Chris Jericho continues to work at a high level and he’s recreating some rock classics while he waits for his potential in-ring showdown with ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson.
Jericho recently spoke with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard about his endeavors in and out of the ring, which includes the appropriately-titled KISS cover band, Kuarantine. While most of the country has been at home under quarantine, Jericho linked up with drummer Kent Slucher (Luke Bryan), Joe McGinness and PJ Farley (Trixter) for their first song together, No No No, and later recruited former KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick for their second song, Heart Of Chrome, set for release later this month.
Jericho says the project is a perfect example of how people are staying creative here in the “COVID-19 era” and noted that the project probably wouldn’t have happened if everyone wasn’t stuck at home. The FOZZY frontman said he saw this project as the perfect way for a band to put out new content and entertain people while adding a fun twist.
“The best thing about it is I’ve never even met the guitar player. It just shows how you can make music now just doing it from home. Just connecting and like you said, staying creative during a pandemic so you don’t lose your mind and fall into the ‘Groundhog Day’ mentality, which I never subscribe to. It’s been really cool. We’ve gotten a lot of steam, we’re getting airplay all across the states now. We’ve got almost 100,000 views on the video in a short time. People are just looking for stuff to do and we got no problems giving them that.”
Both music videos Kurantine has shot so far feature cell phone videos and studio session footage, much different than a typical high-end music video shoot. Jericho saw the appeal of the band not only because of his affinity for KISS, but because it shows how you can create content at home without the stresses of a full-scale production.
“This is different because had there been no COVID, there would be no Kuarantine, in more ways than one,” Jericho said, “so that really appealed to me, the fact that it isn’t like you’d do a normal recording. It isn’t doing a video the way you’d normally do it. We took our phone and held it up and got somebody to edit it really killer and it cost us like a $100 and it was done in a day. If you’re doing a real video it takes five, six, seven hours maybe one or two days and you’re spending thousands and thousands of dollars and there’s no rules now for what COVID is.
“You could make something like we did with ‘The Bubbly Bunch’ in AEW and film it at our houses and you could never put that on camera on a nationwide television show three months ago,” Jericho said, “but now people are just accepting it cause they appreciate the fact that we’re doing something new and providing entertainment for people at this point and time when they need something to divert themselves from what’s going on.”
In addition to creating new music, Jericho has continued to entertain fans on All Elite Wrestling programming each week as the leader of the Inner Circle stable. The group wowed the wrestling world with the Stadium Stampede match at Double Or Nothing, and Jericho stole some more headlines when he rekindled his feud with Mike Tyson on the May 27 episode of Dynamite.
Jericho and Tyson have a history with each other stemming from a past angle on WWE RAW, and this time the two ended up starting a brawl to end the show. Since then, many fans have speculated on what the payoff could be, wondering if “Iron Mike” might actually step inside the squared circle for a match. As it turns out, that’s exactly what Jericho hopes for too, noting that having a wrestling match with Tyson seems like the next logical step for them.
“I’d like to see it go all the way. Mike has been an enforcer, Mike has thrown a punch that has knocked somebody out—which is me—and Mike’s been involved in this wild and wooly brawl. The one thing he has never done is have a match, and I think this is the perfect time for him. The aura and the mystique of Mike Tyson is back. He looks great, you’ve seen his sparring videos, he moves fast, he’s ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson again.
“Probably one of the worst things you could do is put him in an actual boxing match. Maybe if it’s somebody in his own era and doing kind of an exhibition and that sort of thing, but we want to keep Mike Tyson’s aura at a maximum which is why AEW is perfect for him. We can do whatever storyline we choose and wrestling is all shapes and sizes, we can do whatever we need to do and plug him into any situation that we want to make it. I think there’s no better person for that than Chris Jericho after all these years of doing this who is kind of a ‘Mike Tyson’ of wrestling. I’ve never lost my aura or my mystique but you can see that I’m doing some of the best work in my career after doing this for 30 years. So it’s a perfect match-up.
“Mike and I know each other. We’ve known each other for ten years. We have a built-in storyline, a built-in angle. It’s not just a random thing and the character of Chris Jericho that makes perfect sense that I would be obsessing with this for ten years and not scared of Mike Tyson. I know a lot of people are like, ‘Are you crazy? You were standing face to face with Mike Tyson!’ With Mike, there’s no script, there’s no rehearsal, he’s going to do whatever the fuck he wants and that’s fine. I don’t mind cause I can control that and I expect it, so I think there’s a lot of excitement there and I know we’re working on that, both sides, to make something like that happen.”
Kuarantine’s “No No No” is out now; their next music video, “Heart Of Chrome”, will be released on June 26. Chris Jericho can also be seen each week on AEW Dynamite on TNT.
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