Things You Didn’t Know About Chris Jericho
Chris Jericho made his WWE debut in the summer of 1999 by shamelessly interrupting superstar The Rock after a mysterious millennium clock that had been counting down on Monday Night Raw finally struck zero. According to his official WWE bio, the audacious newcomer immediately dubbed himself a superstar and started right in on backing up the claim.
After having made a name for himself in the ECW and the WCW and building up a huge fanbase of loyal “Jerichoholics,” he went on to claim nine Intercontinental Titles, seven WWE and World Tag Team Titles, and a slew of Slammy Awards. He also became the first ever Undisputed Champion of the WWE in 2001 after triumphing over both The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin. In his most recent stint with the company, he struck up an unlikely alliance with Kevin Owens, only to be betrayed at the fittingly named “Festival of Friendship,” which sparked a months-long rivalry between the ex-buddies.
But Jericho isn’t just a pro wrestler. His career has been punctuated by several breaks from the squared circle, during which he pursued projects in acting, music, and other disciplines. He has also published, not one — as is par for the course for wrestlers, and usually in retirement — but five books, most of which are about how he’s the best at stuff, and one about the costume party/rock band Kiss. Surprised yet? Well, there are actually quite a few other things you probably didn’t know about Y2J.
Chris Jericho? Who?
Wrestlers are known for having fun nicknames, but Chris Jericho has more than just about any other character in the business. According to Essentially Sports, he has at least 15, the most well-known of which is Y2J, which stems from his infamous WWE millennial clock debut. (We’ll gladly overlook the glaring fact that his debut was in August 1999, still a few months away from the end of the millennium. It’s whatever.) Some of our favorite Jericho nicknames include “The Greatest Canadian of All Time,” “The Man of 1,004 Holds,” “The Paragon of Virtue,” and the long-winded “The Most Charismatic Showman to Enter Your Home via a Television Screen.”
Another of his most famous, however, describes his other most prominent career: “The Ayatollah of Rock ‘n’ Rolla.” No, Chris Jericho isn’t a Middle Eastern religious leader; he’s the lead singer in a rock band called Fozzy. Even though it somehow erroneously called Ozzy Osbourne the lead singer of the Foo Fighters, we’re sure we can trust the rest of Essentially Sports’ history of the rock band that Jericho has fronted for the last 20 years. When Y2J joined the band in 2000, he apparently took the stage name Mongoose McQueen and subsequently denied all knowledge of a person named Chris Jericho while the band was on tour. Jericho, on the other hand, raved and ranted any chance he could get about this newcomer to the rock scene named Mongoose McQueen.
Chris Jericho's band got some flak for touring during a pandemic
After the coronavirus pandemic canceled Fozzy’s “Save the World” Tour originally scheduled for April and May, Jericho and the boys moved the shows to new dates in July, August, October, and November. After the band performed at the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, in early August, the band received quite a bit of criticism from fans. “Why are Chris Jericho and Fozzy doing pandemic gigs?” asked Super Luchas. And, like just about everyone else who attended the biker rally — where residents saw hardly anyone wearing masks, according to CNN – Jericho downplayed the severity of the pandemic. “The reason these shows have taken place was because these states of North Dakota and South Dakota have low COVID-19 cases,” he said on his live webcast, Saturday Night Special (posted on YouTube). “Less than a thousand cases in both states, and I think in Florida alone, there were 9,000 cases today Saturday.”
It could just be coincidence, but, as data collected by The New York Times show, the state of South Dakota began to see cases of COVID-19 rise a couple weeks after the Sturgis motorcycle rally, and they have only continued to rise since. And as The Guardian reported, the Dakotas and other states in the Midwest became the new epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. in October. But hey, Jericho and Fozzy got to rock some bikers’ faces off, so it was worth it, right?
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