Falls Count Anywhere

02-10-09

Don't strain yourself.

Everyone in wrestling is talking about Chris Jericho. Yes, the Observer’s Wrestler of the Year is all the rage again because of all his rage. It’s an ugly incident in a career that many consider to be rather classy…even if he was a partier like everyone else back in the day.

According to the Observer and various other sites, after a show in Victoria, British Columbia, Jericho walked out of the building to his rental car. There were a ton of folks there waiting to get autographs and such, and when he stopped at a stop sign, a fan came and started banging on the car door.

A bunch of folks then flooded into the street. Jericho got out of the car and then as he was getting out, one of the fans closed the door on him. Jericho then got out and punched the fan and then a couple of others stepped up and he scrambled with them, too.

There was a woman who was in Jericho’s face and apparently he spit on her and then swore at her, followed by her spitting on him and pushing Jericho. Jericho turned to get into his car when all hell broke loose. Apparently someone pushed him and he turned and started swinging, including clocking the woman. It was an ugly incident and it was well-documented by various cameras. You can find at least three different versions of the incident on YouTube (including the most complete one here).

The reality line blurred...

First off, they didn’t provide adequate protection for Jericho as he was driving out. There were no barriers, no guardline, no nothing to prevent a fan from just running out and approaching Jericho’s vehicle. More than one person stated that at first, the guards just sat there and watched what was happening. Maybe they couldn’t have stopped the first fan from running up to the car, but they should have immediately gotten there and pulled him away. They never should have allowed the car to get mobbed.

Once the fists started flying, they tried to restrain him and the fans, but they failed. He told them, in rather harsh words, to do their job, and they tried, but they failed. Jericho even pushed a couple of them around. Security, all of it appearing to be arena security and not WWE security, failed miserably, and you can see it on a couple of the videos.

What does this mean? Well, it’s hard to say. The biggest worry is certainly that Jericho will get arrested for assault. He certainly could get dinged for that; he really did go over-board, but I kind of doubt it would lead to any jail time. The videos certainly show that Jericho was being mobbed and it could certainly be claimed that Jericho felt seriously threatened.

If you listen to what the swarm of people were saying, they were all certainly spouting traditional Mark-ish phrasing about Jericho being a disgrace to Canadians and so on. This should remind folks that Jericho is a very effective heel, and this kind of stuff has happened to heels since the start of wrestling with storylines. Guys have been stabbed, had bottles thrown at them and even worse over the years, but we haven’t seen anything like this in years. It’s a bad thing.

At least "The Ram" is a face...

The big thing is does this elevate Jericho or not. Sometimes, things like this will make a star bigger, especially if they integrate it into storyline. Jericho’s match with Mickey Rourke for WrestleMania has been cancelled, though there are those who say that as soon as the Oscars are over, it’ll be back on and that the only reason they publicly scrapped it was that they didn’t want to effect Rourke’s Oscar chances by wrestling.

That might be a good reason, but there’s still time to promote the match after he wins the statue, and he will because there was no one even close to him as far as performance goes, and that could do a little money.

All in all, Jericho is the topic of conversation.

That’s all for this week. More later!

Chris Garcia