By AmplifiedtoRock
Yesterday on Wrestling
Observer Radio, Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer interviewed Chris
Jericho. Their conversation began with a
discussion of Jericho’s new television show, Robot Combat League, but it would eventually move on to
wrestling. One of the highlights of the
interview came when Y2J responded Meltzer’s question about Jericho’s upcoming
WrestleMania match with Fandango.
Meltzer asked him how long he knew it was planned and what his initial
reaction was. Jericho’s response was,
well, pretty brilliant. It was not a
brief answer and it was abundantly clear that Jericho was pretty peeved with
the decision to change his WrestleMania opponent from Ryback to Johnny Curtis’
new compulsive, name-centric, ballroom dancing character. Though he eventually takes a more politically
correct tone, his opinion is clear. I
have transcribed his response below and present it in full. You can also check out the interview in full
here.
* * *
I came back at the Rumble and I kind of--I had
reached out to Vince in November/Triple H who now does the deals. Ya know because they said to me before, “Listen:
If you wanna come back--Whenever you wanna come back, just let us know. And if there is a certain set of times and we
can all make it work, let’s do it. Because
when I left in August of last year, I was really having fun. Like I’m really enjoying
being in the company and not to sound egotistical, but I feel like the work I’ve
done over the last--since the Shawn Michaels thing in 2008—I think the work
that I’ve done since then has been the best of my career. And even when I came back last year I thought
the work that I did was great and even since I came back this time I think the that
work I’ve done has been really, really great.
And it’s because I’m really enjoying it. I feel awesome. And I didn’t
want to do what I had done before which was leave for a year and a half--come
back. Leave for a year—come back. One, because there’s no reason to do that anymore. And two, ya know, I’m 42 years old. I could, ya know, explode in a pile of dust
tomorrow, so why not continue the vibe while I’m feeling it? So I said, ya know, I’d like to still be affiliated
with the company. Ya know, there’s the
famous Mick Foley deal and I think Mick was the first and last guy to get that
where—I think that’s over now at this point—but he was kinda getting paid to be
affiliated with the company and they would kinda find odd jobs for him to do
and whenever they wanted him to do something he would do it and etc., etc. They said, “Ya know we’re not doing this
Foley deal anymore, but if you ever wanna come back let us know and we’ll be
happy to do it.”
So I called them in November and said I’d like to do
Rumble to Mania and they were like, “Great.”
So there we go and I was like, “I want to know what I’m doing for Mania
that’s the only thing I want to know. I don’t care about anything else. You
know how I am.” And it kinda went back
and forth. There were a couple of ideas: One really lame mixed tag idea that I hated,
a couple things that I pitched that Vince didn’t like and then the idea was it was
gonna be me and Ryback. That was kinda the idea they were going with.
So I came back did the big gig and the month of
shows and then I went to Australia for Soundwave and did the Metallica thing
and then I started kinda hearing rumors that things had changed as far as what
I was doing at WrestleMania. And I was
kinda thinking, “Why?” Like, what is going on?
What is changing? And then when I
asked Eric Pankowski at the time, who was still there, what is going on he
said, “Well Vince wants to talk to you face to face.” And I that’s when I knew okay, he’s either
got a total genius idea that I’m gonna love, or he’s got something that he
thinks I’m not gonna like.
So when I we started to uh—I finally tracked him
down and he told me what he wanted me to do, ya know—diplomatically speaking—it
was not my first choice. (chuckles) And
I was kind of, a little bit, um—I guess I would say not happy about it. (chuckles) Maybe. But you know, Vince is my boss and this is
what he wanted me to do and this is my task and there was no debate about
it. So five minutes later after I
finished, ya know, my little tantrum I said, “Okay. Well, this is what I have
to do.” So I’m gonna take this as a
challenge, something that I’ve always done.
I take great pride in the fact that I’ve had great matches with a lot of
guys who haven’t had great matches from Viscera to, ya know, Glacier to, ya
know, all these different types of guys.
So I just started looking—how can I do this? What can I do?
How can I make this work? Just
started kinda putting my thought process to it and also knowing that if I do a
great job, it’s just another feather in my cap within the company, and with the
fans and with myself.
And, of course, a lot of people are poo-pooing it,
but, ya know, this guy is not a bad worker.
I’ve kind of looked into some of the stuff he’s done. We’ve seen over the last couple nights the
leg drops from the top rope, and how he kinda pops up there like Van Dam does
and even how he kicks his legs over the top rope when he goes in—the guy is
very deceptively agile. And the gimmick
is a strange gimmick, but I’m sure Undertaker was a strange gimmick too when
people first saw it. It’s all how you
work it and all how it gets put over, so.
Vince loves it. It’s one of his
favorite new things, so it’s my job to go out there and do the best I can and I’m
actually really looking forward to it because over the past couple nights—actually
over the last three shows—it’s really starting to come together. I actually think it’s going to take a lot of
people by surprise.
But is it a surprise? When I’m involved in it, you know that I’m
gonna do my best to make it good.
Especially for WrestleMania. It’s
kinda like the number one task for me over the last few years. Anybody can go out there and steal the show
with Shawn Michaels or Rey Mysterio or John Cena. If I go out there and, probably not steal the
show, but go out there and have a really good match and a really surprisingly
good match, I think that just makes everybody look good.
