Book Review: A Lion's Tale

By suggestion of a friend, I have to decided to throw up a stray book review up here and again. Practice is practice, so eh. There will be a LOT of wrestling books, as for some reason I like reading about the people behind it all. Some strange obsession, but one of the worst things I can potentially do as a writer, in my opinion, is read nothing but one genre. Wrestling Autobiographies are a strange genre to choose behind fantasy, but what the hell.

A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex
by Chris Jericho with Peter Thomas Fornatale

Chris Jericho is one of the most charismatic and talented wrestling superstars of the recent era. During his recent two year hiatus from the ring, he took the time to put down in his memoirs and story down in book form for the world to follow. For a shocking change of pace, there is actually a contender to Mick Foley's first two autobiographies(Have a Nice Day & Foley is Good) for king of the professional wrestling autobiography, the book that spawned dozens upon dozens of other autobiographies in a genre previously empty, primarily due to the existence of Kayfabe(Professional Wrestling's code of Secrecy).

A Lion's Tale: Around The World In Spandex, written by Jericho himself with Peter Thomas Fornatale credited as a collaborator, is one of the few books of any genre to make me read it from beginning to end and become annoyed when I was interrupted from my reading time, a rare breed of book indeed with good pacing and few spots that drag on and on. Jericho keeps you reading with much of the flair of his microphone work in the ring- good solid content with a witty one liner here and there to catch you off guard.

A Lion's Tale follows Jericho from the less than humble beginnings of being a Sports star's son in the form of New York Ranger Ted Irvine all the way to to Jericho's WWE debut in August of 1999 where the Lionheart moniker ended and the Y2J moniker began. Along the way, Jericho gives you entertaining insights into the road of the international wrestler, all while showing that he's quite possibly a bigger nerd than us all, drawing pictures of himself as tag team champions with Owen Hart in high school.

His story goes from being in a Training Camp with the Legendary Hart family. Well one Hart who shows up once then hands it off to some other guy. The fun of trying to get started in the pro wrestling industry, which consists of a lot of low paying jobs where you work with sleazy people who may or may not pay you depending on the alignment of the planets on that day – proving pro wrestling has much more in common with the other jobs in entertainment than most people would believe.

First breaks where he screws up his first impression in Japan royally, starting a curse that dooms his first match to suck wherever he goes, but getting his first major break in Mexico where he goes from being some pretty boy gringo to El Corazon De Leon, who stars in comic books alongside magical talking frogs and has to buy his own bootleg merchandise. Traveling to Germany, he then has to adapt to the strange, and apparently exclusively German pro wrestling practice of wrestling the same man every night in front of the the same crowd every night, thusly being forced to come up with a new match every night or not get payed.

His time in SMW, Smokey Mountain Wrestling is worth reading if only for his description of an insane fan tape titled 'Strange Kentucky People'. While that may be strange, it goes to just plain sad when you get to see the mess that WCW was from Jericho's perspective, where he got paid fabulously well because it was all Ted Turner's money anyway and the people who ran it didn't care. At all.

Jericho keeps the book flowing by giving the potential readership of his book exactly what they want- the meat of the industry and entertaining stories. He keeps any mention of his personal life light which is fine by my watch as other wrestling biographies went too far into it and it really hurt the book as a whole. The few delves into it are kept in good faith, such as a particularly awesome scene of him grabbing a guitar and rocking out with a street band in Mexico City. He does express his Christian faith throughout, but he never gets preachy.

It's not perfect though. While he keeps the mood of the book light and cheery throughout it all, it would have been nice for him to go into some pressing issues that effect the industry such as steroid and drug use. The most he says about it is admitting to some pot use while down in Mexico. Additionally, he falls into one of the most common pitfalls I've seen in autobiographies, the 'I'm always the good guy' philosophy. Which means you should always take his side of the story as just that – his side of the story.

Overall, if a non-wrestling fan were suggested to pick up wrestler's autobiography, I would whole heartedly recommend A Lion's Tale right along the holy grails of the genre Have a Nice Day & Foley is Good, being a solid insight to what it's like to try to make it in this industry. I personally anticipate the obvious follow up, as the book ends in August 1999 – giving Jericho nine more years of certainly eventful material involving his WWE career and hiatus to tell us about.