Chris Jericho Explains Origins Of Southpaw Regional Wrestling Persona Clint Bobski
Back in the heyday of the WWE Network, WWE produced a series parodying old regional wrestling broadcasts called "Southpaw Regional Wrestling," which featured numerous WWE superstars playing over-the-top caricatures of territory wrestling personalities, including Chris Jericho as interviewer Clint Bobski.
"Clint Bobski has been in existence since 1989," Jericho explained to RJ City on the latest "Talk Is Jericho" episode. "When I was too young to go to wrestling school ... I went to Red River Community College and took creative communications which is advertising, PR, journalism, television, radio, creative writing, basically everything that I still do, and we used to do like mock sportscasts for television class. I was always Bobski, it was a name I just loved."
According to Jericho, the name "Chris Irvine" appears nowhere in the Red River Community College yearbook but "Clint Bobski" does.
Jericho explains that — after Jericho and co. did Southpaw Regional Wrestling — a later vignette that he did in AEW featured a Patricia Bobski which caused Jericho to receive a cease and desist over his use of the name Bobski. Jericho, remembering the advice of "trademark everything," went to the trademark office to look into the name. "Guess who had not trademarked the Bobski name or any of his family members?" Jericho asked, "WWE." Jericho immediately went about trademarking the Bobski name.
"Clint Bobski is my intellectual property."
Jericho has yet to do anything with the Clint Bobski name, but much like his AEW colleague Paul Wight – whose Captain Insano name from the hit film "The Waterboy" was trademarked by AEW President Tony Khan — anything is possible.