Chris Jericho On Real Life Heat With A Hall Of Famer

It’s getting warm in here. Wrestlers tend to be aggressive people by definition. They’re mostly bigger, more athletic and competitive people and that’s going to cause some issues at one point or another. Sometimes there are going to be problems between some of the people in the back and these issues can lead to altercations. It’s not unique to just smaller names and one of the biggest stars in wrestling history has his own story of just such an incident.

On a recent episode of his Talk Is Jericho podcast, Chris Jericho told a story about an altercation he had with Scott Hall back in their WCW days. Hall wasn’t pleased with Jericho for wrestling long on a house show, despite Jericho not being told to stick to any length of time. The extra time annoyed Hall, who threatened to have Jericho’s push canceled by talking to management.

This went on for several weeks until Scott Norton, a wrestler Jericho had known in Japan, told Jericho to do something about it or Norton would do it for him. Jericho stood up to Hall the next time and Hall backed down, much to Norton’s approval. Despite the incident taking place over twenty years ago, Jericho said he and Hall still aren’t on good terms to this day. Here are Jericho’s comments on what happened, with transcription courtesy of Wrestlinginc.com:

“Scott Hall came up to me and told me that nobody was coming to see me, get in there, do your 5-10 minutes and get out. No one wants to see you. I remember thinking, wow, what an asshole. Why would you say that? I told Chris Benoit that, and Benoit was already furious with Scott Hall after Hall pissed on Chris Benoit’s cowboy boots by the urinals. He just leaned over while they were both pissing and he leaned to the side and pissed on his boots.”

“Scott Norton, who is a friend of mine from my time in Japan said to me that if you don’t say something to him next time he bullies you then I am going to say something and I will bully you. Either you do something about it or I will. If you do something about it and he wants to cause anything then I got your back.”

“When Scott made another comment I went up to Hall and said to never f–king talk to me like that again, you understand me? I told him that there was no rib, or no joke, don’t ever f–king talk to me like that again. He would tell me to calm down and that he was just joking, ‘geez Jericho, can’t you take a joke?’ I looked over at Scott Norton and he was just smiling like I did the right thing. That was a Scott Hall for you. He was always like that, which is a shame. He was obviously a great worker and a great performer but no love lost for him even until this day.”

You can listen to the full show here.

They did work together at one point.

WWE Classics- Nitro 12/15/97, Chris Jericho vs Scott Hall

Opinion: I’m pretty sure Jericho told this story in his first book but it’s still one worth hearing. Sometimes you need to stand up to someone who is picking on you just because you can and a lot of the time, they’re going to back down. Now if you happen to have a 350lb monster who happens to be a former world arm wrestling champion backing you up, things might be a bit easier, but the lesson is still there.

Did Jericho do the right thing? What is your favorite Jericho story? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 27 wrestling books. His latest book is the NXT: The Full Sail Years Volume III: From Dallas To New Orleans.

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