Chris Jericho spoke with Busted Open Radio for a new interview. The highlights are below:
On 2016 being one of the best years of his career: “I have to say last year, 2016, was one of the best of my career. I still can’t put it over the [Shawn] Michaels – Jericho feud and the [Rey] Mysterio – Jericho feud and the Big Show – Jericho team which was 2008-2010, but it was pretty close. Maybe in retrospect I’ll look back on it in a few years and think maybe it was the best, but it’s one of those things, it was like a very nice surprise because I’ve come back quite a few times and somethings you don’t hit as much. But it seems this year I had a late career resurgence to where if I was in a Rock n’ Roll band, I had like three or four top ten hits this year that will go on the greatest hits of Jericho. I’d like to be able to sit back and say I planned this, I’m very smart, I’m a genius and I knew this was gonna happen, but you never know what’s gonna happen and I think I kinda caught lightning in a bottle with this character and all the different aspects of it. It worked and it’s been a lot of fun for sure.”
On returning in 2015 for only house shows: “I think I was the first guy ever to just do house shows. Most guys just come back to do TV but I decided to do the opposite of that, and I had a really fun year. I think I did about 60 shows with the WWE [in 2015] and none of them were on TV. So when I finally did come back, I think it was January 2nd or 3rd of last year, I hadn’t been on in a year and a half or almost two years. It was a chance to kind of recalibrate and reboot the whole character. I knew from the moment that I came out what was going to happen, which was me eventually turning heel. It got pushed back a little bit because of the AJ Styles thing working so well, so Vince wanted us to be a tag team, and then work at Wrestlemania. The original plan was for me to work with [Dean] Ambrose at Wrestlemania, but I think I started planting those seeds as a babyface that were really pissing people off. I knew it and it was fun for me to see that ‘Jericho’s done, he’s stale, he’s so stale. Oh that scarf and the vest it looks ridiculous. Same old catch phrases and he’s trying to get a Rooty Tootie Booty chant going, it’s so annoying. It’s sad to see Jericho falling so low.’ And I was like oh you guys — I’m the master of puppets yet again. Manipulating an entire business into planting those seeds for when I finally turn heel. And when I turned heel it was like, ‘Well I’m glad he turned heel because he wasn’t doing too good a job as a baby face’ but I knew all that. That is one thing that I had planned.”
