On the latest edition of Talk Is Jericho, The Demo God spoke about the first possible time he could have worked with WWE during a conversation with Conrad Thompson. Jericho was a late addition to the Attitude Era, making his name first in ECW and WCW in the 1990s. However, when he was still plying his trade in Smokey Mountain Wrestling, there was an idea to bring him in as a tag team opponent for The Bushwhackers. Jericho was in Japan at the time, so he couldn’t take the offer, but WWE was clearly aware of the talented young Canadian.
Following that, Jericho’s name came up again, but in a different context. Jim Cornette reached out, but Jericho wasn’t interested:
Vince must have said “we don’t want no-name jobbers in my company anymore, everybody should have a gimmick in my company.” Jimmy never told me what the gimmick was because right off the bat I said it was something I wasn’t interested in doing. At the time, I had refocused and said I was going to do ECW. I was following Chris and Eddie and those guys. If I’m going to get to WWE, I’ll get there, but I don’t want to be a spotlight jobber.
Jericho than described a few of the jobbers of the time include garbageman T.L. Hopper and Salvatore Sincere. He then mentioned The Goon, a wrestling hockey player, and Jericho is “convinced” that this was the role set aside for him should he have accepted that offer. Considering the impact that Y2J had on WWE with his later debut, there’s almost no arguing that it was the right decision, even if Jericho probably could have made a wrestling hockey player work well.
You can listen to the full clip from Jericho’s podcast below:
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