Chris Jericho reflects on his appearance at PWG Battle of Los Angeles.
“The Ocho” shocked the wrestling world when he appeared at the event in January alongside the rest of his Jericho Appreciation Society stablemates. The group then scored the win in a 10-man tag team match, giving Jericho a victory in his first bout for an independent promotion in over two decades.
Speaking on Talk Is Jericho, the former AEW World Champion described how the appearance came together. He recalled how he spoke to Excalibur about it months in advance, and the opportunity presented itself when Garcia was set to compete in the Battle of Los Angeles tournament. Jericho also noted that AEW President was very excited by the idea.
“Excalibur and I had spoken about it, for anybody that wants to know how that even happened. Excalibur and I had spoken about it months ago. After the show, we were having some drinks, and I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, I’d like to do PWG. Let’s try and figure it out sometime.’ Then about a month or so ago, Danny [Garcia] mentioned that he’s in the BOLA, and that there’s always this tournament. He said, ‘Why don’t you and Sammy come, and we’ll do a six-man?’ I said, ‘Why don’t we make it the whole gang, all eight of us, and do a 10-man, and have Anna, Tay, and Jake on the outside with us.’
“I think that was kind of the cool part, was the fact that the entire group showed up. Once I suggested it to Tony Khan, he was super excited about it. I was like, this is gonna be really cool. When we first started AEW, I remember the Bucks did a few of these, and I think Kenny and I showed up at a small indie in Georgia, not to have a match but I think I did a run-in. So we were kind of the new company that was just showing up wherever we wanted to and kind of had this street cred because of it. I thought, ‘This kind of takes us back to that.’ No one’s gonna expect this, and everyone’s gonna be talking about it. No matter what we do in this match, it doesn’t matter because they’re just gonna be going nuts, the fact that we’re here because it is such a cool surprise.”
Jericho continues to feud with Ricky Starks on AEW TV. “The Stroke Daddy” will face Jericho’s JAS stablemates in the Guevara-Garcia Gauntlet on the February 8 episode of AEW Dynamite.
