Chris Jericho Recalls Getting Massive Heat For Promo Early In WWE Career
Chris Jericho says that a promo he did early in his WWE run got him a lot of heat with one of the biggest names in the company.
It was in the summer of 1999 when Chris Jericho decided it was time to leave WCW and sign with WWE.
If you were watching WWE regularly then you might recall that Chris Jericho made his WWE debut on the August 9, 1999, episode of WWE Monday Night Raw in Chicago. Jericho has talked about that moment when he interrupted The Rock as something memorable, but he was also critical of what he said in the promo.
One day later in Milwaukee, WWE taped the August 16, 1999 edition of Raw. This was a few weeks before Smackdown’s debut, so WWE was still taping some Raw episodes on Tuesdays.
During that Raw taping, The Undertaker was doing a promo in the ring with Big Show by his side and Jericho decided to interrupt him. Jericho bashed The Undertaker for boring the crowd with his words while Taker fired back with a warning for the cocky newcomer.
Chris Jericho Upset Big Names In WWE
To celebrate 25 years since his WWE debut, Chris Jericho spoke about those early days in WWE on his Talk Is Jericho podcast where he spoke about interrupting The Undertaker and how it was received.
“I did a promo on Undertaker on Tuesday. Originally, it was supposed to be a promo on Austin, but I think Steve said, ‘Screw that. I’m not doing it.’ My idea at the time was I was just going to bury all the top stars and tell them how boring they are. I told Undertaker how boring he was after he just delivered a ten-minute super boring promo. I got so much heat for that.”
“I remember Shawn Michaels said, ‘Word of advice. Something you might not want to do on the second night in the company is tell the top star in the company how boring he is.’”
“Shawn was right, but Undertaker was actually really boring that night. I kind of hit the nail on the head. He did this big promo with the Big Show, walking through the desert and getting bit by a scorpion. Everyone was like, ‘Huh?’ ‘Undertaker, you’re boring, and you’re washed up.’”
“He gave me the line of, ‘I’ve had more shower time than you’ve had ring time,’ which was pretty funny, but nine years in, at that point, I had like 1500 matches. Ehhh, not necessarily true.”
Amazingly, even though Jericho and The Undertaker had two of the longest runs in WWE history, they never had a one-on-one PPV singles match during their careers. They did take part in other matches together, but not a singles match on a PPV.
The “boring” promo from The Undertaker and Jericho’s interruption can be seen below.