Chris Jericho American Professional Wrestler Born in 1970

Early life

Chris Jericho was born Christopher Keith Irvine on 9 November 1970 in Manhasset, New York. His father, Ted Irvine, was an ice hockey player with the New York Rangers at the time, and when his playing career ended the family settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where he grew up. He holds both American and Canadian citizenship. He attended Westwood Collegiate and then Red River College in Winnipeg, graduating in 1990 with a diploma in creative communications.

He became interested in professional wrestling by watching local events at the Winnipeg Arena with his family. Footage of Owen Hart made him want to wrestle himself, and he named Bret Hart, Ricky Steamboat and Shawn Michaels among his other inspirations. His first work in the business was with the ring crew of a regional promotion.

Career

At nineteen he enrolled in the Hart Brothers School of Wrestling, where he met Lance Storm. He made his debut on 2 October 1990 in Ponoka, Alberta, in a time-limit draw against Storm, and the two went on to team as Sudden Impact. By his own later account he took the name Jericho from the album Walls of Jericho by the German band Helloween. Through the early 1990s he worked in Canada, Japan and Mexico. In Mexico he joined Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre in 1993 and held the NWA World Middleweight Championship for around eleven months, and in Japan he won titles in Wrestling and Romance (WAR).

In 1996 he joined Extreme Championship Wrestling, where he won the television title, and later that year moved to World Championship Wrestling (WCW). There he held the Cruiserweight Championship several times and the World Television Championship. He signed with the World Wrestling Federation on 30 June 1999 and arrived on television in August of that year, billing himself as Y2J.

In his first WWF run he took the Intercontinental Championship several times, and in December 2001 he defeated The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin on the same night to become the first Undisputed WWF Champion, holding both the WWF and WCW world titles at once. He later won the World Heavyweight Championship three times, and in total he held the Intercontinental title a record nine times. He is counted as a Triple Crown champion and as a Grand Slam champion. He left in 2005, came back in 2007 for a long feud with Shawn Michaels that two wrestling publications named feud of the year, and won the 2008 Slammy Award for Superstar of the Year. A further return began in 2012. His last WWE match, to date, was the 2018 Greatest Royal Rumble.

After leaving WWE he worked for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, where he challenged Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 12 in a match that became the first of his career to receive a five-star rating from journalist Dave Meltzer. He later won the IWGP Intercontinental Championship from Tetsuya Naito, becoming the first man to hold both the WWE and IWGP versions of that title. He also began a yearly wrestling cruise, Rock 'N' Wrestling Rager at Sea, in 2018.

In January 2019 he signed with All Elite Wrestling. At All Out on 31 August 2019 he beat Adam Page to become the first AEW World Champion, and he lost the title to Jon Moxley in February 2020 after a 182-day reign. In AEW he led the stables The Inner Circle and later the Jericho Appreciation Society, and in September 2022 he won the ROH World Championship. His AEW work includes the weekly television shows Dynamite and Rampage.

Outside wrestling he has been the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Fozzy since 1999. He competed on the 2011 season of Dancing with the Stars, hosted the game show Downfall and presented the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in the United Kingdom in 2012 and 2017. His screen credits include Android Apocalypse (2006), Albino Farm and Bloodstained Memoirs (both 2009), MacGruber (2010), KillRoy Was Here (2022) and Dark Match (2024).

Recognition

Jericho was inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame in 2010 and holds the Order of the Buffalo Hunt. Among his titles are the Undisputed WWF Championship, the AEW World Championship and the ROH World Championship, and he shared the 2009 Tag Team of the Year Slammy Award with Big Show as Jeri-Show, which made him the only person to win both the Superstar and Tag Team of the Year Slammys.