Chris Jericho has revealed that Tony Khan talked him out of getting rid of his crowd-pleasing theme song Judas after turning heel.
In 2017, Chris Jericho’s band Fozzy released what would go on to become the biggest hit of their careers to date, Judas.
As the song’s popularity increased, Jericho adopted it as his entrance music in New Japan before taking it with him when he moved to AEW. During his tenure with the company, fans have taken the song to their hearts belting it out at full volume whenever the star appears.
However, after turning to the dark side in recent months, some had expected the former World Champion to stop using the song. In fact, the man himself admits that he did consider it, before being talked out of the move by AEW President Tony Khan.
Speaking to Spin, Jericho explained how the song transcends being a good guy or a bad guy.
“Well, the thing about ‘Judas’ is, it was a hit before I started using it [as entrance music], right out of the gate,” he explained. “We did the video, it did 1 million views in a week. Why? I don’t know. Whatever reason, people gravitated toward that song. That’s why I started using it as my ring music. I needed a new song because I had switched from WWE to New Japan [Pro Wrestling]. I thought, well, let me use “Judas,” and maybe there’ll be a promoter who hears the song and brings us over to Japan. Then I realized, this is a great entrance song!
“So, when AEW started, I brought ‘Judas’ over there, and then it became part of the show,
For whatever reason, people just felt a real inspiration from that song and wanted to sing it as I came to the ring. Now, I did just change my character, I went from being a good guy to being a bad guy. We thought about not using ‘Judas’ anymore. But then I thought, why? Why change it? My boss [AEW president Tony Khan] agreed because we have a very unique, very cool moment in our AEW presentation, in that people love singing this song.
As a bad guy, I could take it away but then you’re losing this really special moment. People singing ‘Judas’ transcends being a good guy or a bad guy in AEW, it’s just something cool that’s part of the show. It’s like going to a KISS concert and they don’t play ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ because they’re trying to be creative. It’s like, fuck, we don’t care, that’s the song we want to hear!”
The Jericho Appreciation Society has been at war with Eddie Kingston and Santana & Ortiz in recent weeks, but on the May 11th edition of Dynamite the rivalry went to another level. After holding court in the middle of the ring, the group drew the wrath of the Blackpool Combat Club.