This week’s episode of Talk Is Jericho features “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry talking to Chris Jericho about his wrestling career being on the rise, and spoke about how he got the attention of All Elite Wrestling:
“For me, I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, but it really just started taking off now. So I feel like it’s cool to get in with [All Elite Wrestling] and it’s like we’re on this parallel journey doing this together.
Things really took off for me in November in terms of the indies and stuff when it started blowing up. I was at dinner with my family—at Sharkey’s—and I remember looking down on my phone and it said Chris Jericho is following you on Instagram. I was like [excited] and I checked to make sure it had the [verified account check mark] and then a couple of days later, Matt Jackson ‘liked’ one of my posts, and I was like ‘oh man, these guys—they know who I am!’ and I could feel that something was happening.
I remember I did a show in Chicago with Game Changer Wrestling, and Joey Janela told me, ‘I’ve heard them talking about you a little bit.’ It was cool, but it seemed like [AEW] was far away [from starting up] where it didn’t really seem real, and the next day I was at breakfast in Chicago and I got a message from Cody. I had to leave the restaurant because I needed to be by myself for a minute, but that was it. As you’ve mentioned, all of the stuff with my Dad—I was really grateful because he was right there when I got that. I showed him right away when I got the message. I showed it to him and he started crying in this restaurant.”
Perry also talked about getting into wrestling through his father, talking about seeing WCW as a kid and shared some stories about his Dad being a big Dusty Rhodes fan. He and Jericho talked about the irony in Jack now working for Dusty’s son, and Jack talked about how his father would be very casual about going backstage at different wrestling events. After talking about the fan response about Luke’s death and not knowing the fandom surrounding his father’s acting career, they addressed how Jack started training for pro wrestling in fourth grade, and Jack shared his final words with his father before he passed away:
“My dad was supposed to come to PWG, and that was on a Friday and this was on like Tuesday or something. And he texted me and asked if I wanted to have Chinese food, and I said I probably won’t make it tonight because I am here training late with Jake but I’ll see you tomorrow or whatever. And then I woke up the next morning and it was already kinda going, full swing the whole thing.”
During the interview Jack also shares that his father’s love of wrestling is what brought Jack into the industry, saying Luke used to take him to live wrestling events that came through Southern California. Jack also shares some details about the last movie Luke shot before his death, the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood with Leonardo DiCaprio, in theaters this July.
New episodes of Talk is Jericho are available every Wednesday and Friday. Listen and subscribe for free at Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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