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00:00¡Gracias por ver!
00:30I would say he's one of the most underappreciated wrestlers of all time.
00:44Chris is one of those guys who deserves so much more respect, so much more notoriety, and so much more love for everything he did for wrestling.
00:51Despite 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.
01:01I had no idea he was gay.
01:05Here's a guy twice my size that's just always talking about the queers.
01:12I ain't got time for that.
01:13That to me was like the greatest kept secret, and I'm one of Chris's best friends.
01:19Concealing the truth became an obsession, and his increasingly erratic behavior deeply concerned and terrified those closest to him.
01:27Then he started doing a bunch of crazy shit.
01:30The house would be destroyed, or my car would be destroyed, or my clothes would be torn up.
01:36Then at that point, I was like, you just tried to f***ing kill me.
01:40Just holding on to a secret.
01:43Not being able to share with your closest friends and family.
01:45Not being able to tell them who you really are.
01:48That must have killed him for so long.
01:50Literally, it was an emotional rollercoaster.
01:52He was manic.
01:53Really, just out of his mind, it was a painful thing to watch him disintegrate, really.
02:01His life played out the way he saw it.
02:04Because we all manifest our own reality.
02:17Who's been in a canyon?
02:20In the 90s, it's like...
02:21You had to have a catchphrase.
02:22You had to have a catchphrase.
02:24Who better than Canyon?
02:25Who better?
02:27Who better than Canyon?
02:30Who better than Canyon?
02:31Nobody!
02:32He showed me something different every day.
02:34Canyon has really revolutionized our sport.
02:36Brought in some moves that no one's even thought of.
02:39That was different.
02:40As far as guys I love to be in the ring with, and dance as we call it.
02:45Chris Canyon is the top 5%.
02:47Because it was just fun.
02:49It's me, it's D-D-P, Diamond Dallas Page, master of the Diamond Cutter.
02:56I think he did the independent wrestling style before anybody else.
03:02I'm Nick Jackson, this is my brother Matt Jackson.
03:05We're the Young Bucks.
03:06We're very good friends with Chris Canyon.
03:08He doesn't realize so much of us as kids, as teenagers, we watch Chris, the way that he took moves, and the way he sold moves, and the way he strung along offense.
03:17Another one of his innovative moves!
03:19There was something special about Chris, everyone loved him, and he was funny, and he was bright, and he was witty.
03:24I would call him a king of Sunnyside, New York.
03:26Hi, my name is Raphael Morphy, I'm a 20 year pro wrestling executive.
03:31I grew up with Chris Casares, aka Chris Canyon, in Sunnyside, Queens, New York.
03:36I went to grammar school with Chris, and high school, and as luck would have it, work with him at WWE.
03:41Middle class, blue collar area, a lot of Catholics.
03:46In our parish, he would be in the corner with some of his friends, putting on these shows.
03:52He adored wrestling.
03:54I don't think he was ever comfortable about his sexual orientation.
03:59That comes from where he grew up, his religious beliefs.
04:04He had a struggle at our high school.
04:06He was overheard cursing his teacher, and sent him to a chaplain of our school.
04:12And he just blurted out, I'm gay.
04:15You know, don't give in to Satan, don't give in to temptations.
04:20The animosity Chris had towards this person who told him that.
04:24Chris says, that's who I am.
04:27So, why is it wrong?
04:29I think it had a big effect on him.
04:32It really broke my heart.
04:34I was like, man, I wish I knew.
04:36I wish I knew he was going through this.
04:40So when I first started hanging around with Canyon, he presented himself as a guy from New York,
04:47a tough New York, you know, Queens guy, who was very Catholic, and very anti-homosexual.
04:56I am the sinister minister, Father James Mitchell.
05:00I have been known as Daryl Van Horn in Smoky Mountain Wrestling.
05:04I'm sure your mother's waiting for you in the tool shed!
05:07I was known as James Vandenberg in WCW.
05:10Twisted body!
05:12He showed me this tape of him doing a match in the streets.
05:17I said, you know, I could really do something with you, Canyon.
05:21What we need to do is get you into a ring.
05:25And the only wrestling ring that I know of around here is the one that Fabulous Moolah has.
05:31Brought in the hard way by the Fabulous One.
05:34For over half a century, the Fabulous Moolah was one of the industry's leading power brokers controlling nearly all aspects of women's wrestling.
05:43He was pretty marked out that he was in the presence of a legend.
05:48Moolah normally trained women.
05:52I had told him, just keep your mouth shut.
05:55Let me do the talking.
05:57Let me see if I can bullshit her.
06:00Get you in the door.
06:02She looked at him, she was very impressed.
06:07Moolah would run these tiny shows for her students.
06:10Mae Young was there and she would get in there all the time and jump on Canyon in him and stomp the shit out of him.
06:18She'd rip big wads of hair out of his head.
06:21What's going on?
06:23This bitch is crazy.
06:24She's shooting on me.
06:25I'm like, just put up with it.
06:27You'll be okay.
06:28By the mid-90s, Canyon catches the attention of world championship wrestling and is soon realizing his dream performing regularly on national television.
06:38I first met Chris when I went to WCW and he used to be in a tag team called Men at Work where they used to go around and measure things for no apparent reason.
06:48He started getting a little bit of steam because he had such a great reputation amongst the other wrestlers.
06:54He was so agile.
06:55He had this really super thick accent.
06:58He also had a little bit of a lisp which used to bother him.
07:01He was always nervous to do a promo on air because he was always kind of worried about his lisp.
07:05That's Barrios!
07:06That's Barrios!
07:07You were respected and bound to be condemned!
07:09Everyone 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.
07:16He was getting to live his dream.
07:19This was a time when he was really happy.
07:24He went to pack up and go to Memphis, I believe.
07:28I get a phone call and I see it on the caller ID and I'm excited.
07:31Christopher Glussaritz.
07:32I picked it up.
07:33Canyon!
07:34How are you doing?
07:35He goes, Van, I have something to tell you.
07:38Okay, what's that?
07:39I had one of those big U-Haul things and my cousins were trying to move it.
07:45And Van, gay pornography exploded all over the street.
07:50It was like a pinata of gay porn.
07:53And I panicked.
07:54And they said, Canyon, what the is that?
07:57And I said, that's Daryl Van Horns.
07:59He pulls ribs on people.
08:01He's a sick mother .
08:03He's probably gay himself.
08:04I bet it's his.
08:05So that's how he came out to me.
08:08And I said, okay, so what?
08:11And he goes, so you need to call my cousin.
08:13And he had this very elaborate script written out where I couldn't be too obvious.
08:19But I had to say, hey, can you get me in touch with Canyon?
08:24Because I left some materials with him.
08:28And the thing was, I was the only person Canyon told he was gay.
08:33And my job was to cover for him.
08:37What really was a huge break for Chris was they came up with this campaign.
08:43Our world is about to change.
08:46The Blood Runs Cold storyline casts wrestler Ray Lloyd as Glacier, a character inspired by Mortal Kombat Sub-Zero.
08:54While Canyon emerges as his nemesis Mortis, with manager James Vandenberg at his side.
09:00That's the coolest mass gimmick ever.
09:15This was a huge break.
09:19It was a great combination with Vandenberg.
09:22Vanden Balls.
09:23He used to call him.
09:24He used to torture Vanden Balls, man.
09:26He was vicious.
09:28He was vicious on him.
09:30But Vanden Balls never has a career without Chris Canyon.
09:35And he loved Vanden Balls.
09:36He loved them.
09:37Oh!
09:38And Vanden Balls!
09:39Oh!
09:40That was right in the test!
09:43We were celebrating a great victory or something.
09:47I went to turn the car on and it wouldn't start.
09:49He started screaming and yelling and cursing at me.
09:52I'm Canyon.
09:53It's not a big deal.
09:54I'll call a taxi, whatever.
09:56And he just started increasing it.
09:58Anyhow, the car starts.
09:59It's an hour ride home to Atlanta.
10:01The whole time.
10:02He's throwing elbows in my face, going,
10:04You mother****!
10:05I f***ing hate you!
10:06You f***ing piece of shit!
10:08And just going,
10:09What?
10:10What's wrong with you, man?
10:12And we got to the parking garage.
10:15It kicked, actually kicked my f***ing passenger door open.
10:20You mother****!
10:22And he began to kick out every headlight, brake light,
10:27Jumped up and down on the hood.
10:29Totally destroyed my car.
10:34Get the f*** out of here!
10:35I hate you!
10:36I never want to see you again!
10:37If I didn't have a list, I would never have anything to do with you!
10:41Cause I can't do a promo!
10:43And then I looked at him.
10:45I let it sit for a minute.
10:47And I went,
10:50Okay.
10:51That's a hell of a thing to say to the only guy who knows your secret identity.
10:57As Chris Canyon reaches new heights wrestling for one of the industry's top promotions,
11:07He becomes even more paranoid about his colleagues discovering his innermost secret.
11:13If you were gay back then, you were a bad guy.
11:17You were a heel.
11:19You were the guy that you would do the sunset flip and they would pull your pants down and you'd have a thong on.
11:23You know what I mean?
11:25Look at this!
11:27Back in those days, it just wasn't as accepted as it is now.
11:31Oh my gosh! A man kissing another man! I can't believe it!
11:35Absolutely. I'm sure Canyon was worried about how that would be presented.
11:39Oh my God!
11:40Oh my God!
11:41Wait a minute!
11:42It wasn't going to be a positive thing.
11:44My name is Brian Cage, current AEW wrestler, big time fan, very close friend, and also an official trainee of Chris Canyon.
11:52Just because of the creative control that wrestling could have, you know, easily could have lost him his job for sure.
11:58He had what looked like a control center.
12:02He would spend days trolling for boyfriends.
12:06He had all these long-winded conversations with guys and he would print everything out.
12:11Alphabetize them, organize them, and he would put them in this little metal box.
12:17So you'd have the usual suspects come running in and they'd ask what was in the box.
12:22He'd say, none of your fucking business!
12:24And he started getting really paranoid about the box to a point, I started calling it Pandora's box.
12:29I said, Canyon, why do you have this?
12:32You're worried about being outed as being gay, but this is like Nixon keeping Watergate tapes.
12:38Maybe he wanted somebody to knock it over just like his gay porn fell out of the U-Haul thing with his cousin.
12:45You know, that could have been it.
12:47What was great about the Mortis character for Chris was that you could hide behind the mask.
12:54And little did I know that he was hiding behind the mask the whole time.
12:58Mortis really gave him that power to grow.
13:02And then a little thing happened called the N-W-O.
13:14You can call this the New World Order of Wrestling, brother.
13:20And I will never forget Canyon.
13:23He looked at me, he goes, our push is dead.
13:27And he was right.
13:28The N-W-O took over the world.
13:30I hope it's okay because there's nothing you can do about it.
13:34All of that gimmicky character based wrestling stuff went out the window.
13:39We're on reality based wrestling, not cartoons.
13:42He started getting really frustrated about that.
13:45You just opened Pandora's.
13:47The stress of it started making him really lash out at me for no reason.
13:52One night he went off on me.
13:55You mother .
13:57And started choking me like this.
14:00With the thumbs on the Adam's apple.
14:03To the point that I blacked out.
14:07And I started coming to him and I was hearing.
14:10You mother .
14:12And then he looked down at me and he goes.
14:15Oh, Van .
14:17What am I doing?
14:18I'm so sorry.
14:19I love you.
14:20I'm sorry.
14:21And he started kissing my forehead and shit.
14:23And you know, and I was loyal to him and I loved him.
14:26And he helped me so much.
14:28But there's no reason to be beating my ass.
14:32You know, he had to release his steam.
14:35And he couldn't act that way in front of other people.
14:38With the Mortis storyline now over.
14:41Chris grows anxious about his future with the company.
14:44But WCW finds him a new role.
14:46That's, that's Mortis.
14:48Oh my.
14:49You know, we haven't seen Mortis for months.
14:51Now, without a mask, he is reintroduced to fans as Canyon.
14:55Now we can see Chris.
14:57Because he looks, he's a cool looking dude.
15:00You know, he's got swag.
15:02Now he's got a different level of confidence.
15:05Who's better than Canyon?
15:08Eric Pichoff had a lot of faith in Chris Canyon.
15:12I mean, he sent him to do Ready the Rumble.
15:15That match, everything, all that's Chris Canyon.
15:18That generation love Ready the Rumble.
15:22It's the best wrestling movie of all time.
15:25But Canyon helped teach David Arquette how to wrestle and how to take the bumps.
15:30And then he even took some of the stunts.
15:32He was a stunt double in the film itself.
15:34Come on, Jimmy!
15:35Oh!
15:36This is the one that came up with a three-level cage match.
15:39And then it was his idea to use that cage in actual WCW match.
15:44Chris took a bump from the top of it from Mike Awesome.
15:47Big moment.
15:48It was just great to see him.
15:51He's in the mix.
15:52He would make fun of me all the time.
15:55He would do his GDP impersonation.
15:57He was having such a good time with it.
15:59WCW had the money to spend on these guys.
16:03Chris probably went from making, you know, a hundred bucks a day to making, you know,
16:07three, four, five hundred grand a year.
16:10He was spending it, but in a good way.
16:12He loved to play Lord Bountiful and put on the best parties.
16:18He turned his house into a beach bar nightclub.
16:25Like, literally, he bought in sand.
16:29The women were crawling on him.
16:32I'm not kidding.
16:33Crawling on him.
16:35And he completely no-sells it.
16:37And one of the girls one night comes over to me and she goes,
16:40I think your friend might be gay.
16:43And I told him that.
16:45He got really paranoid then.
16:50So he had assigned me to make a pornographic video of him
16:56that he could show the boys as proof that he was straight.
17:01Find a whore.
17:03Here's the room.
17:04And here's my video camera.
17:06Here's the script.
17:08I'll be there about midnight.
17:10And he never showed up.
17:12One o'clock, two o'clock, whatever.
17:14So nature took its course.
17:17Long story short, we followed his script.
17:20And the girl was wearing the mortise mask.
17:22Okay.
17:23In the morning, we're in the hotel room.
17:28And I popped the tape in.
17:30Canyon laughed at first.
17:32And then you could see him start getting furious.
17:35And he ran in the bathroom.
17:38Out of nowhere, he goes, you mother
17:41you used my hair conditioner.
17:43I was like, Canyon, I don't even have
17:46three pieces of hair on my head.
17:48And he's just amping it up.
17:50And I started seeing the things that led to me getting choked.
17:55However, I had a .45 pistol under the pillow.
18:01And he hit me with both fists in the chest.
18:03And I flew over to bed.
18:04And I hit the ground.
18:05And I came right back up, slid across,
18:07put my hand under the pillow, picked up the gun.
18:09I went, you.
18:10You hit me again, you're dead.
18:12Now shit's on.
18:14Canyon grabs the four pieces of Charlie Brown hair
18:17I have on top of my head.
18:19Put down the gun.
18:20And I'm going, I've had enough of this shit.
18:22You're big, you mother .
18:24What the did I do to deserve this shit?
18:27And then it hit me like, okay, this shit's out of control.
18:31This is one of my best friends.
18:34So we let it diffuse.
18:36Were you planning on shooting him if you had to?
18:38Oh, yeah.
18:39Yeah, I was.
18:40I had looked up all the statutes on, you know, reasonable fear of life and whatnot.
18:46I mean, it wasn't something I wanted to do.
18:47But I was like, you know, the next time this guy starts that Adam's apple business.
18:53You were prepared to shoot him?
18:54I was prepared to shoot him.
18:56Although Chris Canyon's paranoia continues to manifest in violent outbursts, his career is about to peak in a way he never dreamed possible.
19:11Chris came to prominence right when the industry was having a great boom.
19:16Then, you know, WWE bought out WCW.
19:19They really believed in him.
19:21You know, 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.
19:28And he ended up being a double champion the first two months or so.
19:31He was a tag champion and he was a U.S. champion.
19:33Who better than Canyon and DDP and Taz?
19:36Who better?
19:37You know, I thought he was in a great spot.
19:40I mean, I thought he was going to shine.
19:43But, you know, it's like anything.
19:46You know, it's, uh, you don't know what you don't know.
19:50Canyon would invite me to come up and stay with him.
19:53I'd stay with him two, three weeks, sometimes a month at a time.
19:56He would spend two or three days sitting on the floor stacking and re-stacking papers.
20:03I'd say, what are you doing?
20:05I'm working on my taxes.
20:06But he wasn't working on his taxes.
20:08He was just taking piles of notices from the IRS and things like that and just moving them around.
20:17Like, he would stay in bed for six and seven days.
20:23After he's invited me there, I'd just be sitting in his house for days and days and days.
20:30I didn't understand depression.
20:33I would say, what the do you have to be depressed about?
20:37You're on f***ing WWE. You're in movies. You got money.
20:42They couldn't articulate it to me further than, you know, you don't know what it's like to be in my head.
20:47You think everybody loves me. I don't think they do.
20:50Then he got hurt.
20:57He got his shoulder injured and he was worried that he was going to get fired.
21:02You build a program and then you get hurt.
21:06It's really hard to come back from.
21:09He took steroids for one of the few times I was ever aware of it to try to rehab his injury.
21:17And I guess he was depressed for a few days and left the needle out and he got some sort of horrible blood infection.
21:23And he lost a bunch of weight and he was really worried that they would let him go.
21:31Canyon spends the next year and a half recovering from his injuries while also struggling with his mental health.
21:37Determined to come back better than before, he's finally offered a role that he believes will get his career back on track.
21:45He had told me he was going to be at SmackDown and he had a role, a big one.
21:50It was a moment for him to be involved with two huge names in industry.
21:55The Undertaker, who was very high on Chris, thought Chris had a lot of potential.
21:59And Paul Heyman, who's presenting The Undertaker with a gift.
22:02Sent to The Undertaker in a box.
22:04Whenever WWE came to town in Southern California, we were on the shows, no matter what.
22:08I remember Chris was hiding in a giant, of course in pro wrestling, a giant present.
22:13At some point, Canyon was directed to come out of a big wooden box dressed as Boy George and singing,
22:21Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? And he was told to do it with a lisp.
22:26Do you really wanna make me cry?
22:30Boy George.
22:32Do you really wanna hurt me?
22:35Oh my God.
22:36And we're like, oh my God, it's Canyon!
22:37Because we were such Canyon fans, we're just popping from our seats.
22:40We're like, oh, we didn't know he was gonna be here.
22:42Make me cry.
22:44It was brother love when you need him.
22:46But then he just got destroyed, right?
22:48I'm a man!
22:50I'm a man!
22:51And a canyon!
22:53Welcome back to the WWE!
22:55It was really violent.
22:56I want a chair!
22:58And I remember like, I was smart to the business even.
23:00I think, I remember thinking to myself like, this is terrible.
23:05Why did they bring Canyon out just to kill him like that?
23:09Oh man, oh man!
23:11He's a human being!
23:13What was it, like a chair shot to the head or something?
23:16It was like a terrible chair shot to the head.
23:17Oh!
23:19Did you hear that?
23:20I was watching it.
23:22I did it, man.
23:23That was a nasty-
23:24It's pretty obvious.
23:26He had never done anything like that.
23:27Just out of the blue one day, he comes out and is expected to sing like Boy George.
23:31Like, I mean, come on.
23:32Somebody found something out or heard something or said, let's put this guy to task.
23:36And it's a bullying WWE trick.
23:40Why else would you do that?
23:42I think that really did hurt him.
23:43To this day, I'm not going to buy it that they wanted to humiliate him, sorry.
23:49WWE is not going to have someone trained to come back for a year to humiliate him on national TV.
23:55That's not going to happen.
23:57It just didn't work out creatively.
23:59And then he started being depositioned or pushed down the card.
24:05Do you know who's better than Canyon?
24:06Yeah.
24:07I want to know.
24:08Tell me, please.
24:10Everybody!
24:11Woo!
24:12Yeah!
24:13This happens a lot of times in the WWE.
24:14You get kind of slotted in a certain position and it's hard to dig yourself out of it.
24:19They didn't feel this enough to keep him on, so they let him go.
24:25Canyon claimed to me at first that the office was punishing him for being gay.
24:30But then he told me later that was all bullshit.
24:33A knee injury, a shoulder injury, he can't get back on track.
24:36And he was just using it as an ace in the hole to cover his ass if he ever had to sue them.
24:42And he became what I guess you'd call in literature an unreliable narrator.
24:46I couldn't tell what was true and what wasn't.
24:51Orlando Jordan against Canyon!
24:53But, you know, Canyon in a lot of ways towards the last few years of his life could be his own worst enemy.
24:58Devastated by his release from the WWE, Chris Canyon finds meaning in mentoring a new generation of wrestling stars.
25:12It was about 2005 when we got booked on a bigger show.
25:16We saw Chris Canyon was on the list and we couldn't believe it.
25:19He was one of our heroes, legitimate heroes.
25:22Here we are, we're just these kids. I'm probably 19.
25:26You're 15, 16.
25:2715, 16.
25:28More like teenage voices.
25:29Hi, I'm Matt. This is my brother Nick.
25:32All nervous.
25:33We hit it off, you know, right off the bat.
25:35Imagine this guy that you watched on television for years.
25:38Now he's your friend.
25:40And he's, you know, calling you every day.
25:44Kid called me up one time.
25:45He goes, hey, are you guys having a show?
25:46So I'm kind of in the area.
25:47I could come, you know, work on your shows if you're there.
25:49And I was like, holy crap.
25:50Well, we're doing a show now.
25:52Chris Canyon, the innovator of all this.
25:56He came out to a big pop.
25:57You know, the big star.
25:58And he buries the crowd.
26:00Super good, he'll work, mic work.
26:02I'm gonna beat you.
26:03And I'm gonna leave this stupid hit town and never, ever come back.
26:08Shut up.
26:09I didn't want to go over.
26:10I didn't want to go over at all.
26:11And he goes, kid, this is your promotion, your hometown.
26:14Like, you gotta go over.
26:15It's gonna get the better reaction.
26:16I was like, okay, fine.
26:17And he goes, he goes, pick me up.
26:18I slip out the back door.
26:19And I roll him up.
26:20One, two, three.
26:22Still to this day, it's one of my top three favorite.
26:24Not only matches in wrestling, but probably one of my top three favorite moments in my life.
26:28And he was such a giving, selfless guy.
26:30Maybe for this one night, you're better than Canyon.
26:33Chris Canyon was the person that would honestly give you the shirt off his back.
26:39He was a great person.
26:41Chris was a great person.
26:43My name is Luke Hawks.
26:44I'm a professional wrestler and also a dear friend of Chris Canyon.
26:48As you can see, such a dear friend.
26:50You see, I have more tattooed on my arm right here.
26:522005, Katrina hit.
26:55And I was in New Orleans, Louisiana.
26:57It was the worst hurricane of all time.
26:58Completely wiped out the city.
27:00Canyon called me up.
27:01And he was the first person to call me.
27:03And he goes, if you need a place to live, you can come live with me as long as you need to.
27:08No charge.
27:09So, Chris would go through these stages where he would stay up for three or four days at a time.
27:13Keep in mind, we're in Clearwater Beach.
27:15And the headquarters for Scientology is not far away.
27:19So, he said he had just got home and he went left.
27:23And he was driving on this bridge for hours.
27:26And he was trying to get to the Scientology building.
27:29And I think he said he'd seen aliens or aliens had stopped him.
27:34Which never happened because he was home with us the whole time.
27:38So, he starts freaking out.
27:39He's like, I got to break into this building.
27:41I got to go in that building.
27:42I know the aliens are in there.
27:44I told the guys, I said, we can't let him leave.
27:52We got to hold him down.
27:53We're going to have to tie him up and lock him in a room.
27:56We can't let him leave until he calms down and goes to sleep.
27:59Because we knew once he went to sleep, he would wake up and he would be fine.
28:02And that's exactly what happened.
28:04He woke up, didn't even remember it happening.
28:07Canyon eventually begins treatment for bipolar disorder and finally feels empowered to open up about his sexuality.
28:19And he says, I need to tell you something.
28:20And I go, okay.
28:21What's up?
28:22His tone was different and he was more serious.
28:25And I'm just like, is everything okay, man?
28:28I just don't know how you're going to react to this.
28:30I'm like, dude, just tell me.
28:31And he finally spits it out.
28:32He's like, kid.
28:33I'm gay.
28:34And I said, okay.
28:36And I said, okay.
28:39And he goes, you don't hate me?
28:43I said, why would I hate you?
28:45He goes, because I'm gay.
28:46And just to be honest, especially at that time, that day and age, I was a little bummed out about it.
28:51I'm like, what?
28:52My kid's gay?
28:54Then I start thinking about it.
28:56I go, wait a minute.
28:57That doesn't change anything.
28:59I'm really thankful for that opportunity now, too, because I really think that made me open my eyes and become a lot more understanding and tolerant towards a lot of things.
29:10Because it was that quick.
29:12Within a minute, I went from like, oh, man, to like, oh, wait, who cares?
29:15We were all kind of happy for him, because by this time, his career wasn't where he dreamed it could be.
29:22He had been discussing on and off being an openly gay wrestler.
29:27He wanted to really be a role model in doing it.
29:31But the issue was, how do you portray that?
29:36He came out of the closet at an independent show where he was wrestling Diamond Dallas Page.
29:41Right now, one of the most controversial wrestlers, right?
29:46The question I got for you, my brother.
29:47You gonna pop the question? Uh-oh.
29:49The rumor that's floating around is, are you gay?
29:53He figured that it would be a big deal.
29:55The rumors are true. I'm gay.
29:58Oh!
29:59I am the first ever openly gay professional athlete active in this country.
30:04You will always be my brother.
30:06The thing was, we're now in 2006, and nobody cares.
30:11It was kind of like too little too late.
30:14Orlando Jordan had been put on television, and they were gonna announce him as an openly gay wrestler.
30:23And Canyon lost his mind about that.
30:26They're taking my gimmick! They're taking my gimmick!
30:29And 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.
30:38He wrote a letter to Stephanie McMahon saying, please let me be the spokesman.
30:44I think I can help kids that need to come out, and things like that.
30:48Stephanie wrote him back, this pithy little response.
30:51I'm so sorry to hear about your struggles. I didn't know about any of this.
30:54But before I can address your other issues, I have to talk to legal department or something.
30:59And he never heard back from them after that.
31:01A few years prior, Canyon had already sealed his fate with the WWE by attempting a series of ill-conceived stunts in hopes of getting their attention.
31:11I was WWE's MSG promoter.
31:14You know, Chris Benoit just wins his world title without Eddie Guerrero in the ring.
31:19So, you know, I'm on the floor.
31:21So this is about a few minutes after we're off air.
31:24I look in the corner of my eye, and I see Chris jump in the ring, go to the turnbuckle.
31:34That was some odd behavior for him.
31:37I was like, you know, I had to ask myself what, you know, what's going on here.
31:40Later that night, you know, WWE was kind enough to, you know, to invite him to the after party.
31:47He goes, oh, and by the way, I just went over to Vince, Vince McMahon, put my arm around him, and I said,
31:52uh, thank you for inviting me to this party.
31:55And, you know, even though you fired me.
31:57And again, I don't know why he did that.
31:59Chris was, he was, it was like a downward spiral.
32:02I think his head was stuck in that, no, I'm going to be controversial, so they'll talk about it in the sheets.
32:09You would hear these stories about, yeah, Canyon sitting front row at a live event, screaming, you know,
32:14give me justice, or whatever, whatever the details were.
32:17Any way you slice it, you can see this, this isn't good.
32:20The industry may have seen him as taboo to work with.
32:25That must have been terrible for Chris.
32:27And then, you know, he kind of disappeared for a while after that.
32:31One time he calls me, and we were really close at this point.
32:34I start the shower, and my phone goes off, and it's Chris, and I always pick up for Chris.
32:39And he's bawling his eyes out.
32:41And I'm like, Chris, calm down, calm, what's going on?
32:43I've had enough, I'm going to kill myself.
32:46And I said, Chris, what?
32:48He's like, pray for me right now, kid.
32:50Pray for me right now.
32:51I'm like, my hand's shaking, and I'm like, I'm praying for this guy.
32:54And he's bawling and bawling and bawling.
32:57And the entire bathroom is filling up with steam, because I'm on this call for 45 minutes.
33:02I'm crying.
33:03I'm 19 years old.
33:04I'm trying to convince this guy, one of my heroes, don't kill yourself.
33:08And it was heavy.
33:09And by the time we were done with the conversation, I got him to calm down.
33:12And we said a prayer, and he told me he loved me.
33:15And I got off the phone, and I'm just like standing there just going, holy crap, what was that?
33:27In 2006, Cannon receives an unexpected call from The Howard Stern Show, where he eventually
33:33appears as a regular, demonstrating his wit, charm, and humor.
33:38He got out there, and he talked about being gay, and he made the self-deprecating jokes that
33:43he'd always wanted to do.
33:45If the Mets win, you got to suck my dick.
33:47Nah, nah, nah.
33:48All right, you know what?
33:49Chris Canyon's a wrestler, and he feels he was kicked out of the WWE because he's gay.
33:54To me, the Boy George thing, that was a message, I thought.
33:57You know, that was like, if you come out of the closet, we're going to beat the shit out of you.
34:00I see.
34:01They told me before that, before I went out there as Boy George, they said, sing like a .
34:05Whoa.
34:06Oh.
34:07You know?
34:08There was an incident with him and John Cena on Howard Stern.
34:11He says Vince is a homophobe, and Chris claims that he was fired because he is a gay man.
34:16Here's the weird thing about Chris, and I've known Chris for a long time.
34:19Okay.
34:20He actually came out of the closet after he was fired.
34:23Right.
34:24He just, he wasn't any good.
34:26I remember when I first saw it, and I was f***ing livid.
34:29It was just such a dirtbag thing to say.
34:32And with Vince, you do have to have a certain technical bravado.
34:35You got to be able to wrestle, but at the same time, it's WWE.
34:37You got to be able to entertain the people.
34:39Right.
34:40It wasn't any good.
34:41Take Canyon, you know, to the general public, who's like right here.
34:43And then John Cena, who's right here.
34:45And if he, you know, kind of craps on Canyon, whatever truth there is to whatever you're
34:50saying, Cena's going to basically stomp it out.
34:53You know, the guys from the WWE were in an uproar after your last appearance here.
34:57Really?
34:58Did you know that?
34:59No.
35:00Uh, Ric Flair is on the phone.
35:01He wants to debate you.
35:02Ric Flair is on the phone?
35:03Yeah.
35:04Canyon loved Ric Flair.
35:05Canyon's Canyon, it was Ric Flair.
35:07John made a good point.
35:08And I'm disappointed in Chris as a person.
35:10I've known him a long time that he would blame his shortcomings on something that's
35:14going on in his personal life.
35:16He started getting into a fight with his childhood hero, Ric Flair.
35:21Ric, we know a lot of guys inside the business that are gay, but they don't want to go national
35:25and be nationally out.
35:26I did and I was punished for wanting to do it.
35:29Yeah.
35:30Um, yeah, I guess it kind of go well for Canyon.
35:32He put Ric Flair in a position of having to say, Chris, I love you, buddy.
35:36You're a good guy, but you're not the nature boy.
35:39You're not stone cold.
35:41Do you think he could work for the WWE again?
35:43No, I don't think he could.
35:45Why not?
35:46I think the opportunity for Chris Canyon has come and gone.
35:48And Cena said, yeah, you are not good enough right now to be on the show.
35:51Okay.
35:52All right.
35:53Well, there it is.
35:54Ric Flair backed what John Cena said and Canyon had a huge problem with that.
35:58He really kind of underplayed how much it affected him.
36:01Um, I think he just didn't want to admit that wrestling had that kind of power over him.
36:07He was a great professional wrestler.
36:10He was a great entertainer and it was gone.
36:15Last time I saw him was January or February of 2010.
36:21And he had been booked to work a show for Mikey Wipwrex.
36:25And the match just, it was horrible.
36:29It's the worst I've ever seen him wrestle in his life.
36:31And people started laughing.
36:34Once they're laughing at you and not with you, you're gone.
36:38Total flat finish.
36:41Nobody cared.
36:43But we went to the bar afterwards.
36:46He was holding court.
36:48He was the star.
36:50He was making all the self-deprecating gay jokes.
36:53And people were laughing with him, not at him.
36:56One guy walked up to me.
36:58Hey, I don't want to bother you guys, but will you just let him know?
37:02He meant a lot to me and he's inspired me because, uh, because, uh, I'm gay.
37:10So we go back to the hotel room and everything's great.
37:13And we walk in and he started saying that he was sore and I asked him what happened.
37:17And he said that he'd just thrown himself in front of a car trying to kill himself a couple days earlier.
37:23And I started saying, Canyon, have you lost your mind?
37:28Did you just see what we did?
37:32Did you see the outpouring of love from these guys?
37:37I said, you're being selfish.
37:39And he goes, no, Van.
37:42You're the one who's being selfish.
37:44You don't know what it's like to live in my brain, to feel like a freak and hate yourself every day.
37:51And I yelled at him a little bit more.
37:54And, and then he goes, Van, I'm going to stop you right here.
37:58And we hugged.
38:00And, and then it was like, like an episode of This Is Your Life.
38:06And when he was going to take me to the airport, we had like 45 minutes to go.
38:10And it was like, you remember the time you did this?
38:13You remember the time you did that?
38:14And we were howling like the good old days.
38:18When I got out of the car, I just lost it.
38:24And I got on the plane, I cried the whole way home.
38:27And I found a little corner seat.
38:29And I got off and my wife asked me what was wrong.
38:31And I said, I think he's going to do it this time.
38:34That last day I saw him, I literally knew that he wasn't going to be here much longer.
38:49I started, you know, calling him several times a day, every day for like two weeks.
38:56And he wouldn't answer the phone at all.
38:59Then his friend Mike Passarello called me at, I think it was like 6am in the morning.
39:06And that's never a good time to get a phone call.
39:09He told me, he told me he was gone.
39:12On April 2nd, 2010, Chris was found dead in his childhood home in Sunnyside, Queens, New York,
39:19having overdosed on antidepressants.
39:22His death was ruled a suicide.
39:24He was 40 years old.
39:26As you can imagine we took it, how we took it.
39:30And, you know, I teared up a little bit, said, mother .
39:38I was like so numb.
39:39I didn't know like what to do or feel.
39:41I was just like just frozen because it was just, I was just at a loss.
39:45But I also remember being relieved because I remember Chris is now at a place where he wants to be
39:51because he can't be in pain, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's not, it's, it's.
39:56I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
40:01He, I knew my friend wasn't suffering anymore.
40:06And it sucked to lose him.
40:08But I just hope that he's not suffering anymore.
40:13I know everything to the guy, you know, he's horribly missed.
40:21He was one of my best friends.
40:24He wanted to reach his arms out and help, you know, me be successful.
40:29And I love him and I miss him.
40:34It's very rare in wrestling that you get somebody that nobody ever talks bad about.
40:41Chris is one of those guys.
40:43I mean, he was a tortured soul.
40:46If I understood what was going on, maybe I could have been a, you know, more, more assistance or guided him in the right way.
40:54But I just didn't know.
40:55And I, you know, I would just tell anybody watching this, if you know anybody who's bipolar, schizophrenic, anything like that, to where their mental health issues are interfering with their day to day existence, do what you have to do.
41:16Any secrets you have, go out there and get them help and save them.
41:26He definitely opened the door though.
41:27Yes, in the wrestling industry.
41:28For others to be more comfortable with coming out.
41:31And he was one of the first that I could remember.
41:33Yeah.
41:34He's a pioneer.
41:35Yeah.
41:36Yeah.
41:37You know, he'd be a hero right now.
41:38He'd really be a hero.
41:40I think that was too much for, you know, crossing bear.
41:43I really do.
41:44I mean, now we've got, you know, out gay wrestlers, trans.
41:49I mean, it's a different world.
41:51Chris Canyon inspired and helped an entire generation of younger guys.
42:01They showed their appreciation for what he did, his legacy, but incorporating his moves into their matches.
42:10Superplex.
42:11Wow.
42:12Who better than Kenny Raymond?
42:13He was just so underutilized and so underappreciated to the fact that we could bring more light to his name and people could really understand and see how great of a guy he was and how great in the ring he was.
42:22You know, it's better late than never.
42:25I remember on one road trip in particular, Chris is like, you guys don't realize what I would do to go back and be your age.
42:32Oh, yeah.
42:33That's right.
42:34Trying to break in and wrestling and make it again right now.
42:37We just, it didn't make any sense to me.
42:39What are you talking about?
42:40You've done it all.
42:41You were on WCW Nitro.
42:43You've been a champion in WWE.
42:45You have your own action figures.
42:46You've been on video games.
42:47You've done it all, Chris.
42:48And I didn't understand, like, why would he want to trade spots with me?
42:51I would do anything.
42:53I would give up anything to be him.
42:55Guys, listen.
42:56He's like, the journey there is so much better than the destination.
42:59And I'm like, I didn't get it.
43:01And now I've made it to the destination.
43:05And he's right.
43:06Like, you're chasing this thing.
43:07And when you finally get to the thing, it doesn't really make you feel any better or happier.
43:11You have to be happy the entire time.
43:13That last night I saw him, I'd asked him, you know, I've told some of these stories about
43:18the crazy shit you did, but you didn't have the gay subtext to explain some of the behavior.
43:25And I said, do you really want me to tell these stories?
43:28He goes, shoot, Papa, shoot.
43:30Tell the truth, Papa.
43:32If you pulled out a Ouija board and I got the chance to talk to him one more time,
43:38I would just say, Canyon, you've been an amazing friend.
43:45I, I, I, I guess I'd just hug his ghost.
43:51You know, oops.
43:54You go, mother , you missed.
43:57You missed.
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