As we all know by now, Old School WWF Legend Chris Jericho will be returning to New Japan Pro Wrestling to face the IWGP United States Champion Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 12.
Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer talked about the possible reason behind Jericho returning to NJPW and below is what he said:
“We’ve seen it build for the last a week or two. I mean it’s like you could see something was building, whether it was gonna be for the Tokyo Dome or for the cruise and obviously timing wise the Tokyo Dome makes more sense.
And it overall makes more sense to do this match in Tokyo Dome rather than on a cruise, right? So, essentially the second biggest show of the year. So they did it. So this is what I kind of am reading into this.
I think that Chris Jericho wants to be something of Brian Pillman. I don’t know if that’s the right analogy. But in the sense of he wants to be the guy that everyone talks about. He wants to be the guy that shocks you. He wants to do the things that you think aren’t gonna happen. And I think that’s what this is.
I think that it was like… you know…. nobody would think that a main WWE guy was gonna go to Tokyo Dome and wrestle Kenny Omega (of all people). I didn’t know this was gonna happen.
Jericho’s signed a short-term contract with WWE because one of the things is that when he’s done, he doesn’t want like……let’s just say that that a movie or a TV show offer comes up, he doesn’t want that WWE thing saying – hey, you’re under contract. We have to approve it. We have to negotiate it.
And usually, very often, he’ll sign for a certain length of time and almost the last couple times he’s extended it.
It’s usually a set time and then he’s gonna go and do his music and usually that’s what coincides with. He’s gonna do his wrestling until it comes time to do the music and now it’s time to do the music.
I do expect at some point he’ll be back in WWE. He’s always said he would never go anywhere but WWE. And maybe that was to build up because I think this is one of those things where he just wants to surprise people.
It’s not so much the money, I mean it is the money always of course, but it’s really not in the sense that he’s got money and I think he just likes to be talked about and shocking. I think it’s really important to him. It was really important to him that nobody knew about that video and that he was going to do the Omega match.
They really tried hard. I think that it was really clever when Omega did the thing…. you know…. right in the middle of that thing going like – This is a waste of our time, this is not going to be a payoff. That was like the clever one because up until then I think everyone knew they’re working.
When you see that it’s like – Maybe they’re not working, maybe Jericho’s just an idiot.
When I was reading the stuff the way it was written and everything it was like, I know that he has respect for independent wrestling. I know he has respect for those kind of wrestlers.
When those guys like Finn Balor and Neville and people like that came to WWE, he always wanted to work with them. That’s when I knew like what he was saying was not the real Chris Jericho, which means it’s an angle.”
