My favorite professional wrestler in the world is Lance Storm, but my second favorite is Chris Jericho. He dropped out of pro wrestling for a couple of years, and during that period he wrote A Lion’s Tale, his autobiography. I figured… why the hell not? Sometimes reading a celebrity’s biography takes the facade away, but as much personality and charisma as Chris Jericho has, I doubted there was much chance of that.
Chris Jericho
is really Chris Irvine, son of N.H.L. hockey player Ted Irvine. He grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba watching the American Wrestling Alliance (A.W.A.) from Minnesota and Stampede Wrestling run by the Hart Family from Calgary, Alberta. He dreamed of being a wrestler, and when he turned 18 he started training at the Hart Brothers school in Calgary, where he met Lance Storm. After finishing, he performed in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Japan. Then he hit the big time, working Extreme Championship Wrestling (E.C.W.) and World Championship Wrestling (W.C.W.) two now-defunct but at the time the most popular wrestling companies in the world. In 1999, he went to the W.W.F., the company that everyone thinks of when they think of wrestling, where he became champion in 2001. But the book stops at his very smartly promoted debut in the W.W.F. His remaining years will be covered in a book theoretically to be published in 2009.
In the foreward, Jim Ross calls this a how-to-achieve-success book. He’s overselling it. It’s a decent book, but it doesn’t stray far from the and then I went here and did this
mold. His writing is funny, in a self-deprecating style. But I felt much more in tune with him in the early part of the book, before he started becoming a star. The later parts became much more about his career and the political machinations of making it.
I have a number of friends in bands that have toured. Any time two or more of them are together, inevitably the conversation turns to road stories. Professional wrestling is full of less than well adjusted people. Consequently they have some really good road stories, generated by a lot of days on the road. A lot of Jericho’s book is road stories. Pranks played on each other. Getting drunk in foreign countries. Doing something stupid in front of an audience.
I kind of wish it really did show more of the hard work that goes in to the industry. There’s some of that in the book when he’s covering his training, but it comes sparingly in the rest of the book. Every time he started on the nuts and bolts of the hard work, it shortly thereafter veered off into the political or the road stories. I was left wanting more. What does it take to carry a lesser worker to a good match? How does one work light
as in Mexico versus strong
as in Japan? I know what the terms mean. But he never really goes in depth on the trials and tribulations of making these things work.
Overall the book entertained me very much, but could have been more.
Title: A lion’s tale: around the world in spandex
Authors: Chris Jericho (Chris Irvine), Peter Thomas Fornatale
Imprint / publisher: Grand Central / Hachette
Format: Hardcover
Length: xviii, 412 p.
Publication date: October 2007
ISBN-10: 0-446-58006-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-446-58006-9
Subject: Jericho, Chris
Subject: Wrestlers — Canada — Biography
Subject: World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.
LC classification: GV1196.J47A3 2007
