Jimmy Jacobs Reveals The Origin Of The List Of Jericho, Hardy/Kassidy On The Firm Deletion Match
The List of Jericho is among the most popular props in professional wrestling, and it turns out Chris Jericho wasn’t the one to come up with the idea.
The List of Jericho was rather the brainchild of former WWE writer Jimmy Jacobs.
Appearing as a guest on the “McGuireOnWrestling” podcast, Jacobs recalled coming up with the idea and pitching it to Jericho in 2016.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how The List came about: “We were in Memphis and Jericho was going to come out and air his grievances against Mick Foley. I thought, ‘He should have a list of grievances, like a physical list.’ I thought about, in real life, Steve Corino has the Corino Shit List. The people who, in his life and in his career, they make his list and they are dead to him. I thought, ‘What if Jericho has the same sort of thing, except he’s super petty and puts all sorts of people on it for all different reasons.’ Once I came up with that, I knew it was a good idea because I started having more ideas on top of it. That’s when you know you have a good idea, when you’re in a creative room and someone pitches something and a bunch of people start piling on, you know you have something with some legs.”
On pitching the idea to Chris Jericho: “I came up with what I thought was good, I pitched it to Chris, and he was like, ‘So, you’re talking about doing this for more than just tonight?’ ‘Yeah, this could be your thing. You’ve been doing the gift of Jericho, drinking it in. This can be like the List of Jericho.’
“He got it right away and added on to it and added the big clipboard and the way he would deliver the click of the pen. He really brought it to life. It was a fun time getting a thing that hit the bullseye. For a while, that would get the biggest reactions on Raw, when Chris Jericho would put your name on the list. That’s what you build to.”
On when he knew The List was going to become big: “For me, it was when Chris had to turn babyface, because he had to turn babyface, and they would end the house shows with him putting the city on the list. That, to me, was ‘we made it.’ You always send the people home with the biggest pop. It’s not enough to get the one, two, three. After the match, you cut the promo, ‘You know what happens Phoenix? You know what happens when you’re a great crowd? You just made the list.’ That was a big deal for me.”
Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, Isiah Kassidy, and HOOK were on the winning team for The Firm Deletion Match that saw Stokely Hathaway’s group get defeated (or deleted) at The Hardy Compound a couple of weeks ago on AEW Rampage.
On the latest edition of “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast, Kassidy and Matt discussed the execution of the cinematic match.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Kassidy on how the match turned out: “I loved it. There was little parts that I wish they still kept in. There’s one part, after I did the Swanton, and Matt was like, ‘I knew you’d come,’ I was like, ‘I always do.’ Me and Matt, we had the perfect dap-up. It clicked. I wished they had that. It was also more little things that don’t come to mind right now. The reception has been so great. That’s what we talked about with the moan and all the crazy stuff that we did. It’s been great.”
Hardy on the match: “I think I had this picture of perfection about how the match would be, if we got to do everything that we could. But between weather, which is something you have to deal with, you have to work with it, and then also, there were some people that had to be out of there at a certain time, and we didn’t shoot as late as we typically did. We moved through this a lot faster than we did a lot of TNA matches back in the day. Because of time constraints and weather issues, we had to change a lot of the match, and that just made me second-guess, like, ‘Is this gonna be okay? I think we still did pretty good, but is it gonna be okay?’ It could have been so much better if we would have gotten everything. But at the end of the day, I was really happy with what we came out with. The response has been so good. It had been overwhelmingly positive, and people really seemed to be entertained by it. That’s what we’re here for.”
Kassidy on being nervous about the match: “I was so nervous, from when we shot, all the way to the day it aired. Every day, I was just nervous, thinking about, man, how is it gonna come out? We filmed so much stuff. We finished real late, and it was like, ‘How’s it gonna come out? I really hope we did it justice.’ Like Matt said, we didn’t really get to film everything that we wanted to. If we filmed everything that we wanted to, oh man. Like the cameos and stuff that we were going to have. If we filmed everything… it still is chef’s kiss, but it would have been like two chef’s kisses.”
Kassidy on his mindset for the match: “I feel like everybody in that match wanted to make this match the best possible cinematic match. That was my mindset going into it. I wanted to make this the best cinematic match. I was really hoping that we was able to film everything that we planned. I made sure I brought three energy drinks so I wouldn’t go to sleep so I was up. I wanted to throw all my weight to make sure this was the best cinematic match. I feel like with the story that we had, going all the way back to September, all the way now through May, I feel like it deserved to be the best possible cinematic match produced ever. I wanted it to be the best cinematic-produced match ever. I don’t know if the fans view it that way, but I think we did a pretty, pretty good job.”
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