Chris Jericho says fans singing “Judas” is too important to the experience of an AEW live event to change his theme song.
Chris Jericho became a babyface in AEW in 2021, but prior to that, fans had begun to sing his theme song, “Judas” by Fozzy at all live events. Eventually, this became Central to Chris Jericho's presentation as a good guy on television and fans would even sing him to the ring despite no audio track being played when Chris Jericho fought Maxwell Jacob Friedman in 2021.
Now, in a new interview with Spin, Chris Jericho admits that he gave some serious thought to changing his theme song following his recent heel turn and the formation of the Jericho Appreciation Society but both he and Tony Khan agreed that the song is too important to the fan experience to change it for the sake of an angle.
"Well, the thing about 'Judas' is, it was a hit before I started using it [as entrance music], right out of the gate,” he explained. “We did the video, it did 1 million views in a week. Why? I don’t know. Whatever reason, people gravitated toward that song. That’s why I started using it as my ring music. I needed a new song because I had switched from WWE to New Japan [Pro Wrestling]. I thought, well, let me use “Judas,” and maybe there’ll be a promoter who hears the song and brings us over to Japan. Then I realized, this is a great entrance song!
“So, when AEW started, I brought ‘Judas’ over there, and then it became part of the show,” Jericho carried on. “For whatever reason, people just felt a real inspiration from that song and wanted to sing it as I came to the ring. Now, I did just change my character, I went from being a good guy to being a bad guy. We thought about not using ‘Judas’ anymore. But then I thought, why? Why change it? My boss [AEW president Tony Khan] agreed because we have a very unique, very cool moment in our AEW presentation, in that people love singing this song. As a bad guy, I could take it away but then you’re losing this really special moment. People singing ‘Judas’ transcends being a good guy or a bad guy in AEW, it’s just something cool that’s part of the show. It’s like going to a KISS concert and they don’t play ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ because they’re trying to be creative. It’s like, fuck, we don’t care, that’s the song we want to hear!”
On television, Chris Jericho and the Jericho Appreciation Society recently made new enemies in William Regal and the Blackpool Combat Club. Learn more here.
Chris Jericho and his band, Fozzy, recently put out a new album. Learn more here.