Jericho on "Best Damn", Ric Flair talks marketing
Submitted by Dustin Tingue on Sunday, March 23, 2003 at 6:43 PM EST



Chris Jericho was on FOX's "Best Damn Sports Show Period" last Wednesday and for those who missed it, here's a couple tidbits from the show.

Jericho talked about athletes dealing with injuries and being able to play through them. Jericho said he thinks a lot of top paid athletes are a little primadonna when it comes to their injuries. Jericho said if he had a minor injury and he called Vince McMahon and tried to use a minor injury as an excuse to get out of his house show duties, he'd probably be fired.

Jericho did mention that sometimes athletes push themselves too far while working with an injury. He said that athelets know thier bodies best and he knows when he can work through a minor injury or when he needs to have medical attention or time off for one. Jericho came off very professional and spoke very intelligently about the business.

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The following was sent in by Matt Kruszewski to the PWTorch.com website

Ric Flair was interviewed on this month's episode of "Channel Surfing with Lisa," a local cable show used to promote InDemand pay-per-view movies and events for Chicago-area Comcast cable subscribers (Check out www.comcastnetwork.tv for further air dates in your area). I believe this interview took place at the Allstate Arena the last time Raw was in town.

Ric Flair: I think the biggest difference in the business is the marketing, but that entails so much in terms of the characters that the guys build themselves into, the way the company markets them. I don't think there's a marketing concept in the NBA, the NFL, or the NHL that can even compare with the marketing concepts behind the WWE, and the way they promote their wrestlers to the fans, and the show it self.

Lisa Aprati: Well, I think it's amazing that for as long as professional wrestling has existed with the WWE, the storylines change all the time. If you think about it, you are the only organization, the only television show that has live shows every week. Every single week on top of pay-per-view, all year 'round. I mean you really don't get any time off.

Flair: This is a huge, huge creative genius behind all this. Mr. McMahon is a different cat. He's driven. I don't mean driven in terms of anything you would see abnormal, but he obviously enjoys what he's doing, takes a great deal of pride in what he's doing, and he will not let something come out of the door that's not perfect. He's a perfectionist, and my hat's off to him. It takes a special kind of guy.

Aprati: Well the toughest part has to be there really is no competition. You have no competition.

Flair: No, we don't right now, but there's always been competition. He is the kind of guy that will compete with only himself. He's not going to compete with... there is nobody... I would never dream... this would surprise me if I heard Vince McMahon say "I have competition." He doesn't see competition. He drives himself, and he's the mechanism that makes our product. He only competes with himself. You see, WCW was trying to compete with WWE, and that's where they lost their focus. If they had looked at their own product, tried to perfect their own product, worked with the problems within their product, not tried to compete with the WWE, they might still be in business. But there was a huge competition thing there that shouldn't have been. I mean the boys can see the competition, the wrestlers, but management should be, I think, focused on the internal problems and with the company that they work with.

Aprati: The WWE competition that you see out there right now, when you bring in somebody like Brock Lesnar, who was an NCAA amateur wrestler, and you see just the quality that the WWE has now, could you have seen that 10 or 15 years ago that this organization would be where it is now in the year 2003?

Flair: Yeah, well, I mean Kurt Angle won a gold medal in '96, I mean, Jack Brisco, who was a pro wrestler years ago... There's been lots of national champions but now you wouldn't know that Brock Lesnar... except for that small group of amateur wrestling people, which I'm one of them because one of my sons is an amateur wrestler. There's only a small group that follows that, but now, because of WWE the whole world is aware of what Brock accomplished and being a national champion is something that is, in my eyes, second to nothing. I mean, I think being a national champion in wrestling is far bigger than being on a national championship team in football. That's just me because I'm for amateur wrestling. It's a huge accomplishment, it's a one-on-one sport. But if you take what Brock did and you take that and give it to the WWE and you let them market it and talk about it, it becomes huge, huge and everybody's aware of it. And that's the difference. We've had a lot of national champions in our business in the 30 years I've been in it, but none of them with the kind of exposure that Kurt Angle and Brock have had. And, of course, Kurt winning the gold medal, that's as big as it comes.

Lisa and Ric then talked up WrestleMania for a while.

At the end of the show, Lisa had a tribute to Curt Hennig, who made several appearances on the show in the past year. There were clips of Hennig performing in WCW and WWE, and clips form his "Channel Surfing" appearances. In December 2001, Curt discussed the importance of entertaining the live audience, and how much he loved his job. He also discussed how he didn't plan to become a wrestler, but a football injury put him in a wrestling camp, so a negative became a positive. In February 2002, Curt discussed how it's important for veterans like him to literally show the ropes to the younger wrestlers and pass on their knowledge of the business. He also cut a brief promo: "There's only only one Mr. Perfect, and you're looking at him. And remember, nobody beats Mr. Perfect, nobody!" Rest in peace.

[Thanks to Matt Kruszewski, PWTorch.com correspondent]

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Credit: PWTorch.com








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