Chris Jericho recently joined Busted Open Radio to accept his 2016 Comeback Of The Year Award.
You can check out some highlights and listen to the interview with Jericho below:
Jericho on who helped him come up with The List:
“The List came up, that was actually my co-writer for most of the year, Jimmy Jacobs. He actually came up with The List of Jericho and we were like oh, let’s give it a try. After the first night it really worked and then I was like ‘let’s actually get a list’. If you see the first couple of weeks, it was basically just a clipboard, and then Vince was actually off for a few weeks, I think that was when he tore his quad or something along those lines, so I went to the props department and I said ‘can you make me a list?’, but I wanted it made out of steel. I wanted it to be thick like a tablet, like a Charlton Heston ‘Ten Commandments’ type of tablet that if you hit somebody with it you could knock them out.
And so they did that, and when Vince came back and I told him here’s this list that I got, I got it made so I can use it as a foreign object. He thought it was great; my original idea was to take it to the ring and use it for finishes but he didn’t want that, he just wanted it to be this entity, and next thing you know, The List of Jericho is more over than 80% of the roster.”
2016 being one of the best years of his career:
“I have to say last year, 2016, was one of the best of my career. I still can’t put it over the [Shawn] Michaels – Jericho feud and the [Rey] Mysterio – Jericho feud and the Big Show – Jericho team which was 2008-2010, but it was pretty close. Maybe in retrospect I’ll look back on it in a few years and think maybe it was the best, but it’s one of those things, it was like a very nice surprise because I’ve come back quite a few times and somethings you don’t hit as much. But it seems this year I had a late career resurgence to where if I was in a Rock n’ Roll band, I had like three or four top ten hits this year that will go on the greatest hits of Jericho. I’d like to be able to sit back and say I planned this, I’m very smart, I’m a genius and I knew this was gonna happen, but you never know what’s gonna happen and I think I kinda caught lightning in a bottle with this character and all the different aspects of it. It worked and it’s been a lot of fun for sure.”
Original Wrestlemania 32 plans with Dean Ambrose and why they changed after his televised return in early 2016:
“I knew from the moment I came out what was going to happen, which was me eventually turning heel. It got pushed back a little bit because the AJ Styles thing worked so well, so Vince wanted us to be a tag team, and then work at Wrestlemania; the original plan was for me to work with Ambrose at Wrestlemania.
I started planting those seeds as a babyface that were really pissing people off and I knew it. And it was fun for me to see that ‘Jericho’s done… this is stale, he’s so stale. Oh that scarf and the vest, he looks ridiculous, and the same old catchphrases and he’s trying to get a Rooty Tooty Booty chant going; it’s so annoying. It’s sad to see Jericho falling so low.’ And I was like oh you guys are just – I’m the master of puppets yet again, manipulating the entire business into planting those seeds for when I finally turned heel. And people were like, ‘Well we’re glad he turned heel because he wasn’t doing a good job as a babyface’ but I knew all that. That is one thing that I had planned.”
