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A couple of old friends got together last night on ESPN Sportscenter when Chris Jericho was Jonathan Coachman’s guest for his weekly “Off the Top Rope” segment focused on WWE.
Coach opened by asking about WrestleMania 32, and Y2J’s bout with AJ Styles in AT&T Stadium.
He spoke of the pride he takes in helping establish someone like AJ for the mainstream fan who may not know him from Ring of Honor (ROH), New Japan or TNA - and also said he’s looking forward to watching, or maybe helping, guys like Finn Bálor and Shinsuke Nakamura make the same transition.
As far as a young star he thinks has the highest ceiling, look no further than his short-lived JerichKO tag partner:
[Kevin] Owens is very, very special. He’s different from everybody else. He doesn’t look like a typical WWE Superstar, he doesn’t really act like a typical WWE Superstar, but that’s what you need to make it to the top, top level. I see a great, great... a great future for him.
Whatever your feelings on 2016 Jericho, he’s a future Hall of Famer whose opinion carries some weight with the brass backstage. Putting KO over like that, somewhere like ESPN, is no small deal. So, let’s all remember this when we go to freak out if Owens loses on Sunday at Money in the Bank.
Jericho is also bull-ish on WWE’s overall future - at least in terms of creating Superstars. He put over the Developmental system and the philosophy it’s brought to acquiring talent from all over the world.
They’d go on to discuss Jericho’s role in inventing the Money in the Bank ladder match, his legendary feud with Shawn Michaels and the chemistry he shared with The Rock. For Jericholics, it was familiar territory he’s covered on his podcast and in his books, but still worth pulling up over at ESPN.com (at least for now, WWE and ESPN have blocked the sharing and embedding of the video clips, so apologies for not including them here as we normally would).
Last but not least, to close the segment, The Best in the World at What He Does slipped back into character, expressing outrage Coach hadn’t asked him about his scarf (which kept getting in the way of his clip-on microphone throughout the interview).
I mean, it’s a $750, exclusive yak’s hair accessory and the stupid idiot didn’t even mention it...