Steve Austin Says Chris Jericho Right Now Is "About As Entertaining As It Gets"

As previously noted, stunt performer, actor, and former bouncer Paul Lazenby visited 'The Broken Skull Studio' for a sit-down conversation with WWE Hall Of Famer Steve Austin. Austin, who will debut a new podcast for the WWE Network, put over the current and defending AEW World Champion Chris Jericho during the show. Additionally, Lazenby talked about how he met Jericho and shared his thoughts on Jericho's ongoing run with AEW.

On the subject of Jericho, Austin called 'Le Champion' a smart, business savvy person and a wrestler's wrestler.  

"Jericho's a smart guy! I mean, he's kind of a wrestler's wrestler." Austin said, "he studies the business [and] has a great recall on the history of the business."

According to Lazenby, he met Jericho back in 1991 when Jericho and his thrill-seeking partner, Lance T. Storm, were Lazenby's professional wrestling trainers.

"I met Jericho in 1991. I went to? I moved 2000 miles from my hometown and went to the Hart Brothers Pro Wrestling Academy and I ended up training at a Hart Brothers school without any Hart Brothers in it. Keith Hart showed up for the first two days to make sure that all the checks cleared. And then, he took off and we never saw him again! So that was my first lesson in what wrestling was like. But I got lucky because Lance Storm and Chris Jericho assisting him were my instructors and they hadn't even finished their own rookie year yet." Lazenby continued, "but just being the prodigies that they were, they were good enough to give us a good grounding in the business, so I ended up getting a better training from rookies than I probably would have gotten from a lot of veterans who would have phoned it in."

With respect to Jericho's current AEW run, Lazenby put over Jericho's foresight and ability to reinvent himself.

"He's Jericho, man. He's going to do everything you need to get over if you're good enough to get over in the ring. Like, he knows what to do as a heel; he knows what to do as a face; he knows what to do to make people care about the match; and then, it's up to you after that." Lazenby added, "I don't understand how he can plan this stuff out because it's very different. It's so diverse, and he seems to know when the right time to make a change is, and what the right change to make is. Like when he started with New Japan [Pro-Wrestling]. 'Well, okay, I have to be a different Chris Jericho in Japan than I am in North America' and that's when the whole 'Painmaker' gimmick started up, and, of course, it turned out to be the right thing and it was something completely different. And now, it's to the point where he [has] kind of got it as an alternate persona where Muta had two personas and you might get Jericho, but you might get 'The Painmaker' that night who wrestles a different way. Yeah, he's just a dude who seems to see around corners and constantly finds new ways to put himself out there and new ways to reinvent himself."

Austin had high praise for Jericho's work in AEW, saying that 'The Painmaker' is as entertaining as he has ever been and feels dangerous and unpredictable.  

"To me, right now he's about as entertaining as it gets," Austin praised Jericho. "He's pushing the envelope. He's edgy. You don't know what he's going to do, so you have that factor of, 'what is he going to do?' because you just don't know right now. Now, it's levelheaded – it's all thought out. You just don't know what he's going to do. He's unpredictable, is what I'm saying. I like that feeling! He feels dangerous! He feels damn near unhinged, but he's very calculated, so what he's putting out right now, I'm digging."

Listen to the show here. If you use any of the quotes from this article, please credit The Steve Austin Show with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.