Undisputed_ How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps - Chris Jericho [60]
Hunter’s injury meant that there was none of that after that match. The mood was somber when we learned that he’d be out of action for six to eight months. Everybody was in a state of complete lugubriousness and we never got to properly rejoice in the magical night we’d created. As a result I’ll always have bittersweet memories of that match.
With HHH gone, Austin didn’t have a partner against Benoit, and so an unlikely ally stepped in. Vince decided that it would be good heat if Austin teamed with his former nemesis Mr. McMahon, and he was right. It worked out great for me as well, especially when we returned to Calgary for Raw.
I opened the show by cutting a promo about how much of a nerd Vince was, flaming him for his outdated pompadour hairstyle and his tacky suits and showing his infamous performance of “Stand Back” from the ’80s, where he sang and danced worse than William Hung and Master P combined. The crowd was laughing heartily and hanging on my every word when, in a throwback to my debut appearance at MSG, the mic died.
But this was an older, wiser Jericho, one who had killed the Jericho Curse and eaten it Raw (tastes like chicken), and instead of standing there dumbfounded, I threw the mic into the crowd. I yelled that as rich as Vince was, he still couldn’t get me a microphone that worked. Even though the crowd loved my rebel actions, Vince didn’t and asked me later why I’d thrown the mic into the crowd.
“Well, I’ve seen Austin do that before when his mic died.”
Vince replied, “ Steve Austin can throw dead microphones into the crowd. Chris Jericho should just lay his on the ground and wait for another one.”
Stu Hart was at ringside that night, along with various members of his massive family. After the show ended with Benoit putting Austin in the Crippler Crossface submission and me locking Vince in the Walls, we addressed the manic Alberta crowd. I grabbed the mic and said that I had just wrestled my first match in the Saddledome and if it wasn’t for the time I spent training in Calgary I never would’ve made it there. Chris and I continued by thanking Owen Hart and then Stu himself, noting that both of them had made it possible for us to make it in the business. Stu stared straight ahead with a dazed look like he had no idea what was happening as 15,000 Calgarians cheered and chanted his name. But then he slowly stood up and waved at the crowd, showing that he knew exactly what was going on. It was one of the biggest reactions I’ve ever received, and it was nice to come full circle and thank the Hart family in the city where it had all started for me.
When Stu passed away a few years later, the city of Calgary bought his famous house and decided to tear it down. We had a show in Calgary right after he died and Benoit went to pay his respects to the battleground where he and hundreds of others had trained. At his suggestion, I decided to make one last visit of my own to the house and the dungeon that lurked inside. Armed only with a ten-pound weight plate emblazoned with the name HART that Stu handmade himself (Bret had given it to Chris to give to me), I walked up to the front door and knocked. There was no answer and the door was unlocked as usual, so I opened it and yelled, “Hello?”
There was no reply so I walked inside.
The Hart House was huge and old, made creepier by the fact it was totally empty. It reminded me of the house in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and as I inched through the kitchen toward the basement, I half expected a homicidal Leatherface to attack me at any second.
I made my way down a set of creaky stairs into the basement and laid my eyes upon the closest thing to a medieval torture chamber I’d ever seen—the infamous Dungeon.
It looked exactly the same as the last time I’d been in its clutches over a decade ago. It still wasn’t much more than a dingy ring, eight inches off the ground, jammed into the corner of the tiny basement. But this wasn