Pro wrestling legend Chris Jericho appeared on the show Untapped to discuss a variety of topics, including his Mt. Rushmore of inspirations.
Jericho said, “If you’re talking my Mount Rushmore — and there’s the certain names that everybody would pick, so I’ll go opposite. The three — for me, the greatest of all-time is Shawn Michaels. That’s the best, for what I like in wrestling. And wrestling, it’s all subjective. ‘Who’s the greatest of all time?’ Well, what do you like or don’t like? Shawn to me was the best from an athletic standpoint, from a character standpoint, from a storyline standpoint. I don’t think it gets much better than than Shawn. And I was a huge fan of his when I was a teenager. I was a huge fan of Ricky Steamboat, huge influence on me. A huge fan of Owen Hart, who I was so into, and I think is so underrated because he passed away at such an early age. And I’d also go with the British Bulldogs. I’ll put Davey Boy Smith and and Dynamite Kid on there. So, I’ve those are my Mount Rushmore of inspirations that I had when I was starting to watch wrestling, that I still think about to this day of like, my golden era of wrestling. The guys that I love to watch were those ones there.
On his Mt. Rushmore of opponents:
“If you’re talking about Mount Rushmore of opponents that I’ve had, I’ll put Shawn Michaels on there. I will put — who else would I put on there that I had great feuds with and great angles with? I think Moxley would be in there from our our work that we did in AEW, and in WWE when he was Dean Ambrose. I loved working with him. Great intensity. I had great chemistry with The Rock. It was very short because he left to do movies very early on. But when we worked together for about a year in the early 2000s, we never had a bad match or a bad angle or a bad promo segment. We were perfect foils for each other. And then I think maybe Kenny Omega had put on there. We never had — same thing, we changed the business when we had our match at the Tokyo Dome, which at the time was crazy because it nobody ever thought it would happen. We’re both from the same small town in Canada called Winnipeg. And we pretty much packed the Tokyo Dome and the digital streaming was through the roof for New Japan Pro Wrestling. Which then led to Tony Khan seeing and deciding that he could form AEW, because there was so much demand for wrestling that was not WWE. So those are my four from an opponent standpoint.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
