The Rock, Stone Cold, Undertaker, Mankind, Triple H, Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit. And that’s just off the top of my head. Kane. There’s nine right there off the top of my head without even really thinking too much about it. There’s probably three or four others that I could throw in there.

Big Show—there’s 10 right there. That shows you that there’s a lot of great talent in wrestling today, but main event stars, main event draws, main event, like, almost iconic characters that are still super popular today because of that timeframe—we don’t have that now.

You have a lot more eyeballs on it because of platforms and streaming, but if you look at the main event names then, they can’t be touched.

So that’s probably why that era is so critically acclaimed and so positively remembered, because of just the name value of those stars that were all there at the same time.”

You can see it in the numbers, tickets sold, the ratings.I think last week, were very close to the ratings that they were right before HBO Max became a platform for us.

So, if we’re doing those same ratings, plus there’s the HBO Max, that would tell me, common sense would say we’re doing bigger ratings now than we were doing three or four years ago.

I think that’s because no matter what’s going on around us, we keep our noses to the grindstone and worry about what we’re doing and what kind of matches and quality of matches and variety. We’ve never been a WWE light. We’ve been AEW since day one, and that’s never changed. And sometimes you like it and sometimes you don’t, but we’ve never changed it.”

Then, of course, when you get back in the ring, you never lose it, but you never know. What’s my cardio going to be like? How am I going to be moving? [Especially when you’ve got someone like Ricochet on the other side of you.] But that actually worked out great because he is so athletic and so acrobatic.

I got in there and realized I didn’t really lose a step either. So, he was the perfect first opponent to have. It was a great storyline because he’s an awesome heel. He knows how to be a heel, and that helped me kind of reimagine what a babyface Jericho was like.

So yeah, I couldn’t be happier with the first couple months of this return—just how it’s been accepted and how much fun it’s been. That’s the point, Renee. At this time, if I’m not having fun, I don’t want to do it. It has to be fun, and this has been a lot of fun all across the board.”

My opponent that night [Jericho] rolled out of the ring and snatched a Brazilian flag from somebody. Brazil don’t play. In America, you get people who get bent out of shape, right? But there’s no law against it. People burning flags, doing whatever, right? Freedom of speech.

He rolled in the ring. I’m down looking at him going, ‘Hmmm, maybe no?’

I can’t remember exactly if he just threw it down and stepped on it, or if he maybe wiped his butt with it. Shawn Michaels did this to the Canadian flag, too. It was palpable, but still a little bit different than doing it in Brazil.

The instant this happened, all of a sudden, there’s a second referee in the ring, and I’m going, ‘Oh, what’s going on?’ One referee’s talking to him. The other referee’s talking to me, trying to relay the information. Then our head of talent relations is in the ring. This all happens lickety-split.

I’m looking around like, ‘Okay,’ and then I turn and I look, and the ring is surrounded by men in fatigues, and one has his gun pointed directly at me.

They were offended. I had my extra referee and my head of talent relations saying, ‘This match is over. This match is over. We got to wrap this up.’ Homeboy who did the thing was like, ‘Absolutely not. I refuse to do this.’ So I had to roll him up for real, stack him up, and the ref counted to three. I grabbed the flag—yay! Crowd pops.

I grab the flag, jump up on the turnbuckle. I’m showing it, I’m kissing the flag, you know. ‘Hey everybody, sorry. I love you.’

Then I got out of there, and they tried to snatch dude up, grab his passport, and we knew if he handed his passport over, he wasn’t coming home.

Under the cover of night, got him out of there, and then we continued on the tour. He went home.”

You know, I remember the first guys to do a moonsault in Japan were myself and Lance Storm. Now, a moonsault is the opening move. But that’s fine. The athleticism grows, but the same principle for wrestling never changes.

It’s all about your personality, your character, your charisma, and connecting with the audience. You have to connect. If not, then you’re just a couple of guys out there doing high spots and not getting any reactions because there’s so much going on. No one’s paying attention because nothing is special.

There has to be a reason for what you’re doing, a reason why the match is even happening. So it’s up to all the guys and girls to figure that out for themselves. You have to find a character that’s going to connect and be a little bit unique that people are going to remember.”

There was a time when I came back [to WWE] in 2007 where I was kind of—not going to say a diluted version of Chris Jericho—but it wasn’t the same. I had shorter hair, and times had changed. So I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be a nostalgia act.’

I cut my hair and switched from long tights to trunks. I dropped the Y2J name and told the announcers, ‘Don’t ever call me Y2J ever again.’ We did a whole new video package that had none of that. And the countdown was so synonymous with Jericho. Get rid of the countdown. It’s done.

That was kind of the first time where I really took a shot because I was like, you know, it’s almost like when Kiss took off the makeup. You’re doing something very drastic here, and you want people to understand we’re doing something different.

Whether you like it or don’t like it, that’s not for us to decide, but here’s where we’re going. Here’s the path that we’re taking. Come on board if you want to.

That was a big risk, but not for long. It’s something that I had to do. That’s when I realized I can reinvent myself whenever I start feeling a little stale. People will like some of it and not like some of it, but I can’t worry about what people think. I just have to worry about what I can do to be the best personality I can be.”