Chris Jericho isn’t just the WWE United States Champion, he’s also a pretty popular podcast host.
The less-dangerous of those two jobs is a natural one for Y2J — the pro wrestler is one of the best promo guys in the business and an accomplished singer, fronting metal band Fozzy. The streaming audio format isn’t Jericho’s first talk radio gig — the “61-minute man” from 2017’s Royal Rumble match used to host an interview show on Nikki Sixx’s SiriusXM channel.
“The show ended one week, and PodcastOne came on my radar the next week,” Jericho told TheWrap. “It was very much an easy transition.”
PodcastOne also happened to be the home of the world’s most-downloaded podcast, “The Adam Carolla Show.” That’s exactly where Jericho learned the still-young medium — and it’s what (and whom) he wants to emulate.
“OK, that’s my competition,” Jericho said of podcasting king Adam Carolla. “I want his job. I want to make it to where my show is a must when anybody is doing press.”
He’s making some progress on the downloads: “Talk Is Jericho” has over 190 million streams to-date. Jericho’s still got a long way to go to catch Carolla, but that’s a pretty hefty sum since December 2013.
The Codebreaker king is actually following Carolla’s footsteps in (several) more ways than one.
“What has Adam Carolla done to get to that point? OK, he’s got his own wine, so I started working on that,” Jericho told us. “That’s the next project that’s getting close to fruition.”
“He’s got his own network,” he continued. “OK great, so when my contract was due last year with PodcastOne and we were renegotiating, one of the things I wanted to do is create my own network.”
And so The Jericho Network was born. The diverse cluster of podcasts cover “wrestling, comedy, music, paranormal, sports and magicians,” per Jericho. “Anything that I think is kinda cool.”
Considering he made scarves and a clipboard the coolest props in wrestling over the past year, we’ll trust Jericho’s judgment on that show-selection process.
New episodes of “Talk Is Jericho” drop Wednesdays and Fridays on PodcastOne.
Read more from our interview with Jericho here, and catch him grappling with former WWE “best friend” Kevin Owens on Sunday, April 2 at “WrestleMania 33.”