Kenny Omega and Chris Jericho faced off at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom back in 2018 in a match that Vince McMahon was totally on board with. But there was one thing he didn’t like.
Speaking on the “Monthly Puroresu” podcast, Jericho revealed that while Vince was okay with the match taking place, he wasn’t a fan of the ‘Alpha vs. Omega’ tagline to hype the bout. The reason for this is because the WWE Chairman had just formed a company called “Alpha” for his XFL football league.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On telling McMahon he wanted to wrestle in Japan: “I was nervous because I hadn’t worked anywhere other than WWE for 20 years. And Vince said, ‘It’s fine, it’s great. You’re a WWE guy anyways. People know it, have fun with it.’ And he was all behind it. The only thing he didn’t like was the ‘Alpha vs. Omega’ tagline, which we later found out is because he just formed a company called Alpha for his new XFL. So he was like, ‘No, stay away from the Alpha!’ And I was like, ‘Alpha and Omega, it writes itself!’
On where McMahon had issues with his NJPW deal: “I really enjoyed it and I thought, well maybe I do want to do more. And that’s when we made a deal for more of a run. And, that’s what kind of caused some issues with Vince.
Because, as one last little story, if you guys remember the very first Saudi Arabia show – where they had the biggest Royal Rumble. The original match for me was ‘Jericho vs. Undertaker’ in a Casket Match. When the Naito match was announced – the fact was, that I had extended my relationship with New Japan – Vince changed the match to Rusev vs Undertaker. He was kind of indirectly telling me ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it too! I’m not going to use you in the spotlight if you’re going to be working on AXS TV as well,’ or whatever the network was for New Japan.”
On wanting other matches after his match with Tanahashi: “Right after, I had ideas like, ‘Well I want Minoru Suzuki, I want to do something with Will Ospreay. I want to do something with Kota Ibushi.’ But if you remember January 4th, 2020 was Jericho vs Tanahashi, what happened two months later? A f***in’ pandemic.”
On the pandemic killing his momentum: “It stopped the momentum that I had in New Japan. Like if I go back there, I would have to start from scratch. But it’s a different thing now. It’s not the same as it was when it was like, because then AEW just started and now you know, once again I could still go back tomorrow and have some of these matches. But it’s a different vibe now than it was when it was kind of this independent Jericho.”
