Christopher Keith Irvine (a.k.a. Chris Jericho) was born on November 9, 1970 in Manhasset, New York, the only child of Ted and Loretta Irvine. Ted Irvine was a National Hockey player and was playing for the New York Rangers when his son was born (not literally!).

In 1975, Jericho’s dad was traded to the St Louis Blues and the family moved from Long Island to the Midwest Town where Jericho started his schooling. In 1977, Ted Irvine retired from the NHL and the family moved back to his hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada where Jericho grew up and finished his education and a place that he still calls home to this day.

Hockey, understandably was one of Jericho’s early passions and while his Dad didn’t pressurise him to play, Jericho had a genuine interest in the sport and is a regular participant in SuperSkate, an annual Charity Hockey Game in New York City that raises money for Cheering for Children and the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundations.

In high school Jericho preferred the more creative subjects such as English, drama and of course music. He started playing bass guitar at the age of 14. His musical tastes varied from the Beatles to the heavy metal bands of the mid 80’s such as Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue. Jericho formed a garage band with some of his friends and they called themselves “Scimitar”. They played some parties and battle of the bands contests during Jericho’s high school years between 1985 and 1988.

The band helped Jericho to develop his early performance skills. In a high school production of Oliver, Jericho played the part of Bill Sykes which allowed Jericho to play his first bona fida Heel!. (A skill that he is very adept at to this day).

Jericho found his true calling in professional wrestling. After the family moved to Winnipeg when he was 7, he began to watch the Minnesota based American Wrestling Association on television with his grandmother, Jessica Irvine. By the time he was 12, Jericho was attending monthly wrestling matches in Winnipeg with his friends and his Dad. In High School, Jericho began to watch the WWF on television at the height of its “Rock and Wrestling” era and Jericho wanted to be a part of it.

Stampede Wrestling in Calgary, Alberta caught Jericho’s attention because of the different style of wrestling they promoted. Performers such as Owen Hart exhibited the technical, hard hitting and high flying Japanese Style rarely seen at that time in America and Canada. By the age of 17, Jericho had quit hockey because it interfered with his weight training and thus his dream of becoming a professional wrestler. Jericho wanted to enrol in the Hart Brothers School of Wrestling - “The Dungeon” run by The Hart family’s patriarch, Stu Hart- but at 17 (he needed to be 18 to be accepted into a wrestling school) was too young so he enrolled in Winnipeg’s Red River Community College and took a two year course in journalism. He left college with his degree in journalism and then headed off to Calgary to enrol in The Hart Brother’s school of Wrestling.

All it took was a letter and a $2,000 fee for a two month camp and Jericho began his formal wrestling training in July 1990. Stampede Wrestling had shut down three months before Jericho arrived in Calgary but he didn’t let the disappointment of not being able to eventually wrestle for the promotion distract him from his training and his dream of becoming a professional wrestler.

Only two wrestler’s were given permission to stay in Calgary to continue training, Chris Jericho and Lance Evers (a.k.a. Lance Storm). Jericho and Storm quickly became friends because of their similar passion for Wrestling and they continued to train together in The Dungeon. On October 2, 1990 the two faced each other in their first professional match. They battled to a 10 minute draw at The Moose Hall in Penoka, Alberta.

After his debut, Jericho hit the road and travelled from town to town in search of independent bookings. After a few failed gimmicks, Jericho began wrestling under his current name - “Chris Jericho”. He took the name from the bible and the story of the City of Jericho and named his back breaking submission move, The Walls of Jericho after an album of the same name by heavy metal band, Helloween.

In the year after his debut, Jericho wrestled in about 40 matches in Alberta and British Columbia, many of them as part of a Tag Team. He and Lance Storm had formed the team “Sudden Impact”. In October 1991, they travelled to Japan for a three week tour with Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling (FMW). As Sudden Impact, they impressed the Japanese Wrestlers and fans alike with their high flying moves as no other performer in Japan was doing that style of wrestling at the time.

Jericho earned about $600 per week, the most he had made wrestling up to that point. Even though Sudden Impact were promised an invitation back by FMW, that didn’t materialise. Jericho arrived back in Canada in November 1991. He didn’t wrestle again until January 1992.

Jericho funded his wrestling by working as a bouncer in a bar in Winnipeg, luckily his boss was a wrestling fan and allowed him time off to travel to independent bookings in Manitoba and British Columbia. Jericho managed to scrape by and at one point remembers only being able to afford 85 cents worth of fuel for his car.

In November 1992, Jericho travelled abroad in search of his big break, this time landing in an Empresa Mundial de la Lucha Libre (EMLL) federation in Monterrey, Mexico. After excelling in some matches, Paco Alonzo, the head of the federation, called Jericho up to wrestle as Corazon de Leon (Lion Heart) in Mexico City. At 22 years of age, Jericho was performing in main events during Mexico’s wrestling boom period. He sometimes wrestled between 8-10 matches a week with three shows on Sundays. He took what he had learned in Calgary and Japan and added more high flying skills to his arsenal. He also developed his in ring psychology skills (particularly as he couldn’t address the crowds in English to get his point across!!). In all he worked for EMLL exclusively throughout 1993 with the exception of a 6 week tour of Germany at the end of the year.

After performing in a tournament in Hamburg, Germany at the end of 1993, Jericho had gained a well rounded resume in Wrestling - he had travelled the independent circuit in Canada, worked briefly in Japan and spent a year in Mexico.

From 1994-1996 Jericho worked for WAR in Japan while splitting his time in Mexico. Jericho loved his time in Japan and in 1995 he travelled every month to the country for two week tours (a total of 31 tours by 1996). During that time, in February 1994, he also reunited with Lance Storm at Smoky Mountain Wrestling (SMW) and they formed a new tag team “The Thrill Seekers”. On August 5 1994, the Thrill Seekers were booked to face The Heavenly Bodies (Jimmy Del Ray and Tom Pritchard) in the biggest show (at that point) in SMW history. Two hours before the show Jericho broke his arm practising a Shooting Star Press. He went to the local hospital where doctors told him they would have to insert a metal plate in his arm so that it would heal properly. Jericho, nevertheless delayed the surgery and still wrestled in the SMW match wearing a soft cast on his broken arm. The next morning, the doctors inserted the steel plate and Jericho was out of action for seven weeks.

Fortunately, since then, that is the only major injury he has sustained and God willing (and fingers crossed), it will continue to stay that way.

By January 1996, Jericho was living in Vancouver. Performers such as Perry Saturn, Chris Benoit and Mick Foley, who he had met in Japan, recommended him to Paul Heyman, owner of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) based in Philadelphia. After a year of trying to contact Heyman, Jericho got his opportunity in the promotion.

In the summer of 1996, Jericho learned of the World Wrestling Peace Festival that Japanese Legend Antonio Inoki had organised in Los Angeles. He was so determined to appear on the card that he even booked his own flight to LA and worked his way onto the card in a three way match against Konnan and Bam Bam Bigelow. It was there, outside the ring, that Jericho met Eric Bishoff who persuaded him to join his promotion, World Championship Wrestling (WCW).

Even though Jericho told Heyman that he was leaving ECW he still booked him in a match in which Jericho actually captured the ECW World Television Title on June 22, 1996.

Jericho never rose above mid card status at WCW like so many of their performers but he did grow as a performer and developed his skills on the microphone during his time with WCW between 1996 and 1999. He also added the WCW World Television title and numerous WCW Cruiserweight titles to his resume. Through WCW, Jericho got the opportunity to travel to Japan again and worked for the New Japan Pro Wrestling Company, he did a total of six tours for them.

By early 1999, Jericho realised that WCW wasn’t the place to be as an aspiring main event performer and he turned his attention to the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). After conquering Japan, honing his trade in Mexico and breaking into the American circuit with ECW and WCW, Jericho knew that the place to get the best opportunities was at WWF.

On August 9, 1999, Chris “Y2J” Jericho made his debut for the company in Chicago at RAW. He interrupted The Rock and delivered one of his most memorable promo’s and his debut ranks up there with the best to this day.

Since his debut, Jericho has excelled with the company becoming one of the most popular and charismatic Superstars in its ranks, He has captured most of their titles at one time or another. He has performed in some of the most memorable and high ranking matches for the company and continues to do so to this day.

On 9 November 2001 at Vengeance in San Diego California, Jericho battled The Rock for the WCW title and beat him to become the WCW Champion. On the same night, he then battled Stone Cold Steve Austin for the WWE Heavyweight Championship and succeeded in capturing that one too. On 9 November 2001, Jericho’s name entered the books as becoming the first ever Undisputed Champion, an accolade that no one else can ever claim.

Although Jericho lost the title to Triple H at Wrestlemania 18 the following year, he is never far from the main event and hopefully, one day soon will once again become The World Heavyweight Champion - a moment his Jerichoholic’s are eagerly waiting for.

In the last couple of years Jericho has been involved in some high profile feuds and classic matches none more memorable than his feud with his child hood hero, Shawn Michaels. Y2J and HBK’s story ran throughout the latter part of 2002 and into 2003 culminating in a very memorable and classic match at Wrestlemania 19, in Seattle. The Storyline had fans gripped and the resulting match was well worth the wait. Jericho and Shawn Michaels showed the fans why they are “The Highlight of the Night” and “The Showstopper”. Since then their paths have crossed on occasion but in recent weeks they seem to have discovered a new found respect for one another and have been teaming up more often than not and have formed quite a solid, effective and very charismatic tag team.

The latter part of 2003 and into 2004 saw Jericho embroiled in a love triangle Storyline with Trish Stratus and (his now) former best friend Christian. At Wrestlemania 20, Trish Stratus turned on Y2J and showed her true colours as she sided with Christian. Even though Trish Stratus is a (no doubt) fond but distant memory, Jericho and Christian’s path’s still cross every now and then. This year we have seen them do battle in an amazing cage match which saw Y2J as the victor and Christian having to take time off due to injury. Although the injury was not solely to do with the cage match but more the years of taking part in those amazing TLC matches. In September, Jericho and Christian stepped inside the ring once more, this time to do battle for the newly vacated Intercontinental Title in a Ladder Match at Unforgiven. On September 12, 2004 Jericho captured the title for a record breaking 7^th time.

Although Jericho dropped the title at Taboo Tuesday in October he is still a seven time Intercontinental Champion and hopefully, now, we will see Y2J step back into the World Heavyweight Title Picture.

Outside of the ring, Jericho fulfilled one of his other dreams of becoming a “rock star”. Along with his good friend Rich Ward who he met during his time with WCW, they formed the band Fozzy. Initially, they were a tribute band and at first it was said that Y2J and Moongoose McQueen (the lead singer of Fozzy), although similar were in fact different people. In 2004 the gimmicks have gone and it has been the year of the Fozz. The band have recorded their 3^rd album with all original songs which is due for release in January 2005. They have played numerous gigs, after Raw, all over America and Canada and are set to do even more in 2005 to coincide with the release of their new album “All that Remains”.

On July 30, 2000 Jericho married his girlfriend of two years, Jessica Lockhart. The couple married at St Charles Country Club in Winnipeg. They met when Jericho was still with WCW. They live in Tampa, Florida and on September 24, 2003 Jericho and his wife Jessica celebrated the arrival of their first child, a son who they have named Ash Edward.

On July 6 2004 Jericho received The Order of the Buffalo Hunt in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, a great accolade and an honour he received for his achievements in professional wrestling and charity work for children. He was also honoured at City Hall the same day when he received the key to the city presented to him by Mayor Sam Katz.