Chris Jericho joined Busted Open with Dave LaGreca and Bully Ray [Bubba Ray Dudley] yesterday and talked about wrapping up this current run with the WWE and working with the young talent in the company. He had especially high praise for AJ Styles. Highlights are below:
On his run and if he’s excited to be on tour with Fozzy:
The original plan was for me to finish after Wrestlemania (with Owens). Then Vince had the idea for me to stay through April 30th and then May 1st and then May 2nd …so it’s a little bit crazy. But yea I think it’s fun. We had a break for about a year and a half with Fozzy so getting back in the room with the guys and just rehearsing and playing Judas for the first time live, it’s really exciting. It takes me right out of the WWE world and straight to Fozzy world very quickly, which helps because I don’t even really remember what happened on Smackdown. It’s a little bit crazier than I expected.
On his recent WWE run being among his best:
Not to pat yourself on the back, but if you ask me “Was this the best run of my career” that’s not for me to answer, it’s for the fans and the people who watch the shows to decide . It’s definitely one of my favorites, top two along with the the Shawn Michaels feud and that era of Shawn Michaels, Rey Mysterio, Big Show was my partner. This year, I would like to say that we were geniuses and we thought to do this from the start and orchestrated the whole thing, but it just was all very organic. The whole partnership with Kevin Owens, the whole “list, stupid idiot” all that stuff it just became a thing much to my surprise to be honest with you. And Bully Ray will tell you this, when you catch lightning in a bottle in the wrestling business, you gotta run with it because you never know if it’s going to happen again. So as soon as everything really started getting over last March, we knew that we really weren’t doing much with Fozzy and the guys were doing another Stuck Mojo record so I said “Listen, I’m just gonna stay in WWE for 2016, I’ll take a break from the road with the band. I think it was a pretty fun route because it just kept getting better and better even up until Smackdown on Tuesday. It was a great way to end the saga between Owens and Jericho because it started organically and then we went through the whole ups and downs and all this other stuff and turning on each other and then finally getting the surprise win on Sunday [Payback] and then having him take me out, kill the “knight in shining armor” on Tuesday I think was a fitting end and a nice way to kind of button everything up.
On his successful run in WWE & getting guys over:
Guilty as charged on all accounts. When it was time for me to win, I would stand up for myself and say I need to get this victory. But most of the time it was putting over guys and you mentioned AJ [Styles]. I take great pride in the fact that when he came into the company, and I know how Vince thinks and that he doesn’t care what people have done outside of the walls of the WWE, I knew that if I could work with him for a couple of months that I could help him with the small little things that he didn’t know about WWE that he picked up in about two weeks. And also get him over with the boss right away. And that’s basically what happened, and AJ is the best in the world I would say at this point. He was when he came in but still there was a little bit of a transition. And then working with [Dean] Ambrose and all the stuff we did with him tearing up my jacket and the potted plant and the thumbtacks and all that stuff was great. And then I transitioned over to Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins and I worked a while with Roman Reigns which was great and Sami Zayn and Neville, the list goes on and on. It was a great time to be in the business because the locker room is filled with great guys, young guys. It reminds me of the early 2000s when guys like me and Bully, Eddie [Guerero] and Chris and Dean, you know all the guys that were there at the time, the Hardys, Edge & Christian. Everyone wanted to work together to have a great match. Not that that ever changed, but it’s really exemplified and amplified now with the locker room that we have. It was a blast to be there in the ring and learn from those guys, I changed my style a little bit accordingly, to kind of stay current. And also behind the scenes in the locker room after the shows…it was just a really great year and it’s something that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. Whether I come back to the WWE or not, I’ll always remember this year as one of the biggest highlights of my 27 years on the job.
Busted Open can be heard weekdays from 2p-4p ET only on SiriusXM Rush Channel 93 and any time on the SiriusXM app.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
