Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [173]
After six weeks Vince decided he wanted to hold off my return even longer to make it as impactful as possible. I was getting paid, so it didn’t bother me even though fans had pretty much figured out that I was the one behind the bits and were chanting my name at shows.
When Cena tore his pectoral muscle and wasn’t able to wrestle Randy Orton at No Mercy in Chicago, Vince had to announce a replacement on the PPV. He got in the ring and told the fans, “I always give you people what you want, and I’m going to give that to you tonight.”
The arena exploded with “Y2J” chants that were so loud they threw old Vincenzo off his game, forcing him to acknowledge them.
He looked like someone had just pissed on his toupee as he said, “Well, I’m not going to give you that.”
To fuel the speculation, I started posting misleading items on my website to make people guess if my return was ever going to take place. If Raw was taking place in Philadelphia, I would say I was taping VH1’s I Love the 60s in New York City. I wanted to keep the cat in the bag for as long as I could, even though at that point my return was a worse-kept secret than Clay Aikens’s sexuality.
In the three weeks leading up to my return, the clues became more advanced; instead of “Save_Us.222,” the phrase now became “Save_Us.X29.” Despite all the clues the fans had found, this X29 code was the one that gave them the most problems. It was a pattern that was deciphered like this: if you added one letter to each of the characters you would get X + 1 = Y and 9 + 1 = 10. The tenth letter of the alphabet is J. Therefore, “Save_Us.Y2J.”
Wow. After typing that, maybe it is more complicated than I thought. No wonder nobody figured it out. I feel like a real 9-D-17-J!
Finally, to erase any confusion and eliminate any further doubts on when my return would be, the last vignette simply said, “Next week the Second Coming arrives.”
In the two years since I’d left the WWE, I had changed my look considerably. The Y2J that had captured the fans’ imagination was a wildly dressed rock star with multiple earrings and chest-length blond hair—hair that was now cut short. I was wondering how people would react to this new-look Jericho, as I knew how I felt when James Hetfield and Bruce Dickinson cut their hair. It threw me off, and even though nothing had changed about their music ( Load notwithstanding in James’s case), I didn’t relate to them or like them as much. I felt a disconnect toward them and I wondered if my fans would feel the same way about me as a result of my new ’do.
I also wanted to come back with a whole new look wardrobe-wise. I saw Sting on the cover of Rolling Stone (Dr. Hook like a maafaaakaa!), wearing a wifebeater/vest combination that I thought looked really froot. But being Chris Jericho, I couldn’t wear just any vest, so I found a tuxedo shop that specialized in flashy ones and ordered a dozen of them in different colors. I bought a pair of black skintight jeans and black boots to match, and voilà!
The new-look Jericho was complete.
My return was going to take place on the November 19, 2007, edition of Raw from Fort Lauderdale, and I was so nervous that I drove down from Tampa the night before. I wrote a lengthy promo about how I was going to save the WWE just as I had done the first time around in 1999 and spent the better part of the night working on it. I’d contacted Zakk, to record an updated version of my “Break Down the Walls” theme song for my return, but Kevin Dunn didn’t care for it and wasn’t convinced he wanted to use it for my first night in. (He never did use it and I’m one of the only people who’s ever heard it. It’s on my iPod right now.)
There were so many details to go over, but Brian and I had decided that we would protect the secret of my return for as long as possible and keep me from showing