Last Saturday night, IWGP Intercontinental champion Chris Jericho shocked the wrestling world when he attacked Kenny Omega while disguised as Pentagon Jr. at All IN. Jericho has stated numerous times before that he would not appear for any televised United States promotions other than WWE, out of his loyalty to Vince McMahon.
During a recent episode of his “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, Y2J spoke about appearing at ALL IN despite his previous WWE policy. Cagesideseats provided the transcription.
“Month’s ago when ALL IN was announced, Cody called me and said, ‘do you want to be involved'”, said Jericho,
“And I said, ‘No, I’m not really wanting to work any shows in the states that aren’t WWE shows. For various reasons. I just didn’t feel it was where I was at career-wise. So I told him I appreciated the offer, but I’m not gonna do it. I also got asked to do Long Beach and those New Japan and all that other stuff as well, so that was kind of the thing. But over the course of the last few months, my mindset’s kind of changed a bit to where I’m enjoying being a part of this kind-of new revolution of wrestling that’s going on… So I just thought, well, you know, I’ll consider it, but the idea has to be right.
“So Cody called me again and originally asked me if I wanted to be Burnard the Bear. I guess sometimes people will take off the bear mask and… so the idea was maybe do something in the main event where The Bucks come down with Burnard the Bear or something and then I attack Kota Ibushi, obviously Kenny’s partner in The Golden Lovers. I was like, ‘Why don’t I attack Kenny?’ It was like, well, it’s not really an angle match and whatever – we just couldn’t figure it out, it’s like, ‘Nah, I’m not really interested in it.’
“And then Cody called me again and I was like, started thinking, ‘I wonder if I could make this work?’ And we started kicking around some ideas and the idea was, ‘Well what if I can come in earlier in the show and attack Kenny?’ Cause that’s the idea of kind of keeping this angle alive from the Tokyo Dome to the cruise and maybe elsewhere. And I just thought, ‘What a great way of kind-of last minute promotion for the cruise?’”