Chris Jericho On Southpaw Second Season Not Being As Good As The First, Characters He Didn't Like
Chris Jericho was a guest on Ring Rust Radio this week. You can listen to the interview on YouTube by clicking here, they sent us this transcription:
You recently released your latest book, No Is a Four-Letter Word: How I Failed Spelling but Succeeded in Life. Why did you feel now was the right time to write this book and what are you hoping to accomplish with its release?
"It's pretty philosophical man. Like there is some kind of otherworldly design behind it. What happened was I've already written three autobiographies in the course of seven years. I love to write and I have lots to write about. A fourth autobiography at this stage in my life might be a little pretentious, like does the world really need another Jericho autobiography? I'm not exactly Jack Kerouac or whatever. So, I thought I would answer a question that gets asked quite often in how you did all these things you do. How did you make it in wrestling? How did you make it in music? How do you continue to do all these things?
"So, I sat down I came up with 20 principles of things I learned over the years from celebrities, family members, people that I know, fictional characters, and put them all down. Twenty principles like I said, the David Bowie principle of always reinvent yourself; The Vince McMahon principle of work hard then work harder; the Steve Austin principle, always be a little bit of an asshole. All these little things that helped me get these goals accomplished that I wanted to accomplish. It became almost like a motivational book or self-help book and it never really intended to be that way but that's the kind of way it morphed. Now that it's out, it's really cool to see people's reactions and how people are gaining a lot of advice from things that I've learned and applying it to their own life. It is a pretty cool feeling."
Southpaw Regional Wrestling is one of our favorite things this year. What was your experience like filming that and playing the role of Clint Bobski and do you think we'll get more episodes in the future?
"It's something I heard about a while back when they came up with the idea and asked if I wanted to be involved. I said yea I want to be the backstage interviewer Clint Bobski. That's the name that I used in college when I went to do creative communications, television classes and radio classes. Whenever we were doing box sports casts or mock radio on sports, I was always Clint Bobski. I love that name and I don't know why. I used it again for Southpaw and it was a lot of fun because I used to watch wrestling like that. Stampede Wrestling and local wrestling in Winnipeg it was called the FWA. They were filmed in the exact same type of cheap gritty videotapes and the backstage announcers were over the top and cheesy. They were playing backstage announcers saying things like, "Oh my goodness look at what we have here! I have never seen such a thing!"
"It was a lot of fun to do and people were very confused early this summer when I came back for Smackdown for one night only and they thought that I was back. I wasn't back I was there because I was filming the second season of Southpaw Wrestling and asked if I could do a match and thought might as well while I am here. I would love to see a few more but I don't know if the series took off virally like they thought it would and I am not sure what the numbers are on that but it was a lot of fun while we did it and hopefully get to do more.
"I think a lot of times the initial one is always the best because it's such a surprise and nobody really knows what they're getting into. Where with the second one everybody wanted to get involved and some of the characters weren't as strong. I think Miz's guy was terrible in it whatever he was called. I just thought it was terrible and it wasn't funny. I thought the Butcher Boys weren't funny. The first one was really funny because no one was really trying. They were just being whatever they wanted to be. It's like a sequel to a movie where you stumble onto something and it's never as good as the original. If they do more Clint Bobski will be there and if they don't it was fun while it lasted."
Your band Fozzy's latest hit is Judas, I think it's an awesome song and it's done so well for you on the charts. I know they're different mediums, but how does the feeling of having a hit song like Judas compare to a big accomplishment in wrestling like winning a title or really getting a character over or something to that effect?
"I think it might be even harder to get a number one song in music. It's hard to become a champion too, so they would be very similar. It's a real pat on the back for years of hard work. This is not a song that went to number one instantly. It went from 15 to 10 to nine to eight to seven, so we're building this fan base and I think there's a lot of people that have heard of Fozzy but never actually heard Fozzy before and now that's changing. There are a lot of people checking out the band because of what they heard about Judas did or they know about Jericho and wrestling and they go back to check out Fozzy and then they suddenly hear the greatest song we have done in our career.
"We've had successful songs in the past, but nothing like this. It's on a whole different level and a whole different world. It's really cool that after all this hard work we put in, which is the whole motto of my life which is no is a four-letter word. When people told me I would never make it in music and guess what? We just did. That's very, very cool to see the fan base growing and the buzz about the band growing and we are still getting started. Judas is still rising in the charts which is great. It has been a pretty cool experience but very, very well deserved after years and years of hard work."
Source: Ring Rust Radio