Chris Jericho’s Favorite Pittsburgh Memory Wasn’t In The Ring, But In An Italian Restaurant With Bruno Sammartino
Photo Credit: All Elite Wrestling
All Elite Wrestling takes over Pittsburgh this week, with AEW Dynamite tonight and the debut of AEW Rampage on Friday. Chris Jericho will be featured on both shows, wrestling on Wednesday and doing commentary on Friday.
Chris Jericho was recently a guest on the Bubba Show on 100.7 Star in Pittsburgh to discuss all things AEW. When asked about his favorite wrestling related memory in Pittsburgh, Jericho reveals that it wasn’t actually a match, but an interview with the late-great Bruno Sammartino at a restaurant for his Talk is Jericho podcast:
“Pittsburgh’s a great wrestling community. It’s a great rock and roll community, so it’s actually very, very cool because we’re coming back to Pittsburgh in September for Fozzy for a show at Jergel’s, which sold out like a year and a half ago. It’s one of those shows that we put this tour on sale, and then it kept getting postponed because of the lockdown, but people refused to get refunds. They just kept their tickets, so we’ve had this sold-out show in Pittsburgh as well from a rock and roll standpoint,” he noted, “so there’s been a lot of great memories for Pittsburgh and Jericho.
“But I think my favorite memory in Pittsburgh, it wasn’t necessarily in the ring, but I had Bruno Sammartino—obviously Pittsburgh’s own—on Talk is Jericho, my podcast, and he was super cool about doing it, he was a great guy, but he insisted on doing it at his favorite Italian restaurant. But here’s the best part, when I recorded the show, as you know, recording a podcast, any outside noise, you can really hear it,” Chris Jericho noted, “and this was really cool because you could hear the outside noise all the people in the restaurant eating, but it was this the coolest on ambiance ever, because it was Bruno talking at great length for almost two hours about his whole history and about his upbringing and all that sort of thing, so it was very, very cool.
“The fact that we were doing it in this restaurant, it was a once in a lifetime type of idea, so it was a very cool moment for me. I think it was called Rico’s. It was just an amazing restaurant, and it was one of those where we walked in there, and it was like, ‘Hello Mr. Sammartino, would you like your regular table?’ Just so you know just how tied in Bruno was with this restaurant,” he noted, “I just Googled ‘Bruno Sammartino Italian restaurant Pittsburgh’, and Rico’s came up instantly. So, it took me three seconds to find it. Yeah, just a great, great memory and a great moment.”
Did you listen to this episode of Talk is Jericho? What is your favorite wrestling memory that took place in Pittsburgh? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.