UPDATE: In an update on the comments iMPACT! Wrestling executive Don Callis made last week (see below), there is expected to be several iMPACT! Wrestling vs. Ring of Honor (ROH) angles during Chris Jericho’s “Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Rager At The Sea” cruise. The angles may lead to some sort of partnership between iMPACT! Wrestling and ROH. While ROH had already been confirmed, iMPACT! Wrestling was officially announced as part of the cruise earlier this week.
ORIGINAL: During a recent interview with the “Killing The Town” podcast, Don Callis commented on iMPACT! Wrestling being a part of Chris Jericho’s Rock N’ Wrestling Rager cruise. Callis teased an iMPACT! Wrestling vs. ROH battle during the cruise. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On iMPACT! Wrestling participating on Chris Jericho’s cruise: “So we’re doing the press conference and Austin Aries is there, Moose, Madison Rayne, Gail Kim, and then Scott D’Amore, Ed Nordholm and myself were up on stage as the executive team and interestingly I figured most of the questions if not all would be about Slammiversary but we did get one question about Sami’s comments, and I guess there were more but after the one person asked then the others kinda let it go but they wanted to talk to me afterwards about it because I kinda hung around and talked to about 50 reporters there. The question was ‘What do you make of Sami’s comments?’ and I hadn’t had a lot of time to think about it because I was just real busy with TV but I basically said, ‘I think for once I kinda find myself agreeing with Sami.’ I’ve never really talked to Chris about it because I haven’t had time the last few months but it’s like, ‘yeah, why isn’t IMPACT Wrestling on there?’. Forget my nearly 30 year friendship with Jericho, you’ve got Ring Of Honor and no one else and we know that sometimes those guys like to do things on their own and I’m sure there’s a reason for that but that’s not IMPACT’s kinda thing so I was like, ‘yeah that is interesting’ and so I kinda said at the press conference that I felt like maybe there was something to Sami’s comments and we may have to investigate that further and then Ed Nordholm, the president of IMPACT Wrestling, basically just piped up and said, ‘Well I think you guys are being too politically correct here. Yeah Sami’s right, we should be there and by the way we’re going.’ So I don’t know what that means other than I guess IMPACT Wrestling in some form or fashion is going on this cruise as Ed’s the boss and he says we’re going so I don’t know what form that’s gonna take. I assume that means Callihan is going which is disturbing. Just what you didn’t want. He worked himself into a shoot to apparently but with Sami, you shot yourself into a shoot.”
On what iMPACT! Wrestling Superstars will be going on the cruise: “I don’t know what other talent. We haven’t had discussions about it but I see Jericho’s been tweeting about it. Well I’m used to dealing with Chris so I’m sure thats gonna be fine. We’re not gonna buy our own cabins.”
On an iMPACT! Wrestling vs. ROH battle on the cruise: “I think, to use Sami’s language, ‘If Chris and Ring Of Honor have the intestinal fortitude to step up and say, ‘Yeah we’ll accept that challenge’, I think it’s what’s best for the Jericho Cruise and it’s definitely what’s best for the fans because you can see people love interpromotional, we’ve been doing Lucha Underground, we’ve got IMPACT vs UK coming up, so we’ve already been doing that stuff, breaking those paradigms of professional wrestling, that whole insular mentality of ‘we only work with who we work with’ etc. I think that we’re in a position now with this where there are some really cool stuff for the fans. IMPACT vs Ring Of Honor could be very interesting and I’ll be interested to have some internal discussions about who we might take on that cruise ’cause I don’t know other than Callihan and who knows whether he’s available or allowed to travel internationally. I think that it’s an interesting thing that it’ll be the first time that you’ve really got Ring Of Honor in kind of the same… very enclosed space, I guess you’d say, with IMPACT! Wrestling. Who knows exactly what is gonna happen with that. Should be interesting, we’ll see what happens.”
