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46. Benoit

47. The Paul Is Dead of Wrestling

Acknowledgments

Bonus Acknowledgments

Copyright

Introduction

The two dark shapes stared menacingly at me from the shadows of my closet.

I stared back at them the way a recovering amnesiac might look at himself in the mirror. I vaguely recognized what I was seeing but couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

I knew I had seen them before; at one point they were my closest friends. I had been through wars, suffered my greatest losses, and enjoyed my biggest successes with them by my side.

But I hadn’t seen them in over two years and wasn’t quite sure what to say.

From the looks of them, they had seen better days. They were covered in dust, their once shiny exteriors reduced to a lackluster hue. Their eyeholes were coated thinly with rust just like I was, which was the reason I had traveled to the wilds of the back of my closet to rescue them.

I was going back to war and needed my closest companions by my side. I couldn’t trust any others to do the job they could do. They were the best in the business at what they did, and I couldn’t return without them.

I reached up and slowly grabbed my black patent leather wrestling boots off the shelf.

As I packed them in my bag, along with a pair of knee pads and some workout clothes, I wondered what it would be like to lace them up again. I would find out soon enough, as I was flying out later that day to Lance Storm’s wrestling school in Calgary to get reacquainted with another old friend of mine—the ring.

I had been preparing for my return to the WWE for three months and it didn’t seem like it had been two years since I’d been gone. It didn’t seem like eight years since I’d debuted there either. It felt like only yesterday that I was standing in the Gorilla position at the All-state Arena in Chicago, as the clock ticked down to zero …

CHAPTER 1

Petulant Pansy

When I stepped out into the bright arena light from the darkness of the Gorilla position, I had only two things on my mind: Judy Garland and my promo segment.

I now knew how Dorothy felt when she escaped out of the black-and-white monotony of Kansas into the garish colorful wonderland of Oz. I could relate because I was also escaping, from the bland world of WCW into the glimmering land of opportunity that was the WWE.

As soon as I breached the curtain and interrupted The Rock mid-promo, the crowd response was unbelievable. jericho signs were everywhere and people were jumping up and down with huge smiles on their faces, ecstatic that it was me that was the big surprise at the end of the countdown and not the return of the Gobbledy Gooker.

It seemed that half of the arena had been sent personal invitations from Vince McMahon himself alerting them to the fact that Jericho was appearing tonight. I hadn’t really known what to expect from the crowd, but the moment I heard their reaction I knew that I had made the right decision in leaving WCW. Due to the buildup of my debut, I was already a bigger star in WWE after thirty seconds than I had been in WCW after three years.

I had been planning this moment for months and knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had seen Michael Jackson in concert in 1993 in Mexico City and had never forgotten the monumental entrance he made. He propelled up from underneath the stage and froze with his back to the crowd and his arms in a crucifix position for what seemed for hours as the crowd went nuts with anticipation. He didn’t rush the moment or move a muscle. He just stood as stiff as a statue and took his sweet time before turning around and revealing himself. I wanted to do the same thing for my debut. So I stood with my back to the crowd in a Jesus Christ pose and let the crowd rumble. Even though the Titantron read jericho in ten-foot-high letters, it wasn’t until I spun around and people saw my face that they really exploded.

I turned with a Paul Stanley pout on my face, although a shit-eating grin might have been more apropos. I surveyed the crowd, lifted the mic to my mouth, and bellowed, “Welcome