Chris Jericho did an interview with Sports Illustrated about a variety of subjects. Highlights are below.
On The Bubbly: “You never know what’s going to stick and resonate with people, so when something hits, you’ve got to go with it. This all started after my title victory when I was backstage yelling at random people, and I had a bottle of champagne to celebrate in my dressing room. I just said, ‘A little bit of the bubbly!’ and suddenly, everyone’s making memes for it and it went viral. So we made a t-shirt for Pro Wrestling Tees, and that became their highest selling shirt for sales for its first day. Wrestling fans are all saying ‘A little bit of the bubbly!’, so let’s make some bubbly. There is a cool factor here with ‘A Little Bit of the Bubbly. And let’s be honest—unless it’s pure crap, they all pretty much taste the same. This is a good tasting wine and the packaging is amazing.”
On Thanksgiving Celebration: “I had the idea months ago after I won the title. As soon as I saw that we were doing a Thanksgiving show, I knew it would fit perfectly because, ever since I won the title, I’ve been bitching about getting my thanks, so that almost wrote itself. I knew I wanted a lengthy segment with lots of twists, but sometimes those things don’t work out the way you want. This one did. Overall, in execution, it was a huge success. I created 90% of that, and that’s why it reeked so much of Jericho. There wasn’t a lot of actual writing. The actual script was mostly bullet points. The script was, ‘Marching band starts playing; Soul Train Jones introduces Jericho; Jericho comes to the ring and cuts a short promo, then gives out coupons; Jericho has a toast of the bubbly with Soul Train like gentlemen; Jericho calls down Inner Circle, who give gifts to Jericho.’ It’s not a strict process with writers putting every word on paper. I wrote something down for Soul Train, and you can see him reading it, because he was having trouble remembering his lines, and I wrote some lines for my dad. But everyone else, it was just, let’s just do what we do. That’s why AEW works.”
On Building Stars: “Sky is a guy we’ve built up really well, and I was happy with it. In retrospect, I would’ve liked to have seen some video packages throughout the show really building up how big it was for Sky to have this championship match. We could have given him a little promo time in that respect, but those are things we noticed afterward. That being said, I thought the match was great. Guys like MJF, Darby Allin and Scorpio Sky have been in main event matches. We’ve made those guys into stars very quickly. It’s only been nine weeks of TV, so imagine where we’ll be after nine months? One of my mission statements in AEW is to build new talent. People complain, ‘We don’t have any idea who this people are!’ It’s only been nine weeks, and we’re focusing on one person every couple of weeks. Building new stars will make this promotion successful. This past week gave Sammy Guevara some spotlight, as well as Ortiz, Santana, and SCU.”
On Jon Moxley Feud: “That feud in WWE was really damn good, but we’re both so different now. It won’t be the same. Moxley was never this confident or this good in WWE. As Moxley said in our ‘Talk is Jericho’ podcast interview, he didn’t know who he was in WWE. He was constantly at odds with the creative and at odds with himself. This is a completely new guy. Dean Ambrose was only a portion of his career. To me, Moxley is the real guy. And there is a new-look Chris Jericho with all this creative freedom in AEW, so it’s going to be very intense and it’s going to be a lot of fun. I know a lot of people have already said, ‘This is happening too quickly.’ Everybody needs to sit back, relax, and watch the story unfold. Trust me, we are not rushing anything. I wouldn’t allow it.”Click Here: Kevin De Bruyne jersey sale