Chris Jericho Can See Huge AEW Crossover Show Happening
In an appearance with Josh Shernoff on FITE In Focus, AEW star Chris Jericho talked about AEW being on the road against after spending most of 2020 and a part of 2021 in Jacksonville, Florida due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jericho pointed out all the possibilities that have now opened up for AEW in regards to doing shows in the UK, Japan, Canada, and cities they haven't run in yet in the United States.
"As soon as, you know, the UK opens, that's going to be huge for us," Jericho said. "As soon as Japan opens up a little bit more, I can see a huge New Japan vs AEW supershow. And like I said, Canada is a complete no-brainer because I think there are probably six or seven cities there that we could do huge business in because I believe on TSN, the Canadian Sports Network, our ratings are the highest wrestling ratings out of any company, AEW Dynamite. So the people are ready for us to go there as well.
"And we're excited too because, and also on top of that, there's so many places we haven't been in the States yet. The West Coast, the Pacific North West, there are so many places we haven't been. And the reason for that is because three months after we started, we were wrestling in Jacksonville for eight months straight.
"Thank goodness we were able to do that and it's awesome, but once we started going on the road again and once crowds started coming back and didn't take long, we realized there is a lot of places that haven't seen us yet and we are ready to go because we've got everything organized with the stories, the talent. We've got the greatest roster in the world today."
Chris Jericho later admitted that he briefly considered winding down his career in 2016, feeling wrestling wasn't fun anymore. His match with Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 12 for New Japan Pro Wrestling changed his mind, and now Chris Jericho feels there's no reason to leave wrestling any time soon.
"Probably about 2016 I thought 'eh, maybe it's time to start winding down.' It wasn't as fun," Jericho admitted. "Then I went to Japan. Jericho vs Omega was like 'holy sh-t, this is amazing.' Like 'wrestling is fun again.' And that pretty much began AEW. That re-ignited my passion and fire for wrestling. And then over the last year and a half, once again, you read the room.
What are people saying? What are they thinking? What am I thinking? And I realized, you cannot teach experience and you cannot teach fan manipulation. And nobody does that better than me and I'll leave it at that. That inspires me creatively, and it makes me more passionate, and it makes me realize that I'm not going anywhere because there's no reason to.
"I'm still one of the best in the business at what I do, which is telling stories and crowd manipulations. I can still have a great match any night of the week. I can still have the best match on the show. Not every night, but some nights.
"But I can always have the best story and always have the best character and have the best puppet-mastering of the audience than anybody in our company and maybe anybody in the business. And that to me, tells me that I'm still not even close to being done yet. And when I'm done, there's not going to be a retirement tour, there's not going to be big pomp and circumstance, I'll be done."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit FITE In Focus and provide an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription