Dan “The Mouth” Lovranski: I am really happy to have him back on the program; he’s just completed his autobiography. It’s called “A Lions Tale, around the world in spandex” It’s actually on the New York Times best seller list and he will be here in town, Toronto, on November the 14th. That’s Wednesday at the Indigo bookstore at the Eaton’s Center, 7pm. The Ayatollah of Rock 'n' Rolla and looking a lot like Bon Jovi and maybe Keith Urban on the front cover here but no matter, here he is the man himself Chris Jericho. Chris how are ya?

Chris Jericho: Well I was gonna take a picture where I looked like Dan Lovranski but then I realized that the sales would just go down the tubes. Second of all I take a little bit of offence, I’m gonna file a copyright report with Jack Tunney about you calling yourself the undisputed champion of wrestling radio. I’m the undisputed champion and I have copyright on all things undisputed champion. I’m just like Gene Simmons with the demon make up. So watch out Lovranski, I’m gonna put you out of house and home and put you in a cardboard box living on the streets.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: It’s no different from what’s going on now actually. You think I’m making scags of cash here doing wrestling radio, hardly brother hardly.

Chris Jericho: I think the people at the fight network should be paying you the big bucks Lovranski being the figure head, I would say, of the LAW, Live Audio Wrestling.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: So how are things going Mr. Jericho? Are you pretty happy at the moment?

Chris Jericho: I’m very happy that you called me mister. You’re showing me some fine respect Dan-o.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Don’t worry it’s not gonna last long.

Chris Jericho: It makes me very happy. You always start out on your best foot. See you just wrapped a compliment stuck into an insult. It’s just like when someone comes up to me and goes “Hey I don’t know who the hell you are. I never watched the stuff but my kid loves ya, can you sign this for me?” So you let me do you a favor for just insulting me. But ya I am actually very happy. I just finished up; I’m actually in Seattle, Washington, just showing the internationalism of your show. I just finished up my book tour, it was 22 days in the States for “A Lions Tale”, I called it the Lions Tour, see how I did that? It’s been great! The signings have been great, tons of media and meeting tons of great people and excited to be bringing the whole show to Canada in a couple of days.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Now when you sat down, was the idea to do the book your idea or were you approached by the publisher? Where did the idea come from?

Chris Jericho: No I had the idea to do a book for a long time. I mean I have a degree in Journalism, I’ve always enjoyed writing. I thought more than anything too, I read a lot of biographies and I’ve read a few of the wrestling ones. I thought my tale was very interesting as far as having this dream at a young age, at 8 years old deciding I wanted to be a wrestler and then all the trial and tribulations I went through to get to where I wanted to go. So I actually about a week after I left the WWE, I had a meeting with a book agent and the about a week after that I got a book deal. It was very organic and it was a really quick process and that was way back in December of 05.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Now as we’ve seen of the top of this interview obviously you’ve always had an amazing sense of humor and I really like in your book the way you used humor rather than the way say Mick Foley did where he kind if just made fun of Al Snow and Test for the whole book. You just kind of made it right there from the first page to the very last and it’s a, not only do you get your story across but it’s a very entertaining read.

Chris Jericho: Well it’s one of those things, I think it’s, when you do a book like this, your life story, one of the biggest things as far as what I wanted to get across was basically was I’m just a guy who had a dream. I’m still the same kid I was when I was 12 years old, 14 years old, wrestling I the high school gymnasium in the BTWF, the big time wrestling federation me and my friends wrestling league. That’s never changed, I’m still a wrestling fan, I’m still very passionate about what I do and I still respect everything that I have been fortunate to accomplish. So I think I need to hit on myself because I am an easy target for one, it’s great to make myself the but of all the jokes because I’m not the Fonz, as much as I wish I was I’m just not the Fonz Dan. You know I’m not the coolest cat in the world all the time, I’ve done a lot of dumb things, a lot of nerdy things, a lot of stupid things. But I think it all comes across and makes the book that much more honest and real and that’s what I wanted to do. You know I didn’t sit down with any agenda or I wanna talk about this or I have to talk about that or this is supposed to mentioned or this shouldn’t be mentioned. It was more like these are the things I wanna talk about, this is what happened and I think that’s half the reason why people got in to what I was doing in the first place is because they knew I never really took myself seriously. You know I took what I did very seriously but I always had that kind of twinkle in my eye that like I’m just one of the guys, I’m just happy to be here type thing and I wanted to get that point across in the book and say “Hey listen guys, I don’t why I did some of these things either but it was fun and I was able to rise above it and continue forward and here I am.”

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Coming off that Chris, one of the interesting things I found in the book was the whole thing where you talk about confidence and how much confidence can be shattered so quickly when something doesn’t go your way or someone criticizes a match. Again you do put forth a very cocky self image right; I found that very revealing and very interesting.

Chris Jericho: Well for me wrestling is show business, it always has been. I always wanted to be the David Lee Roth of wrestling; you know I wanted to be like the number one entertainer. You know not being the biggest guy in the show but I could always be the biggest personality or the biggest character. That was something I was in charge of, I couldn’t’ make my self grow to 6 foot 8, I couldn’t make myself get a job in the WWE. But I could in every match I had be the biggest personality and be the biggest showman I could. I play the character of Chris Jericho and that’s just the same way you know, my name is Chris Jericho but I play the character Chris Jericho on TV just like Jerry Seinfeld was Jerry Seinfeld on the Seinfeld show but he’s also Seinfeld in real life. That’s kind of interesting dichotomy because a lot of people don’t get that. They’re like “Man I meet you in person and you’re such a nice guy. I thought you’d be a jerk or cocky or arrogant.” You know Anthony Hopkins isn’t really a cannibal either.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Right, right.

Chris Jericho: He just played one in The Silence of the Lambs. I’m an actor playing a part and I think once what I can kind of say is this is the Chris Jericho you saw but this is the Chris Jericho that got to these places. This is the guy who always stuck his foot in his mouth when he met somebody he respected. This is the guy who had a crappy match every debut in every promotion he pretty much ever worked in. Like I stunk out the joint in New Japan, in ECW, Smoky Mountain Wrestling, WAR, SMW and WCW. All across the board! You could call me stink out the joint Jericho when it comes to debut matches.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: That’s so funny. I’m glad you covered so much of the different areas in the book too Chris. Like the stuff about Mexico and the stuff about Japan, Smokey Mountain. It was really, really fascinating and I don’t think a lot of or even hardcore wrestling fans realize how much you did before you got to the WWE.

Chris Jericho: Well first and foremost I thought that was the most interesting thing. I wanted to write this book for wrestling fans but just as much for non wrestling fans. I didn’t want to keep inside the wrestling box; I wanted everybody to read it. I wanted to make the book hit the New York Times best seller list and you can’t do that just by marketing to certain people. In one of the ways to do that is to tell the tale that a lot of people don’t know. Back when I was starting there was no internet, there was no insider news letter and if there was I didn’t know about them. Like you said a lot of people said “I used watch you in ECW right from that start.” Ands it’s like dude there was 6 years of stuff before that. They might have known that Jericho was in Japan and that Jericho was in Mexico but they don’t know for how long, how many sacrifices I’ve made and how many life threatening experiences, death defying experiences and all these adventures that I had. So like I said this really is to me more like a follow your dreams story, you know stranger in a strange land type thing with wrestling as a back drop. The type of story I like to read whether it was about a tennis player or a pilot or an anything like that. It’s just my dream and my journey on how I got there and I think that’s what’s kind of taken the book to the next level. To where anybody can enjoy it whether they know anything about wrestling or know who Chris Jericho is or not. Not that anybody doesn’t know who Chris Jericho is but there are a few, a couple of people living in Lithuania don’t know Chris Jericho. A few aborigines who don’t know but those people, they can be included as well.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Absolutely. Of all those parts Chris, we all know how much of a problem WCW was and how it was falling apart but your section on WCW was absolutely mind blowing and unbelievable how blind they were to certain aspects. I guess it just once again reiterates just how messed up they really were in that company at that time.

Chris Jericho: Originally I wasn’t even going to include WCW. I wanted to write this book just on my time in Mexico, I thought that was a very interesting story. You know this young guy who did all these things in a foreign land but then I pitched the idea of the book, actually once Warner Brothers became interested, I said “This is what I want to do. Just this story about Mexico.” And they said they liked it but they wanted a little bit more so I said “Lets do all the places in the first 6 years of traveling around the world.” To me I thought that would be the most interesting stuff but then they kind of wanted to expand a little bit more and then I thought the natural storyline here was I wanted to be a WWE superstar and this is my journey to get there. Nine year chunk of my life and you know I think a lot of the stories have been told over and over again, the WCW, everyone knows the whole sorted past with WCW but I guess they didn’t know it from my perspective.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Exactly

Chris Jericho: When I actually sat down to think about it, I would sit down and I had a little notebook and I said ok I am going to think of a hundred stories of things I wanna talk about from Mexico and a hundred stories of things from Japan and hundred stories from WCW. You know just thinking about it you forget some of the things that happened like that whole Goldberg feud, having the meeting in Nassau Coliseum Hogan, Bischoff and Goldberg trying to explain my point. You look back on it now and in the end I win because I made it to the WWE; I’m the winner, yay!

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: That’s true. No that’s true; you’re the winner for sure. You’re such a winner that we actually want you to hang on. We want to do another segment, we’ve got some callers on the line that want to talk to the ayatollah so are you into hanging around for a bit?

Chris Jericho: I’ll stay for the whole show Lovranski, you can’t make me, you can’t cut me off because if you hang up on me I’ll call back.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: There’s the man again in fine form, Chris Jericho is joining us live on the phone to promote his new book A Lions Tale, around the world in spandex.

Chris Jericho: (laughing)

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: What’s so funny?

Chris Jericho: I love the fact that you stuck a little Halloween save us in there. That was very creative.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Well all of course, I mean we have to ask that question so I might as well ask it now right? There’s been a lot of speculation on the internet. I love the way people have been watching the vignettes on WWE television, trying to decipherer them, saying this is the day Jericho left and this is the day he did this and this is the day he did that. I’m gonna ask you straight out, are you coming back, are you gonna let us know, what’s the deal Chris?

Chris Jericho: You know this really has, it’s been great, it’s like the Paul is dead of wrestling.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: That’s right!

Chris Jericho: People are finding all these clues that really don’t exist, some do, and some don’t. I mean I love the fact there’s speculation, I love the huge buzz about it, I mean it’s great. Everyday since I left the WWE over 2 years ago people ask “when ya coming back?” “Are ya coming back?” and “Please come back!” I mean it’s a lot better if people were going you know “Don’t come back”, “You suck”, “We hate you”, “We never want to see you again you idiot.” So it’s good to kind of be in the middle of it and I enjoy it and it’s a lot of fun. I mean I never said I wasn’t going to come back; I just needed to take a break. I did a lot of things over the last couple of years the biggest being writing this book and that’s really kind of brought me back to the start of remembering how much fun I had on the job and how much I love wrestling and how fortunate I was to have had this successful run and this dream come true. So eventually you’ll see me back, it could be next week, it could be next month, it could be next year and even if I was coming back I wouldn’t tell anybody anyways. I think people; they have a sense of entitlement to know everything. “You know I went on to wrestling survivor dot com and I got all my news out there. They say you were supposed to come back and you didn’t come back Jericho!” You know they’re getting mad at me, “I bought the pay per view and you weren’t there and I wasted my money.” Dude I never said I was going to be there. I think people keep getting mad cause they can’t figure it out and I like that. I’m a magician, I have many tricks, and I have many secrets. I’m a wizard, I’m a wrestling wizard.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: It’s true man, I would never deny it.

Chris Jericho: How was that for a politicians answer? I didn’t tell you anything, I just wasted time.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: That was awesome Chris! That was very, very good. We want to get in some calls from the listeners but I want to start with an email that came during the week when we announced that you would be on the show. This is from Aneesh and he asks could you please ask Chris to give his description of his backstage shoot physical confrontation with Goldberg. From his perspective I would like to know how it all started and what actually took place backstage. How do you want to handle that one Chris?

Chris Jericho: I think that will be for my next book which will probably pick up seconds after the last one ended. It’s a long story, much longer than I want to tell. Most of the rumors you heard about it are true and the ones that aren’t true I’m gonna say they’re true anyways. So there was a conversation, there was a big brouhaha in front of everybody that was started by someone other than me and it ended up with somebody on the ground on the bottom that also was not me as I was on top daddy-o. The rest I’ll tell ya in about 2 years when the next book comes out.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Alright so there are plans for a second book?

Chris Jericho: Ya, like I said I never wrote this book with any intention of that. It started as a very organic slice of life but now that the book has been doing really well and being received really well. Not just from wrestling fans but from snobby literary journals that are saying the book is really well done and blah, blah, blah. So we’ve already started talking about doing another one.

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Nice.

Jason Agnew: Alright we have a few minutes here before the top of the hour so let’s get in a few phone calls. We’ll start with Carston in Toronto, Carston you’re the line with Chris Jericho.

Caller: Hey Jericho, it’s great to talk to you. I love the book, it’s the most honest and funny and thought provoking of all the 50 odd wrestling books I’ve probably read. I want to ask you thought with the current steroid scandal, do you think WWE is going to use this as a chance to move towards smaller guys like CM Punk or do you think Vince will fight against the media by pushing bigger guys like Batista and Lashley or other guys like them?

Chris Jericho: It’s funny that you say that like it’s a revolutionary thing that Vince would push CM Punk. I mean Shawn Michaels to Bret Hart to Chris Jericho to Chris Beniot to Eddie Guerrero to Kurt Angle. I mean it’s not like it’s always been the 6 foot 8 guys, and the guys who weigh 300 pounds. When I was the WWE Champion I think I weighed 220 pounds, maybe, I’m not sure if I did or not, I don’t think I was much more than that. So once again I think there’s been a scandal that’s being dealt with, they needed to take care of, it needs to be dealt with but I still think it’s about connecting with the crowd and the personalities and the charisma. Obviously if you’re a big man you get more chances but steroids isn’t going to make a bad wrestler good and steroids isn’t going to make a good wrestler bad. If they take it away and it’s gone these guys are still going to be huge, they’re still bigger than you, still bigger than the average Joe. So if that’s the case just get rid of them, just get rid of them completely and nothing will really change. Big guys will still be big, good wrestlers will still be good wrestlers and then that will pretty much be the end of it.

Jason Agnew: Lets keep it going here with the phones and going now to Camrose, Alberta listening on the Fan 960, Kevin you’re on the line with Chris Jericho.

Caller: Hi Chris how ya doin?

Chris Jericho: I’m good.

Caller: I’ve been a huge fan and wanted to talk to ya. My question is past or present if you could pick an opponent for your dream match who would it be? Personally my pick would be, I would love to see you in a classic match with Owen Hart would be dream match of all time to see you in, I’d like to get your take on that.

Chris Jericho: When you read A Lions Tale you’ll see all I wanted to do was move to Calgary to get trained by Own Hart and be his tag team partner. I actually drew a picture of Owen and myself in math class in 1987 and I kept it for some reason, it’s in my book. If there was a list of 50 reasons why I ended up going to the WWF from WCW, working with Owen Hart was one of them. Like maybe number 40 or something but still on there, it was one of the reasons I left. Obviously that never worked out but I’ve worked with pretty much everybody. I like working with everybody anyways. I really have no um, maybe Undertaker. I’ve never worked a singles match, actually I don’t think I have ever actually wrestled against the Undertaker other than one time we had a four way match that was a five minute thing on TV. It was me, Kane, Beniot and Undertaker on a Smackdown or something but other than that I never actually wrestled with the Undertaker ever.

Jason Agnew: One more quickie here, before we’ve got to let you go and that is Paul in Toronto, what’s your question for Chris Jericho?

Caller: What’s up Chris?

Chris Jericho: Hey man

Caller: I was wondering what was your greatest match in WWE and WCW?

Chris Jericho: My greatest match? Hard to say, it’s like asking you whats your favourtie kid if you had 10 kids or that sort of thing. If you stuck a gun to my head and said “TELL ME, TELL ME!” I would pobably say against Shawn Michaels Wrestlemania 19 in Seattle, that one sticks out because Wrestlemania obviously is the super bowl of wrestling, the big show of wrestling and the fact that a lot of people say we stole that show tells me that it was a great one. Plus the angle leading up to it was a lot of fun. The storyline behind it was a lot of fun so it kind of had a little bit of everything of what I like to bring to the table wrestling wise. WCW… maybe the last match with Juventude Guerrero, that’s was a lot of fun. I had a match with Eddie Guerrero at Fall Brawl 97, maybe, for the cruiserweight title, that was a good one. There wasn’t as many matches in WCW that really stood out as being classic for me. I mean I had a lot of good ones but…

Dan “the mouth” Lovranski: Alright, Chris I hate to cut you off but we’ve got to get out of here. I want to thank you so much, the book is amazing and everybody will be down there Wednesday to get there signed copy here in Toronto. Take care brother.

(Transcribed by Jenn Poczik) {plug}