When I walked into the room I didn't recognize the frightened person with the swollen face lying there and I thought I was in the wrong room. Then I realized that the face belonged to my mother. She gave me a faint pencil line of a smile and I completely fell apart. All of the hard work that I'd done, my dream of making it into the WWF instantly evaporated when I saw her in that bed. My number one priority was now my mother and I didn't give a damn about anything else. I sincerely hope that none of you sharing this with me right now will ever experience the feeling of seeing one of your dearest loved ones lying motionless in a hospital bed, with a medical halo screwed into their head so tight that you can see the drops of plasma (not blood) creeping down their waxen forehead.

I rubbed my hand along her cheek since it was one of the only places that she still had feeling and she looked up at me with another wan smile. But it didn't mask the sheer terror in her eyes.

I left the room after a few minutes, in order to compose myself and to decide how I was going to murder Danny. I wanted to kill him and and his kids. I'm not exaggerating. A policeman waiting for me in the hallway saw death in my eyes and as I walked by, he stopped me. He was a big man with a thick mustache and I sensed that he wasn't one to mess with. I also sensed that he wanted to help me. his kids. I'm not exaggerating. A policeman waiting for me in the hallway saw death in my eyes and as I walked by, he stopped me. He was a big man with a thick mustache and I sensed that he wasn't one to mess with. I also sensed that he wanted to help me.

He very deliberately said to me, "I'm sorry about your mother, but if you touch this guy, you're going to jail. If you do what you're thinking about doing, it's going to be the end of three lives: his, yours, and your mom's."

I didn't quite register what he was saying. He was talking like there was a choice. But there was no choice. I had to end him.

"The law will-"

I stopped him and said, "Fuck the law. I'm going to kill him."

What he said next probably saved Danny's life...and mine as well.

"If you do, you'll go to jail and then your life will be over. Do you want to go to jail at nineteen? Think about it, it's not worth it. Your life would be over before it even started and that would make your mom's life even harder and unhappier than it is right now."

In the back of my head a little worm of rational thought began to crawl through my brain. What the cop said made sense. As much as I wanted to call some of my Hell's Angel friends and organize a little party, I started comprehending that it wouldn't change a thing. My mom would still be severely injured and my life would end up in shambles. How could I help her if I had to spend the rest of my life in prison? I knew that wasn't what God wanted out of my life either.

Over the next few days the reality of the situation hit me. I was scared that she was going to die but I began to think how hard her life would be if she didn't. I held on to the hope that she would start to move her arms, her legs, a finger, anything. Every night when I went to sleep I prayed that something would improve and every morning when I woke up nothing had.

But every day when I went to see her, she was incredibly strong and never once broke down in front of me. Her attitude began to rub off on me, and I stopped breaking down in front of her. This was the situation; it wasn't going to change and it was time to deal with it. I'd been having a pity party of my own, but that ended pretty quickly when I saw how mentally tough my mom was being.

I was a mental mess though. I'd just gotten confirmation that my first match had been booked in Alberta a few weeks later, yet there was no way I was going to leave my mom.

I had already begun to make plans to move back to Winnipeg. But when she gained enough strength to have a conversation with me, one of the first things she said was, "I don't want you to change anything. I want you to continue doing what you're doing. You have a dream and you're so close to making it happen. I'm not your responsibility."

When I protested, she said, "You've worked too hard and I'm not going to spoil this for you. I'm proud of you and I want you to do this and be the best that you can be!"

As broken-down as her body was, her mental drive and iron will were stronger than ever. If she'd asked me, I would've moved home in a second, but that wasn't the way she wanted it.

Even though my dad was a hard-nosed NHL tough guy, I think I got most of my mental toughness from my mom. She lived as a quadriplegic for fifteen years and during that time she went through enough trials and tribulations for fifteen people, yet she never gave up or stopped fighting. When she gave me her blessing to continue on with wrestling, there was no way on God's green earth I was going to let her down. Her iron will become my iron will and failure was no longer an option.

I had to make it big for her.

CHAPTER 9.

THE PIED PIPER OF PONOKA.

When I got back to Calgary, I knew it was where I was supposed to be. When I'd seen all of my old friends back in the Peg, I realized how much I'd grown and changed as a person. Now that I had something to believe in, there was no turning back.

October 2, 1990 (just over a month before my twentieth birthday), was the day of my first match, and it was rapidly approaching. Lance, Victor, and I had been booked to make our professional wrestling debut with the Canadian Wrestling Connection, which was owned and promoted by none other than the CWC champ himself, Bob "The Judge" Puppets.

Puppets was notorious for being a terrible promoter. He never advertised his shows, and most of them bombed like a Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez movie. He once promoted a show at a college in Rimby, Alberta, on the same night as the homecoming free beer bash. Final total: Free Beer Bash-1000 tickets sold, Puppets Show-seven tickets sold. I guess those seven people were on the wagon...or nerds.

But Puppets's promoting track record meant nothing to us because we had a match to prepare for and names to decide on. Since Dr. Love had already solved his name problem, only Lance and I were still struggling.

We all agreed that Puppets's Rob Benoit idea was lame and I decided that Christian Chris Irvine wasn't flashy enough, so I was leaning toward my new choice of JACK ACTION. Jack Action was perfect and I had already worked out the most important part of any name: how to sign my autograph. Paul Stanley from Kiss signed his name with a star at the end of his Y and I ripped him off by signing a star at the end of my N. Hey, it was better than the X that I signed for the Ranger fans who wanted my autograph just for being Ted Irvine's son when I was four years old!

Lance, however, didn't think that Jack Action was the moneymaking merchandising machine that I did and he told me so.

"I saw you autographing your notebook as Jack Action and you can't call yourself that. It's a terrible name. It sucks." Always the diplomat, that Lance.

I denied old Jack quicker than Peter denied Jesus and said, "I know Jack Action is stupid. I was just messing around." Even though I thought the name was amazing, Lance's typical bluntness had killed the Action Man forever.

Then I experimented with different variations of the last name Skywalker. I thought Shawn Skywalker would be cool but I didn't want my name to be too much like Shawn Michaels. I had already stolen his look, his costume, and his canary yellow hair, so taking his name too would've been a bit much. I tried to think of other decent S names to match Skywalker. Shane Skywalker? Seamus Skywalker? Shakira Skywalker? Nothing fit.

Then I remembered a name that I'd flirted with when I was trying to go the Christian route... Jericho. There was a lame comic book character named Jericho and a great record by the German metal band Helloween named The Walls of Jericho The Walls of Jericho and I thought it sounded cool. I felt I might have something with Chris Jericho. and I thought it sounded cool. I felt I might have something with Chris Jericho.

I was nervous about my choice because choosing a name is like choosing the side of the bed in a relationship-once you pick one, you're stuck for life. And the situation got more stressful when it came time to pronounce my new moniker to Lance, the great communicator.

So I took a deep breath and announced that my name was going to be Chris Jericho. Surprisingly, Ed and Lance smiled and said it had a nice ring to it. I was proud of my marketing genius and decided to give myself a hero cookie. Lance proclaimed that he would now be known as Lance T. Storm. Ed pointed out that the T. was his idea and stood for THUNDER...as if it could've stood for anything else. From the look on Ed's face you would've thought he'd just discovered the cure for fucking cancer, but whatever.

However, Ed also had a name idea for me. He was going to call me Cowboy Chris Jericho from Casper, Wyoming. I kept a poker face as my throat swelled like an erection. I didn't like country music, I didn't like cowboys, and I sure as hell didn't like Casper, Wyoming! (Now that I've been there, I'd like to say that Casper is a nice town filled with nice people.) "You're going to be Cowboy Chris Jericho. You'll come to the ring with chaps and a cowboy hat." What, no lasso?

I'd gone from Vince Neil to the Village People in the space of two minutes.

I was irate when I spoke to Bret Como, who I'd met at the Hart camp, and told him Ed's idea. But he'd been around a bit and gave me some advice. "Just don't do it," he said.

Just don't do it...words of wisdom! I didn't realize that I had a choice.

So I told Ed, "I just don't feel comfortable with it. It's not me and I don't want to do it." His reaction proved that Ed really hadn't been around the wrestling business much. If I was in charge with fifteen years experience under my belt and some punk kid with ZERO matches under his belt said no to one of my suggestions, I would've fired him on the spot. Or I would've turned him into the most ridiculous cowboy of all time; I'm talking Dumb and Dumber Dumb and Dumber cowboy hat, assless chaps, the works. Instead, Ed respected my wishes. cowboy hat, assless chaps, the works. Instead, Ed respected my wishes.

Sort of.

Ed and Puppets had decided that for our first match Lance and I would work against each other and Victor wouldn't wrestle, but would serve as Lee Barachie's manager. Vic wanted to save the moneymaking Dr. Love gimmick for his wrestling debut and was stumped in trying to think of a manager's name. I saw his driver's license and noticed that his full given name was Victor Benson Cyril DeWilde. Just like Rick Fliehr and Rick Roode, Vic had been born with the ultimate wrestling name. So he got himself a suit and a neck brace (which he wore for no apparent reason) and became Lee Barachie's stuck-up, snotty manager Benson Cyril.

Now that we had solved the name problem, the next order of business was to get actual wrestling boots, as simple tennis shoes wouldn't suffice any longer. I was looking forward to getting a pair of the shiny, patent leather beauties that all of my favorites wore. Instead Ed took us to a cobbler friend who made us boots out of a flimsy soft leather that flipped and flopped all over the place. I had to put rolled-up magazines inside just to keep them standing straight up. I'd also made the controversial decision to order black boots instead of white, as my idea was to have a yellow and black costume like Stryper, who were famous for their yellow and black threads.

"You can't have black boots," Ed said, horrified. "You're going to be a good guy, a babyface. If you walk to the ring wearing black boots, everyone is going to think you're a bad guy and boo you."

It was an old-time tradition that babyfaces wore white, but white didn't fit my gimmick, man! Once again, I held my ground and told Ed that I was going with the black boots. I hadn't even had my first match, but I was already a pain in the ass for my boss. This was a trend that would continue for most of my career.

After a short debate Ed eventually gave in again. "Okay, wear black boots, but don't blame me if people think you're a big heel." I thought if I did my job and played my cards right, the people would cheer for me if I had frozen turkeys on my feet. I was right.

Even though my costume was designed, I was having a problem finding someone who could actually make it for me. Then Vic told me that he'd met a wrestler named Lenny St. Clair whose mom made wrestling tights. They had started hanging out together when Lenny was working the night shift at the Petro Can. I had seen Lenny St. Clair wrestling on TV, so I was confused as to why he worked at a gas station. He was a television wrestler, so didn't that mean he was too rich and successful for a menial job? The realities of the wrestling biz continued to seep in.

Lenny's mom was very good at her job and he had the rep around Calgary for having great wrestling outfits. While most of the local guys wore the same style of tights with lightning bolts on the legs and stars on the ass, Lenny sported a plethora (great word) of different-colored, intricately designed costumes with matching ring jackets. So I bought a yard of yellow and black spandex and his mom made me a pair of black and yellow tights with black and yellow frills and wristbands to match. Voil8212;Colorful Chris Jericho was ready for business.

Our first match was in the town of Ponoka, Alberta, which was famous for its mental institution. The irony that I started my wrestling career only miles away from an insane asylum has not been lost, believe me.

My stomach was a butterfly cage and my heart a floating bobber in my chest as we pulled up to the Moose Hall (which to me might as well have been Madison Square Garden), the venue where Jeric-History would be made. I walked through the banquet hall, past the ring, and up a flight of stairs into the dressing room. I read through the program, which to my chagrin still had me listed as Cowboy Chris Jericho from Casper, Wyoming. I guess being a cowboy in name only was much better than actually having to wear a bandolier and a Stetson.

I suited up in my spandex armor, laced up my EVIL black boots, and taped up my wrists just because everyone else was doing it. Ed had decided that Lance and I would do a ten-minute Broadway, and we'd been working on the match for weeks. Even though I had a good idea of what we were going to do, I started feeling nauseous and nervous as I heard the crowd filing into the hall.

The first match on the show was Como versus Brad Young. They worked together often and had a really good match.

After they were finished, the moment of truth arrived. I said a quick prayer as the strains of Poison's "Unskinny Bop" played through the muffled banquet hall speakers. I took a final deep breath and walked out of the dressing room into the arena/room.

Thousands...hundreds...dozens of indifferent faces looked up the staircase at the canary-haired, bumblebee-looking wannabe with the maniacal black boots. There were around 100 fans in the place, which was a huge crowd for a Puppets show and for a teenager having his first match. Lance was already in the ring wearing a pink (there's that color again) singlet, and Ed was our referee. The bell rung, we locked up, and suddenly Chris Irvine was possessed by CHRIS JERICHO.

The nervousness was gone, replaced with the confidence to entertain and succeed. I began wrestling the match just as I had been taught for the last three months. Lance and I worked solidly and believably, incorporating unique moves that no one else on the card was doing. After going through our routine for about five minutes, I noticed that there was actually a crowd watching us!

I had just dropped a knee on Lance's arm when a kid in the crowd said, "Do it again!"

Surprised that someone was paying attention, I searched the crowd for my biggest fan. When I saw a kid smiling at me, I looked at him and said, "All right bud, this one's for you!" and dropped another knee. Someone else yelled for me to do it again so I did. My shameless pandering started paying off as the fans clapped and cheered me on. I responded by clapping my hands in time, which the crowd copied in unison. I'd become the Pied Piper of Ponoka and the crowd ate up my every move.

The match ended after ten minutes and the crowd voiced their disapproval when it was announced as a draw. We shook hands and I walked out of the ring, high fiving all the kids and feeling like the King of the World. Lance was waiting for me in the dressing room and we exchanged hugs and babbled excitedly about our success, until we noticed the other guys staring at us. We'd been taught that one of the unwritten rules of wrestling was never to brag or argue about a match in public. So we went into the bathroom and Lance said excitedly, "You were like Hulk Hogan out there, man!" In retrospect, there were probably like ten people cheering, but it didn't matter. The important thing was that our first match had gone off without a hitch and turned out pretty good. Lance still claims that it was the best match on the show.

Later on that night we also worked in a battle royal, which Lance won. It kind of bothered me that he got to win, but I took solace in the fact that I was the new Hulk Hogan, not him.

After the show, Puppets gave me a white envelope with JERICO written on it. The fact that he'd left out the H in my name was forgiven when I opened the envelope and pulled out a ten and a twenty. Thirty bucks! I used to make forty bucks a week for eight hours' work at the deli and here I'd made almost the same for ten minutes' work. I couldn't believe how much money I'd just made for something that I loved to do.

I was an official working wrestler and it felt amazing.

CHAPTER 10.

HOW TO DRINK LIKE A WRESTLER.

My next match at the Moose Hall about a month later wasn't quite as amazing. I was in a tag team match and was booked to suffer my first defeat. Nobody likes to lose when they first start out and I was no exception, but if I was told to lose to a turtle I would've done it. Instead I was involved in one of the dumbest finishes of all time. Both my partner and the referee went down and I was attacked by my two opponents, their manager, Benson Cyril, and their bodyguard, Big Titan. But the mighty Chris Jericho could not be beaten by four men, so they pulled out a bottle of ETHER. The idea was they would pour some on a cloth, hold it over my mouth, and pin me when I passed out. The kicker was they filled the bottle with rubbing alcohol. I was huffing and puffing after a brutally bad match, when Titan held the cloth soaked in rubbing alcohol over my face. I could see the little birdies circling around my head as my brain melted. They used the alcohol, they explained, so if the people in the front row smelled it, they would know it was real. Weren't they supposed to be using ether? Does rubbing alcohol even smell like ether? I'm confused...

Meanwhile, later in the show Lance beat Bob Puppets to become the CWC champion in his first month of wrestling. Life just isn't fair sometimes.

Our next match was the following week in a Quonset (look it up) in Strathmore, Alberta, another small town near Calgary. The promoter was a young guy named Fred Jung and he had booked Lance and me as a team named Sudden Impact. Fred's show was a little more organized and show business gimmicky than Bob's was, featuring guys with names like Luscious Bubbles, Earthquake Muldoon, and the Black Mamba. Also booked on the show in his debut was Dr. Love! Vic wore a pair of spandex tights with the sides of the legs cut out and replaced with mesh, which accentuated his chicken legs and made him look absolutely flabulous. He faced the Kaos Kid, Fred Jung, and I'll give you two guesses who was booked to win.

Sudden Impact's first match as a team was also our first abortion. In wrestling vernacular the term abortion means a shit match and, believe me, this match was a double helping of steaming shit.

First, the tape deck played my Poison tape backward and we had to walk to the ring to a loopy, psychedelic mishmash of spaceship noises. Then our opponents Steve Gillespie and the Goto Hills Savage himself, Ed Langley, led us through the most nonsensical match of my career, consisting of them beating us up and then beating us up some more. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they beat us up. Finally Ed told me to do a big comeback and just as I got started, he nailed me right in the plums. In camp we were taught that if you got hit with a nut shot you were done, so I played dead while he kept trying to stand me up. Then he said, "Get up! That wasn't a nut shot...it was an inner thigh shot!"

A nut shot in wrestling IS an inner thigh shot. How was I supposed to tell the difference? Not to mention, how was a shot to the inside of my leg supposed to hurt me? How was I supposed to react? "Oww help me, my inner thigh is broke..."

The night of comedy didn't end there. Lance, Victor, and I had volunteered to drive the ring back to Calgary and on our way we blew out a tire and got lost, which turned the ninety-minute journey into an eight-hour marathon. In the course of one week I had experienced the yin and the yang of the wrestling business.

Fred Jung was maybe twenty-two years old and looked like the love child of Jay Mohr and Sandy Duncan. He badly wanted to be a famous promoter and had two of the key skills required to succeed as one. He was a smooth talker and a convincing liar.

But Fred did have legitimate connections with a Japanese company named Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling. FMW was a new company that focused on the table-breaking, barbed-wire-using bloody style that would become known as Garbage Wrestling. Fred used his connection as blackmail by telling all of the local wrestlers that if you wanted to work in Japan, you weren't allowed to work for anyone but him. That was all fine and dandy except for the fact that Fred didn't run any shows. But getting the chance to wrestle in Japan was a big deal due to the prestige and respect shown toward the sport in the country. All the guys in Calgary wanted to go because the crowds were bigger, the style was more technical, and the money was better. Making it in Japan also wasn't as contingent on size as it was in North America and smaller guys that could really wrestle had a better chance of becoming huge stars, like I'd heard Eddy Guerrero and Chris Benoit had done.

When Fred booked Big Titan in Japan his credibility went through the roof. But he was still hard to trust. He ran a crappy little wrestling show on Calgary cable access that he refused to let Sudden Impact wrestle on, because he claimed that Vince McMahon watched the tapes every week and would steal us away. In reality, he just didn't want us to outshine the rest of his rotten roster.

The bullshit continued flowing like wine when he showed us a signed contract for Big Titan that he'd received from Ted Turner's WCW. The contract was a typewritten piece of paper with a photocopied WCW logo on top, which he had obviously cut out of a magazine. It looked so bush-league but I kept my mouth shut and nodded approvingly because Titan had gone to Japan and I hadn't. After six more months of putting up with Fred's bullshit, I eventually got my chance. But I got tired of waiting for my turn and kept hustling for work in the meantime.

Lance was the first wrestling friend I met, but Bret Como was the first wrestling friend I met that I had a lot in common with. Bret had a laid-back attitude, long hair, and appreciation for heavy metal and we got along well and hung out frequently. Through him, I met Mike Lozanski, who I'd seen wrestling on TV in Winnipeg. Like the Puppetses and the Langleys, Mike was quite a talker but unlike them he was also a doer. To me he might as well have been Marco Polo, as he'd traveled to New Zealand, California, Mexico, and the Maritimes. With his friendly personality and award-winning smile, he'd made a lot of connections and it was through those contacts that I got booked for my first match outside Alberta.

When Mike told me that he could get me on a show in British Columbia, I asked him if he could get Lance booked too. Despite the rivalry between us, he was my partner and I didn't want to leave him out. But Mike laughed and said, "You're not going to be a tag team forever. You have to take the bookings when you can and there's only one slot open on this show. Do you want it or not?"

I felt bad telling Lance but to my surprise he had no problem with it. He understood that you couldn't be picky about bookings and gave me his blessing. So with an extra 100 bucks in my pocket that Jerry Palko insisted on giving me because I was broke, I packed my bag and left on my first wrestling road trip.

Como, Mike, and I began driving the fourteen hours to Vancouver. When I was a kid and we traveled long distances during family vacations, we'd stop for the night at eight and get a hotel room. Much to my chagrin, a wrestling road trip didn't work that way. We left at 8 P.M P.M. and drove all through the night, stopping at dawn when we arrived. I hated traveling at night because I couldn't sleep sitting in the car. Now I can sleep underneath the hood but back then I needed my wittle beddie-weddie.

We drove through the mountains on winding roads with 300-foot drops on either side, watched diligently for deer, and arrived in the early morning. We stayed at the house of a seasoned vet named Tim Flowers, and over the next few days he taught me some very important lessons about the wrestling biz. More specifically, he taught me how to drink like a wrestler. He took us to a bar and bought rounds of drinks for everybody. When it came time for the second round, I still hadn't finished my first one and that didn't fly very well. In his world, you finished your drink as soon as you got it in preparation for the next one. It was also very important to have a drink in your hands at all times even if you weren't drinking it, because if you did nobody bothered you. If you didn't, you became a target.

I learned to keep my thumb on the top of the beer bottle at all times, because there were always guys around who thought it was funny to spike your drink with Halcion pills. After you fell asleep from them, you would be the recipient of a free eyebrow shaving and bonus Lloyd Christmas haircut. But I was a fast learner and I'm proud to say that after fifteen years of wrestling, I still have the same eyebrows I had when I was soiling my diapers.

Wrestling is a hierarchy and the guys on top dictate what to do to the guys on the bottom. There is no specific rulebook issued to rookies explaining wrestling etiquette, but you'd better figure out the rules quickly and pick them up fast or you'll be weeded out. Rule number one is you have to drink with the boys. If you didn't feel like drinking, you poured some water into a beer bottle and carried it around as if you were. As long as you were smart about it, nobody noticed or cared.

The match itself was in Agassiz, British Columbia, where the movie First Blood First Blood was filmed and "Sasquatch Crossing" signs were posted on the road. The promoter asked my opponent and me to do a ten-minute Broadway but my opponent was greener than I was and asked, "What do you mean, you want us to act it out?" The promoter sent the guy packing and I worked with Como instead for a cool twenty bucks. was filmed and "Sasquatch Crossing" signs were posted on the road. The promoter asked my opponent and me to do a ten-minute Broadway but my opponent was greener than I was and asked, "What do you mean, you want us to act it out?" The promoter sent the guy packing and I worked with Como instead for a cool twenty bucks.

Even though I was rolling in the dough from wrestling, I decided to supplement my income by becoming a stand-up comedian. I went to an open mike night at Yuk-Yuk's comedy club and did a set based on what the golden topping on movie popcorn REALLY was. It turned out I was the only one in the club who thought that comparing golden topping with golden showers was hilarious.

After accepting that the world wasn't ready for my comedic genius, I got a job working at a new family fitness center in Okotoks. I had been training in the Palkos' barn like Stallone in Rocky IV Rocky IV, so the arrival of the new gym not only brought in extra cash but allowed me to again build muscle with weights, not haystacks.

The gym was also the perfect place to meet girls. It became the hot place for all the high school kids to hang out and the fact I was the muscular wrestler working the front desk made me the Fonz. Girls like the Fonz. After not meeting anyone all summer, I now had teenage girls flirting and hanging all over me. Being nineteen years old with a badass car (or just a bad one), I had become the proverbial magnet of the chicks. If you've ever seen the Three's Company Three's Company episode where Jack has three different dates at the same restaurant and has to run himself ragged so that none of them finds out about the other ones, you'll get an idea of what I had to deal with. There was a certain hot tub room that was a favorite rendezvous spot of mine, and let me take this opportunity to say, Thank goodness for chlorine. episode where Jack has three different dates at the same restaurant and has to run himself ragged so that none of them finds out about the other ones, you'll get an idea of what I had to deal with. There was a certain hot tub room that was a favorite rendezvous spot of mine, and let me take this opportunity to say, Thank goodness for chlorine.

The girls may have dug me, but the local Popo did not. One John Cleeselooking, Inspector Clouseausounding cop in particular named Dan Powers was always looking for ways to mess with me. He pulled me over for going the speed limit ("It's so suspicious") and watched me buy lunch at the Petro Canada just to make sure "I wasn't stealing anything."

One evening, a few older ladies that I didn't recognize came into the gym. I chatted for a few minutes with each of them and then they left. The next day, Powers called me at the Palkos' and told me to come down to the station immediately. When I arrived, Cleese Clouseau proceeded to tell me that there'd been a rash of obscene phone calls in town and guess who he was accusing? He'd told the victims that I was the guilty party and sent them to the gym to speak with me to clarify it. The power of suggestion is a tremendous thing, my friends. If the Pope said you would burst into an order of onion rings if you read this book, would you have placed your filthy hands on this tome so quickly?

When he called Jerry Palko to check our phone bills, Jerry told him to either get a search warrant or leave us both alone. The lack of evidence soured Powers and that was the last time I ever had any problems with him or his mustache. I resumed making calls later that night.

CHAPTER 11.

PROPER CRACK-BUYING ETIQUETTE.

After the Powers debacle, I welcomed the opportunity to take another road trip. This time to Wichita, Kansas, of all places. Mike had established contact with a promoter named Christopher Love (no relation to the illustrious Dr. Love), who was starting up a promotion in the central states. He'd gotten himself booked and had convinced Love to give Como and me shots as well. So the 1-2-3 Stooges got into Mike's car and began the drive from Calgary to Wichita under standard wrestling driving rules of course.

Being the rookie, it was my job to drive all night and after a few hours I fell asleep at the wheel. I opened my eyes just in time to see the hood of the car nuzzling with the ass end of a four-wheel-drive. I slammed on the brakes and smelled the rubber burning as we skidded to a stop on the side of the highway. Once again I became John Candy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, as the guys woke up and angrily asked if I was going to keep driving. as the guys woke up and angrily asked if I was going to keep driving.