 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| The Entertainment Review |
| By: Chris Jericho with Peter Thomas Fornatale Publisher: Grand Central Publishing Reviewed By: Dale Kulas |
everyone's favorite Lionheart of the wrestling world. This is purposely written as a "part one" of sorts as A Lion's Tale
Chris Jericho's autobiography, A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex takes a look at the life and times of only
details Jericho's wrestling endeavors up until his then WWF debut in 1999. I fondly recall being a die-hard going to
contain a lot of new information. I had no idea how interesting it was going to be reading about a lot of his fellow
in-depth about training in the notorious Hart Family Dungeon in Canada and trying to get matches in California and
Japan.
After finishing this book, Jericho did have one heck of an indy career. Reading about how he became a teeny-bop
sensation in Mexico and how being a guest on Mexico's top late-night program led to a live call-in vote to determine
his ring name was just a tiny sampling of his crazy days wrestling all over the world. Jericho also has many more
peculiar tales of his days wrestling under circus tents in Germany, desperately seeking out a McDonalds while
wrestling for WAR in Japan, and shooting rock star promos a decade behind the times for Smokey Mountain
Wrestling while tagging with Lance Storm. Don't just skim over these parts, there is a lot of intriguing information to be
discovered about Jericho and his days on the indy scene.
I was really anticipating him talking about his ECW and WCW tenure, and it delivered. He didn't spend too much time
in ECW, just a few months and not even 30 matches before he was discovered and swept by WCW. His three year
WCW run is by far the highlight of the book for me, most likely because it was what I was most familiar with and for his
unique insight to what went on behind the scenes in WCW during the crazy nWo era. I was glued to the book to when
Jericho detailed what he had to go through in order to get his storyline with Goldberg to go as far as it did, and still
have no blowoff match to it all.
It is very refreshing to see this book bring up a couple topics in great detail that aren't in most other wrestler's books
that are published under the WWE Books label like steroid use and wrestler salaries. It's just too bad the book only
covers his Pre-WWF/WWE years, I guess that's what the sequel is for, but if you can get by the fact he doesn't talk
about his WWE years (he does talk about the process that lead to his signing and debut as the book ends the
moment he interrupts the Rock's promo on this 8/99 RAW debut), than by all means check this one out.
Chris Jericho's autobiography, A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex takes a look at the life and times of only
details Jericho's wrestling endeavors up until his then WWF debut in 1999. I fondly recall being a die-hard going to
contain a lot of new information. I had no idea how interesting it was going to be reading about a lot of his fellow
in-depth about training in the notorious Hart Family Dungeon in Canada and trying to get matches in California and
Japan.
After finishing this book, Jericho did have one heck of an indy career. Reading about how he became a teeny-bop
sensation in Mexico and how being a guest on Mexico's top late-night program led to a live call-in vote to determine
his ring name was just a tiny sampling of his crazy days wrestling all over the world. Jericho also has many more
peculiar tales of his days wrestling under circus tents in Germany, desperately seeking out a McDonalds while
wrestling for WAR in Japan, and shooting rock star promos a decade behind the times for Smokey Mountain
Wrestling while tagging with Lance Storm. Don't just skim over these parts, there is a lot of intriguing information to be
discovered about Jericho and his days on the indy scene.
I was really anticipating him talking about his ECW and WCW tenure, and it delivered. He didn't spend too much time
in ECW, just a few months and not even 30 matches before he was discovered and swept by WCW. His three year
WCW run is by far the highlight of the book for me, most likely because it was what I was most familiar with and for his
unique insight to what went on behind the scenes in WCW during the crazy nWo era. I was glued to the book to when
Jericho detailed what he had to go through in order to get his storyline with Goldberg to go as far as it did, and still
have no blowoff match to it all.
It is very refreshing to see this book bring up a couple topics in great detail that aren't in most other wrestler's books
that are published under the WWE Books label like steroid use and wrestler salaries. It's just too bad the book only
covers his Pre-WWF/WWE years, I guess that's what the sequel is for, but if you can get by the fact he doesn't talk
about his WWE years (he does talk about the process that lead to his signing and debut as the book ends the
moment he interrupts the Rock's promo on this 8/99 RAW debut), than by all means check this one out.
