CHRIS JERICHO INTERVIEW

The following are highlights from a recent Maxim interview with former WWE Superstar Chris Jericho:

You’ve always been fond of bringing comedy into the wrestling ring. If you had to choose between comedy, wrestling, and your band, Fozzy, how tough is that call to make?

If I had to drop one of them, I don’t know if I could do the other two, because they’re all kind of intertwined. It’s all show business, it’s all part of being a showman in the year 2013. You’re always going to have the sticklers and the haters that are like, “Yo, you’re a wrestler, you can’t do anything else.” And those are the people that, if that’s the way you feel, then fine, go f*ck yourself – if you don’t like it, step aside and let the people that do like it get a better seat.

As far as your wrestling career goes, who is the best opponent you’ve ever worked with?

Probably Shawn Michaels. I think he’s probably the best total package wrestler of all time – he could do it all, and was a big influence of mine when I was first starting. That storyline, the feud I had with him in 2008, that was one of the best programs not just in my career, but in the entire history in of the WWE. It’s always cool when you start out as a fan and then become an ally where you’re working together. It’s the same with music – Fozzy toured with Metallica, and it was like, “Here I am with the band that influenced me to get into music.”

Some WWE fans have complained in recent years that the company seems to really push huge guys that can’t actually wrestle all that well, at the expense of experienced all-rounders, like yourself. What’s your take on that?

I don’t see it that way. Wrestling is all about new talent and new turnaround of the stars. I could be the main event guy there for 20 years, but there’s going to have to be other guys that come into that picture or else it’s pretty boring and business will go really bad. There’s only so much Jericho or so much HHH or so much Rock people can take. So you try different guys – some of them are bigger and don’t really have the talent, they have more of the look. Some guys are small and go against the traditional WWE superstar, but yet are so damn good they make it to the top – I’m talking about guys like Eddie Guerrero, or even Shawn Michaels or Daniel Bryan right now. You have guys who would never be the typical WWE superstar, but because they were so damn good, they would rise to the top of the mountain. You have to realize that if you have 60 guys on the roster, the WWE is going to try and get every one of those 60 guys to world championship level. Some of them will make it, the majority won’t, but until you try, you just never know. Everyone’s got to get a full chance, if not, why are they even there on the payroll?