Chris Jericho says the fun is only getting started.
Chris Jericho took part in a post-show media scrum after AEW Double Or Nothing and talked about the evolution of the Inner Circle stable and their ongoing feud with The Pinnacle. Jericho spoke about how everything led to this point, explaining how months of planning went into it, and how they wanted to avoid the same tropes of a stable breaking up.
“We’ve been planning all this stuff for almost a year, since September of last year, with some twists and turns and things change, but we knew we wanted to have Max to join the Inner Circle and then we wanted to do this very intricate quadruple swerve where he turned on us. If you remember we first had Sammy come out and then it was like the Inner Circle was gonna turn on me, then we found out that Max was the snake in the grass and then he formed The Pinnacle and they beat the crap out of us. So, the idea was always for us to turn together,” Jericho stated. “I didn’t want to do ‘Sammy and Jake turn on the three of us’ because I don’t think that’s ever really happened before, usually it’s kind of the wrestling trope of they turn on each other inside of a faction, we kind of stay away from that stuff. So, the five-way turn, it was set up perfectly.”
Jericho explained that they knew to stay off of TV long enough to sell the attack, but they had to come back with some kind of edge to signal the change.
Another reason the change has paid off is due to The Pinnacle serving as worthy adversaries for Inner Circle. Jericho took time to praise MJF’s natural abilities and said they’ve have had two high-profile matches so far, but they’re just getting started with the stable war.
“Having a great heel faction like The Pinnacle, it’s been magic, it’s just been so much fun and it’s not over yet. I like to try different things and we had a segment in Nashville, which was probably week four or five, and we weren’t working together [yet]. I just had this thing with Cody and he was just about to [pass] and we kind of had this little interaction. And [then] we had this great promo and I felt the same thing with Kevin Owens, I was like, ‘oh this guy gets it, he’s good and he gets what wrestling is’ and I don’t care if he’s 25 or 45,” Jericho noted, “you either get it or you don’t, and that’s when I knew I could do something with him.
“When we did the thing with Orange Cassidy, last year, which was 14 weeks, when that was done, I thought about what’s next, and I thought that MJF was that guy and the idea of The Pinnacle was already being floated and I wanted to do it properly. I think we started September 9th, when our limos pulled up and we met Tony Schiavone, that’s a long time for an angle and a feud and in my opinion,” Jericho proclaimed, “it’s the top story on AEW and that was proven by the face that Stadium Stampede was in the main event.”
