Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [172]
One student who had named himself Fighting Action Guy (you figure it out) was having problems learning how to take a fast-snapping back bump, and I decided I would step in and show him how it was done. Lance shot me off the ropes and I hit them with authority, running like a juggernaught straight into his elbow. I threw myself back as fast as I could and took my first bump since the Attitude Adjustment from Cena two years earlier.
It almost killed me.
My body threatened to shatter into a million pieces like a frozen T-1000 and my head wanted to explode like a thirteen-year-old’s wet dream. I lay on the mat, not wanting to let the young boys know that the mighty Chris Jericho had almost taken a dumpski in his spandex. Thankfully the next bump wasn’t quite as bad (I just peed myself), and the one after that felt almost normal. Then after the class ended, Lance and I wrestled a ten-minute match with Lance calling, and I felt my (stuck) mojo begin to return.
Lance helped me regain my confidence in 2007 the same way he helped me find it in 1990, and I can’t thank him enough for both.
One of the things that was missing from my first run in the WWE was an explosive finish that I could hit from out of nowhere, à la the Stone Cold Stunner or the RKO. The Walls was a submission move and the Lionsault took too long to set up. I needed something new.
After some intense thought I came up with a move I’d never seen, a bulldog into a DDT-type maneuver that I wanted to call the Boomstick (a homage to Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness ). Less than a week later, I almost had an aneurism when I saw WWE Diva Candice Michelle use my new move as her finisher on Raw. Even worse, she named it the “Candy Wrapper.”
What does that even mean?
Back to the drawing board …
A few weeks later I was watching a DVD from an independent company called Ring of Honor. A Japanese wrestler named Marufuji hit this move in the middle of the match where he jumped into the air and grabbed the back of his opponent’s head, driving it into his knees. I jumped out of my chair thinking, “Secret Squirrel! That is the frootest move I have ever seen and I shall now steal it for my new finish!”
I showed it to Lance while we were training and he thought it was perfect.
“What are you going to call it?” he asked.
“The Boomstick!” I replied enthusiastically.
“Boomstick?” Lance deadpanned disgustedly. “That name sucks.”
It was 1990 all over again.
Somewhere in a parallel universe where Lance Storm does not exist, there is a famous wrestler named Jack Action who defeats his opponent every night with the dreaded Boomstick.
The following Monday the first “Save Us” vignette played and the speculation started immediately about who it was referring to. My phone blew up with calls and texts asking if it had anything to do with me. Cena texted me right after it aired and said that if the vignette was indeed signaling my comeback, he would fly to the ring on the head of a dragon to wrestle me when I returned.
The trailer was an amazing fifteen-second riddle that said nothing of note, but was enough to get everyone talking. Some fans thought that I was behind the teaser, but nobody really knew for sure. They searched for clues, watching it repeatedly on YouTube and analyzing it frame by frame.
I became the “Paul Is Dead” of wrestling—people were finding Jericho clues in the computer scramble that didn’t exist. One fan claimed to have seen the date 10-27-03 in the alphabet soup, which was the date I won the Intercontinental Championship for the seventh time. Another found numbers representing a Bible verse relating to the Walls of Jericho, and yet another fan was convinced the word “Jericho” was being played backwards in the audio mix of the vignette. None of those things were programmed intentionally and Adam Penucci and I knew we were onto something good.
For the next few weeks we crammed the teasers with red-herring clues that made people think