10 Most Badass Wrestlers On The Planet Today
6. Chris Jericho
Y2J might be best known for his sparkly jackets and earworm catchphrases in 2017, but the Ayatollah of Rock n’ Rolla has also amassed a reputation for being a no-nonsense tough guy backstage.
His most famous altercation was with Goldberg, who had allegedly been bad-mouthing Jericho when the two men wound up in WWE in the early 2000s. Goldberg had famously refused to go through with an angle with Jericho in WCW, and tensions carried over to Vince McMahon’s company several years later. The story goes that when Y2J confronted the former Atlanta Falcon, Goldberg put his hand around Jericho’s throat, prompting Jericho to take the much larger man down and put him in a front facelock, using techniques he’d learned from his time as a bouncer.
If Goldberg wasn’t enough, Jericho also famously stood up to Brock Lesnar after his SummerSlam 2016 main event against Randy Orton. Jericho was of the opinion that Lesnar had gone off book, choosing to level Orton with unplanned shoot elbows until he bled. The two men exchanged heated words after the match, with varying accounts claiming that the confrontation turned violent. Jericho has never fully clarified specific aspects of the incident, but his emotional response to the so-called ‘brouhaha’ is pretty badass in and of itself:
"I’ve never backed down and I think sometimes in the case of guys his size, they think most people are just gonna wilt and most people do but that’s not me, that’s not my background, that’s not what I came up from growing up where I grew up in Winnipeg, and my dad’s lineage of being in the NHL…"