Not that he needed any more help, but Chris Jericho‘s last twelve months have completely solidified his status as one of the WWE‘s all time greats. For a guy “past his prime”, Y2J has had a career renaissance unlike any we’ve seen before. Jericho joined Sirius XM’s Busted Open radio show to discuss his latest exploits and how he had his heel run planned from the get go.
“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.
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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.”
Well played, Y2J. It did seem like Jericho had lost his touch when he first returned, but to hear him explain it, it’s clear the Ayatollah of Rock N Rolla is truly the master of puppets, and thankfully, he’s not done yet.
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