It’s been some time since we’ve seen Chris Jericho in a pro wrestling ring, and his status with AEW has been an ongoing topic of discussion for a number of months now. His contract may be up, or it may be coming up relatively soon, or the company may have added time to it for the time he’s been out. He’s kept himself busy doing things like appearing on other TV shows and touring with his band, Fozzy.
There was talk not long ago that he could be going to back to WWE, possibly for a retirement tour
of his own. The first part of that is still unclear but the latter half has at least some of an answer about how physical the industry has become thanks to an interview with Gameshub where he mentioned how much time he may have left:
“What worries me about the guys working today is here I am at 55, 35 years in, with still some career left to go. I don’t know if it’s a year, two years, four years — I’m not sure. But I don’t know how many of the guys working now will have the option to go 35 years. Hopefully all of them. But you can already see what serious injuries do — a bad neck surgery changes everything. The longevity may be harder to sustain when there’s so much emphasis on the physical at the expense of charisma and character. I remember the first time I ever got hurt. I thought I was invincible. I was in León, Mexico, did a dive over the top rope, and the guy who was supposed to catch me — a guy called Masaka — he just stepped aside. I landed on old-school bolted-down arena chairs. I messed up my arm and I thought, oh, I could actually get hurt doing this. And if a guy doesn’t want to catch you, that’s even worse. After that I started getting smart about which moves were worth the risk. The guys who figure that out early are the ones who get the longevity.”
Jericho certainly isn’t what he once was but he’s proven he can still be as great as he ever was.
Tick tock.
