Eric Bischoff Reveals Who Came Up With Chris Jericho’s “1,004 Holds” Segment

– Eric Bischoff’s first “Nitro Files” section of Sports Illustrated’s Week in Wrestling column is online and looks at Chris Jericho’s famous “Man of 1,004 Holds” promo. You can see an excerpt below, in which Bischoff discusses who helped Jericho come up with the list:

That idea originated with Glenn Gilbertti, aka the Disco Inferno. I just spoke with Chris Jericho, and he told me it was really Disco’s idea to come up with that segment and to roll through the commercial break.

The credit behind ‘The List’ goes to Disco Inferno, Terry Taylor, Raven, and Mark Madden from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, as well as, of course, Chris Jericho. They knew the storyline, they knew the angle, and they knew what we were trying to get across. Throughout the day, during pre-production, they were bouncing around ideas all afternoon, and they created a great way to position Chris against Dean Malenko.

Dean is a great guy, by the way, and people who don’t know Dean do not understand that he really is a dichotomy. He’s really two different people. At the time, Dean was the stoic, traditional wrestling move wrestler, but he also had an amazing sense of humor. Dean Malenko billed himself as ‘The Man of 1,000 Holds,’ because he really was a technically-oriented wrestler. Chris Jericho, being the character that he was – and still is, to this day – took that to an entertaining and comedic level. So the group of guys got together during the day and asked, ‘How can we really cut a promo that contextualizes and frames that match-up?’ And they came up with ‘The Man of 1,004 Holds,’ and that was really Glenn Gilbertti.