Chris Jericho discussed jumping to AEW from WWE in a new Broken Skull Sessions interview with Steve Austin, and revealed how a Brock Lesnar match’s booking made him ultimately decide to leave to WWE. Chris Jericho ‘Botched’ An AEW Dynamite MJF Promo.
“I never thought that I would really work anywhere outside of WWE in the states, for example, after being there for 19 years or so.
Now, you’ve been around longer than I have but you hear this all the time, ‘oh, there’s going to be a new promotion, there’s a guy whose got money,” whatever, you hear it all the time. So, when I started talking to him, I started realizing that there was something different here about this opportunity to start a new company.”
He added, “What you need for that, is you need 3 things: finances and passion, that’s one. You need a television contract, and you need talent. You need about 4-6 guys you can build a territory around. Talking to Tony, he had the finances, he had the passion. Then when we started sniffing around, we realized there was a group of guys whose contracts were all coming up at the same time.
Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, Young Bucks, Chris Jericho, Hangman Page, guess what? There’s your six guys right there, you can start a company on that. 6 legit guys you can build around and Jericho’s got the name value. These other guys, Cody to an extent, but nobody had really heard of the Young Bucks in the mainstream, or Kenny, or Hangman. So, when you see these guys, you’re like ‘where have these guys been?”
All 3 of those factors all came together in a perfect storm to where we’re like we have a chance to really do something here. The contract with TNT was big because I think at first we were thinking maybe Showtime, or HBO, or Netflix, all these different ideas. But you have to have network TV to get off the ground and TNT provided that.”
He said if he had returned to WWE after his NJPW stint, he would have just gone back to doing ‘The List’ gimmick. He also said when Brock Lesnar vs. Goldberg got the WWE Universal Title spot at WrestleMania 33, he wasn’t happy at all. Jericho had a run in with Lesnar backstage at SummerSlam 2016 after he thought Lesnar stiffed Randy Orton. Jericho was upset by his match with Kevin Owens getting moved to second on the WrestleMania 33 card due to Brock and Goldberg. He said, “I’m not a second match guy.”
Jericho also revealed that there were plans for a Jericho vs. Lesnar match that were canceled by Vince McMahon, but those were canceled for Goldberg vs. Lesnar. He said he still wants to wrestle Brock, as he thinks it would draw money.
