AEW announcer and Senior Advisor “Good Ole’ J.R.” Jim Ross took to an episode of his “Grilling Jr” podcast to talk about a number of topics, including top AEW star Chris Jericho receiving heat in WWE early in his career and being considered too short.
Ross said, “People had a hard-on for Jericho. It’s the same thing that he was overcoming since day one when I hired him. ‘He’s too short.’ So the reason, we don’t want to hire this one of the best workers in the world is because your perception is he’s too short. I call bulls**t on that one. It’s ridiculous. So it’s just the fact that if the political — the insiders, that are close to Vince — like Triple H at the time, and others. That whole, that whole group. They just saw Jericho as a threat. How in the hell would you want to eliminate one of your potentially best opponents over political bulls**t, over jealousy? That’s all it boiled down to. That’s all it boiled down to.”
On the rivalry behind the scenes between Jericho and Triple H:
“They were going to end up being more than rivals. I had no problem with that. Because when I book your ass, I expect productivity. I expect a great performance, and above all — above all, give the fans their money’s worth. That’s what I think. And if they didn’t like each other, I could give a s**t less. It’s irrelevant to me. So you know, it was a course of the day in the soap opera world of pro wrestling. Sometimes the stories told behind the scenes were more entertaining and more productive than those that were put on television.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
