Pro wrestling legend and AEW star Chris Jericho appeared on Ringer Wrestling’s The Masked Man Show to discuss various topics, including his decision to go by “Jericho” now.
Jericho said, “Well, whenever I get asked that [his most important eras to his character] I always say the current version. Because if I didn’t, then I’d be like, ‘What am I doing?’ But I like the idea of what I’m doing now with ‘Jericho.’ And just by not using that first name a lot, it created this whole intrigue online like. ‘What’s he doing? What’s the idea? What’s the reason?’ And honestly, it’s like a self-titled album. That’s where I kind of got the idea from. I could create, you know, a dozen other uh nicknames, but how many more do I need? Everyone knows who Jericho is. And when you hear that name, then you can go remember whatever memories that you have on your own. So it really is like Metallica, ‘The Black Album.’ It didn’t need to be called anything, you know who Metallica is, you know what’s going on. The Beatles, ‘The White Album.’ Same thing. So that’s kind of what the idea is for for the ‘Jericho’ era. And I like it, I like kind of what’s been going on, and kind of going with the flow and seeing what what’s working and what’s not.”
On his underrated eras:
“When you’re going through underrated Jericho eras — gosh, I mean, I think the Wizard was pretty cool, when I started throwing the fireballs. That was something that nobody had seen for years in pro wrestling. I just thought that was really cool, to where we were in Vegas and I had to get a magician’s license for real to throw a fireball. Because that’s the rules that the commission has, which I still renew every year and carry with me at all times. So yes, I am a licensed magician in Nevada. I think the early — I mean, it might not be underrated, I think just because it was such a long time ago. I think the very first kind of iteration of of Jericho as kind of like the crybaby era of you know, the tantrums and the slamming the chair against the post, ripping off Dave Penzer’s tuxedo. Like, that was kind of the era where, ‘Who is this guy?’ You know, the paragon of virtue and all that stuff. Monday Night Jericho. That era that was a really good time and people still bring up the clip of the ‘Man of a Thousand and Four Holds.’”
On his other favorite eras:
“There was a dozen other ones. I remember I went to the White House once. We went to Washington DC, and I was a conspiracy victim. And when we showed up, I thought the camera guys were going to know what they wanted us to do, and the camera guys thought that I would know what. So neither one of us had any idea. So, we just walked around DC and the White House and we were filming me in front of the White House doing this speech, and we almost got arrested. Because you can’t film the White House with cameras and stuff. So, that was a good era. And then I also think that The Learning Tree was a good era, because it was kind of really going left-field and really kind of focusing on the haters of of the world, which then made them hate it even more. So that might be a little bit more of a Rolling Stones Dirty Work, Kiss The Elder, [Metallica] St. Anger type of vibe. But I thought that was a really cool one as well.’
On his dedication to his characters:
So you know, I — whether you like it or not, I’ve given 1,000% for every single iteration of Chris Jericho. And there’s never been one where I thought, ‘Oh, this one’s not going to work. Let me focus on it.’ Like, everything that I’ve done, I’ve put a million percent into it. Sometimes it doesn’t work as well as the others, but the intent and the passion and the effort has always been there.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
