Chris Jericho Reveals The Original Plans For Him At WrestleMania Last Year

While appearing on Busted Open with Doug Mortman and Dave LaGreca on Thursday, Chris Jericho said that he was supposed to face Dean Ambrose at WrestleMania 32 instead of AJ Styles.

I knew from the moment I came out what was going to happen, which was me eventually turning heel. It got pushed back a little bit because the AJ Styles thing worked so well, so Vince wanted us to be a tag team, and then work at Wrestlemania; the original plan was for me to work with Ambrose at Wrestlemania.

I started planting those seeds as a babyface that were really pissing people off and I knew it. And it was fun for me to see them say ‘Jericho’s done … this is stale, he’s so stale. That scarf and the vest, he looks ridiculous, and it’s the same old catchphrases, and he’s trying to get a Rooty Tooty Booty chant going; it’s so annoying. It’s sad to see Jericho falling so low.’ And I was like oh, you guys are just – I’m the master of puppets yet again, manipulating the entire business into planting those seeds for when I finally turned heel. And people were like, ‘Well we’re glad he turned heel because he wasn’t doing a good job as a babyface’ but I knew all that. That is one thing that I had planned.

Jericho also talked about 2016 being one of the best years of his career.

I have to say last year, 2016, was one of the best of my career. I still can’t put it over the [Shawn] Michaels – Jericho feud and the [Rey] Mysterio – Jericho feud and the Big Show – Jericho team which was 2008-2010, but it was pretty close. Maybe in retrospect I’ll look back on it in a few years and think maybe it was the best, but it’s one of those things, it was like a very nice surprise because I’ve come back quite a few times and somethings you don’t hit as much. But it seems this year I had a late career resurgence to where if I was in a Rock n’ Roll band, I had like three or four top ten hits this year that will go on the greatest hits of Jericho. I’d like to be able to sit back and say I planned this, I’m very smart, I’m a genius and I knew this was gonna happen, but you never know what’s gonna happen and I think I kinda caught lightning in a bottle with this character and all the different aspects of it. It worked and it’s been a lot of fun for sure.

You can listen to Jericho’s appearance here.