– During the latest edition of Talk is Jericho (transcript credit wrestlinginc.com), Chris Jericho spoke about his latest WWE return and the fan reaction to it. Here are the highlights…
On His WWE Return & Fan Reaction: “It’s not just a one-time thing. I am back, baby! I’m back for the attack, like Dokken always said, and I’m in the Royal Rumble, which is now for the [WWE] World Heavyweight Championship, so maybe I’ll become a seven-time world champion. And I will say this: it’s going to be a long, wild ride. I’ve got a lot of plans [and] a lot of things that [are] going on. I love so many things about the wrestling business and I love all of you fans, but man, some of you complain a lot, which is my favorite part. It’s like, ‘oh, Jericho is re-re-re-re-returning. How many surprise returns is Jericho going to make?’ As many as I want, baby, because I still love doing it and I still have fun doing it.”
On Criticism of His Promo: “Why [was it terrible comedy], because I started a ‘rooty tooty booty’ chant? You mean that’s not ‘if you smell what The Rock is cooking?’ level of comedy? The thing is, it works! It’s fun because it’s The New Day. Their whole gimmick is based around being goofy and I knew that I could get people to chant ‘rooty tooty booty’, so if you weren’t there and you didn’t like it, tough luck because the people in San Antonio [Texas] loved it!” Jericho added, “if that’s bad humor and you didn’t laugh, oh, I’m sorry. Go watch some [Søren] Kierkegaard or something like that. Go watch some Peter Sellers movies or something because I thought it was funny and it was a catchphrase that was chanted throughout the show and they’ll probably make a damn t-shirt of it.”
On WWE Ruining The Surprise Backstage: “I was told this was going to be a big surprise, which it was up until a certain point when somehow it leaked out online, but then even better, [WWE] have a run sheet in the back that says all the matches, you know, ‘Heath Slater versus Dolph Ziggler, Kevin Owens versus Adrian Neville, New Day promo interrupted by Jericho’ and that’s posted everywhere backstage. I’m like, ‘wasn’t this supposed to be a surprise? And even more so, if it wasn’t a surprise, why was I hiding in a bus in the parking lot for, like, the last three hours by myself? Right?’ Like the biggest nerd ever or the biggest snob ever. You’d think that I’m sure a lot of people were like, ‘where’s Jericho? Boy, is he ever being a snob!’”
On His Return Promo: “Another thing that a lot of people didn’t pick up is I basically transcribed my very first promo, the debut in 1999 and kept it very much the same and reapplied that to what’s going on right now, so it was a blast.”
