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| CHRIS JERICHO INTERVIEW |
Matt Barnes |
FSM: Chris, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. We guess the obvious place to start is to ask how it feels to be back in WWE.
Y2J: It feels good, y’know. I decided that I wouldn’t come back unless I really wanted to come back – I wouldn’t come back if I absolutely had to come back. After 15 years straight of travelling the world and getting the chance to do all the things that I’ve done, it was necessary for me to take some time away, both mentally and creatively. For the first year, I didn’t even watch any wrestling. After that I started to get back into the groove again, and once I wrote A Lion’s Tale that kinda brought me full circle.
It made me realise how much fun I’d had being in the business and, more importantly, how I had this dream at a very young age and was able to accomplish it at such a high level. You never want to take something like that for granted, and it ignited some of the fire, which I knew eventually would happen. Once I got into that mindset it was time for me to come back and have
some fun again.
FSM: How do you feel the comeback was handled? News leaked on the internet, so it got put off and put off – were you pleased with how it played out or would you have liked to have come back sooner?
Y2J: I think that was something that the internet created to get revenge for the fact that they had no idea what was going on at first. People have a sense of entitlement nowadays where they think that they deserve to know everything instantly, just as fast as they can type something into a computer. The answer, I think, was that when the promos first started playing they didn’t know who it was. It kept them guessing and that kinda pissed a lot off people off, which is what I wanted to do.
When I was a kid and a wrestling fan, I didn’t know anything – all I knew was week by week from watching TV. There was no internet and there were no wrestling newsletters – at least, if there were, then I didn’t know of them – so all I knew was what the company wanted me to know of the storyline each week. It made it a lot more magical and a lot more fun. Of course, I knew in coming back that it wouldn’t be long before people figured out who it was, but they still didn’t know for sure, and that was cool.
They were maybe 90 per cent sure it was Jericho, but they didn’t know for sure, and that was my idea behind it to create a little bit of buzz. I think I came back at the right time, which was when everybody wanted me to come back, and that was out of my control. My control was creating the vignettes and coming up with a really cool mystery for people to follow, and other than that I was happy with the way everything went.
FSM: Where did the idea for the “SAVE_US” promos come about, and how strong do you think it was in comparison to the campaign before your original WWE debut?
Y2J: Well, I think it’s a case of The Godfather and The Godfather II. I think the first one was such a classic and it was so great that you could never top that, because in people’s minds that was the original, and it was such an interesting idea. That’s what I tried to do with this one – I took elements from my first batch of vignettes and updated and upgraded them. There were a lot of rumours about who came up with that idea, but if other people had the idea then I never actually heard about it, because I came up with it one day when I was watching The Matrix and I thought, “That’s kind of neat”.
I pitched it to Vince and that was basically it. He said he loved it, and it was me and a guy called Adam Pannuci from the WWE production team that created all the vignettes for the ten weeks that we did it. The first vignette was, I think, 15 seconds long, and was supposed to contain all these clues, but it literally contained nothing. There were no clues put it in – it was basically a bunch of gibberish! It was the “Paul Is Dead” of wrestling, like when people were finding all those clues in Beatles records to prove that Paul McCartney was dead and they knew nothing about it.
I think that if people want to find things and want something bad enough, they’ll find things to back that up, and I think that’s what they did with this. I think, to answer your question in the short run, it was in a lot of ways better than the first. The first one will always be remembered, but in terms of competing with the first one, the second one was the absolute best that it could have been. The first one was a 10 and the second was a 9.5.
FSM: So how did it feel when the countdown finally finished and you went out there on stage for your Raw comeback?
Y2J: Waiting backstage, I didn’t rehearse anything. I didn’t want to rehearse it – I wanted to feel it live the way that everyone else did. I didn’t see the new entrance video, I didn’t see any of the build-up towards it – that was all done, and I saw it live the same way you guys saw it. It really builds up a lot of anticipation and a lot of excitement. When the countdown started and the crowd just went ballistic, it was really exciting to know that this was where I wanted to be and this was the right decision to come back and to build it up this way. Once I got onstage it was off to the races and business as usual, and I felt like Y2J Chris Jericho had been on Raw just the week before. And that’s the way it should have felt, y’know?
FSM: Absolutely. Following your debut, your first match back was against Santino Marella. Do you think you’ve finally broken The Jericho Curse™?
Y2J: (Laughs) The thing is that it wasn’t really The Jericho Curse, though, because it wasn’t my first match in this company.
FSM: This is true…
Y2J: In that respect, there was no worry about The Curse. But if I was starting with TNA or All Japan or Ring Of Honor, then I’d definitely have had to worry about The Jericho Curse! This was just a ‘Jericho Sabbatical’, so that’s not quite the same thing!
FSM: Speaking of Ring Of Honor, during your two-year hiatus, was there ever any question that you might do a show or two with ROH?
Y2J: For me, when I left wrestling I wasn’t leaving WWE, I was leaving wrestling. I was really mentally burned out on the whole process, and just the business as a whole. It wasn’t as though I was sick of WWE specifically, I was just sick of wrestling and I needed to get away for a while. (Pauses) I shouldn’t say “sick”, I should just say that I was burned out on wrestling, so to go to ROH, TNA or All Japan – and, believe me, I had offers from all those companies, which was nice to hear – it didn’t make any difference, because I wasn’t interested in wrestling anywhere. At that point, it made it very easy for me to say, “Look, guys, I really appreciate the offer and maybe we can do business together in the future, but for now I just need to step away from the business as a whole”.
FSM: You made it very clear at the time that it wasn’t an all-out retirement, but the choice to take a sabbatical for a year or so must have been almost as difficult a decision to make. When did you know for sure that was what you were going to do, and was there anything specific that prompted you to think, “It’s time for a break”?
Y2J: It was just time for me to go. Four months before that match [the You’re Fired Match against John Cena at SummerSlam 2005] I’d had discussions about a contract extension, but I’d known for probably a year before that I was done with wrestling. I never said I was going to retire, I was just going to take a break. I just knew because it was getting harder for me to come up with ideas and to personally give my all, and in this job if you’re not going to give 100 per cent at all times then you might as well just give it up, because you could hurt yourself or you could hurt someone else, either physically or mentally.
Thoughts and ideas weren’t popping into my head the way they used to, and things usually fall into place pretty easily for me. I’m a pretty creative guy, and I just wasn’t enjoying it, so that’s when I knew it was time for me to take a break. And also, I had a lot of things going on with Fozzy and I had a lot going on with all the acting stuff I was doing, as well as other things that I wanted to take the time to do, so that was the perfect time to take a step back and do it.
FSM: Since you’ve returned, you’ve been a slightly different Y2J. We’ve seen less of The Lionsault, you’ve now got The Codebreaker as your main finisher and you’ve also got much shorter hair this time out. Is this a sign of a more ‘mature’ Chris Jericho?
Y2J: I always pride myself on changing – changing who I was, changing Chris Jericho. It’s kind of a strange analogy, but it’s changing in the same way Madonna always did, or the same way Kiss always did. They always changed their look and changed their style – not to copy what was going on, but to evolve and keep things fresh. I think Madonna’s the best example of that. It’s not like I’m a huge Madonna fan or anything like that, but she always changes her music, always changes her look, her hair. She’s still Madonna, but it keeps her relevant and on top of what’s going on.
I always found that, performing 52 weeks a year on Raw or SmackDown, you’re on TV every week and if you don’t change something about yourself you become boring or complacent very quickly. I never wanted that, so I always changed my costumes or my hairstyles, or even something as small as my facial hair, and I always tried to update my promos with different catchphrases and different ideas. Also, wrestling-wise, I never wanted to rely on the same three or four moves. There’s nothing wrong with having a ‘Greatest Hits’, but you have to write new songs as well.
So I don’t think that it’s a more “mature” Chris Jericho, so to speak, because it’s the same Chris Jericho with the same attitude and the same mindset and charisma. It’s the evolving of Chris Jericho. People would say to me, “You’ve cut your hair – you’re not the same Chris Jericho!”, and my response is always that my favourite singer of all time is Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden, and he has short hair now but he’s still the greatest singer of all time and he’s still cool, either way.
FSM: Can’t argue with that! How have you been enjoying the feud thus far with JBL?
Y2J: I think it’s been great. It’s very rare that you can have a feud with someone where people aren’t sure whether it’s real or not. We have our stories and our wrestling angles, but something about this one has just gone a little bit over the edge from the very first moment when he appeared during my match with Randy, to the first promo we had, to the pull-apart, to the hanging thing, to him cutting a promo on my kids… There’s something about it that’s skewed a little bit differently, to the point where people are like, “Are these guys serious? Do they not like each other?” And there’s a reason for that – I don’t like JBL and he doesn’t like me. I haven’t liked him for 15 years…
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 25 of FSM – available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders and Barnes & Noble, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
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