When it was announced that All Elite Wrestling star Chris Jericho would appear on Peacock/WWE Network show The Broken Skull Sessions with Stone Cold Steve Austin, it's fair to say the wrestling world was shocked. Well, that aired on the WWE Network over the weekend, and there was indeed plenty of AEW talk from the leader of the Inner Circle.
During this interview with the Texas Rattlesnake, Jericho opened up about leaving WWE.
"I knew what I would be if I went back to WWE. I knew what would happen. I knew the first thing when I went back is, I would have to put somebody on the list. In 2020, or 2019, the list was from 2016, it felt like, I’m just gonna go play ‘Back in Black’ for the rest of my life, even though I had 15 albums since." Jericho added that his feud with Kevin Owens played a contributing factor in why he chose to head to New Japan Pro Wrestling and then sign with AEW.
"[We] get to WrestleMania, [the main event] changed from Kevin and Jericho to Brock [Lesnar] and Goldberg. And great, no problem. But when Kevin and Jericho went from the main event proposed to the second match on the show, I thought to myself, this is where I’ll be for, in my opinion, for the rest of my time in WWE. The second match guy. And in my mind, I wasn’t a second match guy."
Le Champion also addressed whether AEW is competition to WWE, and reiterated past comments that they're just doing their own thing rather than attempting to take down the sports entertainment giant.
"I didn't think there would be another national promotion again that could really...I don't want to say competition, because we're not in competition," Jericho explained. "Obviously, by proxy, we're thrown into that, but we're worried about our own stuff and doing things differently and doing things a different way to draw the fanbase to create more of the choices that we had during the Monday Night Wars. We haven't had those choices in a while and now we do and people latched on to it."
There's a lot more to this interview that's well worth checking out, so make sure you do when you get a chance. Jericho mentioned a number of AEW stars during this interview with Austin, and also reflected on his WWE career (a company you have to believe he will eventually make some sort of return to).