10 Most Old School Wrestlers Of WWE's Modern Era

People who only known Y2J as a part time wrestler, writer, rock star and comic actor don’t know Jericho.

He was a nine year veteran when he started in the WWF in summer 1999, having worked pretty much everywhere you could get a job wrestling in those nine years: Japan, Mexico, Europe, all over the US and Canada, including a short but valuable stint in ECW and a longer and much less valuable stretch in WCW.

When he finally made it to the WWF, his goal from day one, Jericho had a lot of the same kind of heat that CM Punk would get seven or eight years later in an almost identical position: he knew his worth, he thought that the company knew it too, and he would constantly butt up against the notion that he wasn’t as good as he thought he was.

That heat may have died down, but over the years Jericho’s been the victim of backstage politicking and chosen his own path through that minefield. He maintained a front facelock on his own brand, refusing to allow wishy washy booking to dilute who ‘Chris Jericho’ was. Still one of the best heels in the business, he refuses to take the hot pop of the ‘cool heel’: he won’t even let the company sell his merchandise when he’s playing a bad guy.

Despite his WWF/E obsession, his attitude towards business is very much that of the grizzled veterans of old. Jericho may have chosen a different path to protect his name - music and acting - but the reasoning is still based on a classic old school mentality, that of ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper, Terry Funk, even Hulk Hogan back in the day. You fight your corner, you don’t back down and if you don’t get what you want, you walk away and go somewhere you will.

Behind the bad jokes and the worse clothes, behind the cocksure !*$% rock attitude, Chris Jericho is a scrapper, a fighter who doesn’t back down from anything, who’s worked a match with a freshly broken arm without changing the layout because he said he would, who’s fronted up to Bill Goldberg and Brock Lesnar when he’s felt disrespected, who was fined by Vince McMahon for heeling it up too hard in Brazil and turned around, told him to go f*ck himself and never paid a penny.

But that’s Jericho: he’s a consummate all-round entertainer, a part time wrestler, writer, rock star and comic actor, and he approaches every facet of that entertainment career with an indomitable, pugnacious old school mindset.