felt for the last few years I worked for him.

Two weeks later I signed my contract, and for the first time in twenty-six months I was once again an employee of the WWE. All thanks to the assist from Ralph Molina.

I wanted to make my return to the WWE as unique and impactful as my debut was eight years earlier. I didn’t want to repeat the countdown clock again, so I was looking for something a little more cryptic. Then the idea struck to use the phrase “Second Coming,” while incorporating the black-and-green binary codes I’d seen while watching The Matrix