Chris Jericho doesn’t take the “please retire” chants in AEW personally.
In recent months, fans have begun to grow weary of Chris Jericho. He has remained a consistent presence in AEW throughout its entire run, appearing on almost every episode in the past six years. Fans have begun to chant for Chris Jericho to retire, but this response doesn’t bother him on a personal level.
Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Chris Jericho discussed the chants, saying they were “fun” to listen to.
“I mean, it’s one of those things,” Jericho said. “When they were really at their peak, of course I’m always thinking. Okay, I can make a t-shirt out of that. I can make a whole angle out of this. But it kind of went away, they kind of stopped. Plus, I was really good at being able to shut people down. Like New York, please retire. I take the mic and say, I know why you want me to retire. Because you want me to go pitch for the New York Yankees so they could possibly win a World Series, but that’s not going to happen. Boo!”
“And then they stop. It’s something that Seinfeld said years ago, or any great stand-up comedian, I’ve got the mic. You can’t heckle somebody when the guy has the louder voice. So, yeah, the please retire was a good one. That was fun.”
Chris Jericho: Nobody Who Really Knows Me Says That Stuff
Chris Jericho continued by comparing himself to the criticism the Rolling Stones had throughout their career. He also said wrestling was a job where the idea was to elicit emotions.
“No, I don’t take it personally. Nobody who really knows me that says that stuff. And probably, if I saw them on the street they’d probably say hi. Whenever I do a convention or something like that, my lines are down the street. That’s not from an egotistical standpoint, but I’ve been doing this a long time, and a lot of people have great memories from the different eras that I’ve been in.
“I’m the Rolling Stones on the Steel Wheel Tour, when all the critics are saying it’s the steel wheelchairs tour, Stones need to retire, they’re done. Well Mick was 47 years old, and that was 1989. I saw him four times last summer at 81 years old and they’re still one of the best bands in the business.” Chris Jericho said.
“This is a job where the idea is to elicit emotions, positive, negative, anything in between. When you sign up for it, you have to understand that people are going to respond. Now all of us wish that you could just walk down the street and have people throw a parade for you at all times and throw confetti and will their firstborn sons to you. It’s not that way, especially now. I mean, society has kind of gone the way that they did when I first got to WCW, where they hated all the babyfaces just because you were a babyface.”
“Hated a young Chris Jericho because they loved the nWo. So this blonde-haired, good-looking guy who was like throwing himself in the crowd because he had nothing to do was getting booed out of the building, and now I’m getting booed out of the building or getting chanted at as a bad guy. Isn’t that the point? Please tell me if I’m wrong.”
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