Chris Jericho Says His Side Projects Helped Give His Wrestling Career Longevity

Chris Jericho has done a number of side projects outside the ring, and he believes those have helped extend his career in the ring. Jericho recently appeared on The Adam Carolla Show and during the conversation, he talked about how keeping himself busy has helped him extend the length of his wrestling career.

“My two dreams when I was a kid was to be a wrestler and was to be in a band,” Jericho said (per Fightful). “And I made it in wrestling, and then Fozzy was going on. I knew we could do it, we just had to put a lot of focus in it. And when something else comes up, [Carolla] was like, ‘Listen, this guy already made in wrestling, he made it in the band, don’t put your chips against this guy.’ You’re kind of right about that because once you succeed in doing a couple different things, then the idea of a cruise, podcast, acting, whatever the hell it is, it’s like, ‘Yeah, why not? Let’s go for it.’ Because it is important in this day and age to be versatile and to have diversity in your career because people get bored easily.”

He continued, “They really do, even in wrestling. I change my character constantly. People are like, ‘Jericho’s got 50 different nicknames.’ Yeah, you’re f**king right I do. Because if I was still doing Y2J from 1999, that would be super boring at this point in time. It’s the same I fell career-wise. I feel that I have way more longevity in the wrestling business because of Fozzy, because of Terrifier 3, because of Talk Is Jericho, or the Jericho Cruise, or this litany of other things that I do. Why not? Why say no to anything if you feel you can make it work? There’s always going to be people that are angry about that and cut you down because of that. But that’s okay, those aren’t the people that I appeal to. I appeal to the people that enjoy the stuff that I do, and I work on gaining new fans that feel that way. So once you focus on the positive side, the negative doesn’t matter as much, and it’s easier to succeed.”

Jericho had a featured role in both Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3, the latter of which has become a major box office hit over this month.