Chris Jericho officially wrapped up his most recent run with WWE shortly after WrestleMania 33, and many fans feel that his latest run was the best of his career. Jericho accomplished a lot during his last run with the company, and he gave fans many segments that we will never forget.
One of the most memorable segments was without a doubt the Festival of Friendship which saw Kevin Owens turn on Chris Jericho. The Fozzy frontman has been busy as of late promoting his new book No Is A Four Letter Word, and he recently spoke to Live Audio Wrestling about what went on behind the scenes with the Festival of Friendship.
According to Chris, the Festival of Friendship was something he had been planning for months, but on the day it was supposed to happen Vince McMahon wasn’t backstage and he was being pressured to make some changes.
“The Festival of Friendship is something I had pitched months before. “Friendship the Magician” was something I pitched right off the bat, the dancing girls was something I pitched off the bat, getting thrown through the TV is kind of a homage to me throwing Shawn through the TV. So all this stuff got approved and then finally, we decided to do it in Vegas. But here’s the big thing, the day we had the show, Vince wasn’t there, and they tried to change it to where Kevin would just attack me. And my whole thing was, the whole drama is the revealing of The List of KO and, “Hey, how come my name is on this?” and the looking up and the feeling of, “Oh s**t, don’t do it, don’t do it,” and then he attacks. I was telling Triple H, if you watch a horror movie and there’s two guys in a forest and one of them gets his head chopped off from behind, he never saw it coming, there’s no stakes at all. The other turns around the corner and sees the killer with the big knife and he’s like, “Oh shit.” Everyone knows it’s gonna happen before the guy does. And then when the guy notices, he’s done. I said, “This is the Red Wedding. It’s Game of Thrones. It’s the big reveal that you do not expect coming.”
Despite the pressure to change the segment, Jericho didn’t back down and he apparently got into some heated arguments with Triple H.
“I had to fight for that all day long, and there was some real heated debates going on between me and Triple H. I said, “This is the way we’re doing it. It’s the way I explained it to Vince. I’ll call Vince right now while he’s in a plane. I don’t care, I’ll find him. I’ll send a carrier pigeon to get him.” And finally, I think it was just exasperation where they said fine. And then when it worked out afterwards I get nothing but calls and praise and texts. Once again, sometimes you gotta stand up for yourself. I knew that my idea was right. I’m not always right but I knew that I was right. It had to be the slow reveal of everyone in the building knowing that I’m done before it happens.”
Luckily Jericho stuck to his guns on this one, because it’s hard to imagine that the Festival of Friendship could have been any better than what we got.
