WHEN Chris Jericho talks about the wrestling business you need to listen.
He was the WWE’s first ever undisputed champion, has held the intercontinental title more times than any other man and recently became a best selling author to boot.
In an exclusive interview Chris talks about all aspects of the industry from why few stars make convincing bad guys to being in the ring when Ric Flair said goodbye.
Your programme of late with Shawn Michaels and Dave Batista has been the most entertaining thing on WWE TV as of late, how have you enjoyed your role in that?
It’s great. It was one of those things we just kind of stumbled upon. It was never planned to be such an intricate storyline, with all the ups and downs and ins and outs, but sometimes when you start working on something you realise that it’s really working out and it’s going good, you run with it. That’s what we did.
I just love having a great storyline that you can sink your teeth into. This is definitely one of those.
You say you don’t mind who you work with, Chris, but a couple of months ago you had a fantastic match with Shawn at Judgment Day. You two always seem to have a great match when you meet up.
Yeah, we have great chemistry, there’s no doubt about that. It’s a lot of fun to be in there with him and I enjoy it.
The two PPV matches we have had have both stole the show and both been classics. Not just the one at WrestleMania XIX but the one at Judgment Day was amazing as well.
He’s a good guy to work with, we’re having a good time with the angle we’ve got going. You have a great babyface, two great entertainers and two great wrestlers, you can’t help but have some classics.
It’s been an interesting development of late with your character becoming a bad guy, how do you like exploring that side?
Well I always enjoy being a heel. It’s a lot of fun. It is a rare art form these days because there’s a lot of people who don’t really know how to be a heel. They have a tendency to want to be a ‘cool heel’.
My attitude of being a heel is that you are a coward and you’re a liar. You need qualities that people don’t like about other people.
There’s nothing valiant about being a heel. Nothing honourable about it.
You’re a piece of garbage and you act like it.
You’re fake and you’re false, you take advantage of someone when they are down, you don’t face them face-to-face when they’re up.
I enjoy that and I’m trying to do it in a different way than I have in the past. So far it’s gone really well and I’m enjoying it.
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Does it please you when you get the chance to showcase your talents as both a wrestler and a talker?
For me, most importantly, wrestling is showbusiness.
That might be a controversial statement but it’s about entertaining people and you have to be good at both.
I love the out-of-the-ring segments. Sometimes I’d rather do those than the actual matches themselves because I’m playing a character. The character of Chris Jericho.
I’m not that guy in real life so it’s like playing a bad guy in a movie. I would never string someone up for real and cut off their toes but if I was in a movie and I’m told to do it I’d love it and make it look as real as possible.
It’s the same playing Chris Jericho the bad guy in WWE – or Chris Jericho the good guy for that matter – there’s a certain way to play both parts. It’s a role that I play and I enjoy it. It’s a lot of fun.
There have been a couple of people added to the storyline, one being the legendary Ric Flair. What was it like working with the Nature Boy again?
It’s always great working with Ric, he’s such a great guy and such a well-loved performer. Even though it was a quick cameo, it was still a lot of fun and raises the profile of our angle by having a guy like him involved. It was a nice surprise.
What did it mean being asked to participate in his emotional farewell?
That meant a lot. There was only a select few that were invited into the ring, so it was a real honour for me. I’m not going to say it surprised me because Ric and I have become real good friends over the years, but I didn’t realise that the powers-that-be felt that way as well.
It was a truly great honour to be standing in the ring with Ric Flair, the Four Horsemen and Ricky Steamboat – one of my all-time heroes. It was a night I’ll never forget.
The other person who has become involved in your business on Raw is Lance Cade. Tell us about him?
You’re just going to have to stay tuned and find out what happens with that.
Like I said, the beauty of the storyline is that it started with Shawn and Batista, then I got involved, then it’s about me and Shawn and Flair gets involved, then Triple H is involved and Lance Cade comes out. It’s a multi-tiered storyline and I like stuff like that.
You of course brought out a book last year, we read and reviewed here at The Sun Online and enjoyed it immensely.
Thank you.
What’s the feedback been like?
It’s been great. I put a lot of time into doing that, writing a book took a lot of effort and took a lot longer than I thought it would.
It took me almost 18 months to write and six months to prepare, so just to write it was hard enough, and when you do, you just want to write the best story possible and not really worry about how it will be reviewed.
At the same time, you want people to like it and from the very first review we got, from this snotty literary magazine called Kirkus which really loved it, I didn’t really get any bad reviews. People really raved about it.
I was really happy with the response, really happy with the sales, really happy that it made the New York Times bestseller list and now I’m happy to be working on the sequel to be it, due to be released in the autumn of 2009.
So you’ve started work on a sequel already?
Yeah, I started working on it in April, I’m in the middle of doing interviews for it right now, to get it all down on tape, then I’ll start putting the pen to paper, so to speak, probably around October.
I spoke to Bret Hart a couple of months and he said that there were only two wrestling books he’d enjoyed, and they were Mick Foley first book and yours. That must be nice to hear.
That’s great man. Bret was one of the guys I sent it to when it was still in manuscript form just to get a quote from him. He read it really quickly and really enjoyed it. It’s the same for me. I enjoyed Bret’s the same as I enjoyed Mick’s.
I think the reason for that is because you have three guys who were writing books that actually have a very intricate story to tell about the wrestling business and I know from my standpoint.
I didn’t write my book for wrestling fans I wrote it for people who might not know about wrestling. I knew wrestling fans would enjoy it but I wanted to take it to a different demographic as well.
Mine was more of a ‘follow your dreams, stranger in a strange land, coming of age’ type of tale. I think that’s one of the reasons people enjoyed it because it was more than just “I gave him a hip toss then an arm drag and won the title.”
That’s all fine and dandy, but I wanted to write about the stories that got me to that point. Bret had that and Mick had that too.
Also, all the international travelling that we did, and all the territories and companies that we worked for, there was definitely a lot to talk about in all three of those books.
One thing that springs to my mind is that all three – Bret, Mick and you – wrote the books yourselves, no ghost writers. How important was that to you?
I knew that I wanted to write a book from the moment that Mick wrote a book. I knew I wanted to write about it, I just wasn’t sure how to go about it.
I worked with a collaborator, someone I was able to bounce ideas off of, but I wrote every word that you read in the book. It was important to do that because that means it’s your voice. You are writing something the way that you would say it and explain it and I think that comes across and give people a sense of who you are.
You’ve recently come back having had a break from wrestling and come back feeling invigorated but how long is Chris Jericho the wrestler going to be around for?
There’s no real timeframe, I’ll be around as long as I’m enjoying what I do, as long as I’m having a great time doing it.
I needed to take some time out from the business, clear my mind, work on some other things, spend some time with my family and then organically some back when the time was right.
I did that and enjoyed it and continue to enjoy it, so we’ll see what happens.
We ought to talk about Night of Champions. You’re not on the card right now, are you going to have an intercontinental title defence?
I believe so, that’s the gimmick of the PPV, that every title is defended. I’m not sure who I’ll be facing at this point. But I’ll be there.
And you can watch it all live on Sky Box Office!
Are there any other matches which you are looking forward to watching?
Obviously I think Triple H and John Cena will be a great match. They had a great match a couple of years ago at WrestleMania, they have a great chemistry and are two really popular entities. I think that’s the one I’ll be watching most.
I’m also really interested to see who Ted DiBiase Jnr’s partner is going to be in the tag team title match and I’m interested in seeing who my opponent is going to be.
I know I’ll be defending the title but not who it’ll be against. Will it be Shawn Michaels? Will it be Lance Cade? Will it be you? We’ll wait and see.
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