• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1799 0

with the crowd. I was good at it, but I was also very lucky to get that valuable time, because many others didn’t. There were tons of performers on the roster who might as well have been mute or had their tongues Oldboy’d, they talked so rarely. How would we find the next Hulk Hogan or Rock if nobody was ever given a chance to talk? With this in mind, I called Brian and told him I wanted to be the host of my own show in the same vein as “Piper’s Pit.” Except I wanted it to be a strictly improvised segment where every week an up-and-coming star would get a chance to talk and show off their character—or lack thereof.

I wanted to call it “Jericho’s Junction,” but Brian came up with “The Highlight Reel.” It was the perfect moniker, since I’d been recently referring to myself as the Highlight of the Night, so we went with it. Even though my improv concept fell by the wayside, the segment did become a modern day “Piper’s Pit,” a regular feature that usually led to some sort of angle.

The first episode was in Boston. We assembled a makeshift set, which consisted of a giant carpet painted with my logo, a couple of barstools that I stole from the Players Club in the Fleet Center (send me the bill, guys), and the extravagant, astronomically priced JeriTron 5000. The JeriTron 5000 was nothing more than a 52-inch flat-screen TV, but much like Michael Knight’s KITT, it took on a life of its own as my mascot.

Ironically, Goldberg was my first guest. He took me aside beforehand and politely asked me not to verbally bury him during the show. When Scott Steiner appeared, Vince was the one who begged me not to bury him. “Chris, we are hoping for big things from Scotty, so please don’t make him look bad out there.”

Why did these guys think I was out to bury people? I never had before. It was if I had become the wrestling Bill O’Reilly, a verbal marksman who struck fear into the hearts of marblemouths everywhere.

And there were no mouths more marbly than that of the Big Bad Booty Daddy. At the time he was wearing what basically amounted to a chain-mail kerchief, like a heavy metal Jackie Onassis, and during his appearance on “The Highlight Reel” I asked him, “Who do you think you are? King Arthur?”

Scotty was supposed to reply, “You think I’m King Arthur? How about I come down there and get medieval on your ass?!” But he butchered his retort and instead bellowed out, “You think you’re King Arthur? Well, why don’t I come down there and kick your medieval ass!”

No, I don’t think I’m King Arthur, Scott, you do. You’re the one wearing the chain mail.

Steve Austin was having major neck problems and couldn’t wrestle anymore, but he was still a big part of the show as the commissioner of Raw. We had been tormenting each other weekly until finally a verdict was passed that Austin could never touch me unless I touched him first.

The angle was working great on TV and the decision was made to take it on the road. It was a smart way to take advantage of Steve’s immense drawing power, and it gave him the perfect forum and the perfect foil to do his routine—“The Highlight Reel” and Chris Jericho. So every weekend during the summer of 2003, Steve Austin was my guest on “The Highlight Reel.” The arena set was much less extravagant than its TV counterpart; made up of two metal folding chairs and—well, that was it. But the fans were ecstatic to see Austin and be a part of his act. This was at the height of his “What?” phase, and we would base the segment on trying to outdo each other with the most references to a region-specific topic. For example, when we were in Green Bay, the routine was based around cheese and went a little something like this:

“We’re in Green Bay, Wisconsin.”

“What?”

“The home of cheese!”

“What?”

“American cheese!”

“What?”

“Cheddar cheese!”

“What?”

“Gouda cheese!”

I grabbed the mic and, inspired by the spirit of K. K. LaFlamme, went on a run of my own.

“Do you mean White Stilton cheese?”

“What?”

“Double Gloucester cheese?”

“What?”

And so on and so on. We would continue to riff back and forth on cheese to see who