Chris Jericho On Why It's A Great Time For AEW TNT Title, Talent Stepping Up During COVID-19 Tapings

AEW star Chris Jericho recently spoke with Newsweek to promote AEW Dynamite on TNT. Jericho has done commentary for the past few weeks, but he will be returning to action next week as AEW returns to Jacksonville, FL for live TV during the coronavirus pandemic. He will team with Sammy Guevara to face Matt Hardy and AEW World Tag Team Champion Kenny Omega.

While Jericho has received praise for his work at the announce table and he's enjoyed it as much as the fans have, he reassured everyone that he is not a commentator by trade, and that he needs to be involved inside the ring again, especially with the Double Or Nothing pay-per-view coming up on May 23. He did say he would love to return to commentary some day.

"I'm the leader of the Inner Circle, and I'm Le Champion," Jericho said. "I think that was a great kind of stopgap measure to keep the star power on the show because we had a smaller crew for those four weeks that will plug up the gaps and I can kind of be one of the focuses of the show without being the focus of the show if that makes sense."

He continued, "As fun as it is to commentate, that's maybe something I'll do more in the future. But I think it's time to kind of take control again, outside of the commentary booth."

Jericho said he's been very impressed with the passion that this limited AEW roster has had during the pandemic tapings.

"The most important thing is to put on an entertaining show," he said. "I think with these guys going out there and having great matches in front of nobody just shows the amount of dedication they have."

Jericho said pro wrestling is show business, and is about connecting with the fans, not about wins and losses. He talked about the recent crowd-less wrestling shows on TV, and said the AEW talents, including the TNT Title tournament competitors who have been under a spotlight as of late, are taking advantage of the opportunities.

"You know this is wrestling, it's show business," he said. "It's not about wins or losses, it's about connecting with the audience and taking advantage of the opportunities that we get which makes you leave an impression. I think that those guys and everybody in the tournament is taking really good advantage of the opportunity that they were given to really show off their stuff, and that's what everybody has done on all of our shows over the last four weeks."

Jericho also gave his thoughts on the new AEW TNT Title and said now is a great time to introduce a secondary title to AEW programming. The finals of the AEW TNT Title tournament will take place at Double Or Nothing with Lance Archer and Cody Rhodes doing battle to become the inaugural champion.

"I think it's good to have a purpose and every show needs to have a purpose," he said. "The more focus you can give to each show, the more interesting it becomes to watch. So I think we've done it the right way and we've got a lot of guys that will be taking perfect advantage of this."