Hiding in the Bowels of the Arena . . .
. . . I couldn’t believe I’d gotten away with it.
I felt like I’d just pulled off the crime of the century as I hid in the back lounge of the tour bus in the parking garage of the US Airways Center in Phoenix. I felt that way because there were 18,000 hard-?core wrestling fans in the arena above me, watching the 2013 Royal Rumble, and not a single one of them knew I was there. It blew my mind that in this age of social media, when everybody and their blog had Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, my secret hadn’t been exposed. I’d re-signed with World Wrestling Entertainment over a month earlier and had looked online every day since, expecting to see my cover blown and my surprise return
to the Royal Rumble spoiled. Thankfully, it hadn’t been and I was ready to go out there and try to tear the damn house down like I always did. It was the first time I’d entered the WWE with no warning, no sign, no series of cryptic vignettes to signal my appearance, and I felt the crowd was going to blow a gasket when they saw me. I’d only been out of the company for a few months,
but my passion for the WWE burned brighter than ever because over the last few years, I felt I was on a career high. I’d left the company in 2005 a bitter man and it had been a long and winding road that had led to my return in 2007, but in the five-plus years since, I felt I’d done the best work of my career and wanted to keep the Y2J ball rolling. I’d learned so much as a character and as a wrestler in the past half decade that I’d become a completely different performer. My work had gone to a different level and I’d helped create and deliver the two best angles of my career as a result. As I took cover in the back of the production bus waiting for the cue to head to the ring, I closed my eyes and began reflecting back on the past five years. I thought back to November 2007, when I was standing in the Gorilla Position ready to hit the stage in Fort Lauderdale as my countdown clock ticked down from 10. . .
Copyright © 2014 by Chris Jericho and Peter Thomas Fornatale. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
