In an interview with FOX Sports, former WWE Champion Chris Jericho discussed his debut for the company, his interest in WrestleMania, the CM Punk/WWE situation and more.
Highlights of the interview are below:
On his WWE debut: “It was a great entrance, probably one of the best entrances to a company of all time. I wrote the entire promo out on my own. I remember going into a back room with The Rock and one of the other writers to go through it. There was no rehearsal, nothing had to be approved by Vince McMahon, these days, every promo has to be approved. Everything goes through rehearsal, it’s very micromanaged now, it’s very different now. At that point in time, no one knew what we were going to say, I didn’t show it to anybody. Now, if you write a promo, the writer will write the first draft and then I’ll re-write it with the wrestler I’m talking with and then we have to get Vince to approve it and then he’ll make his changes and edits.”
On his interest in WrestleMania: “Kind of half and half, I’m not wrestling because I choose not to, I have other things going on, I don’t see myself wrestling 5 years from now, so now is the time to make that transition. I follow the shows more online than anything, I don’t really watch wrestling because there are too many other things I like to watch. If I were at home for a couple of days, I’d rather watch “True Detective” or “The Walking Dead” or “House of Cards” than wrestling. WrestleMania, I might check it out if I’m home, but my house isn’t really a wrestling house, my kids don’t care for it, my wife’s not a fan. If I do watch it, it’s more like I have to tape it and watch it later.”
On the CM Punk/WWE situation: “I walked away from WCW when they offered me a contract, but I had enough. They could’ve paid me $3 million or $5 million or $10 million and I still didn’t want to be there. If you don’t want to be there, the money is irrelevant, yeah, you could look at it like he’s walking away from a s*** load of money, but he’s also walking away from a situation where he’s saying, “I don’t care what they pay me, it’s not enough. It’s not worth my sanity and I’m leaving.” It’s easy to play armchair quarterback with this situation, but no one knows what’s going on except Punk and he’s not talking, so it’s all speculation at this point. The bottom line is, life goes on, the business goes on and Punk doesn’t seem to worry about it too much because he’s not there.”
The interview is available in full at this link.
