Chris Jericho on Not Wanting to Be A ‘Nostalgia Act’, Why He Dropped Y2J in WWE

From the Lionheart to the Learning Tree, Chris Jericho is arguably the greatest veteran at re-inventing his gimmick every few years while still being recognizably himself. From whiny heel to trash-talking good guy, his character shifts have run the gamut. Speaking with Dan Marston recently, he revealed the character change that seemed like the biggest risk to him at the time.

“I think probably when I dropped the whole Y2J persona and the countdown [in WWE],” he said. “There was a time when I came back in 2007 where I was kind of — not gonna say a diluted version of Chris Jericho, but you know, it wasn’t the same. I had shorter hair and and it just, times had changed, right? So, I thought, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be a nostalgia act. So, I switched, I cut my hair, like I said, and I switched from long tights to to trunks. You know, dropped the Y2J. I told the announcers, ‘Don’t ever call me YTJ ever again.’ Did a whole new video package that had none of that. And then the countdown was so synonymous with Jericho. Get rid of the countdown. It’s done.”

[It’s also not insignificant that a certain point past the turn of the millennium, fans were probably going to forget what the Y2K problem he was riffing on even was.]

The Fozzy frontman compared it in his mind to a watershed moment in heavy metal, saying, “It’s almost like Kiss when they took off the makeup. You know, 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. And it was a big risk, you know, but but not for long. And it’s something that I had to do. And that’s when I realized I can reinvent myself whenever I start feeling a little stale and people will like some of it, 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.”

Perhaps even more inspirational than Gene Simmons, though, was David Bowie. Says Jericho, “I always was really obsessed and interested in really paying attention to what he was doing, which, he always reinvented himself…Like, you could go to a Halloween party and see 12 people dressed as Bowie but different versions, and you would know that’s Bowie. And it’s like that with Chris Jericho as well. Every Halloween people are going to be Chris Jericho and there’s every era that you can see and so it’s like, well, that’s what my overall goal was and it kind of worked out.”