Chris Jericho may be one of the most celebrated performers in pro wrestling history. ‘The Ocho’ is a multi-time World Champion, has headlined several pay-per-views, and has been a part of some of the industry’s most acclaimed matches, segments, and storylines. Despite this, even he makes mistakes at the best of times.
During his time competing as Corazon de Leon in Mexico, Chris Jericho encountered a near-death experience. He wasn’t too worried about being shot, though; instead, he was worried about how much trouble he would be in with his mother if he were to die in the moment.
Chris Jericho’s Mother Would Have Been Furious With Him Had He Died
Speaking during an Inside The Ropes live event via Talk Is Jericho, Chris Jericho explained how, after taking a mysterious woman up on her offer of a party invitation, he was robbed at gunpoint:
“So I go to this restaurant called ‘Veeps’, which I thought was just a cool name. And I realised years later it’s VIPs. Oh, okay. Gotta get up pretty early to fool me. So I go to ‘Veeps’ and I look across the way. It’s kind of like a Denny’s, like a family restaurant type of a thing.
So I’m looking across the table at this girl and she’s kind of looking at me. She’s giving me the look like, you know, and like I said Corazon de Leon was my name. Lionheart in Spanish, which is funny, because you have Blue Demon and Dr. Wagner and the Mexican guys, Silver King. The Mexican guys have English names. And then you get the English guy with the Mexican name Corazon de Leon.
So anyway, she’s looking at me and she’s waving. So I go over there, suave and debonair, I’m 22-years-old. And I sit down to start using my amazing Spanish to talk to her. And she’s sitting with her friend who she says is her brother. Amazing. And then she asked me if I want to go to a party? And I’m like, ‘Of course I want to go to a party with this gorgeous woman’, and I’m super famous and cool.
So we get into a car and the brother, her brother is the guy that she was with, he’s driving, and I’m sitting in the back with this girl. And we become fast friends and swapping spit and the whole thing, making out the back of the car. And I’m noticing like if [you] close your eyes, you can see bright lights, but now they’re intermittent, they’re flashing. And I look and I realise we’re kind of going outside of town, kind of in the middle of nowhere. And I’m thinking, ‘Well, maybe it’s a bush party’, which [we] used to have in Canada, you go to the field and I’m like, ‘Where the f*ck is this party?’”
Continuing, Chris Jericho recalled the moment a gun was pointed towards his face, a moment that helped him understand a key aspect of all James Bond films:
“Finally after about 30 minutes, they pull over on the side of the road. And she gets out of the car and the guy turns around and pulls a gun out into my face. Now if you guys ever see a James Bond movie with the beginning, they show the guy walking [sings the James Bond theme], the hole that you’re looking at it has little divots in it, ridges in it. The reason why is that’s what the inside of a barrel of a gun looks like. And I know this because I noticed that when the guy was holding a f*cking gun on me, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what the James Bond thing is.’
Now when I’ve told the story in the past, people go, ‘Why don’t you just punch him in the face? Why didn’t you just knock the gun out of his hand?’ It’s like, ‘It doesn’t work that way’. You don’t know what to do when someone pulls a gun out on you on the side of a dirt road in the middle of Mexico, and I was thinking, ‘If this guy shoots me, and my mom can’t find me, mom’s gonna kill me’. Like I’m in so much trouble with my mom if he kills me right now.
So anyways, he’s demanding my money. And what did I have? I don’t [know], 300 pesos which is about 10 bucks, I give him my money. And they get in their car and they drive away and as they drive away, the chick is like laughing at me. And all I could think of was like, I just bought her dinner at veeps, it cost me 30 pesos.
So anyways, they drove away and now I’m on the side of the road and I have no money and I just start walking towards the lights of Mexico City. And I’m walking and walking and walking, I remember this little scrawny dog came and walked with me for a while. He’s my only friend. I gave him a name, I gave him the name of Terrence, I remember Terrence the dog. And then Terrence said, ‘Okay, I’m done with this guy’. He’s off too, left me by myself. And a taxi drove by, but they wouldn’t pick up gringos because foreigners, because I had long blonde hair.
And I basically walked for three hours down this dirt highway towards Mexico City until they finally picked me up in a taxi and dropped me off at the hotel I was at, ready to go to the front desk and borrow money from the front desk guy, from the manager to pay off the taxi cab guy and finally I go back, he goes, ‘Amigo, did you learn your lesson?’ I said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Never take a [it’s bleeped in the audio] to a party in the middle of f*cking nowhere’.”
Now all these years later, Chris Jericho is in the midst of his first reign as ROH World Champion. He’ll defend the title against Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, and Sammy Guevara in a four-way contest at AEW Full Gear on November 19.
If you use any quotes from this transcription, please credit Talk Is Jericho and link back to this article with a H/T to Inside The Ropes.