Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Why Chris Jericho almost left wrestling in 2005, his favorite match, thoughts on MJF

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Chris Jericho chats with Chris Van Vliet from his home in Tampa, FL. He talks about celebrating his 30th anniversary in wrestling, the match that has meant the most to him, how growing up with a famous father impacted him, how he balances wrestling with Fozzy, his podcast, his cruise and his other business endeavors, who the original members of The Inner Circle were going to be, his reaction when fans started singing along to his entrance theme, why he almost left wrestling in 2005, his thoughts about MJF and much, much more!  Please subscribe and support the show by supporting our sponsors!  INDEED- Get a $75 credit to boost your job post by going to http://indeed.com/BlueWire BETONLINE- Get a new sign up bonus by using the promo code BLUEWIRE at http://betonline.ag Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to this podcast right now. Episodes in English are out on Tuesdays, and episodes in Spanish are out on Wednesdays. Now hit my music. It's Chrysalmania, brother. That's a great question. Look at you, man. With the powerful questions.

Woo! This is the Chris Van Vlachio. Chris Van Vleecho. Ladies and gentlemen. Chris. The... Yeah, welcome back to another audio adventure on the Chris. fan fleet show. This episode is brought to you by Indeed and Bet Online. And for those of you keeping track at

home, this is my fourth interview with Chris Jericho. He's just so great to sit down with. If we take a look here, the first one was before a Fossey concert in 2013. Then we did one on the Fossey tour bus, April 2018, one in the backseat of his car, a few days after he signed with A.E.W. That was January 2019. And now here we go. This one, number four. So if you've watched all of them or listened to all of them, thank you. That's amazing. And if this is your first of the four, I appreciate you being here. Snap a screenshot. Tag me on Instagram so I can say hi and share it. I'm at Chris Phambleet. Tag Jericho as well. On Instagram, he is at Chris Jericho Fossey. And while you're at it, please make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast on whatever podcast platform that you're listening right now.

And if it happens to be Apple Podcasts, please take a few seconds out of your day right now to leave a review. It doesn't need to be long. It can be short. It can be simple. It can literally just be an emoji, but anything helps. It's the biggest thing that we can do to keep the show growing. And I'm going to keep reading one out on every single episode until we get to that goal of 2,000 reviews before my birthday, which is May 19th. We're talking about May 19th, 2021. So we've got some

time here. This one from Golden Jones says, nobody is touching Chris. Chris, you're on another level. There's nobody doing this the way that you do it at the level you're doing it. Wow. Never change, brother. Evolve as much as ever, but never leave wrestling behind. You were a gem in this Immunity. Well, thank you, sir. Thank you, Golden Jones. I mean, the reality is I'm just a wrestling fan like you are or like anybody who's listening to this is. So I'm just, look, I'm fascinated by what makes great people great. And I just, I love hearing that other people enjoy these conversations as much as I enjoy having them. Like this one with Chris Jericho. And he just celebrated 30 years in the wrestling business, which is amazing. Although we talk about here how he almost left 15 years ago.

He almost left the wrestling business in 2005. So we get into why that was the case. I think we're all really glad that he didn't. But we look back at his 30 years in wrestling, beginning with his first match with Lance Storm. And even his life before that, growing up with a famous father in Ted Irvine, who played for a lot of different NHL teams. But he's best known for his time with the new York Rangers. We talk about the influence that his dad had on his life and, you know, on his career as well. The many different faces and gimmicks of Chris Jericho, the many different hairstyles and facial hairstyles as well. We talk about why he thought that AEW was the right fit for him. And very interesting that he talked about who the original members of the inner

circle were supposed to be. Hmm. Yeah. Let's dive right into it. Here we go. It's Chris Jericho. Well, here we go. Excited to be chatting with the one and only Chris Jericho. And, you know, Chris, every interview we've done has always been in such an interesting location.

You know, first it was before Fazi concert, then it was on the tour bus. Then we were in the back seat of your car. Here we are just having just a normal conversation now. Were those interviews or are we dating? Oh, that's true. This is a date number four now. Backstage in the back seat of a car. Congratulations on 30 years.

Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah, it's been pretty cool, a pretty cool week when I think of, you know, something as monumental as 30 years. What do you do to prepare for that? and how to, you know, kind of market and celebrate it. So I think we did a pretty good job. I remember Metallica's 30th anniversary show. They did four shows at the film war in San Francisco.

And they did like 20 songs each set, and they were all different from the last. They had all their guests, stars, and, you know, some of their heroes were there. It was really, really cool. So when this was coming up, I said, what can I do? So we're doing the book, The Complete List of Jericho. We're doing the big show, Jericho 30 Celebration. And I did three podcasts with Lance Storm, two of them watching along with our first couple matches that I'm going to do another with my dad, just talking with those early years.

So I think I was able to kind of encapsulate everything and celebrate it all to where I feel good about it. So this is how it's being celebrated kind of in the public eye. Are you doing anything in your personal life to celebrate this? Not really. I mean, you know, how arrogant would I be to throw a party for myself for my 30th anniversary? So the thing is, too, that's very funny is October 2nd, 1990 was my first match. But November 9th, 1970 was my birthday. So I'll be 50 next month.

So that's going to be the big party. This is more just a professional celebration and try to do the most that I can to make it special because it is special. I mean, there's not a lot of guys who have been able to have the longevity that I have. especially kind of still at the top of their game. And there's nobody else that I, to my knowledge, ever with my longevity that's kept the list of every single match they've ever had. And that's kind of what the book is based on. I mean, I have it right here just because we've been dealing with it for the last few days,

but this is basically every match that I've ever had. You can kind of see it all written down there. Oh, my gosh. You know, there's 2,700-odd matches. And this one right here, which you're reading at the top of that, that was written 30 years ago on this exact piece of paper. Number one, Lance Storm, Pinocca, Alberta. So 30 years ago, I wrote this down, and I've kept this kind of log ever since. So I wanted to do something with it.

I thought, what a great, like to complete this to Jericho. I'll put it out as a total kind of a volume. And if you are interested in that sort of thing, it's got every match I've ever had. where it was, who it was against, what the finish was, what my star rating for it was, how much money I made for it in the early days, and then a bunch of pictures and top ten lists and graphs and info and all that sort of stuff.

So it very much is like there's a rush book behind me, if you can see it, that documents every gig that they ever had. So you've got to be a real fan to want to look at it. But I think it's not just for fans of Chris Jericho, it's for fans of pro wrestling, because once again, it's a 30-year span in this business and how much has changed over the years. And I just think it's a real interesting piece that fans will really appreciate and enjoy a real cool souvenir. How many matches in total is it?

Well, my book is different from, so I got Alex Marbez involved. And Alex is very much a stickler for detail, which is why I got him involved. So he kind of went and cross-referenced the book. And I wasn't counting battle royals, but I was counting Royal Rumbles. these like we shouldn't count one without the other. So we kind of, some were added, some were kind of subtracted, especially for the last few years. We relied a lot on cage-side seats, which kind of helps,

because I didn't keep as thorough of a record over the past years knowing that cage-side seats exist. So they had added some matches that didn't happen, all that sort of stuff. But the way that we have it now is it goes from October 2nd, 1990, to October 7th, 2020, which is this Wednesday for the Jericho-Hager. Superpedical Luther match, and that'll be 2,721 matches, all documented in this book. Now, I think it'd be difficult to ask what your favorite match is, but I'm interested to know of those matches, which one has meant the most to you?

Like you said, Chris, that's hard. That's a hard question because there's so many of them that have meant a lot. You can go through the different eras. I mean, the one that used to come to mind right off the bat was the ladder match I had with Sean Michaels in 2008, in Portland. And the reason for that, not only was a great ladder match, but it also, the whole story behind it was that it was the culmination of a seven-month angle that was supposed to be less than a month.

It was supposed to be just the one and done, and we extended it for seven months to the point where it became kind of the focus of the show to where the world title was even at stake for it. So that one always meant a lot to me. The Tokyo Don't match with Kenny Omega, 2018, was huge because that's what made me fall in love with wrestling again. It made me realize, like, holy shit, this is what wrestling is. There's no handcuffs or chains involved, pure creative freedom.

And then I think, you know, some of those AEW matches, I think the match with Cody was huge because it was a great story that it was the first kind of story that I had written by myself. I mean, with Cody and Tony Kahn's help, but basically it was, you know, the first time I'd had my own storyline that didn't have to be approved and, you know, cut up and changed and moved

and all that sort of stuff. I think the match with Moxie was huge right before the corona happened. So there's a lot of those. The one with Ultimate Dragon, 1995, the Sumer Arena match. That's the match that got me my job in ECW and WCW. So there's quite a few kind of signposts along the road. But just to choose one is very difficult.

I know in this book I put my top 10 matches. And then as soon as I finished my top 10, I was like, oh, fuck, I got to put the Tomahashi match. And that was great too. So it became top 11 matches. It's my book so I can do what I want. But that's the thing. The more you think about, the more of coming to your mind,

you just got to kind of set it at 10 or 11 and just leave it at that. You know, you had a few hiatuses over the last 30 years. Was there ever a point where you were like, you know, I'm just going to step away from wrestling. I'm going to focus on acting, focus on my band, and, you know, what I did in wrestling can kind of stay as it was. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, 2005 SummerSlam with John Cena, like, that was, I wasn't done, done, but I was mentally done and burned out. And I walked away. And my contract was up.

There was no contract negotiations. I said, don't even give me a figure because I felt they were going to give me a downgrading pay just from the way that my contract. career was at the time I knew it was it was it was time to get away so that's what I left the business for two and a half years Chris I think people forget that and uh when I came back in 2007 it was uh with a completely different mindset because I had done a lot of acting uh a lot training studying and that's where the whole you know suit and tie guy Jericho came in where it was just completely dropped in and completely committed to this character and that's you know kind of one of the last guys that was getting fights on the streets with fans because people were so um

invested and just hated this character. And that's directly because of my work with the Groundlings and studying acting with Kirk Boltz in L.A. And Kirk Boltz is most famously known as Marvin Nash from Resward Dogs who gets his ear cut off. So I really studied and learned. And so when I came back to wrestling, that's when I really became the Chris Jericho that you know,

Chris Jericho that you know and love or hate today. Because that's when I think I finally reached my full potential in the ring as a worker as a character and dude that was 18 years in so it goes to show you really don't know until until you get it that's how long it took me you get it ever since then I've been top level um and then you know 2015 I had gone for a while and I decided I didn't really want to deal with the rigumeral of being on TV so I asked Vince if I could just do house shows he said yes so I worked 60 shows that year 60 house shows uh and then I was going to think about winding down, but then I did a, I was going to sign for a three-month thing in 2016 that

ended up going a year and a half because I had so much from Kevin Owens. And then I walked away from that because it was time and to go into Fazi. And then the New Japan, Kenny Omega match came up. And then, you know, it's like the cliche as soon as you need, they draw you back in. But it wasn't hard to draw me back in. I was just looking for something different. And every time I found something different, it reinvigorated my passion and my creative flow. And, you know, And then AW came around. It was a godsend for me. If there was no AWW, I probably would have been retired right now

because I wouldn't have been able to handle the WV system anymore. That's not a cut down. It's just a different world there. So now it's like I have no thoughts or anything about when will I stop because it's just so much fun and I'm enjoying it. And, you know, I think the match I had last week against Isaiah Cassidy and the promo we did after the MGM is as good as anything I've done in the last three or four years. and I'm my own biggest critic.

So I was really happy with it. And as long as I'm happy and I feel that I'm not, you know, not kind of living down my legacy rather than adding to it, I'll continue to be here. I'm just so impressed. I'm so inspired by all of the irons that you have in the fire with everything that you have going on, acting, wrestling, music, you have a cruise, you have a podcast, writing books, everything.

How are you able to balance your time? Well, I mean, it's not as hard as to think because these things come in chunks. Obviously, my schedule is way easier now than it ever was in WWE, you know, even before the corona, and that we were only working once a week. And sometimes we work twice a week and then we get the next week off now because we tape a show here and there. And then, you know, this year's just been the easiest. year in the world because there's nowhere to go. I mean, you know, touring with Fossey, you can't even think about that.

But once we can tour again, I mean, that's the thing is that if you're doing something that you love to do, you pick your spots. And the crews, I mean, there's chunks of work. There's a bunch of work when you're putting it together. There's a bunch of work right before it happens. There's a bunch of work when it does happen. But, you know, we got moved from February to October, so there's really nothing more we can do. We booked the lineup and got everybody in her contract.

and now we've sold the thing out. So now you just sit back and wait. So it's and just like the book, like the new book, The Complete List of Jericho, my four previous books, you're spending hundreds of hours writing those things. This book wasn't as hard because I've been writing it for 30 years.

So just slap some window dressing and put some cool pictures in it and make it, like I said, make it more of a coffee table souvenir. So that didn't take a lot of time either. So there's always lots of projects. But like I said, if you have passion for it, you'll always find the time. And the things that you don't have passion for, you keep pushing them off and then you just don't do them anyways and get rid of them.

So I'm in a real cool position where everything I do is something that I believe in that I want to do. So it makes it much more easier to be involved with it. I've just, it is again, so inspiring. And I'm interested, you know, when you have a father like yours, when you have a famous father, does that kind of start to lay the foundation for you to go, he's accomplished this at the very best of the best. I can do the same. Well, I think if nothing else, it gave me inspiration. It also gave my dad gave me his blessing because he knew what it was like to go out

and follow your dreams and make things happen. He basically walked out of high school and go play with the Boston Bruins when he got drafted at like 17 years old. So I never had any like, well, you better fall back on something or you better, you know, You better, you know, think of another plan. Like, there really wasn't another plan for me. And my dad knew that. He was supportive of it as a result because he knew what it was like.

And, you know, even from my first match, if you watch, if you do the watch along with us and talk as Jericho with Lance and I, you know, we weren't great, but we were still better than a lot of guys in Calgary at the time. And this was our first match. That's not coming from an egotistical standpoint. It comes from the fact that we had the passion and the desire and we prepared. I mean, I started lifting weights when I was 15 to prepare for resting school. I showed up at about 195 pounds.

I thought I was going to be, you know, the strongest guy. And meanwhile, I was one of the biggest because nobody, there's fat guys and skinny guys. And guys were you like, what are you thinking? You know, it's like when you go to a really bad strip club at 3 a.m. And it's like, girls, look in the mirror. Like, what are you thinking? And it was like that with some of these guys where you're like, you honestly don't think that this can translate. Because to me, it's like I wanted to be Althogan, you know, because he's the biggest son.

I want to be the biggest star. You know, I'm not the biggest guy in heights. I better have the most muscle I can and, you know, work on promos and work on characters. And I had all that down before my first day of resting school. And other people just came into it kind of like, wow. And I was like, how can you expect to make it? So I never had a backup plan. And my dad knew that.

So he never kind of put any pressure on me to be like, you know, you're never going to make a kid, get over this fantasy. And that helped a lot. So we came from the same place of this kindred spirit ship of, you know, putting everything on the line to make it in this seemingly unmakeable vocation. Yeah, it's interesting that you say you're inspired by Hogan because I don't see any of Hogan in anything that you do. And I always tell people when you told me that you were inspired by David Bowie, I'm like

that's the best, you know, it's the best because he reinvented himself so many times. and you've reinvented yourself more than any wrestler ever. Well, the thing is the Hogan thing comes in with connecting with the crowd. Like I'm not 6'8, 300 pounds. I don't have that style that Hogan has. But if you look at connecting with an audience and getting them involved, it's very much Hogan influence. Hogan's also one of the few guys that's a great baby face and a great heel.

You can't say that about Rick Flair. Rick Flair's not a great baby face. I worked him as a baby face. Flair is most comfortable as a heel. Hogan can be both and was great at a big. both. And I think he's very underrated as a result of that. I think if you look at Chris Cherico, it's another guy.

Eddie Guerrero could do it too. That can be a great heel that everyone hates. And then on a dime, it turned to a great baby face that everybody loves. It's a very rare thing. The Bowie thing did not start out to be that way. When I started out, I wanted to be the best

rock and roll front man, but in a wrestling ring. Paul Stanley, Dave Lee Roth, Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury, Bruce Dickinson. Those were the guys that I loved on stage, even as a singer Fossey, but also how did they connect with the audience? And what did they do? Once again, I could never be the biggest in stature,

but I got the biggest charisma of personality. Where the Bowie influence came in is when I was in WWE, and I realized we're on TV every single week. And if you're on TV every single week for three, four, five years, you better change your shit up or it's going to be really boring. And if you look at those early days, I always had different facial hair, different hairstyles, and different tights,

because I realized every one you do, they make an action figure of it. So I had probably at this point 250 different action figures. That's no exaggeration because I always gave them something different to build upon. And then I also always had a theory that if you change from baby face to heal or vice versa, something has to change with you. So people know you're serious going back to Kiss taking off their makeup. They took off their makeup. You knew something different, something real.

And that's why, you know, when I turned heel once again from, you know, lovable Y2J who was way too stale in 2007 from some that started in 1999. The countdown was gone. The Y2J was gone. It changed from long days to short days. I wanted people to know there's something different about this guy. And once that kind of work, then I changed it every single time. Heal, babyface returning, coming back, going to New Japan, becoming the pain maker because

it just felt right. Coming back to A.W, what am I going to wear? I got to change something. Let's champ beyond. to do some glittery jackets and that sort of thing. And you think, when you come up with these ideas, they just happen. Either they do or you don't,

you can't sit there and think about it. You just got to do it. And, you know, if you do that, and once again, commit to what you're doing and be consistent with it, nine times out of ten, people will get into it and enjoy it as well. But you have to be 100% committed to it.

Speaking of changing things up, was there ever talk of Fossey being your entrance theme when you were in WWE, when you were changing things up. No, that didn't feel right to me because I had dabbled with changing my music a few times, and Vince was always very against it. I even had, when I came back in 2007, I wanted to use, it was 2007 or 2010 maybe, where it was the, you haven't after 2010, but it was kind of like the end of the world as you know it, Jericho.

That's the code where you can break the code, can you break the code or something like that? I wanted to use a Venge seven-fold nightmare, and Vince didn't want to use a Venn's that. And so then I try to get Zach Wild in Black Lips Society to do a version and they did and Vincent didn't like that. He said, your music is evergreen. And he's right. If I'm in WV, that's my music. But the moment I left WV, it's like

A, I don't want to have to deal with trying to get the rights to break the walls down, nor do I want to even use it. This has to be a different character. And if you look at the first time I used Judas in the Tokyo Dome in 2018, one, I wanted something different and two, I

wanted something we're trying to go to Japan with Fosian. I thought, well, if I can play the fucking Judas in the Tokyo Dome in front of 50,000 people, at least they'll start hearing this music. And maybe somebody will bring us over here. They still haven't yet, which is another story altogether. And when I heard that music, this is really, this is perfect.

It's got the same kind of, like, break the walls down. It's like a, bang-down. Bow-down down. And this is like, you know, bat-down. It's the same kind of band. I don't know, and it's mine. So I thought that was a really cool representation of something new, a new Jericho. And even though that first match with Kenny, there was still a scarf, a light-up jacket, and tights, it didn't feel right to me.

And that's why when I continued on to work with Knight, so I thought I need to change this a bit. And that's kind of where the pain maker idea came. Like, what does serial killer be if he was a wrestler? you know some kind of of a of a horror movie villain like jason borhys or michael meers or what would that be and somebody had sent a picture of me as the joker and i just liked the idea of the makeup and he's one kind of a fedora type of the thing and it's just kind of morphed from that so all of these changes come from eternally thinking something's got to be different here um i don't know exactly what it is but it needs to change it needs to change right fucking now not

next week, not two weeks from now, we need to do it now. And now 30 years in, you have one of the coolest entrances in wrestling with the crowd singing along. So what was it like when you started to realize, oh, my God, like they are singing along to this? Well, they kind of were singing and you didn't really notice you kind of hear, but it really came to fruition on the cruise, on the second cruise. One of the coolest feelings ever, Chris.

I mean, here I am on my cruise, coming to the ring with the wrestling committee that I helped get on the map. with my song that everybody is singing, that's where it started. You know, unfortunately, whatever you want to say, you know, six weeks later, we had no more crowds in the arena, so it kind of got taken away.

But I'll tell you what, the first week we had those 500 people in Daley's Place, and they remembered and continued to sing it. It was like, thank God, this is great. They remember. The only thing is they used to sing the chorus twice. Now they only sing it once. So the tape shows, we always add the chorus.

We double it to try and get people to remember that you're supposed to sing it twice. But sing it once is good for now, but you've got to get back into it again. But once again, people would say, like, oh, how can you, as a heel, can you allow that to happen?

I mean, it's organic. And that's what we try so hard in wrestling is to get an organic reaction. And when people were singing Judas by their own choice, with no prodding from us, it was like, you got to let them do it. He'll baby face, whatever it is.

This goes beyond what side the coin you're on. This goes as to what everybody's, we're always trying to get, which is a reaction, an organic reaction. And we got that with the Judas Sing-along, and thankfully we have it again now that this crowd's back in Jacksonville. You know, you want to talk about organic. I think nothing was more organic than a little bit of the bubbly, which is so amazing on the game together. What do you think would have happened if you, if you somehow, you know, said that line in WWE, what would have happened versus what we did see happen in AEW? I don't know. It's hard to say because I don't want to say nothing because

W.D. Once again, I worked there for 20 years and they have a way of doing things and it's awesome. It really is. It's a great place to work, but I grew out of it. I don't need to be coddled and be told what to do here's your, like everything you've seen

basically since the beginning of the Cody angle, which was back in I guess mid-October, was written by me or written with Cody and Tony with me. This whole thing with Orange Casks in 14 weeks, that was all my stuff. Yeah.

I send it in, get some suggestions, reconfigure a few things. But, I mean, all of it, but most of mayhem, like, I don't think I ever would have been able to think of that there, but maybe I would have. But the point is I'm on a role now. And I know I've got collaborators that appreciate my vision, and nobody fucks with it. That's the best thing. And they always have to go through the system of Vince, and then whoever's invents is

year last, which might change as fine for something you just said earlier. And, you know, there's still a lot of stanky, stanky political machinations there. Here in AW, I'm expected to do that. And I'm expected to come up with shit. I'm expected to give my opinions. I'm expected to do what I can to make the show better,

knowing that everything I'm coming up with comes from that attitude. So a little bit of the bubbly, I don't know. They might have recut it or they would have given me some script that maybe Vince doesn't like that phrase or doesn't know what dumb and dumber is or doesn't care. And that was not a script. The idea was you come from the backstage, you go into this room, you take the champagne,

you spray it all over the backstage employee. Well, the problem was there was fuckups with sound and camera. I didn't do that four or five times. I was getting pissed off. I was like, I don't like this. Like, I'm a one-take guy and doing it four or five times. My improv lines, which are hilarious, the first time you say them, when you say them three or four times,

it becomes like, oh, my gosh, it's not even funny anymore. So we did this is the last one. When I finally got the dressier, I was so excited that, you know, I remember seeing the deli trade. To me, the big joke of that bit was the Splatatatap joke. I mean, look at this deli trait. Look, who's in that, nobody? There's a little guy in there with the olive. And I thought I was just so entertaining myself.

And there's a little bit of the bubbly. No one even paid attention to the spinal tap Nigel Tuftel reference. They just went right to the bubbly. And somebody made a meme. I think the first one was a terrible song of Mambo number five. A little bit of the public in my heart. A little bit of the bubbly. And they posted like a meme of that or a gift, whatever you call it, video on Twitter.

And whenever I see that sort of stuff, I always jump on it and retweet it and say, hey, this is great. If you make your own, send it in and maybe I'll retweet it. Suddenly, boom, boom, boom, boom. Literally dozens, if not hundreds of those things. And once again, when I saw that, I called my manager, I said, we need to find a place to make some bubbly champagne. sat and we were able to get, you know, through AW and through the connections that they had, get it made and get it up and running less than a month later, which is amazing when you think about it. And we sold 30,000 bottles of it to where people are looking for it now.

And we're going to release a second edition very, very soon. So we've created something from nothing. And that's what wrestling is all about, organically creating something that people get into. There you go. This is like show and tell with Jericho. I love it. You can tell I've been doing a lot of these things. So I wanted to have a background that had some story to it,

not just a wall. So yeah, all of those things are organic. And you jump on it and you stick with it and you go with it. And fans appreciate that. They really do. They appreciate when you have the creativity. And I almost feel like I have a responsibility for people to live vicariously through me at this point and expecting me to come up with cool stuff that they'll be able to use in their lives.

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No. That's the thing I don't. I'm not that type of guy. I plan for the moment. Like, you know, when we did the debate with Orange Cassidy and we were able to get Eric Bischoff to come in, I was like, I've never seen a debate in wrestling. I don't think I've ever really seen a debate at all. So I watched Hillary Clinton versus Trump from 2016

and watched the debate. We kind of saw how it worked and saw that the moderator, Lester Holt, who played everything straight. And that's what I told Eric. I said, I sent him the clip. I said, this is what we're doing.

And you're Lester Holt. He's like, do you don't want me to be any character? I want you to be the straight man of the piece. He goes, got it. And he was fucking great. It was so great. And, you know, we'd never heard Orange Cassidy talk.

So here's this asshole, Jericho. I'm going to catch you in your own game and do a debate. And then, of course, he can talk. He didn't know that. I didn't know that. We didn't know what we were going to discuss. Cody came up with the idea of doing some kind of a ridiculous scientific, you know, line, kind of the Waynesworld thing, Milow Kay.

And that was basically it. And so we came up with it and wrote some stuff down that I googled off of what climate change was, gave that to Orange. And his promo, we worked on it briefly, but there's no writing it down. What do you want to say? Here's what I think you should say. Let's do it. And we just kind of made it up literally three or four hours before the show.

Came up with some questions to give Eric, here's your questions. And I had some retort. You know, I haven't liked you for 30 years. He's like, I know the feeling that was all him. Like, this is how we do it. It's just a bunch of talented people. You don't need a script. You don't need to pour over it for hours and hours and hours.

That doesn't make it better. That makes it worse. And so yeah, my notebook, my notepad consists of, okay, I know what I'm doing from now until November 7th. That's great, but it's only a month away. Now I've got to come up with what we're going to do from November 8th to the next pay-per-view. How many weeks is there? What's the story line? Who's involved?

What are the twists along the way? So that's kind of where I spend my time thinking and planning and booking, if you will. But when it comes to individual promos, I don't have time for that. I'm not that type of guy. I need to feel it. I need to be in the moment and feel what is going on today. How do we want to work on this today? Because if not, then I'm just writing scripts that I become a WB writer.

And that's not helping anybody. Yeah. Were you surprised when you saw, you know, after the pandemic started in March? Were you surprised to see that the ratings went down? And I say this because before the pandemic on a Wednesday night at 8 o'clock, you could be anywhere. You could be at your kid's soccer practice. You could be at the movie. You could be at dinner or whatever.

After the pandemic started, I knew it. exactly where you were on a Wednesday night at 8 o'clock. We're in your house. And I was just surprised to see that the ratings didn't go through the roof from there. I think the opposite, Chris. I'll tell the reason why people are used to seeing wrestling in front of the crowd. It's the same reason why hockey ratings are down, football ratings are down. It's just not the same without that audience there.

And I was actually pretty impressed with how we were able to keep the ratings from, like, we went down a bit, but I bet you if you look, it's probably only 10, 15%, maybe 20%, maybe not even and to be steady where we ended up and once again I'm making jokes about this but the demo was real and the demo really didn't go down it went down a snitch but not much so I was actually you know bummed out at the beginning of the pandemic because we were on a roll we were I remember thinking if we can just make it to May 25th which is blood and guts to the Prudential Center in Newark

where we have sold 15,000 tickets that'd be great and I went to the ring March 11th, Salt Lake, and Rochester, the following week, was still on with the double debut of Brody Lee and Matt Hardy. 25th was still on with the blood and guts. And then in that 20-minute span of the match, I went to the ring, I came back from the ring, Rochester was canceled, Newark was canceled,

the NBA was canceled, and Tom Hanks had Corona. I'm like, what a fucking 20-minute span that was. So, you know, and then we kind of, played out the string in Jacksonville and then that got shut down if you guys remember we had to go to Atlanta where we filmed four weeks of TV in one day and that was where we really came together as a company. We had 30% of our roster available and that's where the ratings actually went up from the previous weeks and we're like holy shit. So we got 30% of our roster in a warehouse, QT Marshall's wrestling school and you know, freaking Canton Georgia or whatever it is and we still did you know 900,000

we got something cool here. And that's where I think. we all kind of banded together as a team and went, listen, this is not futile. We can still keep this rolling and keep it going. And to see the ratings that we had on a post, you can see those people are still there waiting for us. And it was a really, it was a cool, gratifying fact to see and to know. Yeah, people are definitely excited to be doing something that feels normal again. The fact that you guys have even 10% of the crowd at Daly's Place,

it feels like it's a step in the right direction. Oh, dude, totally is. And let me tell you this, man. I mean, this is something to show just how pro everybody is. And it goes for WWE and NXT as well. I have been wrestling in front of thousands of people, thousands of people since I was 21, 22 years old. I mean, the early days on the Indies,

he's wrestled in front of 40 people here and 100 people there. But as soon as I started going to Mexico in 1992, there's thousands of people. And you might have a couple small crowds. But if you look basically from 92 up until 2020, I've never wrestled in front of less than, you know, a thousand people. And most of the time it's 8, 10,000. And AEW, I think our average is 5,500. And they go from that to zero, literally zero in one week was very hard because then you've got to go out there and actually work. And my first actual match wasn't for a few weeks after that.

I think it was against Colt Cabana or something. But I remember the stadium stampede and the thing I did with Tyson with no people that, I was like, fuck, if there was people here, they'd be going through the roof right now for both of those moments. In the street fight that we had the week before, me and Sammy versus Hardy and Kenny, and I was like, this is really strange, but guess what? You don't have a choice. Either you do it or you don't do the show. And we had no choice.

We had to put out a show every week with our TV deal with TNT. They expected it. And that's why we continued rolling. So it was a hard transition to make, but you have no choice. So you've got to be a pro and pretend there's people there. And then we put the road in the gallery of having at least 20 people or 30 people. And then we had friends and family and the staff at Morton's steakhouse at the hotel where we stay and we're going every week. And then it started becoming the impact zone.

And what I mean by that is you have the same 500 people there or 400 people there every week. And they start getting complacent because they've seen it all. And it's free. They're not invested. And right after that, we started bringing in people. That first week we had people, dude,

it felt like Madison scored around. It felt like there was 20,000 people there because just to get a real reaction, people really singing Judas. And they're far away and it's scattered. Plus it's open air, which the sound goes up more than down. But still, it means something.

It means a lot. It gives you a little bit of spark. And like I said, going from 5,000 to zero, and then zero to 500 was just as the same as going from here to there. from there to hear was just like, yeah, it was so awesome. You've been doing a lot of fun stuff with MJF,

and I'm curious to know how much of yourself you see in MJF? It's hard to say because he's way more advanced than I was at that age. I mean, you deal with the guy. I think he just turned 24 years old. He's definitely what you would call an old soul in that I can't believe how good he is with the experience that he has, but what really blows my mind is how much better is he going to be with experience over the next couple years

and what he's going to learn from me and learn from Cody and learn from Arne Anderson and Tully Blanchard and all these guys being in his ear, Jake Roberts. So it's amazing to me just how good he is. But I think, like I said, I mean, there's certain guys that you see

that you're like, we can do something together. And it's just a natural progression. If you look, I mean, there's certain, like, if you look all through the summer, once we did the state of Stampede, I did not want to be involved with the elite for a while because we've been doing that story since October 2nd, 2019, all the way up to May of 2020.

He's Kenny and Hangman and the Bucks. We haven't interchanged at all in whatever. That's been six months now almost. That's why I did 14 weeks to Orange Cassidy. Now who's next? Who can I work with us next? Well, MJF and I have something natural there. So that could be something that we can do.

But once again, you've got to sprinkle little things along the way. And that's why, even for this program, all along, I was going to do something with private party and do something with the rich as doing with Mark Quinn, but then I was really impressed with Isaiah, and I want to see what he would do. He was great, which leads into the thing with Luther and Serpentico. That was always on the books,

although I had a few weeks earlier, and Tony came up the idea of doing it on the seventh because of the history with Luther and I. But everybody in our show gets a chance to get over. That's the one thing. If you're under contract to AW, like Janelle and Sinichis, we had two great matches with them because listen

if you're on our show you're not just sitting in the back either you're on the fucking dynamite when the time is right and you get over or you don't because if not there's no reason to have people sign that something's very different between us and WB is we give everyone a shot a legit shot

and if you do good you'll continue to get more shots so I know it's a long way to ask the question but I think MGF's the guy every time he's gotten the ball is delivered and the sky is the limit for him so it's the perfect time for us to just start thinking about maybe possibly doing something together in the future.

All right. Exciting to hear that. So you came in on Dynamite, at least, with the inner circle. And I'm interested to hear what the backstory was between, first of all, coming up with the inner circle, but also the members within the inner circle. Well, Tony wanted me to be a part of a faction. And I've never been a part of one before. I was a little bit reluctant at first. But then I was like, you know, I was sitting for horse and you're Rick Flores.

I was like, okay, well, let's give it a try. And I can't remember his, he wanted to be like a band, like Chris Jericho and the conspirators or whatever would be. And I was like, nah, we got to send better. My idea was Fist, like one, two, three, four, five. And Fist, it would be called Fist. And that would be the merch. And then I was doing a BTE bit that Matt and Nick asked to do. And I said something about, you know, my inner circle is involved in this.

And they're like, inner circle's a cool name. I was like, yeah, that's a really cool name. That could be it. Now, it's funny too because now we say it. It's like positive. You say it. You know it. But when you first say it, you're like, that's weird.

I remember people like, inner circle, that's a terrible name. And now it's a fucking great name. But you just got to live with it for a while. And the idea was at first who's going to be in it. And I remember, oh, let me think about this. It was always going to be the idea of a tag team, an up-and-comer and a heater, so to speak, right? So I think the original tag team, one of the ideas, was bandied around, and it might even been by me, was Phoenix and Pentagon.

And then I thought, I don't want gimmick guys, mass guys. And then Santana Ortiz came up, and I was like, well, I know them from the crews because they're on the first crews. I don't really know much about them. But, you know, the bucks were saying, oh, good they were in the first tone. I was, okay, well, let's, let's throw those guys in there. And then I wanted MJF, but I think Cody wanted to do stuff with him. I said, well, how about Sammy Guevara? Because I scouted Sammy Guevara and brought him to the table.

Never met him before in my life. I just watched him on an NWA pay-per-view that Cody was wrestling all this. And I saw him, I was like, this guy's good. And he's miscast to be because he just looks like an asshole. So, Sammy, that's cool. And then for the heater, there's a guy called Anthony Agogo, who is a boxer. And they were suggesting him. And I was like, I don't want that because I had that in WWE a couple times.

They gave me heaters that were smaller than me or the same size. I want big guy. And I did kickboxing training. Hadn spoken to him in years, but I was kickboxing with the same trainer. as Jake was, getting ready for his Bellator fights. And I just started talking to him, like, are you interested in coming back? And he's like, I'd love to. And I pitched him to the toning.

And I said, this is the guy I want. I've always been a big fan of his. I wanted him to be my eater back in Devonovina. But they just just cast him. They didn't know what to, they didn't know what to do with a six-foot-six good-looking blonde guy who can work and has a character that can talk in the right circumstances. Like, what the fuck? Like, what do you?

What? But that's fine. And so we got him involved. And I remember the very first night when everyone came out, we did a photo shoot wearing inner circle shirts. And I was like, this is just, this reminds me of Guns and Roses in 87. It's five guys that don't really belong together.

If you look at that original picture, they look like they're in five different bands. But it just works. And that's the same to this day. When you get the five us together, it just works. It looks cool. And I pride myself in the fact that in the whole year we've been together,

We've never had any dissension, no teases of breaking up, no cross words, and no reason to. If this was done to me, we've been broken up after three months, you know, and that's not what we're going to do. There's no reason to fuck with it, you know, and that's one of the reasons why I love the inner circle. Now, could we add some people to it? Absolutely. That could always be part of the story, and that will be a part of the story. But to me, it's like those five original guys.

I like that. I still like it and I think we really gelled. And we've become really good friends after not even really knowing each other at all. I mean, it works. It's fantastic. You know, speaking of bands, if we were to go to a Fossey concert, obviously Judas is your biggest hit. Is Judas played first or is Judas played last? Well, we always go from the mindset that Iron Maiden and Metallica have is they always open with their new, the first two songs for the new record.

It's just something that they do. And we've always done that. So on our tour, the Judas Tour, Judas Rises, Judas was on first. And the suggestion was to put on later. I'm like, no, I want people to hear the song they know right off the bat and get hooked right away. Like I remember I saw ACDC open with Back in Black one year. And I said, Cheatrick Open with I Want You to Want Me. And like, holy shit, like, what else is going to happen?

And then stuff happens. And then when that tour ended, you know, the cruise and a couple of the shows we've done, we open with an older song called Sin and Bones and Judas is kind of the encore, which is probably where it will lie from now on, which is where it should be. But for the Rising 2, I wanted it to be first and foremost in your face, not get the fuck out right away and then leave people going like, holy shit, this is great, because there's a lot of people that had never seen us before, so I wanted to hook them right off the bat. Do you have something you do every morning or every day that really sets your day for you?

Because I feel like people who are as successful as you are, have some sort of morning ritual that really helps them win the day? I mean, I've going through, I've really started training before I eat. And I'm up at 6.45 every day with my kids. Sometimes I'll go back to sleep. Sometimes I won't. Sometimes if my kickboxing trainer is available,

we'll train at 9 or 10 in the morning. Always a little bit harder. If not, I'll train on my own. Like, as we speak now at 12, 10, I haven't eaten anything. I've been up since 9. I'll go work out after this. And then I find the earlier the day that I work out, the better.

but like when I'm on the road I don't work out I don't work out on TV days I don't work out in Jacksonville I just don't have any desire to do that I feel that my mind is in another place on those days so there's really no morning morning ritual other than I just try not to eat for as long as I can which makes me feel more invigorated for some reason maybe it's just in my head I don't know it's that fasting thing right I was really doing that a couple years ago and I was really doing that a couple years ago And let's be honest, like the Corona thing came out and everyone was drinking more. Not, like, it's just such a fucking weird year. Now it's like I want to start going back to this fasting and just keeping an open mind,

not drinking as much. I'm a rockster dude. I can drink so 6 a.m. every day if I do so choose. I don't want to do that. Yes, I'm like that. Exactly. And the thing is, too, that's the thing that just by going to Jacksonville, are we have a routine now? I've never been a routine guy.

I mean, I've been traveling around the world since I was 19 years old. This is the longest that ever been situated in one place, being that I travel to Jackson a little weekend. I come back. I mean, I've been to L.A. a couple times. I got to go to New York in a few weeks. But other than that, it's like basically, here I am, back and forth. So that's a little bit insanity-inducing as well for me.

But, you know, it's one of those things. Like, if you were a drug addict and didn't do something, do drugs for six months, you'd be completely off it. And it's interesting me from traveling. Like, I wonder if I'll ever be able to travel the way that I used to. Because now that I haven't been, I'm super spoiled. I live 30 minutes away from where I've been working for the last six months. So it's kind of different now.

It feels weird. Well, you're 30 years into it again. Congratulations. Thank you. What keeps you motivated? Oh, man, that's easy. Just to be creatively stimulated and continue to build on this legacy that I have, you know. I don't believe my own.

hype, but I believe my own facts. And the facts are, had I not gone to New Japan and worked that match with Kenny, I don't know if AW would exist, because that's the match that Tony Kahn convinced himself, like, we can do this. Because that match did big business. It did big business in the arena, added about another 12,000 tickets, and it added about 30% subscriptions for New Japan world for the highest that it's ever been. And Tony was like, there is, there is people out there who want something different. So that motivates me. Starting this company from scratch,

going up against, you know, it's like Game of Thrones. I learned everything, not everything, I learned so much of what I know from the king of the WBE and now, you know, I'm the right hand to the king of

AEW giving him all the secrets that I learned in the kingdom of WBE. Deputy's not going anywhere. They never will, but it sure is fun to mess with them and it sure is fun to go up again. them and it sure is fun to compete with them and to have a great show that we've been putting on and to see our show build and to see our show continue to give better to build stars

in our company. So that motivates me and excites me this kind of unsolicited opportunity to do commentary, kind of open up a whole door there to where, you know, I'm not going to be resting forever, but I'll probably be involved until the day I die at this point just doing commentary. if I choose to. So all that stuff motivates me. It's exciting. It's exciting to be involved in the company that I feel I made a difference in.

W. You're not going to make a difference. That's the monster. That's the machine. Guys come, guys go. AW, it made a big difference for me to be there. It was a big factor in getting it off the ground. And the first couple months, that company was on my shoulders.

Now it's on many people's shoulders. But it's still really cool to know that I made a difference. difference and change the wrestling business for the better, in my opinion. So that's all motivation. You definitely made the biggest difference because, you know, Cody in the box and Kenny and Brandy were making this thing. But then when Chris Jericho's name got attached to it, it's like, oh, I know that guy and he's one of the best ever. He's going to be part of this thing? Yeah. And knowing that I'd never gone anywhere else, I'd never been in impact or never went to Ring of Honor or never left the company. When I left the company, I didn't wrestle. And that was my thing.

not going to wrestle anywhere but for Vista McMahon until I didn't. And that's where everything started changing for me. So, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where it's really cool to be in this position to know that we have a really killer company that's got the cool factor to it. And we're really only just beginning. You know, they think, oh, it's been a year. How much further can they go? It's like there's so many ideas and camaraderie and teamwork and people working together. And there really isn't any snaky, snaking behind each other's back.

And whenever there is a little bit of that, we stuff it. We kill it because we don't want that environment in our company. We've come from that. We've all dealt with that for years. And we don't want that in age of, and we don't have that. So our boss is great. He's super passionate. He's very smart to the business.

He's not a money mark, as people might have thought. He doesn't bow down easily. So I appreciate that. It's great to know who the boss is. And Tony Con is the boss. He has the final sales. same. That's great to know. It's great for a guy like me to know because I need somebody to sign off on my stuff because sometimes I'm not sure if it's the best thing in the world or like Mamosa

man. Is this going to be total shit? Is this is this? That's what I drew right there. That's amazing. That was my thing right there. I drew that about 20 days. Probably. Yeah. And I sent that to Tony Con and I was just like, and he's like, that's awesome. I was like, thank you. So that's how it works our company, you know, if we like it, we do it. If not, we come up with something else. There's no heat and no messing with each other and just make everything cool. It's been an exciting 30 years. Obviously, I haven't been watching all 30 years of it. I was a little young when you started off, but it's been an amazing 30 years. And, you know, again, congratulations. I'm so excited to see what's next for you because

every week you're coming up with something new, something exciting. And that's amazing to be able to continue to watch you perform at the best, you know, at the top of your game. I appreciate that, Chris. Like I said, man, it's just been a lot of fun to see the growth of A.D. I mean, how many guys that are there, they're going to be huge stars for years to come. The fact that I have a little bit of influence and a little bit of putting some of that in there for them, whatever that word may be, it's a pretty cool place to be. So 30 years in, it's hard to believe, can't believe it, but it's exciting to see what's going to happen over the next few years for sure. I'm glad I was able to share it with everybody watching.

Well, again, thank you so much, Jericho. Congratulations, Chris. Good job, man. Well, thank you. All right. I just get so inspired every time I talk with Chris Jericho. You know, seeing what he's built, both inside and outside of the ring, is nothing short of incredible. I hope that there were a few nuggets in there that you were able to take away for yourself from this conversation.

Actually, let me know. So snap a screenshot, tag me. I'm at Chris Van Fleet. Tag Jericho. On Instagram, he is at Chris Jericho Fossey. And I went back and I watched that wrestling match that he talked about with Sean Michaels, that ladder match. And what he didn't mention here was that he broke two of his teeth during that match

when he didn't get his hand up quick enough and boom! The ladder just smashed him in the mouth. But the match was incredible. I mean, yeah, sure. He was bleeding from him. the mouth a little bit, but what a phenomenal match. And can you imagine how different the inner circle would be if MJF was in it? Or for that matter, how different MJF's time in AEW would be if he was part of the inner circle. Hmm. Although I like how things are now. I'm really liking what's going on with

Chris Cherokee and MJF. Very interested to see where this thing goes. And I think the one that, The one thing that really stands out for me from this conversation. And the one thing that stands out for me from Chris Cherokee's just career in general is focus. He's always had such a clear focus on what he wanted to achieve. And maybe that was in wrestling. Maybe that was in, he's been an author. Maybe that's in music. Whatever it's been, he's had so much incredible focus.

And maybe the path to get there looked a little bit different, maybe than he imagined. but he never lost sight of the thing or the things that he wanted. As Mike Hawkins says, you don't get results by focusing on results. You get results by focusing on the actions that produce results. Be great. Be great for my friends. We'll see you on Thursday for a fascinating, insightful chat with Ariel Hawani. Jim Rome takes on sports. Why? Because I have a job to do.

With rapid fire takes. So I don't want to hear from you lava pigs on this notion today. No idea what you're talking about. You're complaining more than you like to breathe air. It's like you get up in the morning only to complain and cry and moan on social media about things that you don't even understand. He's the spitfire of sports smack. Take advantage of it. Get up in here. The Jim Rome Show podcast.

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