News

Chris Jericho Recalls His Youth When Roman Reigns’ Father Told Him To “F Off”

Chris Jericho flips off the crowd at AEW All Out 2022

Chris Jericho has had a legendary career in pro wrestling and he also has some good stories from when a WWE Hall of Famer told him to “f**k off!”

It’s fair to say that Chris Jericho has been living his dreams both as one of the greatest wrestlers of all-time that’s still going strong after 32 years. Jericho’s also a successful musician as the lead singer of his band Fozzy. As a kid, Jericho loved professional wrestling while his father Ted Irvine was playing in the NHL for the New York Rangers.

Jericho, who is 51 years old, grew up watching wrestling in the 1970s and 1980s before he got into the business as a wrestler in the 1990s. One of the most well-known acts during Jericho’s youth were The Wild Samoans made up of Sika and Afa from the famous Anoi’a family.

There was a funny story by Jericho recent episode of the Talk Is Jericho podcast as he recalled meeting Sika. During the interaction, Jericho asked for an autograph and was greeted with a harsh message instead:

“They actually would do vignettes of Mr Fuji having him eat raw fish and he couldn’t speak English. I walked up [to Sika] with a pen and a paper and I was like, ‘Please…sign. Sign name. You…sign name with the pen. He looked at me. He goes ‘F**k off, kid,’ and I didn’t care that he told me to F off, all I cared was like, ‘He speaks English! Did anybody else hear that?’”

Sika has five children, two of whom made it to WWE. Rosey was part of the Three Minute Warning tag team and also won the Tag Team Titles with The Hurricane. Sadly, Rosey passed away at the age of 47 in 2017. Sika’s other son is the current Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns, who is obviously one of the biggest stars in the history of pro wrestling that’s still very active in the business. Jericho would end up spending many years working with Rosey and Roman in WWE.

Chris Jericho’s pro wrestling journey began 32 years ago in October 1990. Jericho had very successful runs working in Japan and Mexico leading to ECW, which led to a full-time deal with WCW and then he joined WWE in August 1999. After spending most of the next 20 years in WWE (with a few breaks) with six-WWE World Title reigns, Jericho signed with AEW when they launched in January 2019. Jericho was AEW’s first World Champion later that year. Recently, Jericho also captured the ROH World Champion making him an 8-time World Champion.

H/T to SEScoops