Archive: Pro Wrestling Star Chris Jericho Has NHL – And Hockey – In His Bloodline

In 2000, longtime superstar wrestler Chris Jericho spoke about his father – NHL veteran Ted Irvine – and his journey as an elite athlete, showman and hockey lover.

The pro hockey world and pro wrestling world have many things in common. And in a major feature story from The Hockey News’ special “MVP” magazine (dated Aug. 1, 2000), we covered the careers of legendary grappler Chris Jericho and his NHL-veteran father, Ted Irvine.

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The Hockey News contributor Jay Greenberg interviewed then-World-Wrestling-Entertainment star Jericho – real name, Chris Irvine – and Ted Irvine for the story. And Jericho, known for his sardonic sense of humor and willingness to play the villain role, told Greenberg he was a decent-enough hockey player, if not as good as his dad.

“I was a grinder, a penalty-killer, a checker, a Craig Berube, Mike Eagles kind of guy,” Jericho told Greenberg. “I was okay, but wasn’t NHL material, although now, with 30 teams, I could probably play for the Blue Jackets.”

Jericho was a student of the pro wrestling game – just as he was a student of his father’s profession. At the time the story was published, the NHL product was jammed up by obstruction, and Jericho lamented how the sport had evolved.

“It’s not what we grew up with in the '70s and early '80s, when I was a huge fan,” Jericho said. “I have a subscription to The Hockey News because I like to read the results, track the stats and read the stories, but going to a game isn’t fun anymore…The clutching and grabbing make it boring now. It’s no fun to watch until the playoffs.”

Jericho is still an active star wrestler today for international promotion All Elite Wrestling, and many wrestling superstars, including Ric 'Nature Boy' Flair are loud-and-proud hockey fans. And Jericho defended his profession, noting it would not be easy for any NHLer, star or otherwise, to do what he does in the squared circle.

“We are professional, live-action stuntmen and guys get hurt all the time, Jericho said. “They aren’t necessarily major hurts, but there’s not one guy in our dressing room today who doesn’t have some aches and pains. I’ll bet a half-a-dozen of them, if they played in the NHL, would be on the disabled list right now.”

Aug. 1, 2000

By Jay Greenberg

It’s not Like the good ol' days, when the Broad Street Bullies came to The Garden. Back then, every match was a submission match.

Hound Kelly used to bounce off all four ropes, working up a head of steam to do the Lionsault on Ted Irvine, Chris Jericho’s Dear Old Dad.

Of course, nobody called it that back then because Chris was only five years old and hadn’t yet patented the move. But be assured forearms to the head were already an established practice of Dave 'The Hammer' Schultz while 'Big Bird' Saleski stood on the ring apron promising there would be more of those coming for Irvine’s boy someday in the unlikely event the punk had the guts to grow up.

Indeed, the boy has - big, strong and melancholy about the loss of simpler times when the NHL and World Wrestling Federation shared one soul. Now a star of the WWF, the 29-year-old Jericho can’t believe the depths to which the NHL has sunk to make itself presentable to the public.

“There are no real characters anymore,” Jericho laments. “Now, everybody wears a helmet because of concussions and the game is a corporate business. The teams are kind of nameless and faceless. There are no Nick Fotius, Jerry Korabs, Dave Schultzes. And not that they had to be goons, either. Guy Lafleur had the hair flowing, then he had no hair and then all of a sudden he had hair again. C'mon, what’s up with that? And Bobby Clarke had no teeth.

“It’s not what we grew up with in the '70s and early '80s, when I was a huge fan. I have a subscription to The Hockey News because I like to read the results, track the stats and read the stories, but going to a game isn’t fun anymore.”

If you haven’t heard disillusionment like this since Tommy Salo got power-slammed by his own general manager, Mike Milbury, in an arbitration hearing, well, you have to consider the source. Jericho once challenged Perry Saturn to a match where the loser had to put on a dress and then won when the referee shamelessly tipped over Saturn as he was about to complete the victory. Not only did Jericho stand on the apron mocking his vanquished foe while Saturn dressed up, but worse, never 'fessed up to the subterfuge.

Why, you had to be born dumber than the Dudley Boyz not to see what was going down, especially after Jericho and the ref left the ring laughing with their arms around each other. Not even Bruce Hood, on his worst night, was that bad.

It made you wonder what kind of evil lurks in the heart of Jericho, or used to anyway. “I was a bad guy then,” he says. “I started off as a good guy in the WCW (World Championship Wrestling, the WWFs rival), became a bad guy, then I came over here (to the WWF) and now I’m a good guy again.”

We certainly were happy to hear that, just in case Ted Irvine’s kid didn’t like any of our questions. Dad was nobody to mess with himself, compiling 657 penalty minutes to go with 331 points in 11 NHL seasons with the Boston Bruins, Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers and St. Louis Blues, but never mastered the powerbomb.

Though big Ted fought more than a few times at Madison Square Garden, never was he required to take on both Kurt Angle and Triple H at the same time in a three-way match that involved more behind-the-back attacks than there’s been in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ front office.

As always, Jericho thoroughly enjoyed returning to New York and having people pull out newspaper clippings and old programs with Dad’s name on them for his son to sign. But at the end of the evening, he was laid out on the canvas, as motionless as Pierre Gauthier at a trading deadline.

Incredibly, 15 hours later, there wasn’t a mark on Jericho, which seemed to us to be verification that maybe they do make them like they used to. We would have argued that Jericho was a living, breathing, contradiction to his own point, but didn’t want to risk being suplexed, which does not look like a pleasant experience.

Jericho is one tough dude, no further evidence being needed than the fact that after suffering internal injuries from a cowardly attack by Chris The Crippled Benoit, the guy missed only a week of the tour. Turned out Jericho used the time to get married. Jericho’s new bride, the former Jessica Lockhart, is nobody we will ever see on a ring apron as she begins her studies this fall to become a teacher. “She didn’t know who I was,” recalls Jericho of their meeting at a Tampa Bay area sushi bar, “and that was cool.”

Soon, love began to hurt, although not as much as a camel clutch. A mere night after Jericho was Left near death by HHH and Angle, the wrestler was avenging the fall of his partner, Eddie Guerrero, when he was jumped from behind again by Benoit, finally submitting to the dreaded cross-face hold.

Jericho appeared to be in more agony than Glen Sather every time he has to sign Valeri Kamensky’s paycheck. Good Lord, how much can one man take?

“Sure, it’s a show but it’s a contact sport,” Jericho says. “It’s not like the ring is made like a trampoline and we never get hurt. We are professional, live-action stuntmen and guys get hurt all the time.

“They aren’t necessarily major hurts, but there’s not one guy in our dressing room today who doesn’t have some aches and pains. I’ll bet a half-a-dozen of them, if they played in the NHL, would be on the disabled list right now.”

Now that’s a challenge that would bring Stu Grimson right off the training table to grab the microphone and tell Jericho that he is the “stinky, brutal, trash-bag, bottom-feeder" that Jericho once called Stephanie, promoter Vince McMahon’s daughter and "wife" of Triple H.

Hey, they tell it is like is in the WWF. “Wrestling obviously is more of a one-man show,” Jericho says. “In hockey, you’re part of a team and the greatest players in the game have always been humble. They don’t even want to talk about themselves.”

How can you respect people like that? “I was also a huge Gretzky fan, and since he retired, I haven’t found another hero yet to take his place in entertainment value,” Jericho says. “I mean, Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya are pretty good, but it’s not the same.

“Granted, I root for the Flames and the Rangers and live in Tampa and follow the Lightning, so over the last couple years, all my teams have sucked pretty much. A guy like Theo Fleury used to be awesome, but now with the Rangers he’s not the lifeblood of a team anymore. He’s just another guy on a huge market team.

“It’s kind of sad to see that happen. The clutching and grabbing make it boring now. It’s no fun to watch until the playoffs.”

Now, it’s a Lot truer than the rumors about Stephanie and Angle that when Jericho was a kid he didn’t like the playoffs much better than the regular season. How’s this for the ‘Summer Slam”’ of ironies: He hated hockey because of the noise.

“I remember going to Madison Square Garden when I was five and getting mad because my Dad wouldn’t look up off the ice at me,” he says. “And I always thought it was too loud. I pulled this little sweatshirt over my ears because I hated the cheering. Now, it’s silence that scares me.

“I remember all the other kids thought it was cool my Dad played for the Rangers. But for me it was just my Dad. I didn’t understand what was going on in the game. Now, I look back on some of the things he accomplished and I’m proud.

“He was a fighter, kind of like a Cam Neely-type power forward. He was 6-foot-2, 195 pounds and in 1970 that was a big player. In his best year (1973-74), he had 26 goals and 105 penalty minutes, pretty good numbers for even this day and age, and back then, things were different. He wasn’t a star, but a very important player, like an Adam Graves. He played for a Long time, 10 years. Today, he’d make $4 million a year.”

Ted retired from the Blues at the end of the 1976-77 season, when Chris was seven. “I just felt it was time,” Irvine recalls. “Playing in New York was the epitome of hockey and after I got traded, it just wasn’t the same.”

“Chris said, ‘Dad, can you stay home and teach me Kung Fu?’ so I did. It was his turn.”

They went back to Winnipeg, where Dad became a financial planner and Chris’ Ten Stubby Little Fingers of Death started punching up wrestling on the tube. “Actually, my Mom was a fan,” Ted says. “She always watched wrestling from Maple Leaf Gardens on TV. Chris started asking a ton of questions. I would take him to go see Hulk Hogan when he came to town.

“He and his friends really enjoyed wrestling. I just didn’t know how much until I saw the holes in the basement ceiling. When he was 15 or 16, he started lifting weights.

“He loved to read and write his own comic books. Superman, superhero kind of things. He had his own air band, was always thinking theatrically and had tremendous people skills and imagination. He would do his own interviews and role-playing with his friends. He was a student of the wrestling business.”

In a school production of Oliver, Chris played the villain who held a bullwhip, killed a lady and beat up Oliver. Hey, you never know when your life’s calling will arrive, but when the moment comes, it’s a powerful experience.

Perhaps to the uninitiated, wrestling seems trashy and repetitious, but on the other hand, everybody in it has big chests and wants revenge, which is more than you can say when the Predators visit the Mighty Ducks. Would you rather see grown men thrown from a ring or a faceoff circle? Besides, if everything is staged, so what? Obviously, this hasn’t stopped Bryan Marchment from paying close attention.

Young Irvine considered his alternatives: A) Being a bad hockey player; B) Being a star wrestler. “I wanted to be a hockey player at one point,” he says. “I was a grinder, a penalty-killer, a checker, a Craig Berube, Mike Eagles kind of guy. I was okay, but wasn’t NHL material, although now, with 30 teams, I could probably play for the Blue Jackets.

“I always enjoyed the athleticism of sports and the entertainment of watching a good band play or a movie. That’s why I loved wrestling so much. It was the ultimate combination of the two.”

In 1990, he wrote to the wrestling school in Calgary run by the family of Bret Hart, packed up all his belongings and went. He wore his blond hair longer than a Thrashers’ losing streak, took the name Jericho both because it was the town on Long Island where he was born and because it had religious overtones to fit his deep faith.

He took to doing parodies of his opponents, and traveled the world literally learning the ropes. Jericho kicked around tank towns, worked as a bar bouncer and mended farm fences while working matches for $25. He perfected ’The Walls of Jericho, a hold in which the opponents get closed in faster and more resolutely than Bill Wirtz’s mind, and went to the Far East and Germany to polish an act wrestling fans came to love. It was easier to put a finger in an opponent’s eye than on why he was becoming so popular when so many wrestlers try and fail. But good looks help and you can’t be a shtick in the mud. Basic principle of the business: As long as they lap it up, keep giving it to them.

“If you just think you are going to walk into this and be a big star, you don’t have a chance,” Jericho says. “It takes a lot of determination, a lot of heart.

“We have quite a bit of input into our characters, then the fans take it from there. Some guys the fans aren’t supposed to like, they end up liking. Some guys they are supposed to like, they hate. You go with the flow. If things get stagnant, you change from being a bad guy to a good guy or vice versa. That’s what makes the business so exciting; nobody knows what’s going to happen with the characters.

“There are some things that relate to what hockey players do because we are on the road quite a bit. But as far as the showmanship, there are probably a few characters left (in hockey) Like Tie Domi, but not many.”

Like father, like son, Ted feels the same way as Chris. Gretz is gone and the NHL is not what it used to be. “Not that I don’t miss going to The Spectrum, or the bus being rocked on the way out of there, or even being booed at The Garden,” says Irvine, 55. “But I was lucky to get in 10 years and play at the exciting time I did. It’s lost some of its zest.”

In fact, we can’t remember the last time anybody in the NHL grabbed his crotch, wore a shirt advocating obscene acts, or made insinuations about an opponent’s sexual orientation. “I don’t like some of the things that go on in wrestling,” Irvine says. “But it’s Chris’s profession and I don’t judge it. It’s the path God chose for him and I know he makes up with a lot of good things that he does.

“Is there a contradiction with our religious beliefs? There’s a contradiction with being overpaid as a professional athlete, too.”

Look, in the Bible, when after 40 years Joshua finally got a gig with that horn, he spared the mute and blew down the Walls of Jericho. The Lord’s work was done-unlike Gary Bettman’s- and with showmanship that must bring the saddest of smiles to Chris Jericho.

Do you have any idea how many millions Tumbledown! would have brought in on pay-per-view?

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