Chris Jericho explains why (and how) his WrestleMania XIX match with Shawn Michaels was destined to happen.
Jericho recently appeared on Steve Austin: The Broken Skull Sessions and spoke about a myriad of topics, perhaps most notably how his WrestleMania XIX match against Shawn Michaels was written out. The match between Jericho and Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XIX is widely regarded as one of the best matches in WrestleMania history, and Jericho explained how Pat Patterson influenced the match before explaining that he wrote out the finish to the match on a receipt in the middle of a sporting goods store.
“It’s a lesson that Pat Patterson, and Vince too, taught me,” Jericho admitted. “I was really [thinking], ‘Why am I losing? I should win.’ Because that’s what you think—what year was that? 2003—I was 32, so I was still young. I didn’t really become ‘Chris Jericho’ until 2008. I remember Pat, and Pat was so smart and it’s almost a cliche at this point, but the guy was just a genius. He really was like the ‘Wrestling Yoda’ and we were young Jedis learning from him,” Jericho explained. “He was like, ‘why do you need to win?’
“And here’s the thing though, Steve, the original idea was for Shawn to win and that was it.” Jericho continued. “Pat came up with the idea and said ‘well, why don’t you kick him in the nuts at the end?’ And that was where I was like, ‘well, what does that do?’ and [Pat said] ‘you leave with more heat.’ You could win, what does that mean? You could lose and kick him, hug him, and Shawn falling down… that was a real lesson learned.”
Related: Steve Austin Reveals How Chris Jericho’s Broken Skull Sessions Appearance Came Together
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Chris Jericho pointed out that this was the first time that he’d ever been in the ring together with Michaels, then went on to explain how the match finish suddenly came to him while he was out shopping for ring gear.
“Here’s my favorite part—I was buying under tights for those [long pants he wore in that era], we used to wear these Speedos underneath, at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Tampa. And I remember sitting there, looking for the right size and I was like ‘holy sh-t’, almost like [I had a vision]. You don’t put together a match, it’s gifted to you by the energy of the universe, not to get too metaphysical, and I remember going to the cashier and said, ‘Do you have a pen and paper?’ All she had was the back of the receipt, and I said, ‘can you print me out [makes the motion of getting a huge blank piece and tearing it off of the roll.] I remember sitting there and writing this, write this—I wrote the whole finish of the match, literally, in five minutes in the middle of the sporting goods store, because it just hit me.”
Jericho continued, noting that one idea Michaels had was for the roll-up finish, adding that he’d seen it before in an Owen Hart match. Jericho went on to explain that they showed up in Seattle for rehearsals, and they shared their ideas with each other. Shawn had come up with the beginning of the match, while Jericho had written the finish, so they put their ideas together and were done in ten minutes. “That’s how destined that match was to be,” Jericho said. “It’s pretty crazy, right?”
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