Chris Jericho Says He Nearly Replaced Shane McMahon at WrestleMania 34

– Chris Jericho spoke on a recent episode of Talk is Jericho about nearly taking Shane McMahon’s place at WrestleMania 34. Per Cageside Seats, Jericho said that he was asked to possibly replace McMahon after the latter was hospitalized with diverticulitus. Ultimately, McMahon was cleared and so Jericho did not have to replace him.

Highlights and audio from the podcast are below:

On nearly replacing Shane McMahon at WrestleMania: “A few weeks before WrestleMania, maybe three or four weeks, I get a call from Vince. And he’s talking about Shane and his appendix, or not his appendix, his diverticulitus, and he had an infection in his hand and he had… a staph infection and he had… a hernia. And he goes, ‘Listen, we don’t know if he can do ‘Mania.’ And he had somehow looked, or got someone to look at my schedule, and we had a Fozzy show that day… So he was like ‘I know you’re doing a Fozzy show, and you’re gonna watch WrestleMania with your fans,’ he goes, ‘What would you think about coming to New Orleans if Shane can’t do it?’”

On how close he got to appearing: “And it’s funny because we were looking, we were googling airports, and it was in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, like the most out of the way place. We were looking up airports close to Hampton Beach and how long is the charter to get there [New Orleans], and he [Vince] was like ‘Okay, you can make it right on time and we’ll give you a police escort, and you’ll basically have to go right into the ring.’ And I said ‘Listen, I’ve got no problem with that, and I know that Bryan has no problem with it. Kevin and Sami – especially Sami – are gonna have heart attacks calling a WrestleMania match in the ring.’ I mean, obviously we would think of some stuff beforehand, but like, I can do it. I don’t have a problem, so can you. We could do it now. But like, Sami is going to die of a frickin’ aneurysm if we do that!”