Chris Jericho On What Made Him Decide To Leave WWE, Why He Won’t Wrestle Part-time

Speaking to Uproxx, Chris Jericho discussed his band, Fozzy, as well as his latest run in WWE. Below are a couple of highlights:

When he knew it was time for his last WWE run to end:

“For this one [WWE run], I knew that it was time to go because you get to a certain level, then you turn babyface, and then that’s where you start having problems, because with the babyface you either win the title and you’re John Cena, or you start going down through the ranks. And that wouldn’t work for me, for this character, with the Jericho character. I’ve always been better as a heel. That’s my wheelhouse.

“And then people start liking you, so you switch, but then it’s only a short amount of time when that stuff that they loved you doing as a heel, that they love as a baby … ‘It’s just a parody of himself.’ And I don’t want to deal with that s–t. I don’t want to deal with the hardcore fans and stuff like that. I had fun with it, I knew it was time to go. I have people saying, ‘When are you coming back to wrestling?’ It’s been 3 weeks.”

Why he won’t be a part-timer who shows up at WrestleMania:

“No, I won’t do it because that’s not the way it should be. When you’re there, you should go on the road. That’s how you help guys to learn. That’s how I got better. This whole year I got way better because of working with the younger guys, who then were learning from me as well. They need that. And it was a great year with just an awesome locker room, great people, lots of fun. I had as much fun out of the ring as I did in the ring. And in 2015, all I did was live events. I didn’t do TV at all. It’s like the anti-type Brock Lesnar. I wouldn’t have a problem doing that either. Maybe I’ll never go back on TV again. Maybe I’ll just do live events.

“The good news is for me I can do what I want and they’ll take whatever Jericho I can give them, so there’s no reason for me to have to decide. When the time comes, when this album cycle is done and then Fozzy take another break or whatever it is that we’re doing, I’ll weigh my options. I’ll see what’s going on, I’ll see who’s around, and then we can go from there. And if not, like I said, it’s not a threat of like, ‘I’m gone.’ But if I never had another match it wouldn’t bother me.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Jericho discussed his 2008 program with Shawn Michaels, how Chris Jericho the wrestler differs from the musician, music and more.