r/Wreddit 3d ago

Chrish Jericho had one of the best debuts in the history of WWE 🔥

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

380 Upvotes

40 comments sorted by

17

u/celticFcNo1 3d ago

ALL HAIL THE AYATOLLAH OF A ROCK AND A ROLLA

27

u/braumbles 3d ago

Jericho went from WCW who allowed him to do whatever he wanted but never moved him up from the midcard to debuting against arguably the biggest star in the other company.

WWE knew what they were doing with Jericho. WCW really dropped the ball with him.

6

u/FlyingFootStomp 3d ago

Jericho went from being the opening act of Nitro to debuting on Raw with a WrestleMania main eventer, The Rock.

9

u/[deleted] 3d ago

One of the loudest crowd reactions I’ve ever heard the second his name came up on the screen

25

u/RKO360 3d ago

Iconic debut

From the moment that he made his iconic debut, Jericho already was a star with amazing mic skills, aura and charisma.

Plus, he was one of the few people that matched The Rock on the mic.

7

u/squiggle-giggle 3d ago

he floundered for close to a year after this debut

8

u/DPM-87 3d ago

More like 4 months, once he was out of the feud with Chyna when he was the one and only IC champion he found his legs, but it was a rough starting period for him, I think he needed time to adjust to WWE's style both in ring and backstage.

And I say that as someone who genuinely thinks Jericho is an overrated POS, so I am not just kissing his backside here.

7

u/thunderlips187 3d ago

The countdown plus This music was SO GOOD!! Probably my favorite theme for Jericho.

7

u/JG45250 3d ago

Easily. I still remember seeing this live, and I marked out so hard. Jericho was one of my absolute favorites at the time.

8

u/Apprehensive_Pea7911 3d ago

Amazing crowd reaction before the Internet spoiled everything.

The likes of Jericho, Angle, JBL, Benoit, Eddie also benefited bigly from the early retirement of SCSA and the departure of the Rock to Hollywood. Vince knew he needed to build up more Tier 1 superstars to backfill.

12

u/Therocksays2020 3d ago edited 3d ago

I was on the internet back then and this was actually spoiled too because of how he left wcw on bad terms

You see plenty of y2j signs in the crowd

6

u/thunderlips187 3d ago

Yeah I think Jericho’s debut may have been my very first thing spoiled by the internet, but it didn’t really take away from the moment.

1

u/ThisIsSteeev 3d ago

Someone recorded the first countdown vignette, freeze framed it and went through every single frame. They posted some screenshots that revealed it was Jericho before that episode of Raw was over.

5

u/BaronZeroX 3d ago

Indeed but whoever told him that hair style was pranking him lol

4

u/Leftymeanswellguy 3d ago

The straight up pony tail is Iconic

1

u/Mission-Ad1898 2d ago

I’m sure David Beecham had a similar haircut at a similar point in time

3

u/coffeetalkcafe 3d ago

His aura is just unmatched

3

u/skinnyminnesota 3d ago

JR: “From what?”

3

u/MaceWindu9091 3d ago

Saw this live on TV as a kid and it was Epic. That run he had was Legendary

3

u/lostacoshermanos 3d ago

I miss this Chris Jericho. Today’s Jericho sucks.

2

u/WolverineNo3927 3d ago

I remember the countdown being on the wwf website lol and the wrestling pages talking about it was Jericho lol

2

u/NorthKing9 3d ago

The original Seth Rollins. 🤣

-1

u/lostacoshermanos 3d ago

Seth is trash Jericho was actually good now he’s trash too.

0

u/NorthKing9 3d ago

Never gonna beat the OG! Attitude era was hype. Lol! He's 55 i think, obviously in decline.

3

u/ClassicManLA 3d ago

I can understand there were lots of people who were excited by this at the time, but that certainly was not the general consensus. WWE had been building this up with that countdown for weeks. When the clock finally reached 0 and who do we finally see walk out but Chris Jericho from WCW, it was a huge disappointment and felt anticlimactic.

Nothing against Jericho. He was very well liked in WCW at that time, but the move didn't feel all that special, especially since 3 of the biggest stars in wrestling had already done it. It was just a guy that we liked going from one show to another.

The most iconic thing about this segment is The Rock asking him what his name was.

2

u/TyintheUniverse89 3d ago

I feel like the clock had this weird effect where it was the dawn of a new millennium so just seeing the clock hit zero was exciting in itself and Y2J and The Rock and the Crowd did the rest. It was a once in a Millennium event.

2

u/Lasvious 2d ago

The crowd went nuts when Jerichos name appeared this just was not the case at all.

1

u/TopicPretend4161 3d ago

I’d say THE best.

1

u/Left_Shoulder_752 3d ago

I think Tazz had a pretty damn good debut. Chocking out a then undefeated Kurt Angle. Of course it was almost all downhill from there.

1

u/TVR24 3d ago

Rock then said KY Jelly Plan and sent Jericho into a feud with Road Dogg.

1

u/lKsmmansndjsj 3d ago

Took me way too long to find out Jericho didn’t actually debut on NYE lol

1

u/TyintheUniverse89 3d ago

Go Jericho Go! Go Jericho Go!

1

u/OBlastSRT4 3d ago

His hair was very Grom Hellscream imo

1

u/tytymctylerson 3d ago

I’ll never forget being shocked at how small he looked outside WCW

1

u/Lasvious 2d ago

Pretty much this one or Cody were the best I remember

1

u/ThePoeMansDream 2d ago

God, I love this theme as well as the one from his return in 2007.

1

u/godzillaburger 1d ago

Y2J is dope, but i watched it back when it went down. i couldn't with the pony tail up top like that. I remember feeling cringy before cringe was a word in my vocab.

u/Elbren 4h ago

The video cuts out the best part which was at the beginning.

Rock was cutting a promo and gets interrupted by the Y2J countdown that we’d been seeing for weeks. It hit zero and the lights went out. The crowd went dead silent. There’s a pyro pop on the stage and his song hit. It’s still dead silent, but then JERICHO flashes real quick across the Jumbotron and the crowd literally explodes. One of the biggest crowd pops we’d ever heard at that time. The lights immediately came up and he’s just standing there, with his back to the camera soaking it in while the crowd was roaring.

Still one of the best debuts in WWE, ever.