AEW superstar and former world champion Chris Jericho recently appeared on Sports Media with Richard Deitsch to discuss all things pro-wrestling, including how he doesn’t seem himself slowing down at 51 years of age, and how he’s not really interested in becoming an agent or a coach. Highlights from the interview are below.
Says he doesn’t feel like he’s slowing down, but discusses a possible move to commentary, and why he doesn’t think he’d become an agent or a coach:
The plan was for me to be a guest commentator that week [of the COVID shutdown] and I said, ‘Well instead of just doing it for the week, I’ll just do it the whole time’ and then you got me locked in so that’s what we did and it worked out good. Tony Schiavone and I had great chemistry, it was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it. I took a real Bobby Heenan-Jesse Ventura mindset towards it and I think Tony Khan really kind of put that into his library and, ‘Keep that for later’ and then when Rampage came up, he said, ‘I want you to do commentary on Rampage’ and I said, ‘That’s great, sure, I love it.’ So yeah, it is probably something I would transition to, I have fun with it, I enjoy that side of things. I like being on camera. Behind the scenes, I like giving advice and that sort of thing. Being a producer or an agent or a coach as we call them, I don’t know if I could do that well. I don’t know if I could really explain ideas. I like helping but I like kind of being on camera like you said and also too, you know, Tuesday I’ll be 51 years old. I don’t feel it. I think that I’m still contributing at the highest of levels. I was never the fastest wrestler or the most high-flying. I could still do all the stuff that I always did but now it’s the storylines, the promos, keeping things kind of really interesting and moving forward and like we mentioned, my demos and ratings are always near the top, thanks to everyone watching but I think it’s because I keep it interesting for people and you can’t teach experience and if there was no AEW, I don’t even know if I’d still be wrestling but because there is, it’s exciting for me, I love being a part of it, I love working here, I love showing up for work every week and I think that goes a long way too. If you are satisfied and excited mentally and creatively, that makes the physical go a lot longer too. When you start feeling stifled and start getting angry and feel like you’re not doing what you really want to be doing, I think the physical gets a lot worse as well so, those two combined is really keeping me excited and really, really enjoying what I’m doing and being a part of AEW. I feel great, I have zero injuries, so there’s no reason to not continue going.
Shares a story of Vince McMahon feeding John Morrison a bad line during a promo:
I used to hate that in WWE. It was like, ‘You need an insult here’ and if you didn’t have the right one [in your promo], you’d go up there [and] I remember Vince [McMahon] made John Morrison use the insult of ‘platypus dung’ and I’m like, ‘John, you can’t say that. No one’s gonna laugh.’ He goes, ‘Well Vince wants me to say it.’ I said, ‘Just say you forgot to say it.’ Of course he said it, it dies and you know, whatever.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)