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Chris Jericho Thought Bob Barker Would Be Buried By Crowd On Raw, Says Barker Nearly Made Him Lose Character

August 10, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Bob Barker Chris Jericho Raw

On the latest Saturday Night Special, Chris Jericho looked back at Bob Barker’s Raw guest hosting stint and recalled that he thought Barker would get ‘eaten alive’ by the crowd. Barker appeared on the September 7th, 2009 episode of Raw as a guest host and discussed how he thought the Chicago crowd — who are of course known to be very rowdy — would bury Barker but it turned out not to be the case. He also discussed how in doing the “Price is Raw” segment, he initially didn’t want to do it but was convinced to by Brian Gewirtz and ended up nearly losing character from laughing. Highlights and the full video are below:

On Barker’s guest host gig: “Bob Barker is one of those guys that I — when he showed up in Chicago, because we were doing the guest host thing at the time. I thought he was going to get eaten alive by the Chicago crowd. I thought they were gonna bury him, I thought they were just gonna tear him apart. And then he got out there and instantly had the crowd in the palm of his hand. It was just the best. And obviously he’d been doing it for 50 years, he knows what to do.”

On working with Barker on Raw: “So at the time, I was the very angry, slow-talking, quiet Jericho. And Bob and I had to do a thing, and they wanted me to play The Price is Right. And Brian Gewirtz was the head writer at the time, I said, ‘Why? I don’t want to do this. I’m not comedy Jericho, this is serious Jericho.’ He was like, ‘That’s why it’ll work. Just do comedy this one week, a couple things, just to remind people that you have that side to you. And then you can switch right back into asshole Jericho.’

“And so that’s what we did. And I’ll tell you what. When I went out there, and like, [Barker said] ‘You be a good boy, Jericho,’ or however it ended up. You guys can go watch it on YouTube, it’s hilarious. When I went toe-to-toe with him, I said something to him like. ‘Barker, I’ll take you on any time, any place, anywhere.’ And he was like, ‘Don’t make me put you over my knee, Chris!’ with that big long, thin microphone that he used to talk into. And dude … I’m thinking, ‘Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh! You’re on live TV, don’t laugh!’ And I was just like [mimics trying to keep a straight face]. I didn’t laugh, but it was the closest I’ve ever come to completely breaking character with Bob Barker.”

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