Freddie Prinze Jr. recalls having a conversation with Chris Jericho which better explained to him how to pitch smaller wrestlers having success to Vince McMahon.
Today, Chris Jericho is a heavyweight and one of the larger wrestlers on the AEW roster. Back in 1999, Chris Jericho was fresh off of WCW TV as one of their top cruiserweights when he entered WWE. Through the years, Chris Jericho would make his way through the ranks, and by the time 2008 rolled around, Chris Jericho was one of the top stars in all of pro wrestling, despite his size.
Chris Jericho is able to use his experience as a smaller wrestler to help Freddie Prinze understand how to better pitch smaller wrestlers in creative meetings by letting Freddie know that Vince McMahon is his father's son and since his father was always a fan of larger wrestlers, that preference was passed down to Vince.
Freddie Prinze Jr. recalled this interaction with Jericho that enlightened him on a recent episode of his podcast, Wrestling With Freddie, where Jericho was a guest.
"You and I had a conversation. Again, I don't know if you'll remember this. But I was having a hard time pitching some of the smaller guys, and you just kind of smiled and looked away. Like you were remembering something way back when, and I didn't know what it was, but I'm like, staring at [Jericho]. Like, 'What's he gonna say? What's he gonna say?' Whatever you were gonna say you change to Freddie,' you said. 'Father, Son.' I went, 'What do you mean?' I grew up without a dad. So it didn't click with me, and you said, 'His dad loved the big guys and he's his father's son. So he's always gonna see the big guy able to beat up the small guy, no matter how much evidence you show him because his father told him it was that way.'"
Freddie was then able to utilize this knowledge to help push names like Kofi Kingston and Jeff Hardy.
"I remember getting on the plane with Vince, and kind of looking at him nd I just changed it changed my whole philosophy on how I pitch things, especially how I pitched the smaller guys and the first one I tried it with was Kofi. I literally just pitched it like, like a Spider-Man comic where all the bad guys beat up Spider-Man the whole time. But it's his goodness that's gonna sort of bring it out and not hulk out. But, we always pitched it where, 'Of course, he wouldn't win the title, but we'll just get him into that match.' We'd always be like, 'We'll cross that title bridge when we get there. So, so it really changed the way I pitch and I started having a lot of success with it, and after Kofi came the Jeff Hardy storyline, which brought him to the championship, and I literally started just looking for different angles. I started seeing that he was selling more merch than even Hunter was selling, and so that's what I went into the pitch with. It was like, No, the creative was the creative, but I was like, 'Hey, man. This dude's selling more merch than anyone in the company right now.' Even the people who are against the idea, [I was] like 'He's selling more merch than you, bro."
Freddie further explains the challenges he had pushing Jeff Hardy and how it caused a rift in his relationship with Triple H on past episodes of his podcast. Learn more here.
Elsewhere on this podcast, Chris Jericho calls Eddie Kingston a dream opponent of his. Learn more here.
