During a recent appearance on “The Kurt Angle Show”, AEW star Chris Jericho commented on the original plan for him to be in the WrestleMania 2000 main event, how Vince McMahon handled the WCW invasion angle, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the original plan for him to be in WrestleMania 2000 main event: “The original plan for that WrestleMania if you remember it was a four way title match with a McMahon in every corner. It was Rock, Big Show, Triple H, and Mick Foley with Vince, Shane, Linda and Stephanie with whoever they were with. The original plan for that match for the four-way was Hunter, Rock, Big Show, and Jericho. If you think that I’m just saying that because I heard rumors, or someone told me, they actually made promotional pieces for the match, and this is kind of like the press kit for WrestleMania 2000 was what they called it. So you can see like, I was never officially told that I was in the match, but why would I be there if it wasn’t true? There was a billboard on Sunset Boulevard with this exact picture on it. I remember seeing it driving down going, ‘Wow, that’s really cool that I’m on that.’ Then I think Vince didn’t have the belief in me, I guess, to put me in that spot yet, so he brought Mick back. That was after Mick had retired. Mick told me that Vince offered him enough money to pay his kids’ college educations, so he came back. But that was the original [plan]. What I was holding up for people that aren’t watching was a press kit that has the four pictures on there, with mine being one of them. Interesting story to think about, right?”
On Vince McMahon’s handling of the WCW invasion angle: “They could have done a million things differently, but it didn’t matter. The thing with WCW is it’s Vince’s company. Pat [Patterson] used to say all the time, ‘It’s Vince’s ice cream shop. Sometimes he wants chocolate, sometimes he wants vanilla. Scoop the fucking ice cream.’ They could have run that Invasion pay-per-view for a year. The Invasion pay-per-view was the highest payoff I ever got in the WWE besides two or three Wrestlemanias. I was in 12 Wrestlemanias and it beat nine of them. That’s how big it was. It was a giant, giant check and it was a 10-man match. Think about that. How much money did that pay-per-view make to pay the 10 guys in the main event that much? So what if that was the first one? Vince wasn’t interested. He’d been at war with WCW for so long. He bought it. He got a big blow-off from it, and he said you’re done, and that was his goal. He wants to kill it, squash it, end it, done. That’s what he did.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
