Chris Jericho has revealed that before creating the Jericho Appreciation Society he wanted to team with Eddie Kingston and Jon Moxley.
The rivalry between Chris Jericho and Eddie Kingston began at AEW Full Gear in reaction to Kingston’s ever-growing friendship with Santana and Ortiz of Jericho’s Inner Circle. This eventually led to the pair having a match at Revolution in March.
On the episode of Dynamite after the show, Jericho initially appeared to praise Kingston before attacking him, in the process he teamed with Daniel Garcia, 2point0 and Jake Hager to create the Jericho Appreciation Society.
During an appearance on Busted Open Radio, Jericho reflected on the promo battles between himself and Kingston in the lead-up to their match. He revealed that it was the reaction to one of these promos, which led him to move away from his original idea of a group with Kingston and another former rival, Jon Moxley.
“I’d love to be able to tell you that I had this big overarching plan that was put into place in November when we started doing this thing with Eddie Kingston and I. It wasn’t. It was just reading the room and evolving.
My original idea was for maybe, Eddie, and (Jon) Moxley to be an alliance as babyfaces. I never really thought about turning heel. I always had this real romantic idea of never breaking up the Inner Circle and having us be together until the end.
Once we started rolling and moving, I realized there was a lot we could do with it. When we were in Bridgeport, Connecticut, we had a promo and Eddie came out there and was like, ‘I don’t know why I’m out here. This is pro wrestling, not sports entertainment, if you want that, go down the block.’ People just responded with a huge half cheer, half boo disdain for ‘sports entertainment.’ I was like, ‘Oh, oh, our fanbase doesn’t like that term. Interesting.’
Then the wheels go into motion and you start thinking of ‘maybe we can do something like this.’ The sports entertainment thing came from listening to the fans and realizing, ‘they don’t like this, I do. I’m a sports entertainer at heart. Let’s talk about it and make it a thing on screen,’ and that’s what we did,”
The rivalry between Jericho and Kingston has continued in recent weeks, and the pair will meet in the ring once more on the upcoming April 13th episode of Dynamite. On the show, Jericho will team with Hager and Garcia to take on Kingston, Santana and Ortiz.
H/t to Fightful for the transcription.