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The son of former NHL
player Ted
Irvine, World Wrestling
Entertainment (WWE) superstar Chris Jericho learned to wrestle
in Stu Hart's "dungeon" along with other wrestlers of his
era such as Chris Benoit, Brian Pillman, and Lance
Storm.
During the early years of his
career, Jericho wrestled in many regional promotions as well
as touring Mexico and Japan. He formed a highly
respected tag team with Lance Storm known as the Thrillseekers
in Smokey Mountain Wrestling (SMW) before moving to Extreme
Championship Wrestling (ECW) where he won the ECW Television
Title.
Jericho began wrestling for World
Championship Wrestling (WCW) where he had many highly rated
matches against opponents such as Chris
Benoit, Arn Anderson, Eddie Guerrero, Konnan, Perry
Saturn, Booker T, Alex Wright, Dean Malenko, and Syxx-Pac.
Jericho would hold the WCW cruiserweight title on four
occasions as well as the WCW TV Title. Jericho would
begin referring to Monday Night Nitro as Monday Night
Jericho.
Not content to rest on his laurels,
Jericho challenged newcomer Bill Goldberg to wrestle.
Mocking the swarm of security that escorted Goldberg to the
ring, Jericho introduced his own bodyguard Ralphus, a balding
overweight man he found backstage. Unfortunately,
Goldberg did not appreciate Jericho's sense of humor and
refused to wrestle him.
While Jericho had achieved a great
amount of success in WCW, he realized that he had gone as far
as he could. At the time, WCW was pushing bigger
wrestlers and so Jericho left WCW for the World Wrestling
Federation (WWF).
At the time, the world was
concerned about the Y2K bug (a computer glitch that supposedly
would fry the world's computers when the year 2000 arrived). A
Y2J Countdown clock began appearing on Monday Night RAW.
At the 1999 edition of Summerslam, Jericho debuted in the WWF
where he interrupted a promo being cut by the Road Dogg, Jesse
James. Jericho began feuding with Chyna over the
Intercontinental Title before winning it at the 1999
Armageddon pay-per-view. Y2J (as he was calling himself) lost
the I-C strap to Kurt Angle but won the European Title during
a three-way match between Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle at
Wrestlemania XVI.
Throughout the next two years,
Jericho battled a variety of WWF superstars and made several
unsuccessful challenges for the WWF Heavyweight
championship.
During WCW Invasion angle in
the summer of 2001, Chris Jericho kept by the WWF's side as it
battled the combined forces of ECW and WCW. Jericho
defeated the Rock for the WCW World Heavyweight title.
Despite being on the same side, Jericho and the Rock had
tremendous tension between themselves. After helping the
WWF defeat WCW and ECW, Jericho turned heel and defeated
"Stone Cold" Steve Austin and the Rock to become the first
undisputed heavyweight champion in the WWF. Assisted by
longtime nemesis Stephanie McMahon, Y2J would hold the title
until Wrestlemania XVII when he lost to Triple H.
Recently, Chris Jericho challenged
John Cena for the WWE Title at
SummerSlam. RAW General Manager had chosen Jericho as
his agent to dethrone Cena but when Cena lost at SummerSlam,
he forced Jericho into a match on Monday Night RAW where
Jericho's career was on the line against Cena's title.
After losing the match to Cena, Jericho was promptly booted
from RAW.
According to interviews with
Jericho, he plans on touring with his band Fozzy and it is
only a question of when and not if he will return to the
ring.
Recently, Jericho began
appearing on the show Celebrity Duets. | 
