Chris Jericho Recalls His WWE Feud With Jon Moxley Being Upstaged By a Potted Plant, Ambrose Destroying His Jacket

– During an appearance for Inside the Ropes, Chris Jericho told a funny story about how his feud with Jon Moxley in WWE getting completely upstaged by the potted plant they used.

The plant in question came into play during Jericho’s feud with Moxley (then Dean Ambrose, of course) in 2016, kicked off because Shane McMahon cancelled the Highlight Reel in favor of the Ambrose Asylum. The two began to feud and Jericho used the plant as a weapon during a reinstated Highlight Reel segment, hitting Ambrose with it. When the plant began to get traction online, someone on the WWE.com staff named it Mitch the Plant, which just pushed the ficus over the top. There was even a fan-made Twitter account for Mitch that still has over 3,000 follows to this day.

Highlights from the story, as well as the full video, are below:

On pitching the idea of Vince McMahon: “We put the potted plant in the ring, and then my idea was that at some point in time, I would use this potted plant as a weapon. So I had a bunch of Highlight Reels over the next few months, and I would keep the potted plant in there every time. And finally the idea was that I would have a Highlight Reel with Ambrose, and then hit him with a potted plant. And I tell Vince this, and he’s like, ‘Well, that’s so stupid. Where are you going to get a potted plant from?’ I said, ‘There’s been a potted plant in the ring every time we do a Highlight Reel.’ ‘For how long?’ ‘F**king six months, man!’

On the segment itself: “So, we do the angle and I hit him with the potted plant. And he misses SmackDown the next week, he’s got got a contusion, he’s got a concussion, he’s got all these injuries. But all anybody was talking about was the f**king potted plant being broken. And then some genius at WWE.com gave it the name of Mitch The Potted Plant. And I was like, “No! Stop it, this is like an assault with a deadly weapon. It’s a potted plant. Like, you hit someone in the head with a potted plant, it’s going to f*** you up!’ But all they cared about was, ‘Mitch the Potted Plant, R.I.P.’ And I was like, ‘You f**king assholes!’ Because that’s all anybody cared about.”

On the plan for Ambrose getting revenge and Vince’s idea: “So we moved on, and then the idea after that was for the revenge, for me apparently killing Mitch the Potted Plant, was Ambrose would destroy my jacket. So what happened was, the lights went out like you saw earlier. I came out with the jacket, one of the celebrity.com jackets. But we really blinged it up. We put diamonds on it to make it look better. I was like, ‘No one’s going to know the difference.’ But if you hold them up … from a distance, you wouldn’t see it. So anyway, the lights go out, the jacket lights go on. Suddenly the jacket falls down, and then the jacket starts down the rampside, and then goes inside the ring and the lights go on, it’s Dean Ambrose. He’s beaten me up, he’s stolen my jacket, and now he’s got it in the ring. And Vince’s original idea was like, ‘When you steal the jacket, do cartwheels down the ramp. So it looks really wacky, people won’t know what’s going on when you’re doing cartwheels.’ And Ambrose is like, ‘I don’t like — I do like cartwheels. So I was like, ‘Just wave your arms and make some motions.'”

On how the whole thing played out: “So he comes down to the ring, and he’s like this [waving his arms], and you see all these lights and all this stuff, and it turns on, and there he is in the ring. And I’m on the ground like ‘No, no no, don’t do it, don’t do it.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it.’ ‘Please, don’t!’ And then he proceeds to destroy my jacket. Now this f***ing jacket, this one here, when a fat guy put it on, killed the whole side, when Brodus Clay put it on. THIS jacket, Ambrose is literally hitting it with a hammer, he’s tearing it apart piece by piece, he’s ripping it to shreds. And the f***ing thing is still blinking. I’m like, ‘Man!’ That craftsmanship is pretty strong in f**king India or wherever they make celebrityjackets.com.’ So finally he destroys the jacket, and that’s how I was able to get rid of that.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Inside the Ropes with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.