The ‘Festival of Friendship’ is one of the more memorable WWE segments so far in 2017. Kevin Owens turned on his best friend Chris Jericho in a segment that included artwork, magic, dancing and much more.
Chris Jericho was recently interviewed by Live Audio Wrestling. This was to promote his new book: “No Is a Four-Letter Word”. He shared some behind the scenes stories about the day of the segment.
It turns out that this was all Jericho’s idea and he was very passionate about his vision:
“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 by name is on this?” and the looking up and the feeling of, “Oh shit, 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”
Jericho also revealed that he had to fight with Triple H over the segment but he eventually gave in:
“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”
It was an awesome segment and glad Jericho fought for it.
Jericho also told a great story recently of getting drunk with Vince McMahon.
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