Chris Jericho opened up on his Talk Is Jericho podcast discussing his signing with All Elite Wrestling. We reported earlier on what led to Jericho joining AEW and clarifying his status with WWE. He goes further into detail with his relationship with his former company and how he plans to help make AEW an alternative, not competition.
“I love the WWE. I respect the WWE. They go through ups and downs creatively and stylistically and character-wise, but it’s the WWE, it’s the biggest wrestling company in the world. You’re not going to beat it. But we don’t want to beat the WWE. We’re not planning on that. That’s not the mindset of AEW. The mindset is to provide an option, an alternative for wrestling fans. Something that you haven’t seen before or something that you haven’t seen in a while.”
Jericho would also discuss an idea with Vince McMahon about a champion vs. champion match with Seth Rollins (when Jericho was IWGP Intercontinental Champion and Rollins was WWE Intercontinental Champion). Jericho would propose for the match to happen at SummerSlam, in which he claimed he didn’t get a response back from McMahon:
“I pitched the idea to [Vince] and called him, ‘I would love to do an Intercontinental Champion vs. Champion match at SummerSlam: Jericho vs. Seth Rollins.’ And Vince was like, ‘I don’t know how that would work and can we do it?’ And was like, ‘Harold [Meij] is the president of New Japan, he wants to expand and I bet you we can figure something out.’ And this was something that happened all the time in the 70s and the 80s with Bruno Sammartino was always going to New Japan via WWE [then WWF] and Andre The Giant and Stan Hansen when they were having talent trades with Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask…
There’s no such thing as just WWE, just New Japan. Why couldn’t we give the fans a dream match? A double main event of Rollins vs. Jericho, Title vs. Title and you don’t even have to have a winner?… Never heard back. Made the call, pitched the idea, and never heard back.”
(Transcription Credit: Christopher McManus, WrestleZone)
Listen to the full episode below:
