Chris Jericho won the eighth World title of his career, and became ‘The Ocho’, after defeating Claudio Castagnoli for the ROH World Championship at AEW Dynamite: Grand Slam on September 21st.
Following his victory, Chris Jericho vowed to destroy Ring Of Honor and tarnish the legacy of its prestigious title by defeating any former champion that was willing to face him.
‘Le Champion’ has gone onto defeat a plethora of ROH’s biggest names since capturing the championship, including Bryan Danielson, but has recently revealed a number of other former ROH Champions that have been considered for an appearance during his title run.
PCO, Chris Hero And Dragon Lee Were Also Considered As Challengers To Chris Jericho’s ROH World Championship
On a recent edition of his ‘Talk Is Jericho’ podcast, the Fozzy singer discussed his recent run of matches against former ROH champions and revealed the idea of bringing Colt Cabana back into the fold.
Chris Jericho also touched upon the story of how Cabana ‘almost died’ during their bout:
“We wanted to bring Colt back on the show, reintroduce him, he had a pretty rough year as well. Former Ring of Honor champion, and I always enjoyed his work. A very solid worker and it was fun to have him back. That’s the reason why he came back, solely, we just wanted to have him on the show and reintroduce him. He hadn’t been on TV for awhile.
The funny thing was, he told the story where he almost died. He bought the wrong kind of socks, he bought compression socks instead of normal socks and I guess it was limiting his blood flow to where, when he came back from the ring, he was about ready to pass out,”
The former WWE star also revealed a number of other names that were considered for a match over the last couple of months:
“I wanted to do another match with an outside guy. We had a couple of ideas, one was PCO, once again, but he wasn’t available. The other idea we had was Chris Hero, but he wasn’t available either, couldn’t do the gig. Same thing with Dragon Lee, another idea that Tony had, but he couldn’t make it. I was like, ‘Does anybody want to wrestle me?’ We were thinking that maybe we could use Chris Daniels, I suggested Samoa Joe or Jay Lethal, but they’re in different programs. Finally, Tony says, “What about Ishii?’ ‘That is great,'”
ROH Final Battle takes place this Saturday and will see Chris Jericho defend his ROH World Title against Claudio Castagnoli in a rematch, with the added stipulation that if Castagnoli loses, he will have to join the Jericho Appreciation Society.
H/t to Fightful for the transcription.