Chris Jericho during his time at AEW, he used many tricks. He went from his original status as world champion and leader of the Inner Circle to sports entertainer and leader of the Jericho Appreciation Society. He has also taken on his old roles as Cheerleader and recently again as Lionheart.
It was with his resurrection as the Lionheart that Chris Jericho first used to challenge Jon Moxley for the AEW World Championship and later face Bryan Danielson at the AEW All Out that he made a statement. Moxley called Jericho “the last survivor of Hart’s dungeon” and Jericho continued to use the slogan to refer to himself. However, is Chris Jericho really the last survivor of Hart’s dungeon?
How did Chris Jericho get into wrestling?
Chris Jericho has been very open about how he broke into professional wrestling. He told his story brilliantly in his first book, Lion’s Tale: Around the World in Spandex. Jericho was a kid in Canada who loved two things – heavy metal music and professional wrestling. During his career, he achieved tremendous success in both ventures. However, wrestling came first, and as Jericho wrote, he thought he had a great chance to get into wrestling while training in Hart’s Dungeon. There have been several ruthless trainers in the Dungeon, the first being Stu Hart, and after Stu retired, Mr. Hito followed. His location was in the basement of the Hart family mansion. This was not where Chris Jericho trained.
Jericho saw an opportunity to train at the Hart brothers’ training camp. On his first day in the training building, he met Lance Storm, another young Canadian who wanted to wrestle. However, Jericho also said that he was rudely woken up at the Hart brothers’ training camp. The Hart brothers were not there to teach him and the other students who brought their money to join the camp. Instead, the coaches were referee Ed Langley and Canadian wrestler Brad Young. Jericho said Keith Hart showed up one day, but he did nothing to educate anyone and just dropped a few students before leaving.
Was Tyson Kidd the last survivor of Hart’s dungeon?
Chris Jericho went to the Hart Brothers training camp to train in 1990. However, Tyson Kidd trained in Stu Hart’s dungeon in 1995. Kidd talked about it on Total divs, as it was here that he worked alongside Harry Smith and became a close friend and confidant of the Hart family, eventually marrying Natalia Neidhart. Since Kidd trained there five years after Jericho worked with Keith’s camp, and by this time Jericho was already working all over the world, Kidd was clearly training after Jericho with his family. Someone might argue that Kidd retired, so Jericho “survived” in business longer. However, Harry Smith trained in 1994 with Bruce Hart and Davey Boy Smith and is still an active wrestler, so he is also closer to holding the title than Jericho.
Who was the last person trained by Stu Hart?
The question seems to boil down to who was the last person trained in Hart’s Dungeon. However, since Jericho talked a lot about Stu Hart stretching people, who was the last person he coached? Stew had retired from regular training by the time Jericho, Storm, Kidd, and Smith showed up to start wrestling. Stu helped train people in the later years of his life, and he even worked with Natalya Neidhart, who didn’t even graduate from high school until 2000, when Jericho was already in the WWE, making her clearly a later survivor than Jericho in the dungeon. However, Natalia found interesting little things for her fans. “Many do not know this, but [Jim Neidhart] was the very, very last person my grandfather Stu Hart coached,” she said on “Table Talk” with D-Von. “My grandfather used to come and watch some training in the dungeon. And he taught me to throw the forearm. So TJ, my husband, Tyson Kidd/TJ actually got into a lot of submissions from my grandfather, and my grandfather was a shooter.”
Is Chris Jericho the last survivor of Hart’s dungeon?
Eventually Chris Jericho was trained in the Hart family’s dungeon. He said that he needed to do some work in the Dungeon with Mr. Hito working with him. With Hito as Stew Hart’s successor, it was legal training in the Dungeon, so Jericho has the right to train there. The truth is that names like Natalya, Tyson Kidd and Harry Smith worked in the Underground after Jericho was already a wrestling star. However, the fact remains that this is professional wrestling. Everything done is part of the story and nothing should be based entirely on the truth. Chris Jericho claims to be the last surviving student of Hart’s Dungeon heading to his Everybody out match with Bryan Danielson. There is no reason that cannot be true for the sake of history. This makes him as arrogant as ever and gives him the opportunity to step back to prove his toughness, even if he was never a student of the great Stu Hart.