– Chris Jericho recently spoke with Doug Mortman and Dave Lagreca on Busted Open. You can hear Busted Open on SiriusXM 92 and on the SiriusXM app or at BustedOpenNation.com. Below are highlights:
TNA signing Billy Corgan:
“I respect Billy immensely because for me he is the only guy besides me that made it in wrestling and in music beyond what we expected. We are the only two guys that can honestly say we are in a rock band and in the wrestling business at a high level, obviously in reverse roles. Billy is coming into this for the right reasons. A lot of people might think “well Billy is not from the wrestling business, how can he be a booker? How can he be a writer?” Let me give you one name if you’re a hockey fan…Scotty Bowman. Scotty Bowman is the greatest coach in NHL history and he never played an NHL game in his life. So if Scotty comes to coach you team you’re going to go “he never played a game, what does he know?” It’s stupid. Billy knows wrestling. He understands wrestling. He is a student of the game and not just figuratively and literally. He has that ability to see things. I learned a lot from talking to Billy Corgan about how to build homegrown talent, about how to restructure the roster and repair some the damage that was done. I was just really enthralled by him. Being in the business for 25 years and listening to how he spoke and I’m sure he might feel the same way if I told him my theories on rock and roll. I’ve used a lot of the things I learned from wrestling in rock and roll and he is using a lot of the things he learned from building The Smashing Pumpkins into TNA. I will also say this. I think TNA got him just in the nick of time. I know for me, I wouldn’t say I gave up on TNA, I never really watched it. I was never interested. It was there, I wished it well, but I didn’t participate. Now I am interested. I want to see what Billy does. I am curious to see what kind of changes he can make. I hope they give him the opportunity to do that. There is nobody there to kind of pee in his oatmeal. There is no Eric Bischoff or Hulk Hogan, or those type of really dominant personalities. They don’t have that there. They have a lot of young people. They have an office that is pretty green. I mean Dixie knows a little. She has been running the company for ten years, but it’s not like Vince McMahon. John Gaburick , not like a Pat Patterson. They have got a lot of newer type of people there. I give them credit for bringing Billy in and I’m really excited to see what he can do. I believe in him as a creative element to that company that they never had before. Just because he hasn’t been an actual wrestler, I don’t care. I think he is the right guy at the right time for them.”
Daniel Bryan vacating the Intercontinental Title:
“I feel bad for Daniel because I am a huge Daniel Bryan fan in the ring and out. I’m not just talking personally, but I’m talking about his love for wrestling. He loves wrestling. He is a guy that fans can look up to as far as someone who made it even when the powers that be thought he had nothing. I knew he would make it from the moment he walked in because he made it in other places before. When you get over, it doesn’t matter that you get over in John Schwartz’s Sunday Night wrestling at the Vermont Auditorium on a Sunday afternoon or if it’s the WWE. If you get over, you know how to do that, and he has done it. He got over huge, huge, huge. More than anyone thought. He is a great performer and he has a great mind for the business. Now it seems like his body is breaking down. When you have to give up two major titles basically within a year of each other, especially with the way we think as wrestlers. If you’re hurt, you go out there and the show goes on, no matter what. Daniel is like that, I mean he worked with a detached retina. If he is being told to stay home, it’s worse than you think in my opinion. Because I know me, if someone told me to stay home, I would be like “F that, I’m coming back.” I don’t know what he does. Does he go away like Shawn Michaels did for a couple of years? Now with the Network, there is a lot of ways to still be involved. He can still do a show, or still be involved with Tough Enough, or do commentary, because it seems like he is not ready to come back. If he is vacating the title, this is not a month injury. This is something deeper and more serious than that. I have heard nothing or know nothing. I just know how we think as performers in the business, and the last thing we want to do is vacate a title again. Something is wrong and I hope that he can go away for maybe a year or two like Shawn Michaels did and maybe that will heal him.”
