During the latest edition of his “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, AEW wrestler Chris Jericho commented on what happened in WWE that led to him making the decision to jump ship to All Elite Wrestling, being insulted by Vince McMahon, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how he was content for awhile staying in WWE: “I worked for WWE for, I think, 19 years, and to me, it was almost like there is really no reason to go anywhere else, because this is the biggest company in the world. I’ve done everything you can do here, so I’ll just stay, I don’t want to do independents or go here or go there.”
On how Vince McMahon told him he and Kevin Owens would headline WrestleMania 33, only to change his mind: “Then in 2017, I could be wrong about the year, maybe it was 2016, you guys know dates better than I do, I was doing a program with Kevin Owens, and when we were doing this program, it was, in my opinion, the best story of the year. It was something that I think we started it at Summerslam, and I said, I think we can take this all the way to WrestleMania, which is basically eight months or whatever it is, and that’s what we did, and we had this really great chemistry with the Best Friends and all the stuff we did, and then we did the big breakup, and what was supposed to happen, for a week, was it was going to culminate in the main event of WrestleMania, Jericho vs. Owens for the WWE World Title, and then Jericho was going to win the World Title at WrestleMania in one of the main events. Vince told me that himself, and I was like, that’s great, I’ve never been champion here as a babyface, ever, I was never WWE Champion as a babyface, I’ve never been World Champion as a babyface, period. So I thought, this is really cool, and to me, the story is good, and then the next week Vince changed his mind to Brock and Goldberg for the title in the main event.”
On how he found it insulting that he and Owens ended up being the second match on the show: “Once again, I’m a big boy, I’m a professional, it’s Vince’s company, he can do whatever he wants, so I wasn’t like angry, but I was like, oh, lasted a week, but whatever, move on to the next thing. But the thing that bugged me was, they put our match second at WrestleMania. Now anybody that knows anything about the order of WrestleMania from a professional standpoint, if you can’t be last, you want to be first. Semi-main event is good, and then there is a really kind of long area in that WrestleMania 3-4 hour show. Going on second is kind of insulting because it’s almost like, it’s not a death spot on the show but the first match always has a lot of prestige to it and the second match is just a match, the way the time of it was and everything, and that’s when I was like, I’ll never go past second match here in WWE. This is kind of the best story, it’s the best time, my character is super hot, the list was hot, all that stuff was hot, and second? That’s it? I was like, I’m done.”
On then deciding he didn’t want to work for WWE anymore: “So that’s kind of where I made the decision to like, I don’t really want to work here anymore, and had the match with New Japan with Kenny come about. I don’t know if I would have went back to WWE. I was talking to them about going back after I did the New Japan run, and it was a little bit of a runaround, and once again, I just wasn’t a priority there anymore, so it kept the door open for this new venture, AEW.”
