During a recent episode of Talk is Jericho, renowned professional wrestler Chris Jericho shared an interesting tale about his experience creating wrestling cruises. Jericho had originally conceived the idea of featuring NXT talent on his cruise but was hesitant to recruit talent from the independent scene without the appropriate connections.
Upon proposing the notion of featuring NXT on his cruise to Triple H in Philadelphia, Jericho encountered skepticism from the outset. Despite his firm belief that wrestling on a cruise ship was tantamount to putting on a rock concert at sea, his argument failed to convince some.
After lengthy discussions with NXT, Jericho was informed that they were not interested in participating, leaving him disappointed and frustrated. Jericho was left even more bewildered upon learning that the ultimate rejection was due to Vince McMahon’s dislike of cruises. It was rumored that McMahon had become aware of a past occurrence where passengers contracted food poisoning on a cruise, leading him to believe that every cruise posed a health hazard.
“The first thing that I did was, my first idea was I’m gonna have NXT come aboard. Because I was like, ‘I’m not a promoter. I don’t know where to pull guys from Indies.’ If I can work with a company and then they can send whoever they want. I don’t have to worry about that part of it. They can book the matches. They can have whatever they wanna do. So I approached Hunter [Triple H] in Philadelphia. I remember I had a meeting with him about having NXT on my cruise. Now people thought I was nuts at first. They always think I’m nuts when I have these ideas like ‘How are you gonna have wrestling in the middle of the ocean?’ I’m like, ‘Well dude I just played a f*cking rock show in the middle the ocean. It’s the same thing.’ Sometimes it’s a little bit [wobbly] but most of the time it’s pretty smooth. It’s not dangerous.”
“So I talked with NXT for a while and then in classic WWF fashion, they finally called me in a group call with about seven people on it, and [took] 45 minutes to tell me that they weren’t interested. I was like you could have just said ‘Hey guys, we’re not interested. Bye.’ 45 minutes. The reason I found out was that, this is so classic, Vince [McMahon] doesn’t like cruises. Because he had just seen the news, where I guess there was a cruise where a bunch of people got food poisoning. Something happened where like whatever. It’s not gonna happen on this cruise. I guarantee that. He was convinced that every cruise, people die of food poisoning, he was like, ‘Yeah, he’s worried that there might be problems with the ship.’ I am like, ‘What? He’s scared it’s gonna hit an f*cking iceberg? We’re going to Mexico, it’s fine.'”
However, Jericho refused to let the setback impede his ambition. He promptly contacted Cody, who introduced him to Hunter Delirious, and subsequently, Joe Koff of Ring of Honor. In an impressive feat, Jericho had sealed the deal with Ring of Honor within 10 minutes.
“So anyways NXT passed and as soon as that 45 minute waste of time call was done, I picked up the phone and called Cody who connected me with Hunter Delirious who connected me with Joe Koff of Ring of Honor. We had the Ring of Honor deal done in about 10 minutes. That quick.”
