Though he’s accomplished pretty much all there is to accomplish in wrestling, Chris Jericho has come up short in his two recent attempts to take the WWE Championship from CM Punk. While the argument could still be made that Jericho is, as he likes to say, “the best in the world at what I do,” it’s hard to say what is next for him in WWE. But for someone who has transcended wrestling to find success with his rock band Fozzy, last year’s Dancing with the Stars and other realms of pop culture, it’s hard to imagine Jericho having a hard time bouncing back from these losses in some way. A showman in every sense of the word (have you seen the jackets he wears to the ring now?), Jericho is not lacking when it comes to entertainment value. With today’s announcement that Fozzy will be on this year’s Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Tour alongside the likes of Shinedown, Adelitas Way and In This Moment, we know Jericho will be away from the ring during August and September. But in this Wrestling with Pop Culture interview, he talks about his jacket, his band and his future with WWE.

Since your return to WWE, you’ve been coming to the ring in an eleborately lit jacket. How much did Dynamo from The Running Man inspire your new jacket?

It’s funny because people say Dynamo and I guess David Hasselhoff wore a jacket similar to that when the [Berlin] Wall got torn down in ’89. But I didn’t know about any of those. The only thing that inspired me was the guy who made it has also done a lighted jacket for Alicia Keys. It wasn’t as extensive as mine, but I had the idea of this wall-to-wall spikes and studs, so we combined the two and that’s how it all came to be.

The jacket was kind of the culmination of the buildup for your return, following a series of mysterious vignettes over the course of several weeks. There seemed to be a good bit of intentional misdirection with those vignettes, implying that maybe they were signalling the return of the Undertaker or Kharma. What was the reason for all the mystery?

A lot of times you just put together some mysterious vignettes. Then it’s like, “Well, what do people take out of that?”. It’s not like we sat down and said, “OK, I want this to be that. Put this right here and put that right here.” You just have to do something vague, but with a point and a purpose. People take what they want out of it and they found a lot of clues that didn’t exist. There’s a lot of things that they’re seeing that aren’t really there.. It’s like the “Paul is dead” theory – Paul McCartney‘s dead, here’s the album cover, here are the clues. But there are really no clues, it’s just people’s imagination. People still ask me to this day, “Who was the girl?” There was no girl. It was just something we put in there to make it creepier.

Why did you have these creepy vignettes, then have this kind of goofy return where you came out with the jacket and didn’t speak for a few weeks?

I don’t know if goofy’s the right word. What it was was, the thing people wanted to see me do the most when I came back was talk. So what if I just don’t talk? What if I just do the exact opposite of what people want? What if I just keep smiling and leading cheers and never saying anything? How will people react? And each week people got angrier and angrier to the point that they were just like, “Screw this guy. Enough of this guy already.”

I wanted something dark because the concept of it was tying into 2012 being the end of the world as you know it, because we’ve been hearing that for so long. As you drive down the road, different turns and things come up that you morph and move with it. I never planned on coming back with black makeup or anything. It was just something different to get people thinking and wondering, “What is this all about? What is the end of the world as you know it?” Which was me coming back and taking back what is mine, which led to CM Punk and all the other people that copied me.

So it wasn’t all that different from your WWE debut with the Y2J thing.

Well, that was the Millennium Man. So it wasn’t really the end of the world, it was more about me coming to save WWE. This time I was coming to take back what was mine and end it. Just something to get people talking.

I interviewed you a few years ago after a Fozzy show just days before you defeated The Rock and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin  to become the Undisputed WWE Champion. That’s one of many things you’ve accomplished in wrestling, but you’ve also accomplished quite a bit outside of wrestling. Is there anything in WWE or elsewhere you have yet to accomplish that you’d like to?

It’s not like I sit down and go, “There’s, like, 100 different things I want to do.” It’s all about what comes up and what interests me that I think I can accomplish. If you look at my track record, it’s all art. I’m an artist and I like being creative. When I was 12, I wanted to be in a band and I wanted to be a wrestler. Those were my two dreams and wrestling took off first, but I continue to play and write music. When Fozzy started in ’99, that was this other passion that I have. Now that Fozzy’s gotten to a higher level, you can kind of see lightning striking again. I’m very fortunate.

Dancing came from that, too. Dancing is creative, it’s show business. Writing is that, acting is that, radio is the same thing. If there’s something exciting and creative that I want to do, I’m going to do it. I’ve turned down a lot of stuff because I can’t do everything. So I just try and concentrate on doing the projects that I want to do. There’s also a certain standard of quality that Chris Jericho has established, so I have to make sure the people that enjoy what I do won’t be let down. I can’t halfass anything.

I ran into your Fozzy bandmate Rich Ward recently and he mentioned that you guys are working on a new album. When will that be out?

That will be out at the end of August and it’s the first record on our new label, Century Media, which is the first major label we’ve ever been with. We’ve kind of carved out this cool little niche where we play very heavy, but very melodic, music. It’s something a lot of bands don’t do now. It’s almost like Metallica combined with Journey or something like that. We’ve really gained a big fan base from that and we’re just continuing down that path and expanding upon that. I think people will be blown away by it. I know we are. We’re really excited about it.

Fozzy originally had a back story about bands like Dio, Twisted Sister and Iron Maiden stealing your songs in the ’80s. Why did you decide to drop that gimmick and reveal who was really in the band?

It was just a fun thing we were doing at the time, almost like Pantera started out as a different band. After a couple of records, we realized we really enjoyed doing it and decided we should take it in a different direction. And that’s what we did. In the beginning the band was a cool, fun hobby. Then we did All That Remains, which was all our own stuff and our own personalities and characters and lives and that’s when it really started getting to the next level.

Having come up short on your two attempts to win the WWE title from CM Punk, what are you plans in WWE going forward?

I have a lot of ideas. That’s one of the reasons I came back was because I had this idea with Punk. I think people make a lot of judgments and read a lot of stuff on the Interweb that they choose to believe, but until you actually see what I have in my head you’ll just have to follow along and enjoy the ride. Don’t analyze it, just enjoy it.

For more information, go to www.chrisjericho.com.