• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Kai continued staring and then gave me an arrogant smirk. He walked away without saying a word. I tried to be nice and he completely blew me off.

Now I wanted revenge.

I went to our backstage tent and called a band meeting. We weren’t sure what kind of reception we’d get from the metal faithful at Bang Your Head, if they would appreciate our homage to the music or crucify us for our costumes. None of us knew for sure but when I told the rest of the band about Hansen’s snub we agreed that our mission for the day was to blow Gamma Ray off the stage.

With that mantra in mind, we watched their set from backstage in order to size up the enemy. They were technically proficient and the audience liked them, but it seemed like they were only one step away from simply sitting down onstage during their entire set. They didn’t move and they didn’t go out of their way to involve the crowd. Big mistake, Gamma Ray—that was Fozzy’s forte.

Hansen mmm-bopped his way to the end of the set and now the shit was on. Our intro music played and I sent out our swinus-inflicted mascot Arthur onstage waving a German flag. It was a standard wrestling trick to get a cheap pop from the audience, but it worked. The crowd erupted when he walked onstage, especially since he had spent the day walking around the grounds handing out Arthur buttons. People who had never heard of Fozzy knew who we were now—or at least who Arthur was.

We ran onstage and I stormed up and down the catwalk screaming at the crowd to go crazy. After Gamma Ray had lulled them into a daze minutes earlier, we woke them up instantly.

We played for forty minutes and tore the house down, especially when we did “Balls to the Wall” by the German band Accept. I felt such power in leading 25,000 people to chant like monks (including a guy in the crowd who was actually dressed as a monk), and as strange as we might have seemed with our wigs and costumes in the United States, in Germany we fit right in. The crowd kept chanting, “Fozzy, Fozzy, Fozzy,” and their relentless energy helped us blow Gamma Ray out of the water.

Mission accomplished: Auf wiedersehen, Kai.

A few weeks later, Heavy Oder Was, one of the biggest metal magazines in Germany, backed up our victory by saying, “Gamma Ray could take some tips from Fozzy about how to work a crowd.” It was quite gratifying to read that we had gained some respect from the German metal community. It wasn’t quite as gratifying to read that Fozzy (or Fotze ) meant “Cunt” in German.

No wonder the crowd wouldn’t stop chanting our name.

CHAPTER 16

Twists and Turns

It was May 2001 and I was once again the Intercontinental Champion. The Rock had taken a temporary leave of absence to film The Scorpion King, while Austin had won the WWE world title by turning heel at WrestleMania X-Seven and began an association with HHH known as the Two-Man Power Trip. The roster lacked top babyfaces to battle them, so it was decided that Benoit and I would get the chance to be the top good guys in the company.

When I arrived at the arena in Oklahoma City for Raw I was approached by a new writer named Pete who sported a chipped tooth and an even chippier Irish accent.

“Top of the morning to ya!” (It was the afternoon.)“You’re having a match for the Intercontinental title against HHH tonight. And guess what? You’re going over!”

His words took me by surprise. I’d never beaten HHH (the State College non-win notwithstanding), and found it interesting that the office was ready to give me the big win.

“Really?” I asked Pete. “So I’m finally going to beat him?”

“No, I’m just kidding! You’re not beating him! In fact, you’re dropping the title to him tonight.” Pete laughed.

I failed to see his humor and sprayed Mace in his eyes.

I snapped out of my daydream and added “Chipping the rest of Irish Pete’s teeth with a crowbar” to my bucket list instead.

I lost the championship to HHH, which meant that the Two-Man Power Trip were now in control of both singles titles. Then a few weeks later they won the tag team titles