We Want Answers: Chris Jericho

It's safe to say that Chris Jericho has had one of the most diverse careers of anyone in show business. He wrestled for just about every promotion in the universe, eventually winning the WWE heavyweight belt. He did improv comedy, toured the world with heavy metal band Fozzy, and logged in hours as one of VH1's few reliably glib pop culture pundits. With the late-October release of the enormously entertaining A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex, Jericho has added author to his résumé. Here he weighs in on…

…A Lion's Tale:
I decided to write about my journey to realize my goal of wrestling in WWE. It's more of a follow-your-dreams, coming-of-age, stranger-in-a-strange-land story with wrestling in the background. You know, The Catcher in the Rye with a half-naked guy swinging a steel chair. It's 100 percent Chris Jericho. If you like it, I'll take the credit. If you don't, I'll blame it on someone else.

…whether young wanna-be wrestlers could follow his path into the business:
A friend of mine recently told me, "The thing about this book is that in an age when all you have to do is write a blog or put yourself up on YouTube to get fame, this is one of the last old-school journeys." When I first started, I had to write letters to people, to send out tapes and pictures, to try to photocopy pictures where I looked cool. Now people just Photoshop everything and send it via e-mail.

The book is really a pay-your-dues type of story, about this kid who probably should've given up a few times, but was too stubborn or stupid to do that. As a result, he ended up achieving his goal. There's not a lot more books like this to be written, because I don't think there are a lot of stories like that to be told. Uh, I pretty much forgot what your question was [laughs].

…"enthusiastic" fans:
Somebody actually tattooed my face on his arm. In a couple years, that will be the equivalent of having a Screech tattoo. A woman fan wrote me letters every time I went to a certain arena in Mexico: "I will be your wife someday. You know you love me." A bunch of letters later, she wrote, "If you don't write me back within the next week and tell me that you love me, I will kill myself." And then the next time I went back to that arena, I didn't see her, and I never saw her after that. It was one of those creepy things. Did she actually do it? I don't know.

Another girl called me at 4 A.M. screaming that the [Japanese] Yakuza were coming to get her and to please help her, then the phone went dead halfway through the conversation. So either the Yakuza offed her while she was on the phone with me, or she hung up the phone and everybody at the party started laughing about how much of a loser I was.

…on misperceptions people have about wrestling and pro wrestlers:
That we're stupid. That it's all fake—"fake" is a word I hate, because nothing about wrestling is fake. It's predetermined show business, but it's a contact sport. The things you do are very, very real. I don't think people understand how hard wrestling is physically and mentally. There's only a handful of people worldwide who really know how to do this job properly, and millions of people worldwide who enjoy watching it.