Chris Jericho made a surprise appearance at the ‘All-In’ event this past weekend. Jericho attacked Kenny Omega while dressed up as Pentagon Jr. This came as a bit of surprise since Jericho has been vocal about only working for WWE while in the United States. He has said in the past that he has a personal rule to only work for Vince McMahon in the U.S.
Jericho explained why he broke that rule at ‘All-In’ on the latest episode of his podcast, Talk is Jericho.
Jericho says that his mindset has changed a bit (h/t to Cageside Seats):
“Month’s ago when ALL IN was announced, Cody called me and said, ‘Do you want to be involved?’
And I said, ‘No, I’m not really wanting to work any shows in the states that aren’t WWE shows. For various reasons. I just didn’t feel it was where I was at career-wise. So I told him I appreciated the offer, but I’m not gonna do it. I also got asked to do Long Beach and those New Japan and all that other stuff as well, so that was kind of the thing. But over the course of the last few months, my mindset’s kind of changed a bit to where I’m enjoying being a part of this kind-of new revolution of wrestling that’s going on… So I just thought, well, you know, I’ll consider it, but the idea has to be right.
So Cody called me again and originally asked me if I wanted to be Burnard the Bear. I guess sometimes people will take off the bear mask and… so the idea was maybe do something in the main event where The Bucks come down with Burnard the Bear or something and then I attack Kota Ibushi, obviously Kenny’s partner in The Golden Lovers. I was like, ‘Why don’t I attack Kenny?’ It was like, well, it’s not really an angle match and whatever – we just couldn’t figure it out, it’s like, ‘Nah, I’m not really interested in it.’
And then Cody called me again and I was like, started thinking, ‘I wonder if I could make this work?’ And we started kicking around some ideas and the idea was, ‘Well what if I can come in earlier in the show and attack Kenny?’ Cause that’s the idea of kind of keeping this angle alive from the Tokyo Dome to the cruise and maybe elsewhere. And I just thought, ‘What a great way of kind-of last minute promotion for the cruise?’”
On a related note, there is a wild story behind Jericho appearing at ‘All-In’. You can read that here.