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This is a mockup for a Y2J soccer jersey. The name of the fictitious team was the Jericho Reign, but I liked the Bad Mama Jamas. I gave myself that moniker, not realizing that it’s slang for a hot chick.

The show started with me coming out to insult Vince and Stephanie: “Vince, the fact that you have a big ego is simply a cover for the fact that you have a small penis.” After Vince told me to watch my language so as to preserve Stephanie’s honor, I retorted with, “The only thing Stephanie knows about honor is jump on her and stay on her !” (Thanks to Jani Lane for that one.)

The McMahons were furious, and to exact revenge they booked me in a gauntlet of three matches. First I beat Big Show via count-out, then I beat Kurt Angle with the Walls of Jericho. The third match was against Benoit with HHH as the special referee. The match ended when HHH screwed me, allowing Benoit to win. But I had delivered three good performances and carried the show successfully on my massive back. Vince had given me the ball and I took off with it, runnin’ all the way back to Saskatoon.

CHAPTER 9

Moongoose and the Diceman

With the advance Fozzy got from Megaforce, we booked a studio in Atlanta and started recording our first record. I had zero studio experience, and the first song we decided to do was “Riding on the Wind” by Judas Priest.

Nothing like breaking your vocal recording cherry with a Rob Halford song.

Before the very first take, I thought I was a pretty good singer. After listening to said take, I realized I was not. Singing in the studio was the equivalent of warbling in the shower and recording it in Dolby. You could hear every little pop, ping, and bad note emanating from my throat, warts and all. And my voice had more warts than Lemmy at that point.

It took me a while to get into the groove of what I wanted to do and to figure out just how to do it. It’s not that I couldn’t sing, but I was unpolished and didn’t really know what I was doing. One look at Rich’s face as he sat behind the mixing board told me I wasn’t delivering the goods on “Riding on the Wind” the way we both hoped I would. But I improved as the sessions went on, and the last four or five songs we recorded, including Iron Maiden’s “The Prisoner,” Krokus’s “Eat the Rich,” and Motley Crue’s “Live Wire,” turned out really good. We brought in a local musician named Butch Walker to play guitar and sing on Ozzy’s “Over the Mountain.” A few years later Butch became one of the biggest producers in the country, boasting Avril Lavigne, Weezer, and Katy Perry on his résumé. We rounded out the album with two originals, “End of Days” and “Feel the Burn,” to give the fans an idea of how Fozzy sounded now that we had returned from our innocent exile. When the sessions were done, we ended up with a pretty good first effort that we simply entitled Fozzy.

In the studio recording the first Fozzy album. I might look like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t.

A graphic artist designed our logo and we took photos with a bigwig New York City photographer named Clay Patrick McBride for the cover. We had everything going for us—aside from the fact that we were wearing wigs and playing cover songs.

(Embarrassed Author’s Note: We buried “Riding on the Wind” at the end of the record and I still hate listening to it to this day.)

The WWE wanted to get behind us by signing us to their brandnew music division, Smackdown Records. But I didn’t want to place the band in the hands of the company. For better or for worse, I had a vision for what I wanted Fozzy to be and I wanted to build it on my own. But the WWE still supported Fozzy as much as they could and decided to do a feature on us for the Saturday morning Superstars show.

The piece started with me as Chris Jericho acting like a crazed fanboy, gushing at how excited I was for my favorite band to return to the States. “I’m ecstatic that the best band ever has returned from Japan after all these years to finally reclaim their glory! I’m a huge Moongoose McQueen fan—my look, my act, it’s all taken from