Chris Jericho has had a multitude of big moments throughout his amazing career, and he’s had the chance to interact with pretty much every big name in the industry. Despite all the options to pick from, one of the most memorable moments has to be Jericho’s big WWE debut, which also involved Dwayne The Rock Johnson. ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis recently had the chance to talk to Jericho all about the debut on the newest edition of Talking Shop, and Jericho isn’t the only person involved who remembers it fondly, as The Rock also had some thoughts on the debut and another match that immediately came to mind.
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After Jericho came out in the middle of The Rock’s promo, he gave a fantastic promo of his own, but it wasn’t subject to the same sort of analysts and rehearsals that today’s promos are.
“It was different back then because that was kind of the last year before they really started getting involved creatively,” Jericho said. “Before you had writers giving you your promo and rehearsing things and approving this, and I wrote that whole promo on my apartment floor, and the only people that knew what it was going to be was Vince Russo and The Rock. I never had to read it in front of Vince and I never had to rehearse it because it was a surprise, so that’s kind of changed, so now that is different, but for me, I was actually pretty lucky.”
Jericho also talked about how agreeable The Rock was as they worked out this sequence, setting the stage in a huge way for Jericho’s debut.
“We talked about it yeah. Rock and I and Vince Russo kind of went over a few things and that was basically it. He was super agreeable to everything because I came up with the Y2J countdown, and Vince’s idea was to have it stop right in the middle of The Rock’s promo so if you go back to 99 that’s the top guy in the business, and getting interrupted by Chris Jericho was a huge way to come into the WWE for sure,” Jericho said.
The Rock remembers it well too, and he was thrilled to get to work with Chris, even after getting tobacco spit thrown in his face.
Legendary entrance from Y2J and no greater way to make your WWE debut. I was really excited to work with Chris. Then we went on to have some amazing matches across the globe. Ask him about our infamous “tobacco spit juice” match. What an asshole but so f’n funny 😂🤙🏾
— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) May 29, 2020
“Legendary entrance from Y2J and no greater way to make your WWE debut,” The Rock wrote on Twitter. “I was really excited to work with Chris. Then we went on to have some amazing matches across the globe. Ask him about our infamous “tobacco spit juice” match. What an asshole but so f’n funny.”
You can check out the full episode of Talking Shop in the video above.
