Chris Jericho thinks it’s very important to introduce yourself to the wrestling audience.
The former WWE and AEW Champion is famous for having one of the greatest debuts of all time. In 1999, the Millennium countdown clock stopped on Raw, as Chris Jericho interrupted The Rock with an iconic promo.
While the arena exploded for his appearance, he was always cognisant of fans who may not have known him. In fact, after declaring that “Raw is Jericho”, Y2J said “For those of you who don’t know me, I am Chris Jericho, your new hero, your party host and most importantly, the most charismatic showman to ever enter your living rooms via a television screen!”.
It was important to introduce himself to a brand-new audience. This is something he carried on for the rest of his career.
Chris Jericho spoke on Talk Is Jericho (H/T to Fightful for the transcription) about the importance of introducing yourself to a new audience.
He said that he never assumed everybody knows him when debuting in a new company. Chris Jericho added that he made sure to say “My name is Chris Jericho” on his AEW debut. This was just in case people were watching that weren’t aware of him yet.
“I thought it was very important to introduce myself in case somebody didn’t know me. That’s something we don’t do a lot of in AEW at times. When we just bring somebody in. ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Zack Sabre Jr. Ah!’ ‘Who?’ If you go back and watch my very first promo on October 2, 2019, which was the very first Dynamite, I said, ‘My name is Chris Jericho.'”
“Just in case there is somebody who might not know me. In 1999, which was 20 years earlier, just in case people didn’t know me, of course a lot of people did know me because there is tribalism, ‘We watch WCW. We watch WWE.’ I let people know who I was and what I was there to do.”
Give Chris Jericho’s thirty-year-long, Hall of Fame worthy career, that is clearly some good advice to follow.
