Chris Jericho on heel turn: You have to know when people hate you

Chris Jericho enjoys making people angry.

Jericho appeared on KCAL News in Los Angeles yesterday to promote tonight’s AEW Dynamite at the KIA Forum. During the interview, he spoke about his recent heel turn and transition into “The Learning Tree.”

“The one thing about wrestling that’s very important is you have to understand the concepts of being a good guy, and when that starts getting stale, of being a bad guy,” Jericho said on the show.

“People say (wrestling’s) like a soap opera. In that way, it is a soap opera. You know, he’s a good guy and then suddenly something happens and you don’t like him for a while. And you have to be able to read the room on that,” he continued.

When the host of the show suggested Jericho was too “lovely” to be hated, he responded:

“Well, I’m a very charming guy. I mean, it’s hard to believe that people don’t like me but sometimes they don’t. And that’s okay, that’s the beauty of wrestling, you just lean into it and I take great pride in, kind of, making people angry with things because that’s what you want to do, you’re playing a character, you know what I mean? When Chris Jericho comes on screen in AEW, it’s different from the Chris Jericho that we’re talking to right now. And that’s the way it should be. A larger-than-life character is kind of what wrestling is all about and I embrace that wholly.”

Jericho is scheduled to debut a new segment on AEW Dynamite tonight named “TV Time with The Learning Tree Chris Jericho.” He’s coming off successfully defending his FTW title against Hook and Katsuyori Shibata at Double or Nothing on Sunday.