Jay Mohr recalls almost dying while wrestling Chris Farley: 'I really thought my life was gonna end'
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Jay Mohr is looking back at two times that he wrestled Chris Farley and their very different outcomes.
The Saturday Night Live alum revealed on a recent episode of David Spade and Dana Carvey's Fly on the Wall podcast that their costar Fred Wolf instigated the pair's first fight by bragging about Mohr's wrestling skills to Farley. While Mohr initially felt confident in his chances, he said the match quickly took a turn.
"So we square up to wrestle," he recalled. "I made the mistake of shooting in on Chris' legs and he just collapsed on top of me. Then, I went to my stomach and I brought my elbows in and Chris, for the next six minutes, sat on my back going [giggling].'"
Mohr was completely trapped. "I really thought my life was gonna end," he said. "And I was trying to say, 'Chris … you're trying … to break… my back…' And after six minutes, David saved me, he goes, 'Get the f--- off him, Farley.' And he just goes, 'Sure, Davey!'"
Barry King/Liaison Chris Farley and Jay Mohr
In the days after their brawl, Mohr said that losing to Farley had "really bugged me." So, naturally, he sought his revenge during a writers' room meeting during the week that Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger co-hosted the show.
"[Farley] was sitting on the couch right inside the writer's room and I said, 'Hey, fat boy, you still wanna go?'" he taunted. "And he went to get up and everyone's sitting at the giant table, there's like 40 people there, Alec Baldwin, I was nuts. Untreated alcoholism."
"His mistake was — it's like, never get in a fight getting out of your car or your bed — he got caught in that limbo between getting up," Mohr continued. "I [put] my right arm around his head and I just bodied into him, and then we were falling forward and then I clasped my hands under the back of his knee so we did a somersault into the room."
Once he had gotten a hold on Farley, Mohr held on for dear life. "I put my knee in his side and my forehead on his temple because I knew if I let him go, he'd kill me," he joked. "So it's like, when you're fighting a bully, I don't want to let him go because he'll beat me up in front of Alec Baldwin and, more importantly, Kim Basinger. And so I let him go and everyone's staring at me, like what the f--- is this guy doing? So then I slapped Chris' ass, I go, 'Now we're even.'"
Farley, however, got the last laugh. "I'm walking to the night elevators — I don't know why I turned left instead of right — and I just hear this running of the bulls behind me. And I turn, and it's like the entire room has emptied and they're walking towards me, but in front of them Chris is walking like a zombie."
The comedian's slow-moving gait granted Mohr enough time to wedge himself into the elevator that was packed with several NBC higher-ups.
"Chris is walking toward the elevator, now he's gonna kill me and there's gonna be collateral damage," he said. "I go, 'Look, everybody, that's Chris Farley!' And the whole elevator, like on an episode of Newheart, goes, 'Oh!' And he turned around and walked away."
To this day, Mohr acknowledges how lucky he was to make it out alive. "I got saved — he would've f---ing murdered me," he remembered, laughing. "The only reason I lived is because he had to get the laugh, even in that [situation]."
Listen to Mohr recall the brawls in the podcast above.
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