Chris Jericho was on the Dan Le Batard Show with Stu Gotz to talk about a plethora of topics including an airport melee involving the legendary hardman of wrestling Haku, his infamous backstage brawl with Goldberg and the upcoming Jericho Cruise.
(Transcription credit to Aditya Rangarajan for Wrestlezone.com)
On fighting alongside Haku in a Mexican airport:
We [him and Haku] got into a little bit of a kerfuffle with the security in the [Mexican] airport in 1993, and this was back in the days before 9/11 where you could show up for your flight about 15 minutes before. And when I showed up, I happened to have a Championship title, and I guess the Mexican security guy didn’t like that and so he decided to mess with me a bit. I was going to miss my flight and I got a little angry and I gave the guy a little shove, and I turned around and pushed the security behind me and that person ended up being a security girl. She fell down and there was a huge kind of a barroom brawl and out of nowhere I hear this ‘Eh what you doin?’ And here comes this 300 pound giant Tongan running through the airport —who I happened to be very close friends with at the time—he get involved and it was like two of us back-to-back like the old Westerns with the Indian posse surrounding us. They drew their guns and put us in airport jail for about two hours until the president of the airport came and suggested that we give some money to the security guards for their problems. I don’t think those security guards ever saw that money; I think the president had a nice dinner on us and they let us out and off we went.
We didn’t have anything! I had 3000 pesos, which is like 100 bucks, and Haku had 27 dollars in change or something. Basically put together it was something like 152 dollars and 12 cents and a couple of meal tickets, that was about it. But it was pretty scary man. I’ll never forget that voice ‘Eh, what you doin brotha?’ And at the time, if you ask anybody in wrestling to this day who the legit toughest guy in wrestling is, they’ll always tell you Haku and so it was a good guy to have on my side.
Related: Chris Jericho Cruise Tickets Sold Out Before Saturday Start
Chris Jericho on his legendary backstage fight with Goldberg:
That’s one of those things, sometimes these backstage—shall we say disagreements—that get physical, but much like a hockey fight, they pretty much get broken up pretty quickly. It reaches legendary status, kind of like a David and Goliath type thing.
Bill and I are pretty cool now, so I don’t really want to get him angry at me again because there’ll never be a rematch and I don’t want there to ever be a rematch, but yes, there was a confrontation many years ago.
On whether he won the fight:
That’s what legend will have, so I’ll let that stand.
I don’t know if I tied him up in a knot, but I did have him in a strange Canadian headlock that he couldn’t get out of, or chose not to get out of. I’m the farthest thing from a shooter. Like I said, if there was ever a rematch, I think Goldberg would tear my head off with a flick of his wrist. But that night, the shooting gods were with me and I was able to hold my own, shall we say.
On the Jericho Cruise:
What goes on in a wrestling cruise? I can’t tell you because this is the first one ever. It’s called the Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Rager At Sea. And it started when my band Fozzy played the Kiss Cruise about 3 years ago and as soon as we got off the boat, I said I want to do this. I can do my own cruise.Based on what I’m known for which is rock ‘n’ roll and wrestling and that’s basically what I did, three years later getting ready to set sail. We’ve never had this before, having this whole tournament of matches on board the ship in the middle of the ocean—to the point where I’d have to have a team of engineers—and when I say a team, that means more than one, come onto the boat and to do their measurements and requirements to make sure the ring won’t slide off the edge, over the side of the boat or whatever the hell it is. They’re talking about putting water ballasts down; I don’t know what a water ballast is, I have no idea but apparently we need them to keep the ring secure. That’s what’s going on; it’s really exciting and we’re 96% full [at the time of recording the show] for this inaugural voyage. It was an interesting concept that I thought would work and here we are, four days away from setting sail and it’s worked so far.
The Jericho Cruise sets sail from October 27 to 31, from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas.
You can listen to the remainder of the interview HERE.
