That's when I found out that Elizondo had booked me at the party to give a speech to the kids on the importance of ECOLOGY. I didn't know anything about Mexico or anything about Spanish and I sure as hell didn't know anything about ecology! I walked on stage and faced a bunch of kids wearing Santa hats staring at me with expectant looks on their faces. They had no clue who I was and were wondering what the hell I was going to say.

So was I.

I walked up to the podium and said "Hola," the only Spanish word I knew. I followed up in English with "We are gathered here today," and it just went downhill from there, as the translator repeated my every word in Spanish. Considering that I had no idea what I was saying I can only imagine what she she was translating my words into. was translating my words into.

"We all know that ecology is very important to the world today. It's very important to love the trees because trees are our friends," I pontificated wisely.

"His mother likes bananas," the translator translated.

The kids stared at me with faces as blank as the Vote For Pedro guy. The parents whispered to each other in the back of the room, probably asking one another, "What is this jack-off talking about?"

I continued: "Make sure that you don't chop the trees down. Don't use a lot of paper, and don't use gas-guzzling cars when you're old enough to drive."

"He worked a match in exchange for a hot dog and an orange juice," the translator continued.

I finished off with a Feliz Navidad, and smiled broadly. A cricket chirped. A tumbleweed blew by. A child picked his nose. I walked off the stage and signed autographs for a mob of six kids. When I got my 600 pesos, I smiled and said thanks to the people in charge. They said the Spanish equivalent of "Whatever" and walked away in silence. I counted the cash and decided if even one of those kids became a future car-pooler, my speech was not in vain.

Our next match was in a small town outside Monterrey called Matamoros. The arena in Matamoros was straight out of the movie Bloodsport Bloodsport: dark and dingy and surrounded by a fence of chicken wire that separated the fans from the ring. During the matches, the fans held on to the chicken wire and pushed it in and out like rabid wolverines. It was a real-life Scorpions video.

The ring was a boxing ring that had absolutely no give and was not made for bumping. My opponent, an American named Fabuloso Blondy, warned me that we wouldn't be able to do much of anything during the match. I figured he was just being lazy and called a hip toss. He ran off the ropes saying "Fuck that," and hip-tossed me instead. When I landed on what felt like concrete, I nearly pooped my pants. No shit. We did nothing but exchange holds after that. It wasn't worth the money we were making to blow out our O rings in this dumpy town. Not to mention that we got ripped off by the promoter anyway.

After the match I was covered in dust and grime from the filthy ring and I wanted to clean up. I changed my mind when I saw that the shower was a garden hose stuck in the back of a toilet tank. A guy had sucked on the end until a lonely flow of water trickled out. I threw up in my mouth a little because even though the water wasn't out of the actual bowl, where I come from toilet water is toilet water.

The biggest star in the country at the time was another Canadian named Vampiro Canadiense. Everywhere you looked you saw the image of the vampire wrestler with the Alice Cooper makeup and the long red and blue braided hair. At his peak he was the Mexican equivalent of Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin. He'd arrived in Mexico just as lucha libre had exploded with increased TV exposure and he had ridden the boom to superstardom. There were Vampiro dolls, T-shirts, comic books, chocolate bars, soap bars, singles bars, everything.

So when it was announced that he was coming to Monterrey to challenge the heavyweight champion, Black Magic, for the title, the city went wild with anticipation.

The Monumental sold out quickly, but on the day of the show Vampiro showed up at the airport on crutches. He had suffered some sort of injury and couldn't work that night. Elizondo needed a suitable replacement and he picked me. It was ironic because when I first arrived in Monterrey, Elizondo had toyed with the idea of calling me Vampiro Americano to try to cash in on Vamp's popularity. A few years later, he gave the name to a Dallas-based wrestler named John Layfield, who went on to become WWE champion JBL.

Black Magic was an American from Florida named Norman Smiley, who was thrilled to be working with another foreigner and was quite responsive to my ideas. I called most of the match even though he was more experienced than me. He ended up holding my tights to win the third fall, but even though he had beaten me, Magic gave me my first great match in Mexico. The fans went loco when I beat him in the first fall and as the match progressed they started to believe that this hot young upstart could win the title. The champ took me to a different level by allowing me to hang with him and I'm still grateful for that. He could've telephoned in his performance against the nobody and sandbagged me but Magic worked his ass off to make me look like a superstar.

When I walked back to the dressing room, Elizondo congratulated me by giving me my pay envelope containing $1,000. It was a Mexican tradition to receive a double payoff for a title match and I was shocked to have made that much money for one match. The next person to congratulate me was Vampiro, but he didn't seem very sincere. Later on at the Cuatro Milpas, he took me aside to give me advice on how to survive in Mexico. He said that all of the Mexican wrestlers were jealous of me and that I couldn't trust anyone.

"But you can trust me. I really want to help you make it here." Then he told me if I wanted to make it big, I needed to start wearing a different outfit.

"I know this country and I know what the people want. If you wore a loincloth, you'd be huge." Aside from the fact that if I wore a loincloth people would know I wasn't that huge, his advice didn't make any sense. If a loincloth was what was needed to make it big in Mexico, than why the fuck wasn't he wearing one? A loincloth would destroy my credibility and make a fool out of me. Maybe that's what he wanted. It seemed that he didn't like the fact that I had rocked the Plaza that night with a great match. As big a star as he was, he was jealous that there was a new kid in town.

I walked over to Mike, who was getting the cold shoulder from Konnan and Love Machine, two other massively popular foreigners who'd worked that night for a rival company. Konnan had long braided cornrows and Love Machine (whose real name was Art Barr) held a cup of chewing tobacco spit in his hand that he-Phbbt-kept adding to constantly. They both grunted a cursory greeting and moved on, ignoring me.

Besides Mike and Magic, was every foreigner in this country a jerk?

At least the natives treated us well, especially the girls. Mike and I were experiencing different female representatives of the fine city on a nightly basis. One night we ended up at a Seor Frog's on the night of the Monterrey Arm Wrestling Championship and, as local celebrities, we got front-row seats. After a grueling tournament a winner was crowned. He turned his attention to the two of us and started babbling in an aggressive manner.

One of the girls informed us that he was issuing an arm wrestling challenge. In the same way that every war in history has started, the girls batted their boobs and my machismo took over. I stepped forward and the patrons of the bar began chanting my name.

As the sounds of "Len!" washed over me, I sat across from the champ and locked grips. This guy didn't know about Scott Norton's secret trick...but I did. I beat that bad boy in about thirty seconds and became the new Arm Wrestling Champion of Monterrey. I was doused in beer by the elated patrons like I'd just won the Stanley Cup. I was given a little tin trophy that said CAMPE, which I gave to one of the girls the next morning.

Despite the available women that were seemingly on twenty-four-hour call, I was still a virgin. I guess I took Paul Stanley's advice about leaving the women behind a little too literally. Don't get me wrong: I'd had my dalliances, but because of my Christian beliefs I hadn't done any full-fledged shagging. But when I met Raquel the temptation was just too much to resist. She was a Modelo girl, which was like a Budweiser girl, and her picture was on posters all over Mexico. She had the classic Latina body, built like J-Lo, with long black hair and a gorgeous face.

I met her at a party after the matches and you could cut the attraction with a knife. It was one of those times when you know it's on from the very first glance. In one of the most awkward situations ever, I invited her back to my hotel where Mike was sleeping in the other bed. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the nervousness, maybe it was the fact that the lights were on and Mike was pretending to sleep only a few feet away, but my first sexual performance lasted all of twenty seconds. It was quite frankly THE worst sexual performance of all time and a real waste because, like I said, Raquel was smoking hot. Here's a few words of wisdom from Uncle J: If the girl you just had sex with for the first time is giggling and patting your shoulder, it's not a good thing. Sorry Raquel-I gave it my best shot.

CHAPTER 16.

THE GOAT BUS.

Shortly after my short (in more ways than one) performance, Mike and I headed back to Calgary for Christmas break and I received a call at the Palkos' from a toymaker I'd met in Monterrey. His company made all of the luchador action figures and he told me that Paco Alonso, the Vince McMahon of Mexico, was interested in hiring me. Mexico City was the big time and wrestling there was a major step up the food chain. I'd hoped to work there from the moment I arrived in Monterrey.

I flew to Mexico City to meet with Paco in his office in Arena Mco, the oldest wrestling arena in the world. He made me a great offer and told me I could work for him as long as I wanted.

He didn't want to call me Len d'Oro, as he already had a wrestler named Oro. So when he asked me if I had any other name ideas I pulled out the old standard Lion Heart. He liked it and liked the Spanish translation of Corazn de Len even more. Why an English-speaking guy would have a Spanish name like Corazn de Len, while a Spanish-speaking guy like Silver King had an English name made no sense, but who was I to judge?

Paco said he was going to book me on shows with veteran wrestler Hector Guerrero, so Hector could help me learn the ropes of surviving and getting by in Mexico. Hector was a member of Mexico's most famous wrestling family, sired by Gory Guerrero, one of the greatest luchadores ever. I'd also heard a lot about Hector's younger brother Eddy, who was making a worldwide name for himself, and along with Chris Benoit was one of the guys I hoped to pattern my career after. I looked forward to meeting and wrestling him.

Paco put me up at the Plaza Madrid, a high-end hotel in the middle of the city, and Hector made a point of introducing me to all of the other guys who were staying there, including my old chewing tobacco buddy Art Barr.

Art was much friendlier now that we were neighbors. He also almost got me fired on my first night, when he took me leather jacket shopping and caused me to be ninety minutes late for my Empressa Mexicana de Lucha Libre debut. I finally arrived at the Arena Coliseo and entered into the new world of the EMLL locker room.

The Coliseo had been owned by the Alonso family for decades and it looked it. The dirty, humid dressing room was on the second floor, lined with ceramic tiles that were as smudged and greasy as some of the guys walking on them. Some of the other luchadores were sitting around in the nude, smoking and drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. Two others were going over their match, while one of them sat naked on the toilet taking a dumpski.

The toilets had no toilet seats (you had to sit directly on the porcelain bowl) and the stalls that housed them had no doors. Instead of flushing the used toilet paper down the toilet, the tissue was dropped beside the bowl building a mountain of poopy paper. I walked around looking for a place to change while all of the guys had a "who the hell is this guy" expression on their face. Right then, I figured out another reason why Paco had placed me in Hector's care: Being associated with him gave me credibility in the locker room. Hector was adamant about introducing me to every member of the roster from top to bottom. I shook the hand of every person in the locker room and to not do so would have been a cardinal wrestling sin. It's a tradition that must be followed in every wrestling locker room at every level in every country.

As we discussed our match with our opponents Hector changed into his Lasser-Tron outfit, which made him look like a red and blue piata. But his costume was nothing compared to the guy who was wearing what appeared to be a Tony the Tiger costume. He was sporting a complete head-to-toe furry bodysuit of orange and black tiger stripes and looked completely ricockulous. His name was Felino and, to his credit, he was very agreeable to all of my suggestions once Hector translated them. As a matter of fact, he was Grrrrrrrrreat.

We were in the semi-main event and for some reason my entrance music was "Everybody Dance Now" by C&C Music Factory. There were about 5,000 seats in the Coliseo arranged in tiers that went straight up like an upside-down wedding cake. The fans sat in sections according to their affiliations holding homemade signs that said, "Seccin de Rudos" (Bad Guys Section) and "Seccin de Ticos" (Good Guys Section). The fans dueled each other with chants of "Arriba los rudos!" countered by "Arriba los ticos!"

I worked mostly with Felino, who seemed to understand my style and worked hard for me during the match. He was a member of the Casas family, who were famous for being great luchadores, and I had the feeling that Paco had asked Felino to make me look good-which he did.

The match culminated with my huge swan dive over the top rope onto Felino. The crowd responded with a huge cheer and I think they were surprised that a pretty-boy gringo with long blond hair could actually wrestle the way I did.

The next day, a big picture of me doing the dive appeared in Aficin Aficin and and Ovaciones Ovaciones, newspapers in Mexico City that boasted millions of readers. Fans all over the country read the reporters' opinions that my debut had been a success. When the lucha magazines filled with my pictures arrived on the stands later that week, I officially became a national star.

My schedule filled up instantly and a typical week saw me working in Guadalajara on Sunday, Naucalpan on Monday, Puebla on Tuesday, Acapulco on Wednesday, Cuernavaca on Thursday, and Mexico City on Friday and Saturday. There were so many shows across the country that I was working as many as ten matches a week, including four matches on Saturdays.

I was twenty-two years old and making three or four grand a week with no expenses. But I was working hard for my money.I had to travel to the shows by bus and while some of the lines offered first-class service, most of them didn't. So I had to make the four-to six-hour trips on glorified school buses.

Even when all of the seats were filled it didn't stop the bus driver from picking up other passengers. We'd be driving down the highway in the dark in the middle of nowhere and the driver would pull over on the dirt shoulder whenever any Tom, Dick, or Javier waved him down for a ride. People would get on the bus with dogs, cats, goats, chickens, and once even a parrot that wouldn't stop squawking in Spanish. The seats and the aisles of the goat bus would be full of people chattering, animals barking, baying, clucking and I would be wondering what the hell I was doing.

"Vaya con Dios...SQUAWK..."

While I had learned decent Spanish from watching Spanish language TV shows (Sdo Gigante rules) and having various girls teach me, I still couldn't pronounce Irvine in a way that people could understand. So the name on my bus ticket went from Chris Irbo to Chris Irbin to Chris Ririn, until I gave up and started calling myself Joshez. It saved a lot of hassle for both me and the ticket sellers. rules) and having various girls teach me, I still couldn't pronounce Irvine in a way that people could understand. So the name on my bus ticket went from Chris Irbo to Chris Irbin to Chris Ririn, until I gave up and started calling myself Joshez. It saved a lot of hassle for both me and the ticket sellers.

In the meantime, I was learning the art of lucha libre and the man I learned the most from was Negro Casas. Negro was known as the Ric Flair of Mexico and one of the best wrestlers in Mexican history. He was from the same famous lucha family as Felino and was one of the smartest performers I've ever worked with. He was the perfect example of a guy who got over (wrestling vernacular for being popular with the fans) because he knew exactly what his audience wanted to see. He knew his people. He was so good that all the fans respected him and knew he was the best no matter what role he was playing. When he was a rudo (and he was the best rudo in the country) I had the feeling that people booed him just because they were supposed to and not because they really hated him. But he was the master of working a crowd and always had them in the palm of his hand. With a simple gesture or facial expression he could make them cheer or boo at the drop of a peso.

Negro taught me when to do a certain move and when not to. He taught me timing, how to use the crowd's reactions as a blueprint for the match, and how not to get frazzled when things went wrong. "Nobody knows it's a mistake unless you let them know," he said in his broken English.

He also taught me not to obsess about a match if it didn't work out the way I wanted it to. "Don't worry when you have a bad match, tomorrow there will be another one. Are you going to worry about the match that's in the past or are you going to do better tomorrow? Tomorrow, this match doesn't mean anything." His point was that you can't change the past, you can only learn from your mistakes and make the future better. I still live my life (both in and out of the ring) by that philosophy.

CHAPTER 17.

AN EMBARRASSING WAY TO DIE.

A lot of American wrestling experts feel that luchadores aren't actual wrestlers because of their unorthodox style. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the wrestlers in the EMLL were the best in the world. Aside from Negro, performers such as Dr. Wagner Jr., Emilio Charles Jr., and el Dandy were tremendous. The tag team of Los Cowboys, Texano and Silver King (aka Ramses from lot of American wrestling experts feel that luchadores aren't actual wrestlers because of their unorthodox style. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the wrestlers in the EMLL were the best in the world. Aside from Negro, performers such as Dr. Wagner Jr., Emilio Charles Jr., and el Dandy were tremendous. The tag team of Los Cowboys, Texano and Silver King (aka Ramses from Nacho Libre Nacho Libre), were two more of my favorites. They worked a stiff fast-moving, Japanese-Mexican hybrid style, which was different from what most of the other luchadores were doing.

The first time I worked with them they nailed me with every kick and punch and I thought they were fucking with me. After a few more matches against them, I realized that that's just how they worked and they expected to be hit the same way in return. That made them different from the other luchadores, who worked pretty light, which is one of the criticisms that people within the business have of lucha libre. But the marquee names in the EMLL were top-level major-league performers and the more I worked with them the better I got.

I also got better at living in Mexico City. The hardest part was getting acclimated to the altitude and the pollution. The city was high above sea level and engulfed in smog for most of the year, which made breathing difficult. It sat in a valley and during certain times of year when there was no rain or wind, the smog would settle in like a fog, which caused me countless nosebleeds and irritation.

But natural disasters like poisonous air and earthquakes weren't the worst dangers I'd face in Mexico. The biggest danger came courtesy of another human being.

One of my favorite restaurants in the country was VIP's, a diner similar to Denny's that served tremendous American-style food. I was eating my favorite dinner of a steak sandwich with a fruit plate, when I noticed a really cute girl staring at me from across the crowded room. I waved at her and she beckoned me to come over to the table she was sitting at with another guy. She spoke decent English and admitted that she and her brother (bonus!) were fans of mine. We spoke for a few minutes and she asked me if I wanted to go to a party with them. Did I? She was a knockout and I wanted to rock with her big time, so I accepted immediately. I played big shot and paid for their meals, then got into their car and left.

Her brother was driving and I was in the back seat with Ingrid and we were getting to know each other's tonsils. The scenery began to get darker and more desolate the farther we went, so I asked Ingrid's brother where the party was. He simply replied, "Estien," (it's okay) as Ingrid poked her tongue into my mouth again. Even though she was a great kisser, I started to get the bad feeling that maybe there was no party. My suspicions were confirmed when we pulled over on the side of the barren road. When Ingrid's brother got out of the car, came around to my window, and calmly pulled a gun on me, I literally almost pissed my pants.

Ever had a gun pulled on you? Trust me when I say that it's the coldest, most helpless feeling you could ever have. Your life lies completely in another person's hands and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

"Get out of the car," he said in perfectly clear English.

I slowly got out, cursing my stupidity for putting myself in that position. He switched back to Spanish and said, "Take your money and put it on the roof of the car."

I never carried around much money in case I got robbed, but I gave him what I had. He put the few hundred pesos into his pocket and pointed the gun directly into my face. It was going to end for me on a darkened road in a foreign country. It was an embarrassing way to die and the worst part of it was that nobody even knew where I was. All I could think of was my poor mom.

He stared directly into my eyes and I stared directly into the barrel of his gun. It was so close that I could see the grooves inside, like at the beginning of a James Bond movie. The seconds seemed like hours, his stare never wavering, until he lowered the gun with a smirk, got back into the car, and drove away. I saw Ingrid laughing at me as they sped past on the dirt road and my only thought was, "That bitch robbed me and I just bought her dinner."

With the taste of her lipstick still in my mouth, I breathed a sigh of relief that my brains weren't spattered all over the countryside. But I was still on the darkened outskirts of one of the most dangerous cities in the world; a gringo who had no money and couldn't speak Spanish. I also had no clue where I was. It might've been easier if the guy had shot me.

A pair of scrawny dogs joined me as I walked toward the faint glow in the sky that I assumed came from the lights of the city. After about an hour of hoofing it, I waved down a passing taxi. When the driver slowed down enough to see me, he sped up and left me hanging. A gringo walking down a deserted road in the dead of night? I wouldn't have picked me up either.

I walked for another hour until finally another taxi driver risked his life to pick me up. When we finally got to the Plaza, I had to borrow money from the doorman to pay for my ride.

The moral of the story is twofold:

1. Don't pick up strange women at restaurants.

2. Don't pay for their dinners if you do.

I learned another lesson the hard way when I drank Mexican tap water. I was constantly careful to only drink sealed bottled water, but I made the mistake of drinking a bottle of unsealed water in the dressing room in Guadalajara. It was common for the vendors to refill empty bottles with tap water and resell them unsealed. A few minutes after I drank it, there was a knock on the door.

"Mr. Jericho, meet Monty Zuma."

It was the shits.

I began to feel the effects as soon as I boarded the plane back to Mexico City: The moment I sat down, I felt some gurgling. We got stuck behind another plane waiting to take off so I wasn't allowed to get up to go to the bathroom. Then as we sped up for the takeoff, the pilot slammed on the brakes at about 100 miles an hour. I flew forward, snapped back into the seat, and promptly filled my pants.

I looked out the window, whilst squirming in my soiled chair and noticed that the cargo door had snapped open and a bunch of bags had fallen out of the hold onto the runway. Of course mine was one of them. My bag had bounced across the runway and settled into a puddle of mud...similar to the one that currently resided in the pants of the mighty Chris Jericho.

At least Hector Guerrero didn't have a problem hanging out with Poopypants Jericho and wanted to introduce me to his brother Eddy, who had just returned from a tour of Japan. Eddy's reputation as a great wrestler and a great person preceded him. If he was anything like his brother, I had a feeling we would get along great right off the bat.

We didn't.

When I walked into Hector's room, I found Eddy sprawled upon the bed wearing only his underwear. He looked like I thought he would: little mustache, big arms, big shoulders, big back, and big mullet. But he didn't act like I thought he would. The first words out of his mouth to me were, "Who the fuck do you think you are?"

I wasn't sure how to answer that.

Then with a sneer, he asked me what my name was. I was confused, as Hector had just introduced me as Chris Jericho, so I thought he was asking me what my wrestling name was.

"I wrestle as Corazn de Len. It's Spanish for Lion Heart."

He said disgustedly, "I'm Mexican...I know what Corazn de Len means." He followed with, "What are you, some kind of mark? I don't mean your wrestling name. I mean your real name."

A mark is a term for a fan or for a wrestler who believes in his own hype and isn't exactly a term of endearment.

I reiterated to him that my name was Chris (too) and assured him that I was not a mark. He grunted a few more choice words for me under his breath, rolled over, and went to sleep. Eddy Guerrero, supposed sweetheart, had turned out to be a complete ass.

When I saw him at breakfast the next day, he instantly apologized to me. When I asked him what for, he said, "For whatever I said or did last night. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but I figured I should apologize." I laughed at his honesty and his complete change of character. I accepted his apology and it was the start of a friendship that would last until his death twelve years later.

My link to the Guererro family continued when Paco informed me I was going to be winning the NWA middleweight title. Eddy and Hector's father, Gory, had been one of the first men to wear the belt some fifty years earlier. Subsequently, the title had been held by some of the biggest names in Mexican wrestling history. Now it was my turn and I wanted to take the title with a brand-new move I'd been working on. My idea was to do a splash from the top rope with a full 360 degree spin in midair. It was both acrobatic and unique and I was ready to debut it that night.

I was warming up in the dressing room before the match with the champion, Mano Negra. I wanted to do the spin a few more times to prepare, so I went into the bathroom for some privacy. I jumped up and spun around on the spot a few times and decided I needed more rotation. But as I jumped again, I slipped on some water on the floor and landed ribs first on the side of a sharp corner of the sink. I fell to the ground with the wind knocked out of me and gasping for air, while my ring music pounded throughout the building. I dragged myself out of the bathroom and down the backstage hallway. I felt like barfing as I lurched to the ring as a knitting needle stabbed me in the side every time I took a breath. However, once the match started, I managed to get through to the finish.

I executed my brand-new maneuver-which looked like shit-and won the title. But even though I was a babyface, the people began to boo. The patriotic Mexican fans didn't like the idea of a gringo winning a championship from one of their own, no matter how much they hated Mano Negra. As popular as I was, some fans were never going to fully accept me because I was a foreigner.

Some of the office employees didn't want to accept me either. The first time I wrestled in Guadalajara, I received an amazing reaction from the fans who'd never seen me before. But the referee, of all people, had an attitude toward me and didn't seem to want me there. This was proved correct when I got in the ref's face during the course of the match and instead of backing down as a ref should, he slapped me in the face. I was furious but I finished the match like a professional.

Afterward, I stormed into the dressing room and confronted the son of a bitch. To my surprise, he slapped me again. I had alls I could takes and I couldn't takes no more, so I tackled him and paintbrushed him from the mount. He was a small, wiry guy in his mid-fifties and it was like trying to hold down a greased pig. Finally the boys pulled me off him. I was completely embarrassed, but all of my frustrations of being a stranger in a strange land boiled over when this dick had taken advantage of me.