Chris Jericho Gives His Opinion On WWE's ThunderDome

AEW star Chris Jericho returned to his weekly Saturday Night Special after the conclusion of last night's Dynamite show. The "Demo God" took a moment during the show to give his opinion on WWE's ThunderDome concept, their new state of the art set with pyrotechnics, drone cameras, video boards, and new lighting.

"I loved it, I loved the presentation of it. It looked great," Chris said. "I think it's great that WWE got out of the Performance Center; I think it was really killing their vibe because it's just a warehouse, do you know what I mean? It has nothing to do with – at least dress it up, or dark it up, or whatever it was, but the ThunderDome looked cool.

"The only thing confusing to me was the fans behind them. They weren't making a lot of noise so maybe they couldn't make noise, or whatever that may be. But it looked cool, but it's also a little bit weird, like something out of The Running Man or something. It's like something you'd see on Black Mirror, just all these faces behind you but they're all on TV screens.

"Nothing takes the place of real fans, and I'm really excited to have real fans at our show next week, next Thursday," Chris continued. "And we did it right, we spaced everybody in pods. If you're with 3 people, you can buy a pod of 4, if you're with 2 people, you can buy a pod of 2, or 6, and you stay in that area. You're social distanced from everyone, everyone is going to be wearing masks, and I think people are ready for it. It's time to at least give it a try and do it safely, and then people can see that we can start going out and doing these sorts of things."

Jericho also discussed his entrance music during his time in WWE, noting that it was ultimately Vince McMahon that kept the 'Break The Walls Down' song alive throughout his career. The only time his theme changed were the few instances where a song to promote something new took it's place. The former AEW champion also revealed a couple of alternative entrance themes he considered to take the place of 'Break The Walls Down'.

"They came up with 'Break The Walls Down', the whole vibe of it, and it became historical," Chris explained. "And of course, I used that for my entire tenure in the WWE, except I think there was a Saliva song – they would do these collaborations with whatever musician it was. I didn't really care for those, but I did get Zakk Wylde from the Black Label Society to do a version. I thought it was great, but I played it for Vince and Vince hated it. Vince thought it was boring.

"I was like, 'What? How could you not like this?' Another idea I had was to use 'Nightmare' by Avenged Sevenfold," he added. "I thought that would be kind of cool if you go back and listen to that song, but we did not use that either. Vince said, 'Break The Walls Down is eternal at this point in time.' So, I used it and we went for it."

In the ring, Jericho says that he hasn't met many "stiff" workers in the major promotions he has been a part of. He does, however, list a couple of workers that were "solid" forces in the squared circle, and notes that some people would describe him the same way.

"Sheamus is very solid, Bob Holly is very solid. Those are guys that you feel everything that they're doing, you feel everything that they're laying into you/onto you. Some people don't like that. Some people say that I'm solid," Chris said. "That's the way I like to work. Stiff, I mean, there's certain guys that – Mark Henry, I liked working with him and he wasn't stiff, but he was such a big man. I remember one time I had to give him a Code Breaker on the floor, that was Michael Hayes' idea. He was like, 'Why don't you give him a Code Breaker on the floor?' I go, 'Alright!' I do it, and Mark Henry is, I don't know, 350 lbs? I do the Code Breaker and it's basically just I pick him up, I pull him down on top of me, and hear 'Crunch!' So that's not stiff on his end, but he was always a big guy to work with that you could feel.

"There was a guy named Kitao in Japan, he was a former Sumo Wrestler," Jericho continued. "He was stiff, reckless, didn't give a s–t, didn't care if he hurt you. And that's the definition of 'stiff', someone that just doesn't have any regard for your safety."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Saturday Night Special with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.