Chris Jericho Reflects on His 1999 WWE Debut – Chris Jericho went from a mid-card performer in WCW to eventually becoming a multiple-time WWE Champion following his arrival in WWE on August 9, 1999.
On that night, he debuted in huge fashion, interrupting one of the faces of the company, The Rock. It’s one of the most memorable debuts in modern WWE history. Although it didn’t catapult Chris Jericho to immediate main-event success, it provided a great launching pad to look back on once he reached the industry’s mountaintop.
Reflecting on his debut on a recent episode of his Talk is Jericho podcast, Jericho admits that he doesn’t believe his WWE debut promo opposite The Rock was great. Still, he feels that the moment that the debut created was a great moment in WWE history.
“Watching it now, 25 years later, some might say that I’m a great promo. I don’t feel this was a great promo. I feel the moment was great. The way WWE orchestrated the moment was great. The way WWE built up the moment was great. I feel my delivery was not quite up to snuff. I still look pretty killer. We’ve got that.”
Chris Jericho recently revealed that his first WWE contract was worth $450,000. He also says that his debut moment and the size of his contract earned him some heat pretty quickly in the WWE locker room.
Walking into that dressing room, I had a fairly good guarantee: I got paid $450 grand a year guaranteed to come in, which was a lot less than WCW was offering me, but I didn’t care about the money. I just cared about the opportunity. It was a lot more than a lot of people were making in WWE so at the time, guaranteed contracts were just starting to become a thing, which is so laughable when you think about it now. I have kind of a target on my back of this ‘hot young upstart coming in, he’s interrupting The Rock, he’s got this big push, this big contract.’ There was kind of a lot of odds stacked against me when I first walked into the dressing room.”
Chris Jericho Reflects on His 1999 WWE Debut
