Original subtitles

Chris Canyon was so ahead of his time.

He was amazing.

I loved working with that monk.

He caught himself the innovator of offense.

In the

1990s, wrestler Chris Canyon rose from obscurity to become one of the most

innovative and versatile performers of the era.

pioneering a style that would set the stage for decades to come.

I would say he's one of the most underappreciated wrestlers of all time.

Chris is one of those guys who deserves so much more respect, so much more

notoriety, and so much more love for everything he's did for wrestling.

Despite success and the adulation of his peers, Canyon lived with a deep secret,

which he believed, if revealed, would end his career in an instant.

I had no idea he was gay.

Here's a guy twice my size who's just always talking about the queers.

How you got time for that? That to me was like the greatest kept secret, and

one of Chris's best friends.

Concealing the truth became an obsession, and his increasingly erratic

deeply concerned and terrified those closest to him.

Then he started doing a bunch of crazy shit.

The house would be destroyed, or my car would be destroyed, or my clothes would

be torn up.

And at that point, I was like, you just tried to kill me.

Just holding on to a secret.

Not being able to share with your closest friends and family. Not being

tell them who you really are. That must have killed him for so long.

Literally, it was an emotional rollercoaster. He was manic.

Really, just out of his mind, it was a painful thing to watch him.

Disintegrate, really.

His life played out the way he saw it.

Because we all manifest our own reality.

Who's better than Kanye?

In the 90s? You had to have a catchphrase. Had to have a catchphrase.

than Kanye? Who better?

Who better?

Who better than Canyon?

Nobody. He shows me something different every time. Canyon has revolutionized

our sport, brought in some moves that no one's even thought of. That was

different. As far as guys I love to be in the ring with and dance, as we call

it, Chris Canyon is the top 5 % because it was just fun.

It's me.

It's DDP, Diamond Dallas Page, master of the diamond cutter.

I think he did the independent wrestling style before anybody else.

I'm Nick Jackson. This is my brother Matt Jackson. We're the Young Bucks.

We're very good friends with Chris Canyon.

He doesn't realize so much of us as kids and teenagers, we watch Chris, the way

that he took moves and the way he sold moves and the way he strung along

offense.

He was something special about Chris. Everyone loved him. And he was funny and

he was bright and he was witty. I would call him a king of Sunnyside, New York.

Hi, my name is Raphael Morphy. I'm a 20 -year pro wrestling executive.

I grew up with Chris Casares, a .k .a. Chris Canyon, in Sunnyside, Queens, New

York. I went to the grammar school with Chris and high school, and as luck would

have it, worked with him at WWE.

Middle class, blue collar area, a lot of Catholics in our parish. He would be in

the corner with some of his friends.

Putting on these shows, he adored wrestling.

I don't think he was ever...

Comfortable about his sexual orientation.

That comes from where he grew up, his religious beliefs.

He had a struggle at our high school. He was overheard cursing a teacher and

sent him to a chaplain of our school.

And he just blurted out, I'm gay.

Don't give in to Satan.

Don't give in to temptations.

The animosity Chris had towards this person who told him that.

Chris says, that's who I am.

So why is it wrong?

I think it had a big effect on him.

It really broke my heart. I was like, man, I wish I knew. I wish I knew he was

going through this.

So when I first started hanging around with Canyon, he presented himself as a

guy from New York, a tough New York, you know, Queens guy who was very Catholic

and very...

Anti -homosexual.

I am the sinister minister, Father James Mitchell.

I have been known as Daryl Van Horn in Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

I'm sure your mother's waiting for you in the tool shed.

I was known as James Vandenberg in WCW.

He showed me this tape of him doing a match in the streets.

I said, you know, I could really do something with you, Canyon.

What we need to do... is get you into a ring. And the only wrestling ring that I

know of around here is the one that Fabulous Moolah has.

Brought in the hard way by the Fabulous One. For over half a century, the

Fabulous Moolah was one of the industry's leading power brokers

nearly all aspects of women's wrestling.

He was pretty marked out that he was in the presence of a legend.

Moolah normally trained women.

I had told him, just keep your mouth shut.

Let me do the talking.

Let me see if I can bullshit her, get you in the door.

She looked at him. She was very impressed.

Moolah would run these tiny shows for her students.

Mae Young was there, and she would get in there all the time and jump on Canyon

and stomp the shit out of him. She'd rip big wads of hair out of his head.

Pat, what's going on? This bitch is crazy. She's shooting on me.

I'm like, just put up with it. You'll be okay.

By the mid -90s, Canyon catches the attention of world championship

and is soon realizing his dream, performing regularly on national

I first met Chris when I went to WCW, and he used to be in a tag team called

at Work where they used to go around and measure things for no apparent reason.

He started getting a little bit of steam because he had such a great reputation

amongst the other wrestlers.

He had this really super thick accent.

He also had a little bit of a lisp, which used to bother him.

He was always nervous to do a promo on air because he was always kind of

about his lisp.

Everyone saw the potential that he had to be top star, and that's when they

started giving him a little bit more to do on the show and kind of expanding his

role. He was getting to live his dream.

This was a time when he was really happy.

He went to pack up and go to Memphis, I believe. I get a phone call, and I see

it on the caller ID, and I'm excited. Christopher Klusaritz. I picked it up.

Canyon, how are you doing?

He goes, Van, I have something to tell you. Okay, what's that?

I had one of those big U -Haul things, and my cousins were trying to move it.

And Van...

Gay pornography exploded all over the street. It was like a pinata of gay

And I panicked. And they said, Gagnon, what the fuck is that? And I said,

Daryl Van Horn. He pulls ribs on people. He's a sick motherfucker.

He's probably gay himself.

I bet it is.

So that's how he came out to me. And I said, okay, so what? And he goes, so you

need to call my cousin.

And he had this very elaborate script written out where I couldn't be too

obvious. But I had to say, hey, can you get me in touch with Canyon? Because I

left some materials with him.

And the thing was, I was the only person Canyon told he was gay.

And my job was to cover for him.

What really was a huge break for Chris was they came up with this campaign.

Our world is about to change.

The Blood Runs Cold storyline casts wrestler Ray Lloyd as Glacier, a

inspired by Mortal Kombat Sub -Zero, while Canyon emerges as his nemesis

with manager James Vandenberg at his side.

That's the coolest mask gimmick ever.

This was a huge break.

It was a great combination with Vandenberg.

Vandenballs, he used to call him. He used to torture Vandenballs, man.

He was vicious.

He was vicious on it.

But Vandenballs never has a career without Chris Cannon.

And he loved Vandenballs. He loved them.

We were celebrating a great victory or something.

I went and turned the car on and it wouldn't start. He started screaming and

yelling and cursing at me.

Now, Kenyon, it's not a big deal. I'll call a taxi, whatever.

And he just started increasing it. Anyhow, the car starts. It's an hour

home to Atlanta. The whole time. He's throwing elbows in my face. He's going,

you mother... I hate you. You beat the shit.

I'm just going, what?

What's wrong with you, man?

And we got to the parking garage.

They kicked, actually kicked my passenger door open.

You mother... And he began to kick out every headlight, brake light,

jumped up and down on the hood, totally destroyed my car.

Get the... I hate you. I never want to see you again. If I didn't have a list,

would never have anything to do with you because I can't do a promo.

And then I looked at him. I let it sit for a minute.

And I went, okay.

That's a hell of a thing to say to the only guy who knows your secret identity.

As Chris Canyon reaches new heights wrestling for one of the industry's top

promotions, he becomes even more paranoid about his colleagues

innermost secret.

If you were gay back then, you were a bad guy.

You were a heel.

You were the guy that you would do the sunset flip and they would pull your

pants down and you'd have a home on. You know what I mean?

Back in those days, it just wasn't as accepted as it is now.

I can't believe it. Absolutely. I'm sure Canyon was worried about how that would

be presented.

It wasn't going to be a positive thing.

My name is Brian Cage, current AEW wrestler, big time fan, very close

and also an official trainee of Chris Canyon.

Just because of the creative control that wrestling could have, you know, I

easily could have lost him his job for sure.

He had what looked like a control center.

He would spend days.

trolling for boyfriends.

He had all these long -winded conversations with guys, and he would

everything out, alphabetize them, organize them, and he would put them in

little metal box.

So you'd have the usual suspects come running in, and they'd ask what was in

box. You'd say, none of your fucking business.

And he started getting really paranoid about the box. I started calling it

Pandora's Box.

I said, Kenyon, why do you have this?

You're worried about being outed as being gay. But this is like Nixon

Watergate tapes.

Maybe he wanted somebody to knock it over just like his gay porn fell out of

U -Haul thing with his cousin. You know, that could have been it.

What was great about the Mortis character for Chris was that you could

behind the mask.

And little did I know that he was hiding behind the mask the whole time.

Mortis really gave him that power to grow.

And then a little thing happened called the NWO.

You can call this the New World Order

of Wrestling, brother.

And I will never forget Canyon.

He looked at me, he goes, our push is dead.

And he was right. The NWO took over the world. I hope it's okay, because there's

nothing you can do about it. All of that gimmicky, character -based wrestling

stuff went out the window.

We're on reality -based wrestling, not cartoons.

He started getting really frustrated about it. You just opened Pandora's...

stress of it started making him really lash out at me for no reason. One night,

he went off on me. You mother...

and started choking me like this with the thumbs on the Adam's apple to the

point that I blacked out.

And I started coming to and I was hearing, you mother... And then he

at me and he goes,

Oh, man.

What am I doing? I'm so sorry. I love you. I'm sorry.

And he started kissing my forehead and shit.

And, you know, and I was loyal to him, and I loved him, and he helped me so

much. But there's no reason to be beating my ass.

You know, he had to release his steam, and he couldn't act that way in front of

other people.

With the Mortis storyline now over, Chris grows anxious about his future

the company, but WCW finds him a new role.

That's, that's Mortis!

Oh, my. You know, we haven't seen Mortis for months.

Now, without a mask, he has reintroduced the fans as Canyon.

Now we can see Chris.

We can see because he looks, he's a cool -looking dude.

You know, he's got swag.

Now he's got a different level of confidence.

Who's better than Canyon?

Eric Bischoff had a lot of faith in Chris Canyon.

I mean, he sent him to do Ready to Rumble. That match, everything.

All that's Chris Canyon.

That generation, love, ready to rumble.

It's the best wrestling movie of all time.

But Canyon helped teach David Arquette how to wrestle and how to take the

and then he even took some of the stuff. He was a stunt double in the film at

some.

He came up with a three -level cage match, and then it was his idea to use

cage in an actual WWE match.

Chris took a bump from the top of it from Mike Awesome.

Big moment.

It was just great to see him. He's in the mix.

He would make fun of me all the time.

He would do his DDP impersonation.

He was having such a good time with it.

WCW had the money to spend on these guys.

Chris probably went from making $100 a day to making $300, $400, $500 a year.

He was spending it, but in a good way. He loved.

to play Lord Bountiful and put on the best parties.

He turned his house into a beach bar nightclub.

Like, literally. He brought in sand.

The women were crawling on him. I'm not kidding.

Crawling on him. And he completely no -sells it.

And one of the girls one night comes over to me and she goes, I think your

friend might be gay.

And I told him that. He got really paranoid then.

So he had assigned me to make a pornographic video of him that he

could show the boys as proof that he was straight.

Find a whore. Here's the room.

And here's my video camera.

Here's the script.

I'll be there about midnight.

And he never showed up. One o 'clock, two o 'clock, whatever. So nature took

course.

Long story short, we followed his script and the girl was wearing the mortise

mask. Okay.

In the morning, we're in the hotel room and I popped the tape in.

Canyon laughed at first and then you could see him start getting furious.

He ran in the bathroom.

Out of nowhere he goes, you mother, you used my hair conditioner.

I was like, Ken, you don't even have three pieces of hair on my head.

And he's amping it up. And I started seeing the things that led to me getting

choked. However, I had a .45 pistol under the pillow.

And he hit me with both fists in the chest and I flew over to bed.

And I hit the ground, and I came right back up, slid across, put my hand under

the pillow, picked up the gun, and I went, you.

You hit me again, you're dead.

Now shit's on.

Canyon grabbed the four pieces of Charlie Brown hair I have on top of my

put down the gun, and I'm going, I've had enough of this shit.

You're big, you mother.

What the fuck did I do to deserve this shit?

And then it hit me like, okay, this shit's out of control.

This is one of my best friends.

We let it diffuse.

Were you planning on shooting him if you had to? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was.

I had looked up all the statutes on, you know, reasonable fear of life and

whatnot. I mean, it wasn't something I wanted to do, but I was like, you know,

the next time this guy starts that Adam's apple business... You were

shoot him? I was prepared to shoot him.

Although Chris Canyon's paranoia continues to manifest in violent

career is about to peak in a way he never dreamed possible.

Chris came to prominence right when the industry was having a great boom.

Then, you know, WWE bought out WCW. They really believed in him. Chris writes in

his book, you know, Vince pulls him aside and said, you have really adjusted

well here and we have big plans for you.

And he ended up being a double champion the first two months or so. He was a tag

champion and he was the U .S. champion.

Who better than Canyon and DDP and Taz? Who better?

You know, I thought he was in a great spot.

I mean, I thought he was going to shine.

But, you know, it's like anything.

You don't know what you don't know.

Canyon would invite me to come up and stay with him. I'd stay with him two,

three weeks, sometimes a month at a time.

He would spend two or three days sitting on the floor, stacking and restacking

papers.

I'd say, what are you doing? I'm working on my taxes.

But he wasn't working on his taxes. He was just taking piles of notices from

IRS and things like that and just moving them around.

He would stay in bed for six and seven days after

he's invited me there.

I'd just be sitting in his house for days and days and days.

I didn't understand depression. I would say, what the do you have to be

depressed about?

You're on WWE, you're in movies, you got money. They couldn't articulate it to

me further than, you know, you don't know what it's like to be in my head.

You think everybody loves me. I don't think they do.

Then he got hurt.

He got his shoulder injured and he was worried that he was going to get fired.

You build a program and then you get hurt.

It's really hard to come back from.

He took steroids for one of the few times I was ever aware of it to try to

his injury.

And I guess he was depressed for a few days and left the needle out.

And he got some sort of horrible blood infection.

and he lost a bunch of weight, and he was really worried that they would let

go.

Canyon spends the next year and a half recovering from his injuries while also

struggling with his mental health.

Determined to come back better than before, he's finally offered a role that

believes will get his career back on track.

He had told me he was going to be at SmackDown, and he had a role, a big one.

was a moment for him to...

be involved with two huge names in industry.

The Undertaker, who was very high on Chris, thought Chris had a lot of

potential. And Paul Heyman, who's presenting The Undertaker with a gift.

Whenever WWE came to town in Southern California, we were at the shows, no

matter what. I remember Chris was hiding in a giant, of course in pro wrestling,

a giant present.

At some point, Canyon was directed to come out of a big wooden box.

Dressed as Boy George and thinking, do you really want to hurt me? And he was

told to do it with a lisp.

Do you really want to make me cry?

Boy George. Do you really want to hurt me?

Oh, my God. And we're like, oh, my God, it's Canyon. Because we were such Canyon

fans. We're just popping from our seats. We didn't know he was going to be here.

Make me cry.

There's brother love when you need him.

But then he just got destroyed, right?

Welcome back to the WWE.

It was really violent.

And I remember, like, I was smart to the business even. I think I was thinking

to myself, like, this is terrible.

Why did they bring Canyon out just to kill him like that?

What was it, like a chair shot to the head or something?

With like a terrible chair shot to the head.

It's pretty obvious.

He had never done anything like that. Just out of the blue one day he comes

and is expected to sing like Boy George.

Like, I mean, come on.

Somebody found something out or heard something or said, let's put this guy to

task.

And it's a bullying WWE trick.

Why else would you do that?

I think that really did hurt him.

To this day, I'm not going to buy it that they wanted to humiliate him.

WWE is not going to have someone trained to come back for a year to humiliate

him on national TV.

That's not going to happen.

It just didn't work out creatively.

And then he started being depositioned or pushed down the card.

Do you know who's better than Kane?

I want to know. Tell me, please.

Everybody!

Woo! Yeah!

This happens a lot of times in WWE.

You get kind of slotted in a certain position and it's hard to dig yourself

of it.

They didn't feel it was enough to keep him on, so they let him go.

Canyon claimed to me at first.

The office was punishing him for being gay. But then he told me later that was

all bullshit.

A knee injury, a shoulder injury. He can't get back on track. And he was just

using it as an ace in the hole to cover his ass if he had to sue them.

And he became what I guess you call in literature an unreliable narrator.

I couldn't tell what was true and what wasn't.

But, you know, Canyon, in a lot of ways, towards the last few years of his life,

could be his own worst enemy.

Devastated by his release from the WWE,

Chris Canyon finds meaning in mentoring a new generation of wrestling stars.

It was about 2005 when we got booked on a bigger show. We thought Chris Canyon

was on the list, and we couldn't believe it.

He was one of our heroes, legitimate heroes.

Here we are. We're just these kids. I'm probably 19.

Yeah, and I'm 15, 16. 15, 16.

We're like teenage boys. Hi, I'm Matt.

This is my brother Nick. All nervous.

We hit it off, you know, right off the bat.

Imagine this guy that you watched on television for years.

Now he's your friend, and he's, you know, calling you every day.

A kid called me up one time. He goes, hey, are you guys having a show? I'm

of in the area. I could come work one of your shows if you're there.

I was like, holy crap. Well, we're doing a show now.

He came out to a big pop, you know, the big star.

And he buried the crowd.

People could hear what Mike worked.

I didn't want to go

over. I didn't want to go over at all.

And he goes, kid, this is your promotion, your hometown.

Like, you got to go over.

It's going to get a better reaction.

I was like, OK, fine.

And he goes, pick me up. I step out the back door. And I roll him up. One, two,

three.

Still to this day, it's one of my top three favorites.

Not only matches and wrestling, but probably one of my top three favorite

moments of my life.

And he was such a giving, selfless guy.

Maybe for this one night, you'll bet it in Canyon.

Chris Canyon was the person that would honestly give you the shirt off his

He was a great person.

Chris was a great person.

My name is Luke Hawks. I'm a professional wrestler and also a dear

Chris Canyon. As you can see, such a dear friend.

You see, I have Mortis tattooed on my arm right here.

2005, Katrina hit.

And I was in Louisiana.

It was the worst hurricane of all time, completely wiped out the city.

Canyon called me up, and he was the first person to call me. And he goes, if

need a place to live, you can come live with me as long as you need to. No

charge.

So Chris would go through these stages where he would stay up for three or four

days at a time. Keep in mind, we're in Clearwater Beach, and the headquarters

for Scientology is not far away.

So he said he had just got home, and he went left, and he was driving on this

bridge for hours.

And he was trying to get to the Scientology building, and I think he

seen aliens or aliens have stopped him, which never happened.

Because he was home with us the whole time.

So he starts freaking out. He's like, I gotta break into this building. I gotta

go in that building. I know the aliens are in there.

I told the guys, I said, we can't let him leave.

We gotta hold him down. We're gonna have to tie him up and lock him in a room.

We can't let him leave until he calms down and goes to sleep. Because we knew

once he went to sleep, he would wake up and he would be fine.

And that's exactly what happened.

He woke up.

I didn't even remember it happening.

Canyon eventually begins treatment for bipolar disorder and finally feels

empowered to open up about his sexuality.

He says, I need to tell you something.

And I go, okay, what's up? His tone was different and he was more serious. And

I'm just like, is everything okay, man?

I just don't know how you're going to react to this.

I'm like, dude, just tell me. And he finally spits it out. He's like.

Kid, I'm gay.

And I said, okay.

And he goes, you don't hate me?

I said, why would I hate you? He goes, because I'm gay.

And just to be honest, especially at that time, that day and age, I was a

bummed out about it. I'm like, what?

I'm like, he's gay?

Then I start thinking about it. I go, wait a minute.

That doesn't change anything.

I'm really thankful for that opportunity now, too, because I really think that

made me, like, open my eyes and become a lot more, like, understanding and

tolerant towards a lot of things because it was, like, that quick. Like, within

a minute, I went from, like, oh, man, to, like, oh, wait, who cares?

We were all kind of happy for him because by this time, his career wasn't

he dreamed it could be.

He had been discussing on and off being an openly gay wrestler.

He wanted to really be a role model in doing it.

But the issue was, how do you portray that?

He came out of the closet at an independent show where he was wrestling

Dallas Page.

Now one of the most controversial wrestlers, right?

The question I got for you, my brother.

You gonna pop the question?

Uh -oh. The rumor that's floating around is...

Are you gay?

He figured that it would be a big deal.

The rumor's the truth.

I'm gay.

I am the first ever openly gay professional athlete active in this

You will always be my brother.

The thing was, we're now in 2006, and nobody cares.

It was kind of like too little too late.

Orlando Jordan had been put on television, and they were going to...

announced him as an openly gay wrestler. And Canyon lost his mind about that.

They're taking my gimmick! They're taking my gimmick!

And I would say, well, you don't have a patent or a trademark on being gay, and

you didn't bring it up to them before.

He wrote a letter to Stephanie McMahon saying, please let me be the spokesman.

think I can help kids that need to come out and things like that.

Stephanie wrote him back with this pithy little response. I'm so sorry to hear

about your struggles. I didn't know about any of this. But before I can

your other issues, I have to talk to legal department or something. And he

heard back from him after that.

A few years prior, Canyon had already sealed his fate with the WWE by

a series of ill -conceived stunts in hopes of getting their attention.

I was WWE's MSG promoter.

You know, Chris Benoit just wins his world title with Eddie Guerrero in the

ring. So, you know, I'm on the floor. So this is about a few minutes after we're

off air.

I look in the corner of my eye, and I see Chris jump in the ring, go to the

turnbuckle.

That was some odd behavior from him.

You know, I had to ask myself, what, you know, what's going on here?

Later that night, WWE was kind enough to invite him to the after party. He goes,

oh, and by the way, I just went over to Vince, Vince McMahon, put my arm around

him, and I said, thank you for inviting me to this party, even though you fired

me.

I don't know why he did that. Chris was, it was like a downward spiral.

I think his head was stuck in that, no, I'm going to be controversial, so

they'll talk about it in the sheets.

You would hear these stories about, yeah, Canyon sitting front row at a live

event screaming, you know, give me justice or whatever the details were.

Anyway, you slice it. You can see this is good.

The industry may see him as taboo to work with.

That must have been terrible for Chris. And then, you know, he kind of

disappeared for a while after that.

One time he calls me, and we were really close at this point.

I start the shower, and my phone goes off, and it's Chris, and I always pick

for Chris.

And he's bawling his eyes out. And I'm like, Chris, calm down, calm down.

going on?

I've had enough.

I'm going to kill myself.

And I said, Chris, what? He's like, pray for me right now, kid. Pray for me

right now. I'm like, my hand's shaking, and I'm like, I'm praying for this guy,

and he's bawling and bawling and bawling, and, like, the entire

filling up with steam because, like, I'm on this call for 45 minutes. I'm

crying. I'm 19 years old. I'm trying to convince this guy, one of my heroes,

don't kill yourself.

And it was heavy.

And by the time we were done with the conversation, I got him to calm down.

And we said a prayer, and he told me he loved me.

And I got off the phone, and I'm just like standing there, just going, holy

crap, what was that?

In 2006, Cannon receives an unexpected call from the Howard Stern Show.

where he eventually appears as a regular, demonstrating his wit, charm,

humor. He got out there and he talked about being gay, and he made self

-deprecating jokes that he'd always wanted to do.

If the Mets win, you gotta suck my dick.

Chris Canyon's a wrestler, and he feels he was kicked out of the WWE because

he's gay.

To me, the Boy George thing, that was a message, I thought.

That was like, if you come out of the closet, we're gonna beat the shit out of

you. They told me before that, before I went out there as Boy George, they said,

sing like a... There was an incident with him and John Cena on Howard Stern.

He says Vince is a homophobe, and Chris claims that he was fired because he is a

gay man.

Here's the weird thing about Chris, and I've known Chris for a long time. He

actually came out of the closet after he was fired. Right.

He just, he wasn't any good.

I remember my first thought, and I was livid.

It was just such a dirtbag thing to say. And with Vince, you do have to have a

certain technical bravado. You got to be able to wrestle. But at the same time,

it's WWE.

You got to be able to entertain the people. Right. Chris just wasn't any

Take Canyon, you know, to the general public, who's like right here. And then

John Cena, who's right here.

And he, you know, kind of craps on Canyon.

Whatever truth there is to whatever he's saying, Canyon... Cena's going to

basically stomp it out. You know, the guys from the WWE were in an uproar

your last appearance here. Did you know that? No.

Ric Flair is on the phone. He wants to debate you. Ric Flair is on the phone?

Canyon loves Ric Flair.

Canyon's Canyon was Ric Flair.

John made a good point.

And I'm disappointed in Chris as a person. I've known him a long time that

would blame his shortcomings on something that's going on in his

He started.

getting into a fight with his childhood hero, Ric Flair.

Ric, we know a lot of guys inside the business that are gay, but they don't

to go national, be nationally out. I did, and I was punished for wanting to

it. Yeah, I guess it kind of didn't go well for Kenyon. He put Ric Flair in a

position of having to say, Chris, I love you, buddy, you're a good guy, but

you're not the nature boy, you're not Stone Cold.

You think he could work for the WWE again?

No, I don't think he could. Why not?

I think the opportunity for Chris Canyon is come and gone. And Cena said, yeah,

you are not good enough right now to be on the show. Okay. All right, well,

there it is. Ric Flair backed what John Cena said, and Canyon had a huge problem

with that.

He really kind of underplayed how much it affected him. I think he just didn't

want to admit that he had that kind of power over him.

He was a great professional wrestler.

He was a great entertainer.

It was gone.

Last time I saw him was January or February of 2010.

And he had been booked to work a show for Mikey Wiprex. And the match just,

it was horrible.

The worst I've ever seen him wrestle in his life.

And people started laughing.

Once they're laughing at you and not with you, you're gone.

Total flat finish. Nobody cared.

But we went to the bar afterwards.

He was holding court.

He was the star.

He was making all the self -deprecating gay jokes. And people were laughing with

him, not at him.

One guy walked up to me. Hey, I don't want to bother you guys, but will you

let him know he meant a lot to me and he's inspired me because

I'm gay.

So we go back to the hotel room and everything's great.

And we walk in and he started saying that he was sore and I asked him what

happened. And he said that he'd just thrown himself in front of a car trying

kill himself a couple days earlier.

And I started saying, Canyon, have you lost your mind? Did you just see what we

did?

Did you see the outpouring of love from these guys?

I said, you're being selfish.

And he goes, no, Van.

You're the one who's being selfish.

You don't know what it's like to live in my brain, to feel like a freak and hate

yourself every day.

And I yelled at him a little bit more.

And then he goes, Van, I'm going to stop you right here.

And we hugged.

And then it was like an episode of This Is Your Life.

He was going to take me to the airport. We had like 45 minutes to go.

And it was like, you remember the time you did this? You remember the time you

did that? And we were howling like the good old days.

When I got out of the car, I just lost it. And I got on the plane. I cried the

whole way home and found a little corner seat. I got off and my wife asked me

what was wrong. And I said, I think he's going to do it this time.

That last day I saw him, I literally knew that he wasn't going

to be here much longer.

I started, you know, calling him several times a day, every day for like two

weeks, and he wouldn't answer the phone at all.

Then his friend Mike Passarello called me at, I think it was like 6 a .m. in

morning, and that's never a good time to get a phone call, and he told me,

told me he was gone.

On April 2nd, 2010, Chris was found dead in his childhood home in Sunnyside,

Queens, New York, having overdosed on antidepressants. His death was ruled a

suicide. He was 40 years old.

As you can imagine, we took it how we took it.

And, uh, you know, I teared up a little bit, said, I was, like, so

numb, I didn't know, like,

What to do or feel just like just frozen because it was just I was that a lot

But I also remember being relieved because I remember Chris is now at a

where he wants to be Because he can't be in pain, you know, he sees he's not

it's it's I'm sorry, I'm sorry

He I knew my friend wasn't suffering anymore and it sucked to lose him,

but I just hope that

He's not suffering anymore.

I know everything to the guy, you know.

He's horribly missed.

He was one of my best friends.

He wanted to reach his arms out and help, you know, me be successful. I

love him, man. I miss him.

It's very rare in wrestling that you get somebody that nobody...

ever talks bad about, Chris was one of those guys.

I mean, he was a tortured soul.

If I understood what was going on, maybe I could have been of, you know, more

assistance or guided him in the right way, but I just didn't know. And, you

know, I would just tell anybody watching this, if you know anybody who's bipolar

or schizophrenic or anything like that, to where their mental health issues

are interfering with their day -to -day existence.

Do what you have to do.

Any secrets you have, go out there and get them help and save them.

He definitely opened the door, though, for others to be more comfortable with

coming out. And he was one of the first that I could remember. He's a pioneer.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, he'd be a hero right now.

He'd really be a hero.

I think that was too much of a cross and bear. I really do.

I mean, now we've got, you know, out gay wrestlers, trans.

I mean, it's a different world.

Chris Canyon inspired and helped an entire generation of

younger guys.

They showed their appreciation for what he did, for his legacy, by incorporating

his moves into their matches.

He was just so underutilized and so underappreciated, so the fact that we

bring more light to his name and people could really understand how great of a

guy he was and how great in the ring he was, you know, it's better late than

never.

I remember on one road trip in particular, Chris was like, You guys

realize what I would do to go back and be your age. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Trying to break in in wrestling and make it again right now. It didn't make any

sense to me. What are you talking about?

You've done it all. You were on WCW Nitro. You've been a champion in WWE.

had your own action figure. You've been on video games. You've done it all,

Chris. And I didn't understand, like, why would he want to trade spots with

I would do anything.

I would give up anything to be him. Guys.

Listen, he's like, the journey there is so much better than the destination.

And I'm like, I didn't get it. And now I've made it to the destination, and

right. Like, you're chasing this thing, and when you finally get to the thing,

it doesn't really make you feel any better or happier. You have to be happy

entire time.

That last night I saw him, I'd asked him, you know, I've told some of these

stories about the crazy shit you did, but you didn't have the gay subtext to

explain some of the behavior.

And I said, do you really want me to tell these stories? He said, shoot,

shoot.

Tell the truth, Papa.

If you pulled out a Ouija board and I got the chance to talk to him one more

time, I would just say, Canyon, you've been an amazing

friend.

I guess I'd just hug his ghost.

Oops.

Motherfucker. You missed.