Rumors had persisted about a potential WWE return for Chris Jericho during his year-long hiatus from AEW last year. The AEW veteran ultimately chose to continue his current run with the promotion, disappointing many who had hoped to see him back in WWE.
During a recent interview with Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, Jericho explained the reasoning behind his decision. Chris Jericho explained that he chose to return to AEW since he had skin the game:
“When it was time to kind of start thinking about coming back, obviously you weigh your options. And there is a lot of factors, but the bottom line is this, and this was the one that really clinched it for me, was 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.”
“And I can’t wait to see how much bigger the company gets over the next 10 years, etc. 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.”
Chris Jericho also revealed the names he would like to with in AEW, now that he has returned to the company including Kevin Knight and Ricochet:
“Kevin Knight, I would love to do more with him. I’d love to be a tag team with Ricochet. I’d love to be a tag team with Ciampa. I mean, I could do something with Jack Perry. I could work with Mark Davis. I could work with Kyle Fletcher. I could work with The Rascalz. The Rascalz could be like my minions.”
