Chris Jericho gets heat
Chris Jericho’s WWE debut in Chicago was magical. The company had a countdown clock running through much of the summer that finally culminated on August 9, 1999. The countdown hit zero that night and it was revealed that it was all leading to Y2J. (Get it? Because late ’90s.) Jericho looked like an instant superstar in the segment as he dueled on the microphone with The Rock and the crowd ate it up. Jericho’s second night in the company in Milwaukee did not go nearly as well.
Jericho was told to interrupt one of the top stars in the company, The Undertaker. The longtime WWE star was the veteran leader of the locker room and one of the most respected people backstage. He was the one guy in the company that you didn’t want to cross. The Undertaker was teaming with Big Show and calling himself the “Personification of Evil” at this time. In front of 14,178 at the Bradley Center, The Undertaker cut a long, strange promo about riding motorcycles in the desert and leaving Big Show to die. It was weird, but worst of all it was boring.
When Jericho subsequently called The Undertaker “the personification of boring” in his promo, he was in big trouble. As Jericho tells in his book Undisputed:
Jericho would eventually stop pissing people off and become one of the biggest stars in the world, but his first WWE Milwaukee appearance would prove to be one of the lower points of his run.