Chris Jericho was so committed to making fans hate him during his 2008 WWE heel run that he willingly left merchandise money on the table and wanted absolutely nothing to do with being presented as a cool wrestling star.
During Wrestling Observer Radio, Jericho looked back on the suit-and-tie character that emerged after his feud with Shawn Michaels. He explained that he had studied acting while away from wrestling in 2005 and 2006 and wanted to take a much deeper approach when he returned. For Jericho, that meant the character didn’t stop when WWE cameras did.
“This was a period of time, Dave, and I went deep. I had studied acting in ’05 and ’06 when I was gone, and I really wanted to implement some of the things I learned — method acting and really dropping into this character.”
Jericho remembered arriving at Madison Square Garden one night and ending up in an elevator with a father and son who were attending the WWE show. The father told Jericho that his son was a huge fan and asked him to acknowledge the kid. Jericho refused.
“I remember one time being on the elevator with a father and a son, and they were going to the show. He was like, ‘Hey, my son’s a big fan.’ I just kept staring straight ahead. ‘Hey, can you say hi to my son? Can you take a picture?’ I’m not going to talk to him.”
The father eventually became furious with Jericho, which was exactly the reaction Jericho wanted. Once Jericho realized it was working, he took the idea even further. Selling T-shirts suddenly made no sense to him because merchandise would allow fans to publicly show that they liked him.
“By the time it was over, this guy wanted to fight me. My mindset was, if I’m nice to this guy and then go to the ring and be a jerk, he’s going to go, ‘Yeah, he’s really a nice guy.’ Or, this guy’s an asshole, and get the people in his row to start chanting whatever, and really creating this hatred.”
“It was working. And I thought, the last thing I want to do is now give the cool people, like, ‘Jericho’s great. I’ll wear some of his shirts.’ No. You don’t get the right to wear my shirt.”
Jericho said he applied the same rule to WWE’s publicity machine. If magazines wanted him for photos or interviews designed to make him look like a star, he wanted no part of it.
“‘Hey, Chris, we want you in the magazine.’ No. ‘You want a photo shoot?’ No, I’m not doing it. ‘Why not?’ Because I don’t need any press of, like, ‘Here’s crazy Chris Jericho.’ No. Nothing. You get nothing.”
The wild part is that Vince McMahon apparently never stepped in and ordered Jericho to start selling merchandise or doing publicity again. Jericho took that as a sign that McMahon understood exactly what he was trying to accomplish.
“Vince never said otherwise. If Vince doesn’t like this, he’ll obviously say, ‘Shut your mouth, do the photo shoot, and here’s new merch.’ I think he understood what I was trying to go for.”
That philosophy continued when Jericho started teaming with Big Show. Big Show eventually asked the obvious question: why were two guys working WWE main events not selling merchandise? Jericho’s answer was that they were making more money by being hated enough to work major programs against D-Generation X than they would by selling a handful of shirts. According to Jericho, the strategy paid off.
“I remember talking to Paul about it. Show was like, ‘Why don’t we have merch? We’re working the main events.’ I said, ‘Yeah, and that’s how we’re working the main events. We’re the hated heels. We’ll make way more money being in the main events against DX and Shawn and Hunter than we will if we’re selling 20 shirts a night. Just trust me on this.’”
“It really worked. We had some real heat. And that, to me, was kind of cool because it’s way easier to make people hate you than it is to make them like you.”
Jericho wasn’t just playing a heel for a few minutes every Monday night. He built the entire presentation around making sure fans had no reason to think he was secretly a nice guy they should cheer, even if that meant passing up merchandise checks and publicity opportunities along the way.
Do you think Chris Jericho was right to sacrifice merchandise money to protect his heel character, or was he taking things too far? Let us know what you think and leave your feedback.
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