Jericho Interview

[Strummer]

Chris Jericho granted his first interview on the subject of professional wrestling in nearly three months when he joined Between the Ropes Radio live this evening at 11pm Orlando time. Jericho stated that he did not miss wrestling at all, and though he would always leave the door open, for now he has no reason to return to wrestling as he wants to pursue other avenues. Jericho stated that until those avenues dried up, he didn't see a return to wrestling happening. Chris Jericho is coming off of a tour with his band Fozzy that makes several stops in Florida this next week, and joked that he left wrestling to spend more time at home, but that doesn't seem to be happening as of yet. When the tour winds down in a few weeks, Chris Jericho stated that he was looking forward to spending time with his family in his Tampa residence. Chris Jericho has been keeping busy lately, taking acting classes and trying to prove to himself that he can make it in Los Angeles. Chris Jericho is a regular guest on VH1's Best Week Ever, and also currently worked the red carpet at awards shows for E! Entertainment with Joan and Melissa Rivers. Chris Jericho is also working on a book which he stated wasn't an autobiography, but something that focused on a particular time in his life, though he didn't elaborate. Chris Jericho also has a lead in a film produced by the Sci-Fi Network which costars Joey Lawrence.

 

When asked about the picture that appeared on his website displaying the TNA logo, Chris Jericho explained it to be a practical joke on his behalf. Jericho stated that while looking at messageboards, he saw a lot of fans speaking as though they knew everything about him. Jericho put over the dedication and support of internet fans, but stated that he called his webmaster and told him to put the photo up as a joke so that he could watch the "shitstorm" unfold. Jericho stated that within hours, he was receiving calls from high ranking officials within both TNA and WWE.

 

On his wrestling career, Chris Jericho put over John Cena as a guy who gets a bad reputation as a wrestler who didn't deserve it, and claimed to be touched by being cheered by half of the crowd in his match with Cena as Jericho considered his opponent to be the biggest babyface in several years. Jericho also light-heartedly claimed that Kurt Angle calls himself the best in the world, but his matches with John Cena weren't nearly as good as his own. On the subject of Christian, Jericho stated how proud he was of him, and put him over as a top all around performer who never got his due because of his size. Jericho stated that he regretted never having a run with the title as a babyface, but it was hard to have regrets when you were a three time World Champion and the first Undisputed Champion. Chris Jericho called the biggest problem with wrestling today the scripted nature, and recalled writing his debut promo with The Rock in a hotel room the night before. Jericho also stated that he wasn't a fan of Vince McMahon's affinity for "toilet humor".

 

On the subject TNA, Chris Jericho admitted that he watches more TNA than WWE currently. In spite of that, Chris Jericho said that he loves Vince McMahon as a boss and feels a strong sense of loyalty to him, so he didn't see TNA in his future anytime soon. Jericho put over Samoa Joe as his current favorite wrestler and someone who could be a top level star in WWE almost immediately. Chris Jericho also put over A.J. Styles and Christopher Daniels, and stated that he thought Monty Brown or Samoa Joe should be the ones to take the title off of Jeff Jarrett. Chris Jericho closed the interview by plugging Fozzy and thanking his fans.

 

Credit: The Pro-Wrestling Chronicle

The shot at Angle really sticks out. Ouch.

[sek69]

I'm starting to get the impression that a lot of people seem to think Angle's a dick.

[JHawk]

The recap of the interview did say Jericho said it light-heartedly though. Did he actually mean to sass Angle or was he trying to be funny?

 

Light hearted or not though, he's right. The Jericho-Cena matches were better than the Angle-Cena matches.

[sek69]

A lot of times people will say something they believe to be true in the context of humor in order to blunt any harshness and/or to give the speaker an out if they're ever called on it ("Hey I was just joking man!").

 

It just seems that reading between the lines over the years it seems Angle has garnered himself a reputation of thinking highly of himself. People like Meltz giving him constant BJs doesn't help matters either.

[Guest savagerulz]

Yeah, but when he genuinely is the best performer in the United States what do you expect? In terms of the all round package there's nobody as good.

[sek69]

That's the thing, he's not. Kurt Angle is a world class olympic wrestler, but only an above average at best professional wrestler.

 

His shortfalls have been discussed ad nauseum and I'm sure someone will arrive to detail his spotty selling and over-reliance on suplex spots.

 

In short, he's far from the best performer in the US, but he's being sold as such because main voices in the internet fanbase (Meltz) see him as validation to their "real fighter" man crush.

[Guest savagerulz]

I'd totally disagree with you. Angle's the best there is out there at the moment. His ring work is excellent, and he's at least as good outside the ring as anyone else around who is still a full time active performer.

 

Who do you think has a better all round package than Angle then?

[sek69]

Off the top of my head: Benoit, Daniels, Joe, Styles (at times) are all as good or better than Angle on a more consistent basis.

 

Angle has stepped it up lately with his more serious character, but in the ring Kurt is extremely overrated. He's more concerned with setting up the next suplex spot than the pacing and flow of a match. Being able to hit 97 suplexes a match does not make you a world class professional wrestler.

[Guest savagerulz]

Benoit's not because outside of the ring he's awful. His in ring stuff is better than Angle's, I'd agree, but the difference isn't big enough. Angle's a better all round performer.

 

Daniels, same thing.

 

AJ outside of the ring is shockingly bad, his promos etc are terrible. So same goes there.

 

Joe, not as bad as Styles or Daniels but he doesn't have anywhere near Angle's charisma.

 

Angle's better than all those guys in my opinion, he pisses all over them in terms of charisma and while they're arguably better than him in the ring, although I stlil think he knows how to tell a story in his matches better than Styles for sure, as an all round performer in a business that does not in any way rely strictly on in ring performance he's a much better all rounder than any of those guys.

 

You did highlight one decent point though which is that while Meltzer's factual stuff is 99% great, his opinion based stuff I tend to disagree with a lot. It bugs me when people say "but Meltzer thinks this...." in an argument. If it's his factual stuff, fair enough, but outside of that he's just a guy with an opinion, same as the rest of us.

[sek69]

Meltz's opinon carries more weight than almost anyone on the internet. There are people out there who have no opinon on a match or a wrestler until Dave chimes in with his.

 

As far as your comparison of Angle to the guys I've mentioned, their out-of-the-ring shortcomings are no better than Angle's in-ring shortcomings. He's simply not a top notch professional wrestler. At this stage of his career he should be far better at pacing a match, not to mention being more professional than to get upset at a guy for selling because it doesn't allow him to do more suplex spots.

 

*edit* That made me remember another guy better than Angle: Eddy.

[Guest savagerulz]

Meltz's opinon carries more weight than almost anyone on the internet. There are people out there who have no opinon on a match or a wrestler until Dave chimes in with his.

 

 

It does, and for me it's irritating that a lot of people either jump on his bandwagon's, or simply hide behind him as a defence, "well Meltzer reckons he's rubbish too, so I must be right" kinda thing.

 

If you think Angle's as bad in the ring, as AJ Styles is out of it then fair enough, but I just disagree immensely. The other thing that Angle has over Daniels and Styles is that he's a lot more legit, and believable. It's hard to take AJ seriously as a threat sometimes. That's never the case with Angle. Obviously Joe doesn't have that problem, and Benoit's intensity and style makes up for it.

 

Eddie, for me, suffers from the same believability factor again. Whether they put him over these people or not, I just struggle to ever believe he's a threat to a Big Show, or a Brockberg. Eddie's decent on the mic, certainly better than anyone else that you put in there for my money, but I don't think he compares to Angle. Inside the ring? He's really not that much better. Over the course of the past year has Eddie really been having better matches than Angle? Wrestlemania, biggest show of the year. While Eddie was having a botchfest with Rey Jr and putting on a really disappointing match, Angle was in a superbly paced encounter with Shawn Michaels. Michaels is one of the best around, so I'm not saying anyone would have expected Angle to have a bad match with him, but, I wouldn't have expected Eddie to have a bad match with Rey either, and he did.

 

Besides, Meltzer says Angle's the best, so I'm right

[sek69]

I don't think Styles is THAT bad outside the ring, he's supposed to be the lovable babyface and he doesn't do anything to mess that up, so what else can you ask of the guy?

 

Besides, you haven't addressed the fact that Angle has significant drawbacks in the ring that keep him from being considered world-class by most people's standards.

[kjh]

Wrestlemania, biggest show of the year. While Eddie was having a botchfest with Rey Jr and putting on a really disappointing match, Angle was in a superbly paced encounter with Shawn Michaels. Michaels is one of the best around, so I'm not saying anyone would have expected Angle to have a bad match with him, but, I wouldn't have expected Eddie to have a bad match with Rey either, and he did.

That's an unfair comparison IMO as Shawn and Angle had 15 more minutes for their match, so it isn't surprising that they were able to pace their match better and didn't have to rush their spots like Rey and Eddie had to. Rey and Eddie's lengthier rematch on 6/23/05 edition of Smackdown compares very favourably IMO to Shawn and Angle's WrestleMania match, as it told a much deeper story than Shawn and Angle did at WM.

[Marty]

Back to the Angle-Jericho stuff for a moment. On top of the BTR comment, there was also this comment from Jericho in his recent online commentary:

 

I still get people everyday asking me when I'm going back to wrestling and it's kind of funny for me, as I've only been gone for about 3 months.  Things move so fast in the WWE that it seems so much longer.  I've been enjoying watching as a fan though.  It's fun for me to see the improvement of guys like Snitsky and Kurt Angle as well as the emergence of Ken Kennedy and MNM (Melina is too hot!).

First, there's the funny thing about categorizing Snitsky with Angle in any way, but just saying the "improvement" of Angle is eye-catching, due to the perceived rep of Angle being one of the best of all-time. This may very well be Chris' way of saying, "Sorry, Kurt, you ain't one of the best, despite what you think."

[Mad Dog]

Yeah, but when he genuinely is the best performer in the United States what do you expect? In terms of the all round package there's nobody as good.

Ha, Angle is the single most overrated wrestler in the world. He's even more so than Kobashi is right now. He doesn't even begin to touch the worst performance of Samoa Joe. Angle has no grasp of selling and most days is little better than a spot monkey. If you need to see how overrated he is just go back to last year when he complained to management that Guerrero was staying down to sell moves instead of popping right back up so he could hit another suplex.

[Guest EastCoastJ]

I wrote the posted recap for my blog on professional wrestling news and history and I tried to properly portray Jericho's tone of voice when speaking on Kurt Angle. I'll elaborate though. Jericho put over Kurt Angle several times during the interview in nothing but the kindest way possible, but when Jericho began speaking on John Cena, Angle came up again. Jericho said that a lot of people unfairly criticize Cena of being a bad worker, and then asked if Cena looked like a bad worker in the two matches that he had with him. Jericho then said, and I'll try to quote as directly as I can from memory "Look at Kurt Angle. He's saying he's the best in the world, or the best alive, or the best today or whatever. Look at his matches with John Cena. Their matches weren't as good as the matches as the matches that I had with Cena". He sounded slightly irritated maybe when he said it, but it didn't sound like he was trying to knock Angle at all.

 

My guess is that professional wrestling has lost Chris Jericho for at least two years, he sounded like he had absolutely no desire to do anything related to it at all.

[Loss]

Jericho is much better than Angle. Always has been.

[Slasher]

Who let Savagerulz in here? Man... and this was supposed to be my escape from TSM idiots.

 

 

I agree with the people who said Angle is overrated. If one was to be the best performer in the ring, one needs to sell which is something Angle somehow seems to fail to grasp. As others has pointed out, Eddie was selling a spot and Angle got pissed because Eddie didn't pop up to be suplexed again. While I wouldn't call Jericho the bastion of workrate, he has a better grasp of what makes a match work and what doesn't. I've noticed that when you put Angle's and Jericho's common opponents, 7 times out of 10, Jericho has the better match with that opponent.

[Loss]

If Jericho doesn't ever show up in TNA, I'll be very surprised. I think it's just a matter of time, unless Vince gets wind of it and offers him a big money deal to resign with them to essentially work part-time, which I don't see happening.

[Slasher]

Jericho by all accounts has not been interested in rejoining wrestling now or for the near future. I am not ruling out the Genesis surprise appearance, but I don't think it will happen nor do I have a real reason to believe it would, outside his jokes on his site.

[sek69]

Isn't it all but confirmed the Genesis suprise guy is Christian, other than TNA's attempts to be coy?

[Loss]

It is. I don't think it'll happen soon. I'm just not sure that Jericho will end up in WWE if he ever does make a return to wrestling.

[Mad Dog]

I'd say Brock Lesnar was infinately superior in the ring than Angle was. He sold better and his matches had better flows to them.

[Guest EastCoastJ]

The series of matches Angle had with Booker T really exposed his recent work to me, and his following stuff with John Cena it's safe to say he isn't on the level of Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio or Shawn Michaels right now. He's still an elite worker and injury has obviously taken a toll on him, but he's definitely not the best right now.

[Loss]

Jericho can be pretty ugly when he doesn't care, but to his credit, he stayed pretty motivated for most of late 2001 forward in the ring, even if his matches sometimes seemed stale. While I do think Jericho is better at connecting with a crowd, selling, bumping and conveying emotion than Angle, it's also worth noting that Angle is pretty consistently Angle ... his performance quality doesn't vary nearly as dramatically from night to night as Jericho's did, even at his peak. He has also never had a Rhyno at Summerslam 2001-level bad performance. Angle is more athletic and has better offense than Jericho, but that's about where his superiority to him ends.