Chris Jericho Says WWE Shut Down His Name Idea For Signature Move
Chris Jericho has revealed that a name he came up with for a finishing move was shut down by his WWE bosses.
It was 25 years ago in August 1999 when Chris Jericho made his WWE debut by interrupting a promo from The Rock on Raw. Over the next 20 years, Jericho established himself as one of the greatest WWE superstars of all time.
During his WWE career, he had a few different moves that he used as a finisher. There was the Lionsault (springboard moonsault), Codebreaker (jumping double knees) that Jericho started using after 2007, and the Walls of Jericho submission move.
The Walls of Jericho is a modified Boston Crab submission where Jericho hooks the two legs of his opponent and bends back to cause pain to their back and legs. There is also a high-angle version of the move that’s called a Liontamer, which is what he called it in World Championship Wrestling.
On a recent episode of his Talk Is Jericho podcast, the current AEW FTW Champion Chris Jericho spoke about coming up with a name for the move while talking to former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon about it.
“I remember debating what my finish would be. I think Vince (McMahon) thought I could use something more explosive than a Boston crab. We were talking back and forth. I said, ‘Whatever you want to call it, it’s going to be the Y2J Problem.’ He said, ‘No, that’s not the name of your finish, that’s your name.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘That’s your nickname.’ ‘The Y2J Problem?’ ‘No, just Y2J.”
“That’s one of those little things that Vince is really genius about, a little detail that created this amazing name that, especially for the time, people still chant to this day even though I haven’t used that name since 2008.”
Chris Jericho Wanted To Call His Submission Finisher The STD
As he continued, Jericho revealed that he wanted his Walls of Jericho finisher to be called the Standing Torture Device because then they could use the “STD” acronym, which could draw laughs since it is used for the Sexually Transmitted Disease phrase.
“The finish, when we did decide to use the Boston Crab, Liontamer, he didn’t like that because Ken Shamrock had the Lion’s Den. We came up with Walls of Jericho. Another idea I had was the Standing Torture Device, which was the STD. It was the Attitude Era. It would have worked.”
“They also gave me a list of finishers that WWE corporate came up with and I remember one of them was the Rock N Roll Finisher and the other was the Salad Shooter. I think there was a thing you could buy on an infomercial called The Salad Shooter. ‘Why would I call it the Salad Shooter?’ I realized, maybe, because of the Sharpshooter, but what does salad have to do with Chris Jericho?”
Up next for Chris Jericho in his AEW career is an FTW Championship match where he’ll defend the title against Hook at AEW All In next Sunday, August 25th at Wembley Stadium in London, England in front of AEW’s biggest crowd of the year.