Chris Jericho had options when it came time to figure out his wrestling future, including a possible WWE return, but when the decision finally had to be made, AEW had something WWE couldn’t match — Jericho helped build the place from the ground up.
During Wrestling Observer Radio, Jericho was directly asked what pushed him toward staying with AEW instead of going back to WWE or taking a more limited wrestling schedule somewhere else. Jericho said his time away from television gave him room to work on outside projects and made him realize there was no reason to rush back into the ring.
“We filmed for that, so I had those projects going on, and then it was kind of like, there’s a lot of stuff happening. So then when you get away for a bit, you’re like, ‘Well, what’s the rush?’ But then when it was time to kind of start thinking about coming back, obviously you weigh your options, and there are a lot of factors.”
Once Jericho started seriously looking at those options, he said one thing separated AEW from everything else — he has a personal stake in what the company became.
“But the bottom line is this, and this was the one that really clinched it for me: I’ve got skin in the game in AEW. I helped start AEW. And in a lot of ways, if there was no Chris Jericho, there might not have been an AEW. And there certainly wasn’t one before me. There was a WWE before Chris Jericho. There was a New Japan before. There was a CMLL before. And there’ll be an AEW after I leave, obviously.”
Jericho also revealed that he and Tony Khan had a few things to sort out before he committed to staying, though he made it clear those conversations weren’t some major battle.
“I can’t wait to see how much bigger the company gets over the next 10 years. But when it came down to it, it was like, I like working for Tony. We had to work some things out, which we did. It wasn’t hard to do.”
Jericho then traced his connection to AEW back to 2018, when he left WWE and faced Kenny Omega at the Tokyo Dome. In Jericho’s mind, that match helped open the door for everything that came afterward.
“I’m proud of the fact that, I mean, 2018, I left WWE and went to the Tokyo Dome, and Kenny and I had that match that changed wrestling history. And that’s not — that’s the truth. That’s factual.”
Jericho said joining AEW at the beginning was a massive gamble, and he even called Omega before the company’s first press conference to make sure he was actually coming aboard. That risk is exactly why Jericho feels more attached to AEW now than he would simply returning to a company that already existed long before he got there.
“I remember, like, it was such a huge risk to go, ‘What’s going to happen?’ And I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know, but if it works, then this is, like, what a feather in the legacy cap of Chris Jericho, and what a huge thing for the business and for the guys and the girls and the fans and everyone in between.’”
Jericho finally summed up the WWE versus AEW decision without taking a shot at his former company. He still has love for his time in WWE, but AEW is something he feels he actually helped create.
“I loved working in WWE when I was there, but I love what we created in AEW. And when it comes down to it, I kind of wanted to continue to see how far we can go with this company. And we’ve already gone farther than most predicted. That’s a really big, important time for the company right now, and I kind of wanted to just be involved with it.”
Jericho didn’t frame the decision as WWE losing and AEW winning some bidding war. For him, it came down to history. He took the risk when AEW was nothing more than an idea, helped turn it into a national promotion, and now wants to see how far the company can go before his career finally comes to an end.
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