Chris Jericho and AEW President Tony Khan chatted all things AEW on this week’s edition of Talk Is Jericho. Chris Jericho highlights appear below.
(Transcription Credit: Michael McClead, WrestleZone)
Jericho On AEW Not Looking For Established Names From Other Organizations:
We’re not looking – and this is no offense to anybody – we’re not looking for names from other organizations. I think Cody’s word is ‘fresh.’ Everything needs to be kind of ahead of the wave rather than going back behind.
Chris Jericho On The Importance Of Wins And Losses:
I can call it out because I don’t give a sh*t. You see John Cena come out and lose and the next week come out and not even care. That doesn’t happen in any type of sport, or any type of movie, or any type of TV. Losses matter. That crushes you. If you have a bad gig as a musician, you feel like sh*t. It bothers you for a week, two weeks, three weeks, on end….
Sometimes you’ll hear people say, ‘Wins and losses don’t matter in wrestling.’ That’s not necessarily the truth, but if I’m a babyface and I lose 10 match in a row, it’s not gonna be good for me. If I lose 9 matches in a row and then have a match against the World Champion and beat him – just like sports – you can be the last place team and sometimes the last place team beats the first place team. Those upsets happen. It doesn’t mean you get a championship fight, but it does make a difference. Incorporate that into a wrestling roster, to me it sounds very interesting and, once again, it’s fresh.
Jericho Talks Having Never Watching A Kenny Omega Match Before The Two Signed A Deal To Wrestle:
When you’re in WWE, I watched a little bit, but more just reading, just reading the websites and the newsletters, so I’d heard about The [Young] Bucks and I heard about Kenny. I had never seen a Kenny match until after we signed a deal for the Tokyo Dome.
You know why? Enough people I trusted told me he was amazing and that’s all I needed to know. Don Callis told me he was amazing. That’s all I needed to know. Don Callis, he’s amazing – Don Callis hates everything, so if he’s telling me, and AJ Styles is telling me, and Finn Balor’s telling me, Luke Gallows, and Karl Anderson, ‘This guy’s the guy.’ OK, I believe you.
Same thing with The Bucks. When I got in the ring with Kenny, it was a whole different world. When I got in the ring with The Bucks on the cruise, it was like, ‘Holy sh*t, these guys are good.’ Now there was a couple things I was able to plug in that they really didn’t think of, but as performers it was like, ‘Wow! This is good sh*t,’ and I think there’s a lot of people – listen, we don’t know where those millions of wrestling fans went back in the Monday Nitro days, they might be gone forever – but there might be a whole new crop that sees these guys and say, ‘This is something. It’s the same kind of thing as WWE, but it’s completely different.’ That’s where I think our chance and our strength lies in really taking this to the next step.
Jericho On His Role In AEW:
The thing I love about this and people are making jokes, ‘It’s Cody Championship Wrestling.’ No, you guys are missing the point. It’s Tony’s vision. You [Tony Khan] have some really great generals, just as Vince [McMahon] does and I’m one of Vince’s generals. Now I’m one of yours. You’ve put together a really great roster in that you have – it’s like Gordie Howe in 1980 when he’d been playing for 30 years, but could still score 35 goals a year, but now Gordie’s gonna teach the rest of the guys what’s up – that’s the Jericho position. After the last year, the timing, the re-invention, it’s great for me.
Then you’ve got The Bucks, Cody, Kenny, guys that have been around, but that no one really knows, but people know are gonna be your top scorers. Then you’ve got a guy like Adam Page. Dude, that guy – we’ve got our homegrown guy. We will build him into a champion. Hopefully, I get a chance to work with him, and kick his ass, and teach him some sh*t because that’s the guy. Then we’ve got all these others guys from Joey Janela, to MJF, to a Scorpio Sky, a couple other great veterans in [Frankie] Kazarian and [Christopher] Daniels. You’ve got a great roster of all different levels. That’s how you win championships is by having all the different levels of experience that can teach, and learn, and play together to win.
Chris Jericho On WWE Signing Too Much Talent:
This is what’s going on with WWE right now [what happened in the late 1990s WCW]. They’re signing everybody and they can’t use everybody.
Jericho On AEW Booking With An Abundance Of Talent:
If it’s a 2 hour show, there’s only so many names you can push and it’s not more than, I honestly would say probably 10. You’ve got 10 names to push. You’ve got 10 people that can help you get there and that’s about it for 2 hours. I was telling Cody the other night, the roster we have right now, in my mind, and I’m not the booker, but if I was armchair booking, we’ve got 8-12 months already with just the guys you have signed. Even just guys that I think of, ‘OK, I can do this for three months. I can do that. I can do this guy for awhile,’ and that’s when you start realizing that we’ve got a lot of guys and people don’t even know them all right now because we still have more coming, but we’ve announced Jungle Boy, and Jimmy Havoc, and we mentioned Kenny Omega, and the AAA relationship, which is a huge coupe by the way because that opens up the door to Pentagon and Fenix, and I want to wrestle both of them, by the way. I want to do a tag team match with me and Kenny against both of them, at some point. You’ve got this whole other door opened to some of the greatest performers in the world that no one knows and Konnan will tell you, ‘This guy, this guy, this guy.’ That’s a huge thing as well, so we’ve got a lot of options and then of course the cats in China, ‘Oh, my gosh, have you seen that?’
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