Chris Jericho has recalled threatening to quit WWE after he received a fraction of the payout he expected for WrestleMania 18.
At WrestleMania 18 in 2002, Chris Jericho was in the main event of the Showcase Of The Immortals for the first time in his career as he defended the Undisputed WWE Championship against a recently returned Triple H.
Triple H had been out of action for much of the previous year after suffering torn quadriceps during a match that May. The Cerebral Assassin continued the bout despite the injury and was even locked in the Walls Of Jericho for some time.
Following his triumphant return in January 2002, Triple H went on to win the Royal Rumble and set his sights on Chris Jericho, who had also been building a relationship with his wife, Stephanie McMahon.
In the end, Triple H came out on top, pinning Jericho to capture the gold and cap off his incredible comeback. To add insult to injury for Jericho, his payment for the bout didn’t meet expectations.
Speaking to Kenny McIntosh during the recent ‘The Jericho Chronicles’ tour of the UK with Inside The Ropes (via Talk Is Jericho), The Wizard revealed that he was given a fraction of the payout he thought was coming for the main event, while Triple H was given the lion’s share of the pot.
“And then I get the paycheck for it. Now you’re thinking, Oh, he must have been happy with that, I wasn’t, let me tell you the reason why.
“I had always heard that if you were in the main event of WrestleMania, you’re making seven figures. Easy, like no doubt about it, no doubt about it whatsoever. When I got the check, it was considerably less than that. I don’t want to say what it was because it was still a shitload of money, but it wasn’t the WrestleMania payoff that I had always heard about.
“So then I happened to ask Triple H – we’re friends now, but we were not friends at the time, there was always a lot of animosity between us. I asked him, ‘What did you get for Wrestlemania?’
“Now, I’m not gonna mention numbers because it sounds really really obnoxious if you’re complaining about a number, but if the WrestleMania payoff was a pie, Triple H got four pieces of the pie, and I got one piece of the pie. So he got 80% of the payoff that was delegated by Vince, I got 20%, and I blew my f*cking stack.
“I was like, listen, okay, I get it, but dude it’s 80 to 20. So I talked to Jim Ross, Jim was the guy that you would go to if you’re angry about a payoff, and guys would go and be angry about a payoff and Jim would give them $5,000 extra. I don’t do that, you know that they’re just going to take it off your next pay-per-view check. Here’s okay, you get what you [want], don’t want 20, here’s 25. Next time it is supposed to be 20 you get 15.
“This was different, this was not a matter of $5,000. This was a matter of if you don’t make this right, I’ll walk the f*ck out because it was so insulting to me. I explained my case to Jim and he said, ‘Well, Vince pays on what the people paid to see and he feels that people paid to see Triple H win the world title.’
“I said, ‘He’s been back for three weeks, the three months prior I was the one who was doing the work to lay the foundation so that when Triple H came back, people would want see him win, that’s how it works.’ So I told Jim, Jim went and told Vince and to Vince’s credit, with no argument, he sent me another check, which brought me up to one and a half pieces of the pie. At that point I was like, ‘I tap out, fine.'”
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