Chris Jericho Says Match Quality Is ‘Overemphasized,’ Worries About Stars’ Longevity

Chris Jericho believes there is too much focus on high-quality matches and worries that the emphasis on physical styles is shortening careers. Jericho has had a career spanning over 35 years and, while he hasn’t appeared on AEW TV in almost a year, still inspires plenty of speculation about his free agent status. While he is still under contract with AEW, there has been plenty of speculation over the last several months about his potentially coming to WWE when his deal expires.

Jericho was asked in his interview with GamesHub how he defines success at this stage of his career. He noted that match quality os “overemphasised” and that he worries about what the push toward physical styles is doing to shorten stars’ careers. You can see the highlights below:

On How He Defines Success in Wrestling:

“Match quality has become so overemphasised. Wrestling isn’t about match quality — wrestling is about connecting with the crowd, capturing the imagination and the interest of the people watching. Take WrestleMania 18, Jericho versus HBK — we had a great match, probably the best match on the show, and there were 75,000 people there going nuts. But that was the result of a great storyline that built to that moment. Now you can go to a show and see five-star matches back to back, if we’re going by the definition of lots of innovative physical moves. Which is great. But how is the crowd reacting? A five-star match should mean the crowd is going crazy in a sold-out stadium. You can also have a five-star match in a community centre in front of 50 people, so the rating in isolation is irrelevant. It’s character, it’s storyline, it’s charisma. That’s what wrestling is about — it was in the 1930s and it is now. The biggest stars are the ones who connect at the highest level. If you can do that, you’ll always have a career. If you can also have a great match, even better. But the Ultimate Warrior didn’t have many great matches. People didn’t go to see great matches from him — they went to see him run to the ring. I’d love to be able to do that and save the wear and tear.”

On the Current Emphasis on Physical Wrestling Styles:

“What worries me about the guys working today is here I am at 55, 35 years in, with still some career left to go. I don’t know if it’s a year, two years, four years — I’m not sure. But I don’t know how many of the guys working now will have the option to go 35 years. Hopefully all of them. But you can already see what serious injuries do — a bad neck surgery changes everything. The longevity may be harder to sustain when there’s so much emphasis on the physical at the expense of charisma and character. I remember the first time I ever got hurt. I thought I was invincible. I was in León, Mexico, did a dive over the top rope, and the guy who was supposed to catch me — a guy called Masaka — he just stepped aside. I landed on old-school bolted-down arena chairs. I messed up my arm and I thought, oh, I could actually get hurt doing this. And if a guy doesn’t want to catch you, that’s even worse. After that I started getting smart about which moves were worth the risk. The guys who figure that out early are the ones who get the longevity.”