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Chris Jericho On People Comparing MJF To Him, Using Clinton vs. Trump As Idea For Orange Cassidy Debate

October 23, 2020 | Posted by Blake Lovell
Chris Jericho MJF AEW Dynamite Image Credit: AEW

In a recent interview on The Chris Van Vliet Show, Chris Jericho discussed comparisons to MJF, how the debate idea with Orange Cassidy came about, and much more. You can read her comments below.

Chris Jericho on people comparing MJF to him: “He’s way more advanced than I was at that age. You’re dealing with a guy who I think just turned 24 years old. He’s definitely what you would call an old soul in that I can’t believe how good he is with the experience that he has. But what really blows my mind is how much better is gonna be with experience over the next couple of years – and what he’s gonna learn from me and Cody and Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard and all these guys being in his ear. Jake Roberts, too. So, it’s amazing to me just how good he is. But there are certain guys you see and are like ‘We can do something together.’ It’s just a natural progression. Once we did the Stadium Stampede, I did not want to be involved with The Elite for a while because we had been doing that story since October 2, 2019 – all the way up to May of 2020. We haven’t interchanged at all in whatever that’s been, and that’s why I did 14 weeks with Orange Cassidy. Now, who’s next? Well, MJF and I have something natural there.”

On how the debate idea with Orange Cassidy came about: “When we did the debate with Orange Cassidy and we were able to get Eric Bischoff to come in, I’d never seen a debate in wrestling. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a debate at all. So, I watched Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump in 2016 and watched the debate and saw how it worked and saw that the moderator was Lester Holt, who played everything straight. That’s what I told Eric – I sent him the clip and said ‘This is what we’re doing and you’re Lester Holt.’ He’s like ‘You don’t want me to be in character?’ I said ‘No, I want you to be the straight man’ and he goes ‘Got it.’ He was great, it was so fucking great. We’d never heard Orange Cassidy talk, so here’s this asshole Jericho saying I’m gonna catch you in your own game doing a debate, and of course, he can talk. He didn’t know that, I didn’t know that, we didn’t know what we were gonna discuss. Cody came up with the idea of doing some kind of ridiculous scientific line – doing the Wayne’s World type of thing – and that was basically it. So, we came up with it and wrote some stuff down that I Googled off climate change and gave that to Orange and his promo – we worked on it briefly – but there’s no writing it down. We just kind of made it up literally three or four hours before the show.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit The Chris Van Vliet Show with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.