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Then fate took over and tangled up my feet, causing me to take one of the best bumps of my career. I hit the steel hard but the fall stopped my momentum, and in true Indiana Jones fashion I came to a screeching halt just as my feet glided over the lip of the stage.

It was one of the worst/best lead singer entrances of all time.

Due to the slick conditions of the surface we were playing on, we were forced to tone down our usual high-energy set. Any movement at all and I once again faced the danger of flipping off the stage like Shaun White on a half-pipe. So we did our Gamma Ray impersonation and stood there glued to the stage. As we sopped our way through the set, I could count each fan one by one and felt like David St. Hubbins playing a blues/jazz odyssey.

I love festival crowds.

CHAPTER 21

The Undisputed Champion of the World

In October 2001, I beat Rob Van Dam to become the number one contender for The Rock’s WCW title, for a match to take place in St. Louis at the next PPV, No Mercy. The WWE and WCW titles were two separate world championships within the same company, the same way that the Raw and Smackdown! world championships are now. The angle leading up to the match saw The Rock claiming that I had never won the big one. He was right—with all of my bragging and bravado, I’d never come through in the clutch. I’d never officially worn the world title around my gorgeous waist.

Rocky and I had great chemistry at this point, and the match at No Mercy was one of our best. We worked so well together in keeping the crowd on the edge of their seats with our various false finishes: I kicked out of the Rock Bottom, Rock escaped from the Walls after I had thwarted the People’s Elbow. No one knew who was going to win until Stephanie distracted Rock and I gave him a face plant onto a steel chair using my new finisher, the Breakdown. (It was an awkward move and I stopped using it a few months later. It has since been resurrected by The Miz, who doesn’t do it half as well as I did.) I watched the ref’s hand smack the mat three times and just like that I was the World Champion, and unlike my tainted victory in State College, this one was for real. The irony that I had to leave WCW and come to the WWE in order to become WCW Champion wasn’t lost on me.

WWE.com interviewed me after the match and asked me if there was anything I’d like to say as the new World Champion.

“Yeah, I’d like to tell Eric Bischoff to fuck off. And you can print that.”

It wasn’t the classiest of statements, but I felt such vindication. And I was still angry at Bischoff, as I’d heard after I left WCW that he had told people that Vince wouldn’t know what to do with me and I would be a colossal failure in the WWE. Now that I was wearing Bischoff’s own title in Vince’s company, I wanted to shove it right down his throat. But instead of telling Eric to fuck off, I should’ve thanked him—after all, if he hadn’t let me leave WCW, I never would have ended up as WCW Champion.

I was only the champ for a few weeks when Rock and I had a rematch for the title on Raw. The second match was almost as good as the first, despite being hindered by lack of time. We were the last segment on the show, and as we were building up to the finish we were told that we only had three minutes left until Raw went drop dead off the air. The only way to make the deadline was to rush through to the finish (which saw Rocky regain the title after surprising me with a rollup) and rush through the aftermath (where I attacked him with a chair to gain revenge). The problem was I panicked when the ref gave me the time cue, and instead of waiting for Rock to set himself up so I could smash him in the back, I pulled a complete rookie mistake and carelessly hit him on the side. He recoiled and held his arm in pain, and I hit him again in the back as the show went off the air.

I was embarrassed at my faux pas, because instead of protecting my opponent like I was taught, I’d carelessly swung the chair with no regard for his well-being. It