Chris Jericho On Being Threatened With $7 Million Assassination Bounty

Chris Jericho is no stranger to generating a ton of heat, and sometimes people get mad at him for what he does outside of the ring. That was the case in Abu Dhabi a number of years ago, and Jericho ended up with a bounty on his head.

While speaking to Wrestling Observer Radio, Jericho revealed a very interesting story about himself and Jake Hager. The former Jack Swagger legit had Jericho’s back during an assassination attempt.

Le Champion said that he bumped into someone in a bar and “body checked him” because the guy was being a jerk. That is when the man got really mad and said that his father owns “27% of the country” and he promised Jericho that he would be dead within 24 hours after he placed a $7 million bounty on his head.

That put Jericho in “Larry David mode” as he asked if $7 million is a good price. He wondered if Brad Pitt might fetch $30 million or the guy up the street would cost $100k to take out. This is when Jake Hager had to step in and literally save Jericho from himself.

“Hager was behind me going, ‘this is the Wild West, don’t mess with this guy,’ but this guy had his little posse of characters and they were going to assassinate me, and he was there the whole time like, ‘dude we gotta get out of here.’ I was like, ‘no, I wanna know if $7 million is a good number.'”

“So, I went back to the room and I was like, I was kinda worried. I stayed in my hotel before the show. Then I went to the show and I’m like ‘I hope none of these fans are assassins that are gonna kill me for this $7 million bounty.’ I went back to his room and let this blow over. Guys were sending me pictures trying to get me to go out so I decided to go and I go back to the club and the bouncer is there. He’s like, ‘Oh you weren’t assassinated yet,’ I go ‘no.’ He goes, ‘that motherf*cker says that all the time. His dad doesn’t own the country, he owns the gas station down the street.'”

At the time, they had no idea the threat was fake. Jake Hager still had Chris Jericho’s back even when they all thought that Le Champion was a likely target for a hitman’s scope. Obviously, that loyalty played into Chris Jericho’s decision to pull for Jake Hager’s insertion into the Inner Circle years later.

Transcription by Ringside News