Chris Jericho Pitches Idea For Potential AEW – NJPW Angle
AEW star Chris Jericho was on a recent edition of Sunday Night's Main Event with Dan "The Mouth" Lovranski. Jericho discussed his current feud with MJF.
"Well, once again, when I came to AEW, being in the WWE bubble for years, I didn't know a lot of the guys that were signed," Jericho admitted. "As a matter of fact, none of them. I mean, obviously, I knew The [Young] Bucks, and Kenny [Omega] and Cody [Rhodes] from Japan, and I'd met Hangman [Adam Page] over there and was really impressed with him. But other than that, I didn't really know a lot of the guys. Dustin Rhodes [and] Luther was there, but other than that, I didn't know Orange Cassidy, MJF, Joey Janela, Sonny Kiss, Private Party, you name it.
"I never heard of these guys. Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus so I started looking through the roster because obviously, you always want to think, who can I work with. I'd never seen Sammy Guevara. I didn't know much about Santana and Ortiz. Obviously, I knew Jake Hager. Who can I work with here? And the one guy that kept standing out was MJF, who looked like he was about 18 years old at the time. Who is this kid? He's deceptively big, but when you see him on screen, it's kind of like this runty, nerdy guy who's really good. Where did he come from? Why have I not heard of this guy before
"So we did a promo face-to-face. I think it was Nashville last year, probably in October or November of '19. I just wanted to see what kind of chemistry is there, and it was through the roof right off the bat. So okay, MJF, I put him in my pocket. When the time comes, let's do something with him. Once we finish the Orange Cassidy thing, what's my next thing going to be? I said, well, what is MJF doing? He's really not doing anything. Well, let's start working with him, and we started in September of 2020 and here we are in March pretty much of 2021 and the MJF – Jericho feud is just starting."
Jericho continued commenting on how long their partnership and feud has lasted. He also made this comparison between himself and MJF.
"Think about that. When's the last time you had an angle for eight – nine months and we're just getting started," Jericho pointed out. "That's the sign of great storytelling, and that's the sign of a great competitor and talent you can work with. We were great heels together, and now we're great foes of heel and babyface together.
"Eventually, he'll turn babyface, and we'll be great baby faces together and then we'll turn again. He's a guy that you can see can go either way. He loves being a heel, but he's so damn entertaining that pretty soon, I know he's Jericho in 2008, '09 and '10, pretty soon, no matter what you do, people are going to be cheering for you. And that's just the sign.
"The guy can really talk. He knows exactly what his character is, and once again, he's very young, which is amazing on one side, but it's also a little bit detrimental to the other in that imagine how much better he will be five years from now with five years, more experience under his belt. He'll make MJF at 25 seem like Jericho at 25. He was good then, but you should see him now, and that's what I'm looking forward to."
Former IWGP Heavyweight Champion Yuji Nagata will be making his AEW debut when he takes on Jon Moxley for the IWGP U.S. Championship. Jericho discussed AEW's partnerships with other companies, and he gave an idea for an AEW – NJPW angle.
"Well, I think we've said from the start that we were open, Tony said it from the start, he's open to working with other companies, and I think we've taken it to the extreme between what we've done with New, Japan and Impact," Jericho noted. "Even the fact that I was on Broken Skull Sessions with WWE, I don't know if that'll ever happen again, but still, we made it happen. We are open to doing that. Our company's kind of the place to be. Everybody wants to come to AEW. Everybody wants to be a part of AEW.
"I think that's why it's very easy to work with some of these other companies because they want their guys to be on the hottest show on TV when it comes to wrestling. So yes, Yuji's going to come, and yes, KENTA was here. And when we open up, there's no reason why we won't see a [Kota] Ibushi, and [Kazuchika] Okada and [Hiroshi] Tanahashi, and I see a great invasion angle for AEW and New Japan. I think that's Tokyo Dome. I think Jericho and Kenny, we'll call ourselves 'The Golden Jets' with the Winnipeg connection.
"Imagine Kenny and Jericho vs. Tana and Okada or Ibushi and Okada. Whatever, that's a Tokyo Dome main event then come back to Madison Square Garden, or Staples Center or Air Canada Centre. These are big time, arena level, stadium level shows that we can do. I'm assuming that will happen when the time is right both logistically for the world and for the story, like I said earlier, it's always about the story first. Once we get those things rolling, I think you're going to see even more involvement between between AEW and other companies."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Sunday Night's Main Event with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.