Chris Jericho Talks His WWE Contract Status, Retirement, and Bryan Danielson’s release

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Chris Jericho did an interview with Fanhouse.com (click the link for the full interview) and here are some relevant bits.

On his schedule: Yeah but the cool thing about Downfall is that it was a pretty quick turnover. We filmed six shows in three nights last week. It’s long shoots from 9p.m. to 5a.m because it has to be at night to be on the rooftop and have the LA skyline behind you. The work ethic that I have that’s been cultivated over the years it’s probably second-to-none and that’s one of the things that really endeared The Rock to Hollywood when he first started is the fact that he had a great work ethic. You have that when you come out of the wrestling business. You get the job done and that’s all there is to it. If ‘Downfall’ does well and they decide to do more episodes, it’s a perfect way for me to kind of branch out and be seen by a whole new audience and not have to spend six months in New Zealand doing Lord of the Rings part four.

On retiring: Yeah, the same timetable I’ve always had. When I’m finished with it and I feel I can’t be at the absolute best any more I’ll finish up. The stuff I’ve done over the last couple of years — the last two-and-a-half years – to me has been the best stuff of my career. And that means a lot to me because when I came back, I didn’t want to come back and be a nostalgia act. I wanted to do something completely different and make an impact and I’ve done that more than I had ever in my career. Even last night, working with Evan Bourne it was the best match I’ve had in months. I was like ‘stole the show, hadn’t stolen the show in a few months’ but I haven’t really been given the opportunity to working with The Miz against the Harts, those types of things. I think at WrestleMania Edge and I came close to stealing the show. I wasn’t completely happy with the match but it was still good. But last night was one of those matches, like, for me, because I can only judge by how I feel and last night was one of those ‘give it up for Jericho’, that was a Jericho match. That’s a classic for me. So it’s good to know that those are still there. When you do those and have some great promos… You know, I always have, storylines are always important to me. I always laugh when I start a storyline because they’re always very intricate and drawn out. You do something for one or two weeks and people make assumptions. Jericho is on a losing streak or Jericho is this or Jericho is that. That just makes me laugh because you should know by now with Jericho that things are never what they seem and you should sit back and shut the (expletive) up and let me do my job and just enjoy it and not analyze it until it’s all said and done. The same thing I did with (Rey) Mysterio or Shawn Michaels or Steve Austin or these old-timers or the Mickey Rourke thing, there’s always more to it than meets the eye and you never really know exactly the whole story until it’s over. It’s kind of like Pulp Fiction – Jericho is the Pulp Fiction of wrestling.

On his contract: Yeah, it’s coming up fairly soon, it’s coming up very soon. It’s one of those things we’ve been talking about for a while to get it rolling again. Like I said, to me, I’ll leave the business when I’m ready to and I’m not ready yet. I still want to continue to work. I still have some things that I can offer. I still think I’m among the best in what I do, if not the best just because of the fact I have 20 years of experience which is a rare thing nowadays. You can’t teach experience. You can teach someone to do a promo kind of, you can teach someone to do a move but you can’t teach someone experience.

On Bryan Danielson’s release: I think he got caught in a crossfire. I think he was the scapegoat for somebody getting angry at the choke thing. Obviously, that’s been a hot button topic for years. I don’t think he did it maliciously. I don’t think Vince (McMahon) fired him maliciously. I think it was one of those things where hands were tied and somebody got angry from somewhere and they had to make a knee jerk decision to do that. I think it hurts the NXT group because it’s great right now when you have seven animals ganging up on one guy. That’s a great visual but when it comes down, at some point they’re going to have to wrestle. At some point, somebody’s going to have to wrestle. And Wade Barrett is good but Danielson was the gem and could go out there and have five star matches with anybody. And they don’t have that right now. That’s the one thing I think is a little bit of a weak link in the NXT chain is the fact that they don’t have that. So losing Bryan is going to be, it’s going to be a blow. Hopefully, they’ll bring him back at some point because he’s a great guy and a great talent. I worked with him for about six minutes on the first NXT but it was a great match and I would love to work with him more and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way,

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.