Original Plans For Celebrity Match At WrestleMania 25 Revealed

In a recent interview with Inside The Ropes, Chris Jericho revealed he was originally set to face Hollywood actor Mickey Rourke in a one-on-one match at WrestleMania 25.

The former World Heavyweight Champion revealed that he and Vince McMahon both knew that the match wouldn’t be the most athletic or technically proficient on the card, but they wanted to great an entertaining WrestleMania moment.

Jericho would say:

Vince called me in to his office and said here’s what we’re going to do: you’re going to have a match with Mickey Rourke at WrestleMania, it’s going to be an attraction. Which is what I said, ‘Certain matches at WrestleMania are earmarked to be the classics, or at least given the shot to be, others are on the show just to give everybody a reason to be on the card, the others are attractions. Ronda Rousey at WrestleMania last year was the attraction.”

Plans changed however when Rourke announced in a red carpet interview that he was going to face Jericho on the “grandest stage of them all” before the company planned on doing so. Vince McMahon strategically wanted to announce the match after the Oscars.

On Rourke’s slip-up, Jericho said:

“Then, because he called me out at the SAG Awards, his agents flipped out…[they told him] that you’re not going to win an Oscar if you’re involved with the WWE – the dirty scumbags of the WWE. You can’t do this match, you have to pull out. And Vince was so mad because he wasn’t going to announce the match until after the Oscars, but Rourke, whatever happened, I think he got excited, maybe he’s a little loaded, he announced it himself. Vince was like, ‘F***!’ I knew as soon as he announced it that the match was off.”

Jericho praised his former boss’ ability to adapt. The changed plans meant that Jericho instead went after WWE legends of the past. He even had a program with Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, to which Jericho had to say:

“Vince’s motto is take a negative and turn it in to a positive, and he was spinning his wheels, and the idea of The Wrestler was these guys that hang on too long, and I would now wrestle with three guys that have hung on too long…Snuka, Piper, and Steamboat, and I’m like, ‘S***, this is great!’ I know I can do something with Steamboat because Steamboat is one of my heroes when I was a kid, along with Owen Hart and Shawn Michaels. I never got to work with Owen, but I had this great thing with Shawn, and then I got to do something with Steamboat.”

Jericho would go on to say the following about having the chance to work with one of his childhood heroes:

“We did the match and it turned out so great and Steamboat was so good that Vince signed him to be, like, a player coach, and we ended up having about six or seven more matches… Roddy was great and I know he was mad because I beat him in, like, a minute with an Enziguri. I beat Snuka with the Walls and I beat Steamboat with the Codebreaker, but at least with Steamboat, it was really cool. And we built it up well – Flair was out there, and Rourke came in at the end and punched me in the face and gets the celebrity [spot].”

This revelation comes just one day after Y2J claimed that WWE had “banned” him from having their performers on his podcast after he was confirmed as having signed for All Elite Wrestling.

• Mickey Rourke
• wrestlemania 25
• chris jericho
• wwe

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