Chris Jericho was recently a guest on Busted Open. Jericho revealed that he didn’t ask Vince McMahon for permission to wrestle his upcoming match against Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom. He did however, let Vince know ahead of time out of courtesy.
Jericho revealed Vince’s reaction when he told him the news:
“I know he wasn’t upset because I called him six weeks before and told him. As soon as the deal was done, I would never surprise him like that. You know, I didn’t ask him for his permission, but I didn’t have to. I told him what was going on. To be quite frank with you, he was super excited about it.”
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Jericho continued, talking more about Vince:
“See the thing about Vince, he loves wrestling. It’s what he knows best. Obviously his mission is to seek and destroy and kill every other company, but I think he secretly likes it when other companies do good because it makes it better for his company. When Chris Jericho goes to New Japan — and everyone knows I’m not a New Japan guy, I’m a WWE guy — when Chris Jericho versus Kenny Omega headlines the Tokyo Dome, it’s not some kind of behind the scenes screwjob. It’s taking a great opportunity and helping the business — helping Kenny Omega, helping New Japan — but guess what, it helps Chris Jericho, which in turn helps WWE. I think all of that is stuff you take into consideration. If it had been somebody else, I think Vince wouldn’t have been happy. But once again, he knows where I’m coming from. I would say you could count on one hand the amount of people that had done that over the years, as far as leaving for somewhere else and telling him about it first. I had no contractual obligation, but it was respect for the guy that I still consider to be my boss, because I would never want to do him like that. That’d be a pretty crappy thing to wake up one day and see that. I think it was the right move to do and I think he appreciated it.”
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[h/t to Bill Prichard of Wrestlezone for the transcript].