The latest issue of Fighting Spirit magazine features an interview Chris Jericho. He talks about the “Save Us” viral marketing campaign, JBL, why he left WWE in 2005, and more.
Regarding the viral campaign, he believes that the Internet wrestling fans were angry over the promos because it “kept them guessing.” He said, “I think that was something that the internet created to get revenge for the fact that they had no idea what was going on at first. People have a sense of entitlement nowadays where they think that they deserve to know everything instantly, just as fast as they can type something into a computer. The answer, I think, was that when the promos first started playing they didnât know who it was. It kept them guessing and that kinda pissed a lot off people off, which is what I wanted to do.”
He also added, “Of course, I knew in coming back that it wouldnât be long before people figured out who it was, but they still didnât know for sure, and that was cool. They were maybe 90 percent sure it was Jericho, but they didnât know for sure, and that was my idea behind it to create a little bit of buzz. I think I came back at the right time, which was when everybody wanted me to come back, and that was out of my control. My control was creating the vignettes and coming up with a really cool mystery for people to follow, and other than that I was happy with the way everything went.”
On how the idea came about, he said after watching The Matrix, he got the idea, and pitched it to Vince McMahon. “He said he loved it, and it was me and a guy called Adam Pannuci from the WWE production team that created all the vignettes for the ten weeks that we did it.”
He said all the “clues” really meant nothing. “The first vignette was, I think, 15 seconds long, and was supposed to contain all these clues, but it literally contained nothing. There were no clues put it in â” it was basically a bunch of gibberish!”
On a scale of 1 to 10, Jericho rated his return in comparison to his debut in WWE. “The first one will always be remembered, but in terms of competing with the first one, the second one was the absolute best that it could have been. The first one was a 10 and the second was a 9.5.”
Jericho on how he felt backstage before his return: “Waiting backstage, I didnât rehearse anything. I didnât want to rehearse it â” I wanted to feel it live the way that everyone else did. I didnât see the new entrance video, I didnât see any of the build-up towards it â” that was all done, and I saw it live the same way you guys saw it. It really builds up a lot of anticipation and a lot of excitement. When the countdown started and the crowd just went ballistic, it was really exciting to know that this was where I wanted to be and this was the right decision to come back and to build it up this way. Once I got onstage it was off to the races and business as usual, and I felt like Y2J Chris Jericho had been on Raw just the week before. And thatâs the way it should have felt, yâknow?”
