Chris Jericho making his entrance to the ring has a tradition associated with it – fans singing along to the Fozzy song “Judas.” The song from Jericho’s rock band is from their 2017 album of the same name. He’s used this song as his entrance theme ever since he started appearing in New Japan Pro Wrestling in 2017.
But even after turning heel, Jericho hasn’t changed the song as most wrestlers do. Since fans sing along to his entrance song and that is considered a positive interaction between the wrestler and fans, most wrestlers in place of Jericho would opt to change the theme.
But Jericho says that fans singing along to “Judas” during his entrance is too special to be taken away. According to him, it transcends being a good or a bad guy.
Speaking to Spin, Jericho said that “Judas” became a hit as soon as it came out. Jericho admitted that he has no idea why people liked the song so much. He decided to use the song for his entrance in NJPW and realized it makes for a pretty mean theme song.
“Well, the thing about ‘Judas’ is, it was a hit before I started using it [as entrance music], right out of the gate,” Jericho said. “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],” Jericho continued. “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!”
When he turned heel in AEW, Jericho thought about changing the song. But even Tony Khan agreed that this would be taking away a cool moment that they consider part of their presentation, and decided against it.
“So, when AEW started, I brought “Judas” over there, and then it became part of the show,” Jericho noted. “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? And 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, f*ck, we don’t care, that’s the song we want to hear!”
Chris Jericho wanted to form a stable with Jon Moxley and Eddie Kingston. Read about that scoop here.
