If you’re a sports fan in any capacity you’ve likely noticed the biggest conversation in the sports world over the past month has been the new ESPN documentary series on Michael Jordan, The Last Dance. The series centers around the Chicago Bulls’ run to the 1998 NBA Championship while also going into detail about Jordan’s upbringing, his early years in the league and his relationships with teammates and opponents, most notably Isiah Thomas of the Detroit Pistons. AEW’s Chris Jericho popped up on this week’s The Rich Eisen Show and was asked if he had any personal rivalries like what Jordan and Thomas had, and “Le Champion” gave just one name — Triple H.
“I think there were guys, in the past, that I had issues with,” Jericho said. “I mean Triple H is one of them. He’ll tell you the same. In the early 2000’s, we didn’t have much [fondness] for each other, but we always had great matches, and I think that’s one of the reasons why.
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Jericho said the rivalry fueled them to try and out-do one another, then mentioned that they became friend over time.
“We just had this professional rivalry, maybe a bit of a personal dislike [for each other]. But fast forward five, six, seven years, you get to be older and wiser and think back. Why did we have so many problems? Why did we hate each other? Why didn’t we like each other? And now we’re friends,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of professional rivalry when you’re young full of vim and vigor as they say. It happens in rock and roll bands all the time. Bands will break up, and 10 years later, they’ll get back together like why did we waste 10 years of our lives not playing together?”
“I think there’s that animosity that drives you to become better, and if you have a case like say Jericho and Triple H, our matches were always great because there was a little bit of real-life animosity between us,” he later added. “‘I’m gonna show him. Well, I’m gonna show him. Well, I’m gonna show him,’ and I think that’s good in a certain way. And I can almost suggest back in those certain days, Vince McMahon would subtly encourage that because you knew you were going to get better results inside of the ring.”
Jericho and “The Game” had more than 100 matches against each other (including tag matches) throughout their careers. Some of their most memorable encounters included a couple of WWE Championship matches on Raw, a Last Man Standing Match at Fully Loaded 2000, the main event of WrestleMania X-8 and a Hell in a Cell match at Judgement Day 2002.
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Image Courtesy of MK McGehee
