In a video posted to his Instagram Saturday morning, AEW Champion Chris Jericho officially added a stipulation to his match against Hiroshi Tanahashi for night two of next week’s Wrestle Kingdom 14 show.
Last week, Tanahashi floated the idea of a rematch for the AEW title if he is able to defeat Jericho in their first meeting on January 5th at the Tokyo Dome. It surprised many because the two organizations haven’t established a working relationship and there’s some bad blood due to how things ended when Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks and New Japan parted ways.
However, that didn’t stop Jericho from accepting Tanahashi’s challenge after he said he talked to Tony Khan:
A post shared by Chris Jericho(@chrisjerichofozzy) on Dec 28, 2019 at 6:42am PST
Jericho has a clause in his AEW contract allowing him to work in New Japan, but it’s unclear about whether this marks a change in the relationship between AEW and New Japan. The latter has had a working relationship with Ring of Honor for years, further adding questions to what is happening.
Jericho puts over Tanahashi on an NJPW show and Tanahashi returns the favor on an AEW show. Sounds like a good, mutually beneficial idea if that’s how it goes down.
Though Tanahashi winning the AEW belt is the “shit’s about to get interesting” booking, I assuming it’s also the least likely scenario.
Also, I’m generally against world champions losing non-title singles matches, but if done sparingly and against one of the best in the world, I can handle it.
Yes but he needs to win. If Tanahashi loses no match is happening
If Jericho loses to Tanahashi it has to be because of interference from Moxley. Otherwise what’s the point if he just loses clean? What interest is there in a Mox and Jericho match if he just lost clean.
I still thought NJPW was committed to ROH so unless that’s changed we haven’t heard of a joint PPV or anything
TBH, when there’s money to be made and/or have good publicity, any grudges go out the window. We see it all the time in Wrestling.
NJPW want publicity for this American expansion and AEW want ratings, it’s a win win situation as far as I’m concerned.
As I said in a previous thread, CZW and ROH had a pretty good feud.
Done properly and spread over a few months instead of condensing it into a couple (Like WWE do with Survivor Series, where they brand warfare has a scheduled start and finish date) there is no reason AEW and New Japan can’t have a sustained feud that is mutually beneficial to both companies
Surely it’s a case of Tanahashi wins at WK then faces Jericho at New Beginning ‘for the belt’ and Jericho gets his win back. I mean Tana v Jericho isn’t main eventing the dome but could easily headline a New beginning show for the AEW title. Surely any title match would be before the AEW PPV on Feb 29th?
Keeping in mind how “the Elite” have made use of their YouTube shows for building angles, and the recent show focusing about how The Elite left NJPW, it would not surprise me that AEW and NJPW are building towards some type of cross-promotion booking. At the end of the day, what Tony Kahn and The Elite know how to do is make money.