AEW star Chris Jericho brings Vietnamese pro wrestling to spotlight, highlighting sport's unifying force
Chris Jericho has stepped up to many challenges in his professional wrestling career, and, in some situations, had the odds stacked against him and succeeded time and time again.
The All Elite Wrestling (AEW) star recently brought a new set of challengers to the spotlight in a documentary he produced called "Vietslam." The film showcases the rise of Vietnam Pro Wrestling (VPW) and how pro wrestling fans from the Asian country were able to get their own company started to unify a population that was starved for the sport.
"Vietslam" follows how pro wrestling fans in the country were able to convince the Vietnamese government to allow the sport to be featured in the country, starting from almost nothing to building a rabid audience that only really watched WWE or AEW on TV.
"On ‘Talk is Jericho,’ I got a random request through an email from a pro wrestling group in Vietnam," Jericho explained to Fox News Digital in a recent interview. "And I'd done a few episodes about wrestling in different parts of the world, like China and the Inuit in northern, northern Canada areas, so I thought it'd be interesting to talk to the guys and when I talked to them, it was a Vietnamese guy called Rocky and a Canadian guy called Carrie who had moved to Vietnam, and they had kind of, against all odds, started a wrestling company. There wasn't wrestling in Vietnam. There wasn't even a wrestling ring in Vietnam and the government didn't even know what wrestling was because they had to get the permits because obviously it's a very strict government there.
"But they went and followed their dreams and followed the heart and followed the passion and started up a wrestling company in Vietnam that ended up becoming fairly successful. And I just thought, how interesting is this, not just from a humanity standpoint of these guys going and following this crazy dream, but also the fact that pro wrestling connects the cultures of the West and the East. We all love wrestling here. We know what it is. Most of the country, Japan and England and Ireland and Scotland, etc., etc., etc., but Vietnam, what even is Vietnam in 2026, you know, because I think we still equate it with the movies that we see about the war of your ‘Platoon’ and ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and those types of things. So, I thought, how interesting is it that pro wrestling is kind of the common denominator between our cultures. That is something that we can see eye to eye on. And that's kind of where the idea came to do a documentary about them."
Jericho said the formation of Vietnam Pro Wrestling and the hard work coupled with the amount of work that it took to even build a ring showcased the unifying aspect of the sport – something that goes way overlooked if anyone only knew about pro wrestling from seeing clips and talking points being debated on social media.
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While pro wrestling has a tendency to be tribalistic online, logging off for a bit could do a lot of people justice. "Vietslam" showed how the good-willed nature of people can bring people together, capitalizing on a kernel of an idea and turning it into something that everyone can connect with.
"But I kind of find that though, Ryan, is when you get off of social media, you realize that most fans aren't like that. Those are just the vocal minority that want to be tribalistic and want to be negative about everything and you can't really go on that," Jericho said. "So, I mean, yeah, once again, I'm sure there's people in Vietnam that that hate VPW and say, ‘This is nothing like American wrestling, this sucks,’ and it's like they have no idea the amount of hard work these guys put into even putting on a show. And it's the same for anybody. Anybody that's ever stepped in the ring, it's very hard to get in the ring and wrestle. It really is. The other night, once again, never mind the cut, but 102 degrees outside. I mean, anybody that's bitching about anything about wrestling, go do that and see how much you b----ing, right?
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"So, I that doesn't bother me. I just think what it really showed me and you know, this is a wrestling story, but it's so much more than that. It's really about the human desire to do great things and the fire that we all have inside to make something happen and going up going up against the government, man. I mean, this is not the United States where you and I can just, hey, let's put on a show tomorrow night. We rent an arena, we do it. It’s not like that there, It's a very strict socialist almost communist government in a lot of ways and you're not allowed to just do whatever you want."
Jericho explained that those involved with Vietnam Pro Wrestling had to convince the Vietnamese government that pro wrestling was more like a dance routine rather than a combat sport like MMA.
"So, they had to convince the government that what they were doing was a show, like a dance routine," he said. "So, if we can go to a dance studio where they do dance routines to put on a show, we should be able to have our own show because we're just doing a performance. And they're like, ‘Oh, OK. So, you're not actually going to, you know, you're not actually going to hurt each other.’ It's like, ‘Well, no, it's a show.’ And once the government understood that, they allowed them to do it.
"But I mean, these are just normal people going up against the government of Vietnam to get a permit to put on a wrestling show. That's pretty intricate, deep stuff that took a lot of time to make happen. So, all of these things was one of the reasons or all contributed to the reasons why I wanted to do this documentary because I just felt it was a great story to tell on so many different aspects."
Jericho added that to have some influence over the pro wrestling scene in the Asian country meant a lot to him and he was able to surprise some of the wrestlers and the fans involved with the promotion for one show.
"Yeah, it means a lot. When you hear World Wrestling Entertainment, WWE, and working there for so long, it really does go around the world," he told Fox News Digital. "And now with AEW as well, we're in 100 countries, too. So, you can just see that people watch and especially now, I mean, they can watch you on YouTube, they can watch you on Netflix or on this platform or that platform. It's not as hard to see. You don't have to wait ‘til Sunday night at 8 o’clock on your local channel to watch, but you can do that as well. So, it really, it really was humbling, I guess you'd say, and surreal when I did go to Vietnam and surprise Rocky and the rest of the wrestlers that were there, they went nuts. Like, they literally went nuts. It'd be like if, I don't know, if Mick Jagger walked through the door right now, you'd be like, what? They couldn't believe it because their dream had come true. And that's not just to meet me, but I kind of represented, I think, what WWE meant to them in that here comes Chris Jericho.
"And there were a lot of big Chris Jericho fans, too, but also the dream of pro wrestling. Like, we have now gotten enough of a name to where one of our heroes is here standing in front of us watching us wrestle. And that's a pretty cool feeling. They knew that there was a documentary being made, but they didn't know that I was there. And when we surprised them with that fact and then surprised the fans with that fact later on in the evening, it just kind of showed once again how universal pro wrestling is. It's not about a country. It's about a feeling and about a camaraderie that that we have as wrestling fans. It doesn't matter where you're from, you mentioned earlier what style, doesn't matter what style it is, doesn't matter what country it's in, pro wrestling is pro wrestling. And you can do it in a field in Africa, which we've seen. You can do it on dance mats in Vietnam, or you can do it in a stadium in the United States. But it all equates to the same thing of just loving the business and having this passion for it."
"Vietslam" will be released on Tuesday on Prime Video, Fandango, Hoopla and Local Now and Aug. 6 on Tubi.