Former AEW World Champion Chris Jericho recently reflected on a major career decision.
Over nearly four decades, Jericho has constantly reinvented himself. From Y2J to The List and Le Champion, his character changes often connected with fans. Other versions like The Painmaker, The Wizard, and The Learning Tree also helped him stay relevant. According to Jericho, retiring the iconic Y2J persona was his biggest career risk.
Chris Jericho explains why he moved on from Y2J
Speaking with Dan Marston, Jericho revealed that he took the biggest gamble of his career when he dropped the Y2J character and introduced a new persona in 2007. He said, “I think probably when I dropped the whole Y2J persona and the countdown. There was a time when I came back in 2007 where I was kind of not gonna say a diluted version of Chris Jericho, but it wasn’t the same. I had shorter hair and times had changed, right?”
“So, I thought I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be a nostalgia act. So, I switched from, you know, I cut my hair, like I said, and I switched from long tights to trunks. Dropped the Y2J. I told the announcers, ‘Don’t ever call me Y2J ever again.’ Did a whole new video package that had none of that. And then the countdown was so synonymous with Jericho. Get rid of the countdown. It’s done.”
Jericho admitted the move felt risky at first. He compared it to the rock band KISS removing their famous makeup. “And that was kind of the first time where I really took a shot because I was like, it’s almost like Kiss when they took off the makeup.”
“You’re doing something very drastic here and you want people to understand we’re doing something different. Whether you like it or don’t like it, that’s not for us to decide, but here’s where we’re going. Here’s the path that we’re taking. Come on board if you want to. And that was kind of it. It was a big risk, but not for long. And it’s something that I had to do.”
“And that’s when I realized I can reinvent myself whenever I start feeling a little stale and people will like some of it, not like some of it, but I can’t worry about what people think. I just have to worry about what I can do to be the best personality I can be.”
Jericho credits David Bowie for inspiring reinvention. “Well, that’s exactly right. And my biggest inspiration in show business is David Bowie. I always was really obsessed and interested in paying attention to what he was doing, which was always reinventing himself. I just did a podcast a couple months ago of all the Bowie characters and there’s literally a dozen of them.”
“You could go to a Halloween party and see 12 people dressed as Bowie, but different versions, and you would know that’s Bowie. And it’s like that with Chris Jericho as well. Every Halloween people are going to be Chris Jericho, and there’s every era that you can see. So it’s like, well, that’s kind of what my overall goal was, and it kind of worked out.”
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